Page 37 of A Winter of Discontent for Henry Milch
“Unless what?”
“If she hires a lawyer and they hire us, then we have confidentiality.”
“What if there’s no lawyer and no one asks?”
“We keep our mouths shut. Also, if she confesses, we send an invoice right away.” Then he asked, “Do you really think she did it, though?”
Honestly, I hadn’t given it much thought. It seemed dumb to kill someone and then drop them at your own door—even if you were trying to fake people out. No matter what, it draws attention to the fact that you have a motive.And… Melanie’smotive had disappeared. Bobbie would not be taking the winery away from her, so there was no reason to kill her. Unless there was another motive. One I wasn’t aware of.
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay, well, go to the winery and tell her the sheriff’s coming soon and that she should call a lawyer.”
When I got to the winery, there were more customers than there had been the first time I was there. Word had probably gotten around about the corpse early that morning. I took a spot at the bar. Melanie saw me and nodded. She filled an order and then came down to me.
“Where’s your sister?”
“Probably watching Fox News. She’s already in love with Sean Hannity.”
“Creepy.”
“Listen, the police are searching Bobbie’s trailer. I talked to Buford Campbell and he told me you were there last night. I’m guessing he told that to Detective Lehmann right after I left.”
“Oh shit.”
“What were you doing there?”
Keeping her voice low, she said, “I went to Main Street Café to confront Bobbie and ended up driving her home.”
“Excuse me?”
“She was drunk.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that happened a lot. Why didyouhave to drive her home?”
“I went there to tell her off. She’d put me through a lot and I wanted to give her a piece of my mind. But as soon as I started, she crumbled. Telling me how sorry she was. That her life had been so hard. That her last husband had run off with everything she had. That she could barely get by on her Social Security checks. That she was just trying to get money from my insurance company and that’d she’d never have taken the winery. I startedfeeling sorry for her. She was telling me about all the shitty things men had done to her. I ended up paying her tab and driving her home.”
“You got out of the car. When you got to her place you got out of the car.”
“Well, of course I did. I was afraid she’d fall and break something, and I couldn’t have that now, could I? I’d get blamed all over again.”
“You lied to me when you said you were at home.”
“Not really. I was at home. Eventually.”
She’d also made it sound like she hadn’t seen Bobbie in a long time. That was also not true. I let it go. “General question: While you were at Main Street Café did you happen to notice anyone who might have followed you and killed Roberta after you left?”
She looked thoughtful for a moment, then quietly said, “Her son was there.”
“Her son? She has a son?”
“They don’t get along. In fact, I think they had words. He could be the one who killed her.”
“Do you know what the problem was between them?”
“I’m guessing she was a shitty mother.”
I felt deeply uncomfortable when she said that. In that particular moment, in a lot of particular moments, I thought I had a pretty shitty mother. I had no desire to kill her, though. I didn’t see how it would make the situation any better. Death never made anyone a good mother.
