Page 82 of A Week Away
Lunch was delicious. The food came quickly and prevented me from asking more questions. Not that I had many more. When it was time for dessert I declined, but Claudia ordered the tiramisu. She was part way through when I asked, “You said Mr. Cray left right after Joanne on Monday afternoon. What do you mean by ‘right after’?”
She pushed her dessert away as though my question had just soured it. “Right after is right after.”
“They didn’t walk out together?”
“No, I would have said that.”
“So, did he leave a minute later or five minutes later?”
“I’m not a clock. I don’t know.” She did seem to be considering it though. “When Joanne left I was on a call with some deadbeat in Ohio. He was squealing like a stuck pig. Then, when Mr. Cray left, I was giving the guy our address so he could send a check.”
“Okay. How does that help me?”
“The calls are scripted. We have two pages of questions and if they haven’t offered to send money we threaten to take them to court. When Joanne left, I was already on the second page. Then when Mr. Cray left, I was at the bottom of the page. I’d threatened him with court and he was going to pay.”
“Is that about two minutes?”
“Or three, maybe,” she said, taking another bite of tiramisu.
“Does Mr. Cray have a gun in his office?”
She looked at me uncomfortably and then swallowed. “Yeah. He does.”
“Do you know if it’s still there?”
“Now how would I know that? I don’t go in his office much. I’m not the maid.”
“Could you check?”
Putting down her spoon, she said, “Are you crazy? You think I can’t figure out what you’re thinking? You think he killed Joanne because she had something on him and she was going to use it? And you wantmeto go and see if he’s still got a gun? No way. You’re crazy. I’m not getting myself killed for you or anybody else.”
She drained the last of the bottle of wine she’d ordered.
“I’m not even going back there. I’m feeling a bad case of food poisoning coming on and it won’t go away until I know my boss isn’t killing people.”
“If you go back and wait until he?—”
“Uh-uh, no way. I’m not stupid. I’ll pretend to be stupid if I need to, but that’s smart. Looking around for some old gun… That’s stupid, that’s real stupid. Why don’t you go in there yourself and be stupid? I’m fine with that.”
I left it alone. I couldn’t think of even one thing I might have to offer her that would tempt her to go into that office and look for a gun.
Without finishing her dessert, she stood up and said, “Thank you for a lovely lunch. I’m going home now and pretend to be sick.”
She walked out of the restaurant with more elegance than a woman who’d just had a Cosmo and a bottle of wine should be able to. After Charles Henderson paid the bill and left a generous tip, I went back to the men’s room and relieved myself of the three lemon sodas I had with lunch. There was a pay phone right outside. When I came out, I called Cass’s house.
“Are the police gone?”
“Yeah. They left a few minutes ago.”
“They didn’t find anything, did they?”
“Not really.”
“Not really?”
“They tried to take some of my mom’s paperwork from the junk room, but Aunt Suzie wouldn’t let them.”
That had to mean Joanne’s financials weren’t on the warrant and weren’t in plain sight. The fact that they were there looking for evidence in her murder would likely put evidence of crimes she was committing out of bounds.
