Mr. Mercedes (9 page)

“I'd like you to take us through it one more time,” Pete said.

She rolled her eyes, which were red-rimmed and bloodshot. “Is that really necessary? I'm exhausted. I was up most of the night with my mother. She couldn't go to sleep until four. She's in such pain. I'd like a nap before Mrs. Greene comes in. She's the nurse.”

Hodges thought, Your car was just used to kill eight people, and only eight if all the others live, and you want a nap. Later he would not be sure if that was when he started to dislike Mrs. Trelawney, but it probably was. When some people were in distress, you wanted to enfold them and say
there-there
as you patted them on the back. With others you wanted to slap them a hard one across the chops and tell them to man up. Or, in Mrs. T.'s case, to woman up.

“We'll be as quick as we can,” Pete promised. He didn't tell her that this would be the first of many interviews. By the time they were done with her, she would hear herself telling her story in her sleep.

“Oh, very well, then. I arrived here at my mother's shortly after seven o'clock on Thursday evening . . .”

She visited at least four times a week, she said, but Thursdays were her night to stay over. She always stopped at B'hai, a very nice vegetarian restaurant located in Birch Hill Mall, and got their dinners, which she warmed up in the oven. (“Although Mother eats very little now, of course. Because of the pain.”) She told them she always scheduled her Thursday trips so she arrived after seven, because that was when the all-night parking began, and most of the streetside spaces were empty. “I won't parallel park. I simply can't do it.”

“What about the garage down the block?” Hodges asked.

She looked at him as though he were crazy. “It costs sixteen dollars to park there overnight. The streetside spaces are
free
.”

Pete was still holding the key, although he hadn't yet told Mrs. Trelawney they would be taking it with them. “You stopped at Birch Hill and ordered takeout for you and your mother at—” He consulted his notebook. “B'hai.”

“No, I ordered ahead. From my house on Lilac Drive. They are always glad to hear from me. I am an old and valued customer. Last night it was kookoo sabzi for Mother—that's an herbal omelet with spinach and cilantro—and gheymeh for me. Gheymeh is a lovely stew with peas, potatoes, and mushrooms. Very easy on the stomach.” She straightened her boatneck. “I've had terrible acid reflux ever since I was in my teens. One learns to live with it.”

“I assume your order was—” Hodges began.

“And sholeh zard for dessert,” she added. “That's rice pudding with cinnamon. And saffron.” She flashed her strangely troubled smile. Like the compulsive straightening of her boatneck tops, the smile was a Trelawneyism with which they would become very familiar. “It's the saffron that makes it special. Even Mother always eats the sholeh zard.”

“Sounds tasty,” Hodges said. “And your order, was it boxed and ready to go when you got there?”

“Yes.”

“One box?”

“Oh no, three.”

“In a bag?”

“No, just the boxes.”

“Must have been quite a struggle, getting all that out of your car,” Pete said. “Three boxes of takeout, your purse . . .”

“And the key,” Hodges said. “Don't forget that, Pete.”

“Also, you'd want to get it all upstairs as fast as possible,” Pete said. “Cold food's no fun.”

“I see where you're going with this,” Mrs. Trelawney said, “and I assure you . . .” A slight pause. “. . . you
gentlemen
that you are barking up the wrong path. I put my key in my purse as soon as I turned off the engine, it's the first thing I always do. As for the boxes, they were tied together in a stack . . .” She held her hands about eighteen inches apart to demonstrate. “. . . and that made them very easy to handle. I had my purse over my arm. Look.” She crooked her arm, hung her purse on it, and marched around the big living room, holding a stack of invisible boxes from B'hai. “See?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Hodges said. He thought he saw something else as well.

“As for hurrying—no. There was no need, since the dinners need to be heated up, anyway.” She paused. “Not the sholeh zard, of course. No need to heat up rice pudding.” She uttered a small laugh. Not a giggle, Hodges thought, but a titter. Given that her husband was dead, he supposed you could even call it a widder-titter. His dislike added another layer—almost thin enough to be invisible, but not quite. No, not quite.

“So let me review your actions once you got here to Lake Avenue,” Hodges said. “Where you arrived at a little past seven.”

“Yes. Five past, perhaps a little more.”

“Uh-huh. You parked . . . what? Three or four doors down?”

“Four at most. All I need are two empty spaces, so I can pull in without backing. I hate to back. I always turn the wrong way.”

“Yes, ma'am, my wife has exactly the same problem. You turned off the engine. You removed the key from the ignition and put it in your purse. You put your purse over your arm and picked up the boxes with the food in them—”

“The
stack
of boxes. Tied together with good stout string.”

“The stack, right. Then what?”

She looked at him as though he were, of all the idiots in a generally idiotic world, the greatest. “Then I went to my mother's building. Mrs. Harris—the housekeeper, you know—buzzed me in. On Thursdays, she leaves as soon as I arrive. I took the elevator up to the nineteenth floor. Where you are now asking me questions instead of telling me when I can deal with my car. My
stolen
car.”

Hodges made a mental note to ask the housekeeper if she had noticed Mrs. T.'s Mercedes when she left.

Pete asked, “At what point did you take your key from your purse again, Mrs. Trelawney?”

“Again? Why would I—”

He held the key up—Exhibit A. “To lock your car before you entered the building. You
did
lock it, didn't you?”

A brief uncertainty flashed in her eyes. They both saw it. Then it was gone. “Of course I did.”

Hodges pinned her gaze. It shifted away, toward the lake view out the big picture window, and he caught it again. “Think carefully, Mrs. Trelawney. People are dead, and this is important. Do you specifically remember juggling those boxes of food so you could get your key out of your purse and push the LOCK button? And seeing the headlights flash an acknowledgement? They do that, you know.”

“Of
course
I know.” She bit at her lower lip, realized she was doing it, stopped.

“Do you remember that specifically?”

For a moment all expression left her face. Then that superior smile burst forth in all its irritating glory. “Wait. Now I remember. I put the key in my purse
after
I gathered up my boxes and got out. And after I pushed the button that locks the car.”

“You're sure,” Pete said.

“Yes.” She was, and would remain so. They both knew that. The way a solid citizen who hit and ran would say, when he was finally tracked down, that of
course
it was a dog he'd hit.

Pete flipped his notebook closed and stood up. Hodges did likewise. Mrs. Trelawney looked more than eager to escort them to the door.

“One more question,” Hodges said as they reached it.

She raised carefully plucked eyebrows. “Yes?”

“Where's your spare key? We ought to take that one, too.”

There was no blank look this time, no cutting away of the eyes, no hesitation. She said, “I have no spare key, and no need of one. I'm very careful of my things, Officer. I've owned my Gray Lady—that's what I call it—for five years, and the only key I've ever used is now in your partner's pocket.”

18

The table where he and Pete ate their lunch has been cleared of everything but his half-finished glass of water, yet Hodges goes on sitting there, staring out the window at the parking lot and the overpass that marks the unofficial border of Lowtown, where Sugar Heights residents like the late Olivia Trelawney never venture. Why would they? To buy drugs? Hodges is sure there are druggies in the Heights, plenty of them, but when you live there, the dealers make housecalls.

Mrs. T. was lying. She
had
to lie. It was that or face the fact that a single moment of forgetfulness had led to horrific consequences.

Suppose, though—just for the sake of argument—that she was telling the truth.

Okay, let's suppose. But if we were wrong about her leaving her Mercedes unlocked with the key in the ignition, how were we wrong? And what
did
happen?

He sits looking out the window, remembering, unaware that some of the waiters have begun to look at him uneasily—the overweight retiree sitting slumped in his seat like a robot with dead batteries.

19

The
deathcar
had been transported to Police Impound on a carrier, still locked. Hodges and Huntley received this update when they got back to their own car. The head mechanic from Ross Mercedes had just arrived, and was pretty sure he could unlock the damn thing. Eventually.

“Tell him not to bother,” Hodges said. “We've got her key.”

There was a pause at the other end, and then Lieutenant Morrissey said, “You do? You're not saying
she
—”

“No, no, nothing like that. Is the mechanic standing by, Lieutenant?”

“He's in the yard, looking at the damage to the car. Damn near tears, is what I heard.”

“He might want to save a drop or two for the dead people,” Pete said. He was driving. The windshield wipers beat back and forth. The rain was coming harder. “Just sayin.”

“Tell him to get in touch with the dealership and check something,” Hodges said. “Then have him call me on my cell.”

The traffic was snarled downtown, partly because of the rain, partly because Marlborough Street had been blocked off at City Center. They had made only four blocks when Hodges's cell rang. It was Howard McGrory, the mechanic.

“Did you have someone at the dealership check on what I was curious about?” Hodges asked him.

“No need,” McGrory said. “I've worked at Ross since 1987. Must have seen a thousand Mercs go out the door since then, and I can tell you they all go out with two keys.”

“Thanks,” Hodges said. “We'll be there soon. Got some more questions for you.”

“I'll be here. This is terrible.
Terrible
.”

Hodges ended the call and passed on what McGrory had said.

“Are you surprised?” Pete asked. Ahead was an orange DETOUR sign that would vector them around City Center . . . unless they wanted to light their blues, that was, and neither did. What they needed now was to talk.

“Nope,” Hodges said. “It's standard operating procedure. Like the Brits say, an heir and a spare. They give you two keys when you buy your new car—”

“—and tell you to put one in a safe place, so you can lay hands on it if you lose the one you carry around. Some people, if they need the spare a year or two later, they've forgotten where they put it. Women who carry big purses—like that suitcase the Trelawney woman had—are apt to dump both keys into it and forget all about the extra one. If she's telling the truth about not putting it on a fob, she was probably using them interchangeably.”

“Yeah,” Hodges said. “She gets to her mother's, she's preoccupied with the thought of spending another night dealing with Mom's pain, she's juggling the boxes and her purse . . .”

“And left the key in the ignition. She doesn't want to admit it—not to us and not to herself—but that's what she did.”

“Although the warning chime . . .” Hodges said doubtfully.

“Maybe a big noisy truck was going by as she was getting out and she didn't hear the chime. Or a police car, winding its siren. Or maybe she was just so deep in her own thoughts she ignored it.”

It made sense then and even more later when McGrory told them the deathcar hadn't been jimmied to gain entry or hotwired to start. What troubled Hodges—the only thing that troubled him, really—was how much he
wanted
it to make sense. Neither of them had liked Mrs. Trelawney, she of the boatneck tops, perfectly plucked brows, and squeaky widder-titter. Mrs. Trelawney who hadn't asked for any news of the dead and injured, not so much as a single detail. She wasn't the doer—no way was she—but it would be good to stick her with some of the blame. Give her something to think about besides veggie dinners from B'hai.

“Don't complicate what's simple,” his partner repeated. The traffic snarl had cleared and he put the pedal down. “She was given two keys. She claims she only had one. And now it's the truth. The bastard who killed those people probably threw the one she left in the ignition down a handy sewer when he walked away. The one she showed us was the spare.”

That had to be the answer. When you heard hoofbeats, you didn't think zebras.

20

Someone is shaking him gently, the way you shake a heavy sleeper. And, Hodges realizes, he almost
has
been asleep. Or hypnotized by recollection.

It's Elaine, the DeMasio's hostess, and she's looking at him with concern. “Detective Hodges? Are you all right?”

“Fine. But it's just Mr. Hodges now, Elaine. I'm retired.”

He sees concern in her eyes, and something more. Something worse. He's the only patron left in the restaurant. He observes the waiters clustered around the doorway to the kitchen, and suddenly sees himself as they and Elaine must be seeing him, an old fellow who's been sitting here long after his dining companion (and everyone else) has left. An old overweight fellow who sucked the last of his cake off his fork like a child sucking a lollipop and then just stared out the window.