“IT was that gold necklace,” Betsy said. “It twinkles and the crow came after it.”
“God bless the crow!” exclaimed Godwin.
“Amen,” said Betsy. “May it live long and happily in Iowa. I wish I could nominate it for that animal hero medal, but its existence has to retain the tattered remnants of a secret.”
“Did you think it would attack Tony?” asked Detective Omernic.
“No. I noticed it coming into the living room—Tony left the office door open and the light on. I never got a padlock for its cage, so it was always getting out. I tried not to look at it, but it kept coming closer to the chair. I could see it had its eye on the necklace he was twiddling. I thought about warning him, because I didn’t want it to startle him into shooting, but then I saw it was coming up to him from behind and I hoped it might distract him enough so I could run out of the apartment.”
“On a broken leg?” scoffed Godwin.
“When you’re really scared, you can run on a broken leg,” said Sergeant Omernic with the air of one who knows. They were sitting around Betsy’s table in her dining nook. Omernic had kindly come by for a wrap-up.
“Why didn’t you sic Tony on Godwin?” asked Omernic. “It was Godwin he was mad at.”
Betsy stared at him. “I couldn’t do that!”
Godwin, moved beyond words, touched his mouth with his fingertips, then went in another direction. “Anyone want coffee? It’s already made.”
“Thank you, black,” said Omernic.
“No, thank you,” said Betsy.
Godwin stood and asked over his shoulder, “Does Tony still say I’m the murderer?”
“He’s not saying much of anything,” said Omernic. “He’s an old hand at being arrested, he knows better than to say anything more than he has to. Besides, he honestly doesn’t remember what happened that night in the parking garage. That skull fracture he suffered in the car accident wiped about thirty-six hours of memory from his brain.”
“Can you convict a man of a crime he doesn’t remember committing?” asked Betsy.
“Certainly,” said Omernic. “If you can prove he did it.”
“Still,” said Godwin, coming back with a mug in each hand, “it would be weird and awful to go to prison for something you don’t remember doing.”
“I think he already halfway believes he did it,” said Betsy. “If only—I wonder where the check got to? It was never cashed or deposited in that fake account he set up. He was very firm that he never saw it, and he thinks that’s proof he’s innocent.”
“Well, Germaine’s shirt and cuff links were in his possession. Plus these two clues.” Omernic put down his mug and reached into a pocket to pull out a folded sheet of paper. Unfolded, it proved to be two sheets, photocopies. One was of a small key, the other of a photograph of a watch. Each item had a big evidence tag attached to it.
“Where did you find that?” asked Betsy, touching the picture of the watch. It appeared to have a lizard-or crocodile-skin band.
“It was pawned just a few blocks from Marc Nickelby’s condo, where Mr. Milan stayed after his own apartment caught fire. We found a partial of Milan’s thumbprint on the band, and the pawn ticket was in Milan’s possession. Also, the pawnbroker’s description of the man who pawned it for three hundred dollars matches Mr. Milan, though he used a different name.”
“Three hundred dollars for a watch?” said Godwin. “But it’s not a Rolex.”
“No, it’s a Bulova.”
“My father wore a Bulova,” said Betsy. “But I can’t imagine he paid even a hundred dollars for his. Of course, that was a long time ago.”
“You don’t understand,” said Omernic. “This is a very high-end Bulova, valued at close to two thousand dollars.”
“Oh!” said Betsy, bending for a closer look. “Oh, I see. Well then…is it Bob Germaine’s?”
Omernic took a drink of coffee. “His wife says it is. She bought one for his birthday about eight weeks ago, and he was not wearing a watch when he was found in the trunk of his car. Tony at first said he picked it up at an estate sale a couple of weeks ago, and had no idea it was an expensive watch. Now he says he didn’t say any such thing and since we aren’t listening to him, he’s saying nothing further.”
Betsy shook her head. She had no further thoughts herself about it. She turned to the other sheet, the one with the picture of the small brass key. She and Godwin leaned forward to look at it. The key had a small piece of white paper taped to it, or maybe it was just a strip of white adhesive tape on which was neatly printed the number 36.
“Where did this come from?” asked Betsy.
“Tony’s apartment. He says he doesn’t know where it came from. It’s listed on the items returned to him by Hennepin County Medical Center, so it was in his pocket when he was brought there after the accident.”
“It looks like a key to a mailbox,” said Betsy.
“It doesn’t open his mailbox in his apartment building,” said Omernic.
“Maybe he has a post office box,” suggested Godwin. “You know, at the post office.”
“No, it’s not a post office box key,” said Omernic.
Betsy recalled a conversation from a Monday Bunch meeting. “I bet I know. There’s one of those mail-drop places right next door to the hotel. Patricia was complaining about ‘those kind of places’ opening up downtown. I bet he took the check there. He didn’t want to keep it on him, his bank was closed—anyway, I’m sure he didn’t have a deposit slip with him—or an envelope and a stamp, either, so he couldn’t mail it to himself. He had to put it somewhere while he figured out what to do with the body. So he went up the street and put it in PostNet.” She was looking brighter. “If the check is there, it will have his fingerprints on it. Then even he would have to admit he’s guilty.”
“I saw that place,” said Omernic. “I went and had a talk with them, and while they agree the key looks like one of theirs, no one named Tony Milan—or Stoney Durand, for that matter—has ever rented a mailbox there.”
Godwin thought while he drank some coffee, then said, “Anyway, when would he have done that? He had to drive right off from the hotel, remember?”
“When he came back from the airport—” began Betsy. “No, wait, he would still be wearing Bob Germaine’s clothes.”
“Maybe he changed,” offered Godwin.
“No, he was wearing Germaine’s clothes when he got into the accident,” said Omernic. “The hospital sent them home with him.”
“There, then!” said Betsy, with an air of stating the obvious.
“What?” said Omernic.
“If he was wearing Germaine’s clothes, then he was carrying Germaine’s wallet and ID. You go back to that mail drop and see if Bob Germaine rented a mailbox.”
Omernic looked at her for a long few seconds, then he began to smile. He reached into a different pocket and pulled out yet another photocopy. He unfolded it, bumped it with a forefinger so it spun around and across the table toward her. It was of a commercial-size check all black and smeary—“Fingerprint dust!” exclaimed Godwin. “You knew!”
“And those are Mr. Milan’s fingerprints, all right. I brought it along to show off with, but I see Ms. Devonshire is just as clever as Sergeant Malloy thinks she is,” he said, smiling at Betsy.
“Of course she is! Strewth, she’s cleverer than that!”
Omernic’s green eyes twinkled. “I think you’re right, Goddy, I think you’re right.”
ALICE had brought a new cardboard box for the crow. And, somewhere, she had acquired a pair of heavy leather gauntlets that came well up her forearms.
“I’m surprised you don’t want to keep him, now,” she said. “He’s a hero.”
“That doesn’t lift his sentence of death in Minnesota,” said Betsy.
“True,” said Alice. “But he at least deserves a medal.”
Betsy held up the Crewel World keychain she was going to give the crow. “I hereby present you…” she intoned, and its shimmer and faint clatter drew the crow’s attention. It sat more upright on its perch, like a soldier at attention. “…with this medal for courage beyond the call of duty.”
Alice, taking advantage, reached into the cage with one hand to crowd the bird into a corner, then brought the second in to clamshell the creature and lift it out. All it could wiggle were its feet, which it did, industriously.
“Of course, there are other considerations that make me celebrate his departure,” admitted Betsy.
“Like the fact that you about doubled sales of the Minneapolis Star Tribune in Excelsior all by yourself?” Alice put the crow in the box and Betsy held it partly closed so Alice could get her hands out without freeing the bird.
Betsy said, “That, too.” The box was closed and Betsy pulled off a length of clear mailing tape from the big roll and bit it so it would tear. She taped the box shut. “I hope he has a long and happy life in his new home.” She touched the box as if blessing the bird inside it. “He was about the worst houseguest I’ve ever had in my life, but I was sure glad to see him come sneaking out of the back bedroom that night. Almost as glad as I am to see him leaving this morning.” She handed the trinket to Alice, who put it into a pocket.
Alice said, “I take it you would not be willing to be a stage on our secret passage out of state for some other crippled wild animal?”
“Maybe, if the animal were a bluebird, or a possum.”
Alice smiled at this partial victory and left.
Less than an hour later two burly young men—the same as the original pair? Betsy couldn’t tell—arrived and went to work dismantling the cage and its stand, hauling the pieces down the stairs and into an old gray van.
Sophie watched all this from the safety of Betsy’s bedroom. When the apartment was quiet again, she slipped into the back bedroom and very thoroughly sniffed the hardwood floor where the cage had sat on its platform. Betsy came in a few minutes later with a mop and bucket to find the cat circling a small black pinfeather on the floor, one forepaw pulling inward as if burying it.
“I take it you are telling me, ‘No more crows’,” said Betsy.
The cat looked up at her in eloquent silence and left Betsy to her work.