Chapter 20
“Are you sure?” Nate asked as Augusta stood next to me wide eyed and speechless.
“Yeah. I’m sure. The car dealer left a message for Louis that my aunt played when we went over to his house. When I asked her what kind of car it was, she was very specific.”
“Maybe she made a mistake,” Augusta offered.
“No. Not Aunt Ina. When it comes to cars, food, clothing, and jewelry, she knows her stuff.”
Nate took a closer look at the brochure. “That doesn’t necessarily mean anything, Phee. Lots of people own that kind of car.”
Then Augusta piped up. “Lots of rich people own that kind of SUV.”
Clearing his throat, Nate gave Augusta a funny look. “Well, that certainly narrows down the field. Look, you two, it makes no sense whatsoever for Louis Melinsky to murder Theodore Sizemore. Besides, a man who has as much money as Louis purports to have would find a more efficient way of bumping off someone. No, this was an angry and personal attack. Not business. That’s not to say I don’t think Louis is totally off the hook, but I don’t think he’s one of our murderers.”
Seconds later, the door flung open and it was Nate’s two-thirty appointment. A red-haired woman in her late forties or early fifties who wanted to track down her birth mother. As both of them headed into Nate’s office, I gave Augusta a shrug and walked back to my desk. The rest of the afternoon was uneventful, but the evening made up for it.
Nate got a call around four from the police in Surprise. They authorized him to check out Louis Melinsky’s house and provided him with the access code to the garage. Apparently, that was how the police were able to get in initially, since they didn’t have a key. Somehow they were able to open the door manually and reset the keypad. Not a very comforting thought since that meant any burglar would be capable of doing the same thing.
“So, what do think, Phee? Care to join me right after work? This shouldn’t take too long and it’ll give us the answer we’re looking for.”
A few minutes after six, Nate and I had parked our respective cars on Louis’s street and were walking up his driveway. The crime scene tape was still there. Ducking underneath it, he turned toward me and mentioned something to the fact that if he had to bend any lower, he was afraid his back would seize up. I teased him about getting old as we waited for the garage door to open.
“At least it’s daylight,” I said. “We won’t have to worry about bumping into anything.”
Since I knew exactly where to find the fire safe key, I headed back to the master bedroom and Louis’s dresser drawer as soon as we got into the house. Minutes later, Nate and I were going through the contents of that fire safe like two kids who had just dumped their loot out of a plastic Halloween pumpkin.
“I’ll give the guy credit for this much,” Nate said as he started to go through the documents. “He was definitely organized. See for yourself. Life insurance policies, his trust, the IOUs, car title, and . . . hmmf, look here—a couple of divorce documents. And there’s more. I suppose we should focus on what we came here for in the first place—a better look at that IOU.”
“Yeah. I’ve been curious about it ever since Aunt Ina and I discovered these.”
Nate picked up the pile of IOUs and spread them out on the bed. I had done a quick tally of approximately $950,000 when I first got my hands on those notes. I hadn’t factored in the one note that wasn’t written on Emerald Cruise Line paper.
When I took a closer look at that amount, I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t imagining things. “Holy cow, Nate! Do you see what I see?”
“Yeah. Someone got carried away with the zeros.”
“That’s over a million dollars. My God! Let me see the other ones.”
“They’re pretty clear-cut, Phee. Looks like gambling debts to me. See for yourself.”
Nate pointed to the names and signatures as I leaned over the bed. The light from the overhead fan seemed to make everything stand out.
“Wow. If I’m reading this right, then Roland LeDoux lost a hell of a lot of money gambling and he lost it to Louis Melinsky. Check the witness signature. It’s the same on all of those notes—Theodore Sizemore. The dead man from the golf course. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I’ve got to go get something.”
I ran out of the room and straight toward the hutch, without giving Nate a chance to say a word. I couldn’t get to that stack of old photos fast enough.
“Take a good look at this photo, Nate. That’s Louis at the baccarat table and the man next to him is Roland LeDoux. Could the guy in the tux be Theodore Sizemore? That would certainly explain a lot.”
“Hard to say. It could be. That photo was taken a few years ago and people change. They put on weight. They lose weight. They lose hair. You know what? Take out that smartphone of yours and Google him. I’ll bet anything we’ll see enough photos of Theodore Sizemore to be sure. I know you’re dying to tap into a search engine.”
“Not really. Not with this gadget. Maybe if I was fourteen. Or twelve. I’m not as adept as the post-millennials. Give me a second.” My fingers felt enormous on the small iPhone keyboard but, surprisingly, they didn’t slow me down.
“Well, what do you think, Nate? Is it the same guy?” I was pointing to a cover article that had been written about Theodore Sizemore when he made a substantial donation to some golf club.
“Let me take a look at that.” Nate perused the article. “Yeah, it’s him all right. Theodore Sizemore. Back when he was still playing at Tanglewood Golf Club. Before he had that falling out with the board. It would seem our Mr. Sizemore had more than a passing relationship with Louis Melinsky and Roland LeDoux.”
“My aunt Ina told me Louis knew of the guy. Why would Louis lie to her?”
“Darned if I know.”
As I was leaning over the notes, I couldn’t help but pick up the copies of Louis Melinsky’s divorce papers. His first divorce was only six years after he’d married Candace Everton. His second marriage lasted longer—fifteen years to Edith Ellen Sasserman. I scrambled though the papers looking for the third divorce document.
“Nate, do you see another divorce document?”
Both of us moved the papers around and looked through all of the folders we had lined up on the bed.
“No, guess that’s it, kiddo.”
“It can’t be. Louis Melinsky was divorced three times. That’s what my mother told me. Three times. She went on and on about it. So, where’s the third set of divorce papers?”
“Maybe he filed them elsewhere. That happens.”
“Come on, Nate. You yourself said the guy was really organized. And he is. Look at this stuff. Someone this methodical doesn’t leave out an important document like his third divorce. Oh my God! That can only mean one thing. Oh my God! Louis Melinsky is still married. OH MY GOD! Aunt Ina must never find out. Not yet.”
Suddenly, all I could think of was a decaying mansion, an uneaten wedding cake, and a crazy woman in a tattered wedding gown. If my aunt Ina got wind of this information, she’d make Miss Havisham look like Mary Poppins.
“Hey, calm down, kiddo.” Nate started to put the documents back into the fire safe box. “Missing divorce papers don’t mean he’s still married. The real issue we’ve got on our hands is what’s written on that third IOU.”
I locked the safe as soon as it was closed and watched as Nate put it back in the master closet. We were headed into the living room when we heard the unmistakable sound of a key turning in the door.
Nate immediately reached for the gun he kept on his body holster.
“Shh. Go back in the bedroom and stay there.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. I was behind the bedroom door just as the front one swung open.
A loud voice seemed to scrape the air. “I’ll only be a minute. I know where I left them.”
That voice . . . that voice. It took a second for it to register. Aunt Ina! What was she doing here and whom was she talking to? I charged into the room, sidestepping my boss and nearly knocking into my aunt. Behind her was a young police officer who looked as stunned as I was.
“Aunt Ina! Why are you here?” I shouted.
Nate immediately held up his ID for the officer to see and announced himself. As the two men spoke, I grabbed my aunt by the arm and sashayed her toward the kitchen.
I kept my voice to barely a whisper. “For heaven’s sake, you didn’t tell them we were here the other night, did you?”
“Of course not. Don’t be silly, Phee. I told them I had to get into the house because I left my reading glasses here the last time I visited with Louis. I didn’t tell them it was really the other night when you and I were here. They believed me when I said I wasn’t about to buy one of those cheap ones at the drugstore when I paid good money to my optometrist. They arranged for that nice young officer to bring me here. He came directly to my house.”
“Well, you better hurry up and get those glasses, Aunt Ina. Are you sure you left them here?”
“Positive. I set them down on the vanity in Louis’s bathroom. By the way, what are you and your boss doing here? And how did you get in?”
I quickly told her about Nate getting clearance and the fact we needed to see what was on the other IOU.
My aunt stood perfectly still between the refrigerator and the kitchen island. “Tell me the truth, Phee. Does Louis owe the mob money? Is that what’s on that other note?”
“The mob?”
Leave it to my aunt Ina to offer up the one explanation none of us wanted to consider.
“There is no mob, Aunt Ina. Only restaurant financiers, and no, Louis doesn’t owe anyone any money. At least not according to the papers we found.”
“Good. Because I’ve decided to find a harpist to welcome the guests with angelic chords as they walk from the parking lot to the pathway.”
I swore I could feel my head spinning faster than that girl’s from The Exorcist.
“A harpist? Where are you going to find a—Oh, never mind. I thought you said Louis took care of all the music for the ceremony.”
“He did. He did. Yet there’s something ephemeral about thoughtful music played on the harp and lyre. . . .”
I was about to say the last people who played the lyre were the ancient Greeks and I was certain they weren’t about to rise from the dead to grace her wedding with “thoughtful music.”
“Are you ready, Mrs. Stangler? Did you find your glasses?” It was the young officer from the Surprise Police Department. “Young” being the pivotal word. I’d seen elderly women with more facial hair than this guy. He certainly seemed nice enough and more than willing to accommodate my aunt.
He took her by the elbow and coaxed her toward the door. “Let me drive you home.”
“I’ll call you later, Aunt Ina.”
Nate took a few steps toward them and held the door open. “We’ll leave through the garage, Officer McClure. Thanks again for the information.”
I waited until the door closed behind them before I spoke. “Information? What information? Do they have an idea of where Louis might be?”
“No, nothing like that. But they may have discovered a motive at Roland LeDoux’s condo for the murder of Theodore Sizemore.”
“What was it? What did they find?”
“It was a crumpled-up letter Roland had thrown into the trash. Sent to him registered mail a few days before Sizemore was killed on the golf course.”
“And? And?”
“Quit chomping at the bit, Phee. I’m getting to it. The letter said Theodore Sizemore was pulling all funding and wouldn’t be backing another Saveur restaurant. In other words, Saveur de Madeline was about to get its own death certificate before it was even built.”
“Holy cow. Could Roland have been that angry to actually kill Theodore Sizemore?”
“He could. But that’s not all. The letter wasn’t only addressed to Mr. LeDoux. Seems we’ve got another player. Come on, let’s get out of here before it gets dark.”