“I don’t see a reporter,” Gabriella said.
“And I don’t see a librarian,” I said.
“Well, then,” said Grant, “let’s go find the man with the keys. Whoever and wherever that may be.”
The prince had another idea. “I could just jimmy the lock. Save a lot of time.”
Grant offered three more useful foreign words. “ Que sera sera. ”
The prince gave him a quick, appreciative bow. Then he turned to me. “Wouldn’t have a bobby pin, would you, Maddy?”
I dug into my purse and produced one. I handed it to the prince. He pried it open, and with the skill of a burglar, inserted it into the tiny lock on the niche’s glass door. He wiggled it back and forth. Then up and down. Then sort of round and round. Clockwise then counterclockwise. Nothing. Grant took over. He, too, wiggled the pin every whichaway. With equal failure. I also tried-it was my bobby pin after all-but after two minutes of frantic jiggling handed the pin to Weedy. It took him about five seconds. “It’s pretty much the same kind of lock they have on our vending machines,” he explained.
Gabriella was shocked by his criminality. “You steal from the vending machines?”
“Not steal-get the candy I paid for.”
The prince opened the glass door. Put his head inside and lowered his nose over the little box. He lifted the lid. Without a smile or a frown he whispered, “Oh my!” He closed the lid. He pulled back his head. Moved his hands to the urn. He stroked it. Then he gently lifted it. Then he cradled it against his chest and kissed the shiny purple lid. “I wouldn’t have expected it to be this heavy,” he said. “Not that I ever held one before.”
That’s when Detective Grant had his epiphany. “Oh shit!” He coaxed the urn out of the prince’s hands and gently put it on the floor. He got on his knees and bent over the jar. The rest of us bent over him. He unscrewed the lid. He took a pair of latex gloves from his jacket. He wiggled his fingers into them. He undid the twist-tie on the plastic bag inside the urn. He held his breath and pulled the bag open. He slowly drilled a finger into the ashes. He slowly pulled out a small pistol.
Prince Anton had been a regular Rock of Gibraltar since the day he arrived in Hannawa. Sweet and patient. A gentleman. Now he went crazy.
And why wouldn’t he go crazy?
Can you imagine standing in that cold columbarium looking at the ashes of someone you’d missed horribly every minute of your life for fifty years? Then see that pistol emerge through those lifeless ashes like some ghastly demon? Good gravy, can you imagine it?
“What the hell kind of a country is this?” he screeched. “What kind of people?” He was grabbing at the pipe in his shirt pocket. I swear if it had been a knife he might have driven it through his heart.
Grant held the pistol just above the bag of ashes while Weedy snapped his pictures. While Gabriella furiously took her notes. I tried to comfort the prince. “What a horrible shock,” I kept repeating. I walked him to a pair of wrought iron chairs by the window overlooking the outside garden. He covered his face with his hands and cried. “I’m taking Petru home, Maddy.”
“Yes-you should.”
“Such a vile thing, Maddy.”
“Yes-it is.”
“I’ll sprinkle those damn ashes from one corner of Romania to the other.”
I pulled him up by the arm. Pulled him toward the others. “Come on.”
He pulled away. “No-I can’t stand to look.”
I let go of his arm. Called to Gabriella. “Bring your notebook over here. The prince has a quote.”
Gabriella knew enough to come.
I pinched my thumb and forefinger on the prince’s chin and swung his face toward mine. “Tell her exactly what you just told me,” I commanded.
The prince started stammering, unsure of what he’d said.
I gave him a hint. “About sprinkling.”
“Maybe it isn’t such a good idea that I say anything right now,” he stammered, trying to retreat.
I refused to let him. “Maybe it is. Tell her!”
He obeyed. “I told her I’m going to take Petru’s ashes home. To Romania. And sprinkle them from one corner to the other.” Now he embellished a bit. “It’s what she would want, I think.”
I waited until Gabriella stopped scribbling. “You get it all?”
“Of course I got it all,” she said.
Now I called Detective Grant over. Weedy came with him, snapping pictures like a frog in a swarm of flies. “Now Gabriella,” I said, “read your quote to the detective.”
She refused. “I don’t have to run my quotes by the police.”
“This one you do,” I said. “Read!”
And so she read: “I’m going to take Petru’s ashes home. To Romania. And sprinkle them from one corner to the other.”
I looked at Grant. Mentally crossed all my fingers and toes that he knew where I was going. Luckily he did. “There’s nothing I can do to stop you from reporting that,” he said to Gabriella. “But-so there’s no confusion-finding the gun in the ashes is part of an ongoing police investigation and strictly embargoed until I say so.” He looked squarely at Gabriella. “Agreed?”
Gabriella, by now, of course, knew that something was up. Something conspiratorial. More than likely unethical. “I think I’d better call Tinker before I agree to anything,” she said.
I set her straight. “The only call you’re going to make is to the metro desk. You’re going to have them insert Prince Anton’s quote into your story for tomorrow.”
She started raking through her purse for her cell phone. “I’m calling Tinker.”
I had to act fast, as they say. “And of course when they arrest the killer, tomorrow or the next day, Detective Grant will make sure you’re the one who gets the story. Even though Dale Marabout is the police reporter.”
That Gabriella understood. “Well, I can’t muck up an ongoing investigation, can I?”
“No you can’t,” I said. “And neither can you, Weedy.”
Weedy stopped snapping. He knew how to play the game. “It would be great to be on hand when the arrest is made.”
Gabriella called the metro desk. With my help, she gave the night editor a couple of paragraphs to insert in her story for the morning paper. We didn’t have to rearrange the facts much at alclass="underline"
On an emotional visit yesterday to the Riverbend Moor Family Memory Garden in Bloomfield Township, Prince Anton announced his intention to take his sibling’s ashes back to their Eastern European homeland.
“I’m going to take Petru’s ashes home, to Romania,” he said, staring sadly at the purple urn and other mementoes inside the glass-covered niche in the columbarium. “And sprinkle them from one corner to the other. It’s what she would want, I think.”
23
Wednesday, August 30
Ike shook me awake at three o’clock, just like I’d asked. I took a quick shower and dressed. Dungarees. A tee shirt. A peelable sweat shirt over that. I drank half a mug of much-too-hot tea. I shook Ike awake and reminded him to take James out for his six a.m. pee. Then I drove to the paper. West Apple was empty. It had rained sometime after I’d gone to bed. The dark city glistened like a glazed chocolate donut. Something I wished I had right then, along with the rest of my tea.
Detective Grant was waiting for me when I pulled up. He didn’t have the police van this time. He was driving his own car. It was one of those enormous station wagons they don’t make anymore. I opened the back door. Gabriella, Dale Marabout, and Weedy slid over. Their sleepy, bugged-out eyes made them look like hallucinating toads. Weedy offered me his open box of Entenmann’s Mini Muffins. I took the last three. “God bless,” I said.
Prince Anton was in the front with Detective Grant. He twisted his head and blew me a playful kiss.
Grant sang out, “Wagon ho!”
We pulled away from the curb, made a wide, illegal U-turn and headed out of the city, everyone slurping from a plastic travel mug of something except me.
We were on our way to Bloomfield Township, to the cemetery, to catch Violeta Bell’s murderer. And we were driving there in the middle of the night because we wanted to be in place before the murderer could read the morning paper, then drive like a maniac to the cemetery and remove the little. 22 pistol from the ashes.