Magic Hour, Susan Isaacs [life changing books txt] 📗

know is where this money came from. Maybe she could tell us.”

“Oh,” Bonnie began, “it’s—”

“Quiet,” Gideon snapped at her.

“But, Gideon, it doesn’t have anything to do with Sy.”

Gideon did not look thrilled with her. “Would you please leave us alone for a minute?” he asked. We walked into the hall outside the kitchen, heard whispers. I took deep breaths, but I just made myself dizzy. Then Gideon called, “All right.

You can come back in.” When we did, he nodded at Bonnie.

She spoke to Robby, as if there was only one cop in the room. “The money you found is what’s left of twenty-five hundred dollars I got last December. I do a lot of work for a catalog company, and the owner pays me once a year. In cash.” Then she added, “Off the books.”

“So there’s no record of your having received the payment,”

I said. Bonnie made herself look at me, except her eyes did not meet mine.

“That’s the point of being paid off the books,” she explained, too patiently, as if talking to someone with an IQ

in the minus column. “There isn’t supposed to be any record.”

“So we just have your word that that’s where the money came from?”

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“Where else would I get eight hundred and eighty dollars?”

“On the morning of his death, Sy Spencer withdrew a thousand bucks from a cash machine. It was gone when we found him.”

Gideon broke in. “Do you call this police work? You don’t investigate. You just drop whatever you can’t explain at Bonnie Spencer’s front door. Obviously Sy gave it to someone. Or he bought something.”

“No,” Robby said.

“Don’t say no. I knew the man. He had a great eye, and he loved to indulge himself. If he saw a hundred-dollar tie he liked, he’d buy one in every color.”

“Believe me, we checked,” Robby continued. “There was no time for him to buy anything. And he didn’t give anything to anyone. Whoever was with Sy Spencer last took the money. And we know that person was Mrs. Spencer here.”

“You know that? How do you know? ” Gideon asked, as if he couldn’t believe our stupidity. But I could tell; he knew too.

“Because they were in bed together in the guest room of his house that afternoon.”

“Really?” There’s nothing like watching a desperate lawyer trying to do an amused act.

“Yeah, really,” I broke in. “There was some hair in the bed that wasn’t Sy’s. We’re betting that when we get a sample of Ms. Spencer’s blood, it’ll be a perfect DNA match.”

Bonnie’s hand flew up to touch the top of her head. She remembered. She understood. She looked at me with a terrible mixture of fury and grief.

“Now, you want to know what happened the afternoon Sy was killed?” I could only talk to Gideon. I didn’t have the courage to look at Bonnie anymore. “Your client had relations with Sy Spencer. They

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had a disagreement. He left the bedroom. She took the thousand bucks from his pants pocket. When he went for a swim, she put on a pair of rubber thongs—”

“I don’t have rubber thongs,” she said to Gideon.

“—and went downstairs. At some point, she walked to a spot right by the back porch, where she—”

I could feel Bonnie staring straight at me. Her eyes were huge. “No. I did not do it. That money…I got it—”

“Okay,” I cut her off. “Give me the number of the guy at the catalog company.”

Bonnie looked over at Gideon but didn’t wait for a signal.

Just as he started to shake his head no, she said, “The man’s name is Vincent Kelleher. He lives in Flagstaff, Arizona. I do three catalogs for him. Country Cookin’, Juno— that’s for heavy women—and…God, I’m going blank on the other one right now. Oh, Handy Dandy. Hardware, gadgets.”

Before I could say anything, she hurried out of the kitchen, upstairs, to her office. I followed. Her hands were shaking as she leafed through her address book. “Here.”

I dialed the number. The place wasn’t open yet. Gideon came upstairs, into the office, followed by Robby. Finally, I got Kelleher’s home phone from Information and woke him up. Yes, he was Vincent Kelleher. Thighs must have sensed something going on, because he came upstairs too, but the small office was too crowded for him to fit in; he stood outside the door, staring at Bonnie’s Cowgirl poster. Yes, Vincent Kelleher affirmed, he owned several mail-order catalog companies. Yes, Detective Brady, a Bonnie Spencer had done some work for him. Off the books? I demanded. In cash?

No! Did you pay Ms. Spencer two thousand five hundred dollars in cash last De-218 / SUSAN ISAACS

cember? No! At any other time? No! She’d done some work for him a couple of years ago, and he’d paid her…by check.

Was she in some sort of trouble, Detective Brady?

I hung up the phone. I turned to Robby. “He never made a cash payment to her.”

“That’s what I figured,” he said.

Bonnie grabbed onto the lapel of my jacket. “I swear to you—” It was the first time she’d touched me. I pushed her hand away.

“Out of curiosity,” I continued, “Mr. Kelleher wants to know if the lady’s in some sort of trouble.”

“I’ll say she is,” Robby said. “Big trouble.” He looked at Gideon and smiled. “In fact, by tomorrow, I think the lady could find herself under arrest.”

“I think you and I should talk,” Gideon said to me.

“I think it’s too late,” I said.

“The man’s right,” Robby told Gideon. “It’s too late. Deal time is over.”

“There are not going to be any deals,” Gideon said.

“You’re right,” Robby told him. “No deals. You know why? Because your client is dead meat—and all of us know it.”

Oh, right. Vietnam vet with Purple Heart and Bronze Star.

Big, brave cop with brass balls so big they clang. Except when the cars lined up in front of Bonnie’s house like a cortege—Bonnie and Gideon in Gideon’s BMW 735i, Robby and Thighs in Robby’s