Page 12 - Labelle Gramercy, On the Case

Polished Off

I groped for an appropriate answer, but Labelle, back at my side,
interceded.
“Mr. Keane will have to wait until my investigation is complete.
And you will have to remain here until you are relieved by Ms. Doyle.
Did she call again while we were out?”
“Yeah. From a pay phone with a lot of traffic noise in the
background. Some guy who was passing on the highway had stopped
to work on her carburetor.” Iris laughed mirthlessly, as if she had just
uttered some sort of drollery. “I guess she conned him into fixing her
wagon.”
“I thought she had a sedan,” I said sharply, in my best cross-
examining manner. This would show Labelle Gramercy how a good
lawyer could snare a suspect in her own inconsistent testimony.
“Yeah, yeah, she does. Whatever. Anyway, she’ll be here in twenty
minutes once it gets running again.”
“Did she tell you where she was calling from?” asked Labelle.
“No.”
Labelle shrugged, unperturbed and, I now presumed, unthwarted.
It would have been a serious rupture in her thoroughness not to have
all incoming calls traced. I made a mental note to examine Linsey’s
vehicle; as far as I knew (not owning one myself) there were no
models ambiguously sedan or wagon. This could be definitely
established beyond a reasonable doubt.
“Could you tell me exactly what happened here this morning,”
said the detective, “from the time you arrived until you called the
ambulance. I need to know who saw Ms. Trench before she died.”
Iris rolled her eyes until they came to rest on some invisible
external source of memory. “Sure. No problem. Customers weren’t
exactly beating down the door for dog-eared copies of Lady
Chatterley’s Lover when I opened the shop. That was around nine
o’clock, give or take. Mariana came in about ten and went into her
office, as usual, to fool around with her clothes and makeup and
answer any phone messages.”
“Did you take any messages? Are they written down anywhere?”
“Only if they come in through the shop’s telephone.” A gnarled
digit led my eyes to a grubby old dial instrument with a tangled cord
half-covered now by the oily sandwich bag. “And this thing just
about never rings. She has a private line with voice mail, so I can’t

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