Page 33 of The 24th Hour
“Let’s go, Patty,”
“Do I need a lawyer?”
“You always have the right to a lawyer.”
While Patty pulled on jeans and a cardigan, I openeddrawers in her nightstand, then her dresser. Looking for what, I didn’t know. A diary. A weapon. Letters from Jamie. Drugs. I had a search warrant for the house and I figured that covered individual rooms. If not, bad on me.
I found nothing but fancy dildos and lubricants along with her workaday outfits and lacy underclothes.
I turned on the closet light, gave her laundry basket a good tossing, moved on to the overhead shelves, feeling up handbags for the weight and shape of a gun. Nothing, nada, zero.
The red-eyed blonde turned to give me a questioning look.
“Do you have a gun, Patty? Tell me now if you do.”
“No. I don’t have a gun. Arthur doesn’t have a gun. He’s my friend. He’s the only one who knows, knew, about me and Jamie.”
She ran from the room and down the stairs. I followed as she turned toward the kitchen. She went into Arthur’s arms while Alvarez and I looked on.
CHAPTER 41
THE KITCHEN WAS one of those to-die-for rooms one sees in glossy home decor magazines—marble-tiled walls and floor, with a stone table in the middle of the room—but I focused on Arthur Bevaqua, who had his arms around Patty, cooing, “It’s going to be all right.”
“Never,” she said. “It will never be all right, Arthur.”
I pulled out a chair for Patty and one for myself. She sat next to Arthur and I sat beside Alvarez. Arthur looked grief-stricken, as if he’d accidentally backed his car over his dog. The house was big and empty and quiet, except for the sound of Patty’s thick breathing and the distant sound of a lawn mower.
I asked the two sitting across the table from us, “Who’s caring for the grounds?”
“Joe Casey and Mike Thomas. They’re here once a week. They don’t come into the house. I hired them. They never met Jamie or Holly.”
I asked Alvarez to go outside and get their information andIDs. “Call for a car and ask them to come to the station for questioning. We know they didn’t do it. We just want to know what they’ve observed.”
Alvarez got up from the table and headed out.
I asked Arthur and Patty if they knew or had a good guess about who’d killed the Frickes.
Arthur answered. “Don’t you know that I would do anything to know? If only I had a hint or a suspicion as to who killed Mr. Jamie and Mrs. Holly, I would give it up. You wouldn’t have to ask. I loved them both.”
“Arthur. Think. Who hated them? Who’d been swindled? Who’d been ditched? Who was jealous?”
He said, “Sergeant, no offense. There’s a whole world of people the Frickes knew that I never met, or only met to bring a drink to. I opened doors. I hung up coats. I supervised the staff and sometimes I served meals. I kept the press from the door. I was a utility. I knew from things Jamie told me or dictated to me that a lot of people didn’t like him. Players and fans from any city with a soccer team that lost to the Bleus. Any man with a woman Jamie had slept with. There were many.”
“No,” said Patty, fresh tears starting. “You’re wrong about that.”
“Patty, it’s true.”
He put his arm around her again and she put her elbows on the table and cried into her sleeves. Then she got up and unloaded the dishwasher.
I said, “Anyone you think we should be looking at?”
“This is just talk,” Arthur said, “because I don’t know anyone who would have killed either of them. I’m a housemanager. Understand? Talk to Marilyn Stein again. She knew everyone who knew Holly.”
“Anyone else?”
“Talk to Mr. Jamie’s driver. Rafe Talbot. He was totally checked out and cleared before he got this job.”
Alvarez poked her head back in the room. She said to me, “Backup is here.”