Angelina Bonaparte Mysteries Box Set, Nanci Rathbun [shoe dog free ebook txt] 📗

“When did Elisa move into the apartment?”

“First of May.”

“And how often did you see her?”

“Twice, maybe three times a week. Mostly daytime, after she quit her job at Dunwoodie’s.”

Convenient, I thought. You already have two singletons and a set of twins, your wife’s in the third trimester of her fourth pregnancy and you’re having a nooner two or three times a week. I didn’t look up, just kept writing notes on my legal pad. The pinging in my head was now an insistent chiming. “Tell me about Elisa’s background. Family, where she grew up, education, that kind of thing.”

“No clue. We didn’t talk about that.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Movies, sports, her investments.”

“Investments?” I asked.

“Yeah, she was into some limited real estate partnerships, and she liked to play the stock market. She was pretty good, too.”

Twenty-four years old, real estate and stock market investments, 70K in a mutual fund. Elisa was one financially savvy woman.

“Did you ever meet any of her friends?”

“Nah, we mostly stayed in.”

I’ll bet you did, I thought, in more ways than one. “I need to talk to others who knew her. Did she have an address book? Planner? PDA? Cell phone?”

“Funny you should ask that. She misplaced her PDA about a week ago, and it was making her crazy. She practically took the place apart trying to find it, and then she turned my car inside out, but it never showed up.”

“How about email? Do you know her login and password?”

He gave me the email address.

“And her password?”

He grimaced. “She never told me, but one day, I watched her log in. It’s not that hard to figure out a password that way, you know?” I nodded. “Well, I tried it later, and it worked. It’s ‘one for the money.’”

“Spell it, please.”

“Number one, number four, t-h-e-m-o-n-e-y,” he told me.

The corruption of words by numbers is one form of what geeks call “leet speak.” This one was ambiguous. The initial number could indeed stand for the word ‘one,’ as Tony interpreted it. It could also stand for the word ‘I.’ Either way, the password gave evidence to Elisa’s priorities. “Okay, Tony, now for the hard part. Where were you last night?”

“Gracie and I had a fight. She was acting crazy, waving the credit card statement and the cellular bill in my face, telling me she’d hired you to trace the charges and the calls. I lost it, took off and drove around for about an hour. Driving helps me calm down.”

I nodded. “Yeah, me too.”

His voice softened and he looked down at his hands. “Well, the longer I drove and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I really love Gracie and the kids, and I was a jerk about Elisa. I decided to drive over to the apartment and talk to Elisa, tell her it was all over. It was about eight o’clock when I got there and parked. I called her from the car. She didn’t like me to surprise her.”

I’ll just bet, I thought. Can’t have boyfriend number one accidentally walk in on number two or three. “So you were at the building last night?”

“Yeah,” he confirmed.

This would look great to the cops. Motive, means, opportunity—the triple play, all wrapped up in one neat package labeled “Anthony Belloni.” I kept my expression as neutral as possible. “Not good. Did you go in?”

“Nah, she didn’t answer the phone. I sat there until about eight-thirty, thinking maybe she’d gone out for groceries or take-out. When she didn’t show, I left. I drove straight home and begged Gracie to forgive me. I never saw Elisa last night, I swear.” Again, he placed his right hand on his chest.

“Did you see anyone in the lot? Talk to anyone?”

“No, nobody drove in or out.”

“What about garbage?” I asked, remembering the time I’d spent in the dumpster at the back of the lot.

He sat up with a jerk. “That’s right. Somebody did come out the super’s door and toss a big box in the dumpster. I remember thinking they should have torn the box down so it wouldn’t take up so much space. You pay by the load, you know.”

“Did you recognize them?”

He shook his head.

“Man or woman?”

“Man.”

“Black man? White man?”

“White.”

“What was he wearing?”

“Something dark, but his shoes were light, like running shoes.”

“Hair color?”

“Kind of light brown, I think. It was dark, I couldn’t see that well.”

“How tall?”

He shrugged. “Couldn’t tell.”

“Did the dumpster come up to his chest, shoulders, head?” I asked.

Tony screwed his eyes shut in concentration. “When he stood at the front, it was about up to his armpits.”

“Good job, Tony. How did he move? Fast? Slow? Easy? Stiff?”

“He walked fine, but I heard him grunt when he lifted the dumpster cover and tossed the box in. Like my old man used to do when he had to reach or lift.”

I smiled. “My pop, too. I used to kid him when I was younger, now I do it myself at the end of a hard day.”

“Ain’t it the truth,” he commiserated.

“Did he use a key to get back in the building?”

“Nah, he propped the door open with something as he came out, then just shoved whatever it was aside as he went back in.”

So he might not be a tenant. “How many tenants in the building?”

“Six floors, eight units on each floor, total of forty-eight units.”

“Any idea how many are men?”

“Not really. But Jeannie at my office can tell you.”

“Did he go back into the building before you started the car to leave?”

“Yeah. I waited. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself.”

I took a deep breath. Didn’t he see how this would look to the DA? “It isn’t good, you being there last night. Let’s hope that no one saw you at all, or someone watched you the whole time and saw you leave without going in. Did the cops ask you where you were last night?”

“Yeah, but Bart told me not to answer until he and