The maid was seated at the kitchen table waiting for us. She was an older Hispanic woman named Felipa Calderón, Mexican, and almost certainly illegal. She was nervous, scared stiff, wanting to be any place but where she was right now talking to two detectives about her murdered boss.
“What weel happen to me?” she asked in broken English. “I need this job. I work for Mr. Brian for two years now. Good years.”
“You’ll be okay,” I said softly. “Now just tell us about the murder.”
“I know nothing,” she blurted, still fearful.
“Well, what did you see?” Grant barked. “Come on, out with it or you’ll be gone, on the bus back home. Comprende?”
“Easy on her,” I told Grant.
“You gotta get their attention, Hollow, or she’ll never spill. Put some fear in her and she’ll tell what she saw.”
I turned to the maid and told her, “Don’t worry, Felipa, you won’t get hurt in this, I promise you, just be truthful with us.” I looked over at Grant, “Let me handle this.”
“I know nothing,” the maid repeated. Then at my urgings she added, “I do my work, clean the house for Mrs. Milly, his wife. I never go into the book rooms, Mr. Brian forbid me to go in there. Too cluttered. I do not know how he can work in there. So much books, piles of books, everywhere. I offered to clean it for him one day and he told me no. No. No!”
“So how did you find the body?” Grant asked suspiciously. “If you said you never went into those rooms?’
Felipa looked at Grant fearfully, “I seen him slumped over at his desk when I pass by in the hallway. I bring up towels for the bathroom. I thought Mr. Brian was sleeping, I called out to him, then Madre de Dios, I saw the knife sticking in his back.”
“Letter opener,” I corrected.
“Si, it was his letter opener. The silver one from his desk.”
“And then?” I prompted.
“Then I call la policía,” she said simply. “Will I lose my job now?”
Grant shook his head impatiently and ignored her.
I looked at Felipa, “I don’t know, you’ll have to talk that over with Mrs. McDonald. By the way where is Mrs. McDonald? We need to talk to her.”
“I do not know,” the maid snapped a bit too quickly and I could see she was lying, covering up. But what and why?
“She knows something,” Grant told me glomming onto the scent like a bloodhound. To me he was just stating the obvious but I didn’t comment.
“Where’s Mrs. McDonald?” I asked Felipa.
“I no know nothing,” she told me quickly. It was clear she was scared of saying where the wife was. Something was going on.
“We’ll come back to her later,” I told Grant and he nodded.
“Yeah, once we find her. We need to talk to the wife,” Grant added.
I looked at Felipa and asked her, “So who do you think killed Mr. McDonald?”
The maid hardly hesitated in her response, “Oh, it was certainly Mrs. McDonald. She hated him, he was cheating on her with a Black woman. Always the Black women with Mr. Brian.”
“Ah!” Charlie Grant burst out impatiently smelling another scent now, one more to his liking containing scandal and sex. This time I decided to let him run with it for just a little bit to see where it might lead us. “So Felipa, Mr. Brian liked the Black women?”
“Sí, before me he had a negrita maid, Alice Sparks, but Miss Milly caught them. So Alice was fired. She was very angry with Mr. Brian.”
“Miss Milly or Miss Sparks?” I asked.
“Oh, both! Both very angry at him,” she said shaking her head in disapproval.
“Well, that’s two suspects,” Grant said.
I shrugged, apparently so, but we’d have to check this all out a lot more deeply before we could rule anyone in, or out.
“But Mr. Brian always fighting, have many enemies, always troubles in book business,” she added. “It’s a crazy, loco business.”
“What other enemies?” I asked fishing for information. Felipa was openly talking to us now and she had apparently turned into a veritable gold mine of valuable information I hoped—or a dead-end rumor mill—or maybe both. I wanted to keep her talking, then I’d lead her back to the subject of the whereabouts of Mrs. McDonald.
“Mr. Brian have a partner, name of Spears, and they always argue, each one accuse the other of stealing. I don’t know how they can be in business together. Mr. Brian’s ex-wife, Sandy—such a nice lady, but sad. I met her once. I hear he treated her terrible. Then Mr. Johns of Royal Books, Mr. Brian tell me once they have a big feud that runs for twenty years! Imagine that?”
I looked at Grant, “We got enough here for three murder cases.”
“Seems like that,“ he admitted grimly. Then Grant ran them off on his fingers one by one. “We got the wife, the ex-wife, the former Black maid he got caught schtooking, the crooked business partner, then the feud with his main competitor in the book business. Anyone else?”
The question had been rhetorical but Felipa shrugged, “Mr. Brian was a very complicated man.”
“So it seems,” I said. “Now he’s dead.”
“Yes,” she replied as if she still did not believe it.
“Now, Felipa, where is Mrs. McDonald?” I asked sternly.
She looked up at me, “Oh, please, do not make me tell you that. It will cause much trouble. When she come home, she will tell you everything.”
“Look you!” Grant barked, “tell us now or I swear I’ll take you out of here!”
Felipa looked at me with pleading eyes. I looked at Charlie Grant, I knew he was bluffing, the last thing he wanted to do was bring in anyone unless it was the actual killer. He saw anything else as just one big annoyance. “Forget about her for now. The wife will turn up soon, then we’ll get what we need from her.”
“I don’t know, Hollow,” Grant said. “I don’t like it.”
“Come on, let’s go.”