Page 93 - Labelle Gramercy, Detective

Cat’s Paw

I was about to add my own two cents’ worth to his opinions, when
Ruth Lesley pulled up to the curb next to us. Granville Knott glared
at her and scuttled back to his own property. She joined me on the
pavement. “Here I am, so let’s get this over with.” She unlocked the
gate. “I see you met old Granny. He’s quite the neighborhood
busybody. Just about ready for the men in white suits with the big
butterfly net.”
We went into Art Lesley’s two-bedrooms-and-a-den storage bin
masquerading as a tract house. Ruth had dolled herself up quite a bit;
not for my benefit, I hoped. Nothing about her suggested mourning,
unless you counted drop-dead red as an appropriate color. Could she
really be considered a widow? Not if Lola Costa’s claim were correct:
nobody leaves two widows in a monogamous society. Still...
“Tell me, Mrs. Lesley,” I said nonchalantly as our eyes became
accustomed to the interior gloom. “Did Art ever consider getting
married again after the two of you, uh...”
She laughed in a harsh dry cigarette-smoker way. “Hah! You’ve got
to be kidding, Lance. It’s one thing to end up with a man living like
this, quite another to want to start up with one. He had his chance,
and he blew it. Unless he sent away for a mail-order bride from some
place where all the women are congenitally deaf, dumb and blind.
And lack a sense of smell. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, just curious.” So who was telling the truth? At least this
former Mrs. Lesley had a consistent story. I wondered if old Mr.
Knott would have been so uncertain if she had been the last one to
see Art Lesley alive; he had to have seen her dozens of times. “Well,
here’s the plan: I’m going to start in the study, if I may call it that,
and work outward.” I produced a small box of stick-on tags from my
jacket pocket. “When I finish with a pile, I’ll put one of these blue
dots on the top item, so please don’t move anything if it’s under a
blue dot.”
“No problem. I’ve got some calls to make.” She sashayed into the
kitchen, where she had evidently already created an ad hoc phone
booth by pushing aside some stacks of boxes and planting a chair
next to a wall phone. No doubt other extensions of the line existed
in other rooms, but finding them would be totally serendipitous.
I headed for the computer; there at least was something I could
make sense of. It hummed and whirred into life, and I was soon

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