Olga. At the security guard’s desk, breathing heavily, I said, “You need to call the police. I went up to see Taylor Bunch and she’s dead. Whoever killed her ran out the fire exit in back.”
Naturally, Mr. Macho didn’t believe me. He had to go up and see her dead body for himself. As soon as the elevator door closed, I looked at his guest book to see who’d signed in within the past three hours. There were only two names. Mine, and somebody named J. Smith. Yeah, right. No doubt it was “J. Smith” I’d just chased down the stairs. I used the security guard’s phone and called the cops.
They arrived quickly and we all went upstairs to Taylor’s apartment, where we found the security guard wandering around, looking in closets and under the bed. Clearly, he hadn’t gotten it when I said the killer ran out the fire exit.
The two uniformed officers told him to go downstairs, said that they would question him later, then asked me to have a seat in the kitchen, which seemed odd to me since Taylor was there. It unnerved me, her body lying so close, her eyes staring up at me.
“Tell me what happened,” the taller of the two said as he took the chair opposite mine and the shorter one went off somewhere else in the apartment.
I’d already given some thought to what I would say, and it seemed to me that being honest was the best way to go. Start lying and I was bound to trip myself up. As briefly as possible, I told him.
He wrote it all down, then had me read it over and sign it. Several minutes later, a middle-aged, ordinary-looking man in a dull brown suit came in and walked around Taylor’s body, checking her out before he sat across from me.
“I’m Detective Schumski. I know you’ve already given your statement, but I’d like to hear it from you.”
He stared at me as I spoke, without asking any questions. When I was done, he got up and left the room, then came back and said, “Did you leave a cab driver downstairs without paying him?”
“I told you, I was chasing Olga and didn’t take the time to get my purse before I left.” I glanced at the entry to the kitchen. “Is he still there?”
“I paid him. You owe the city thirty-two bucks.”
“Thank you.”
He gave me another hard stare. “I’m taking you in, Miss Pearl. There are way too many questions I need answered, and there’s a dead foreign dignitary across town. Until I have a better handle on what went on tonight, you’ll be a guest of the city.”
So I went downstairs and rode to the police station in the back of a squad car. Once there, I sat around and waited aeons before Schumski and another detective came in and asked a thousand more questions. Not only did they have the deposit and check copies from the office, the ones I’d handed over to Taylor and she’d conveniently taken home, but they also had the contents of Taylor’s surprise package—multiple Valikov Interiors invoices made out to me, covering three hundred thousand dollars’worth of Chinese antiques and furniture. For ten thousand bucks, an antique fish pot with a wooden stand, and three pairs of Chinese wedding shoes, the tiny kind women wore when their feet were bound. A real bargain at twenty-two thousand dollars was a jade horse from the Yuan Dynasty. All of the invoices were for similar items, equally pricey.
I said to Schumski, “Why would a person embezzle money, then spend all of it on this kind of stuff? It seems to me a person would buy things like cars, or go on a trip, or maybe blow it on some expensive jewelry.”
He glanced at his partner. “You tell me, Ms. Pearl. Maybe you have a thing for Chinese antiques.”
“Detective, I am not behind this, and I didn’t murder Taylor. I’m being honest and forthright because I want you to find the woman who did do it. Besides, if I bought all of this stuff, where is it?”
“My guess would be that it’s in your home, either here or in Midland. That’s why we’re getting a search warrant for both places. We’re also going to get the signature card from that bank in Kansas, and I’ll bet it’s a spot-on match with yours.”
He was wrong about that. The signature card had to be my ace in the hole. I would have to remember signing a signature card. I’d hire the best handwriting expert in the country to prove it. I was not going to prison. Period.
Nevertheless, thinking of all the circumstantial evidence against me, including the phone call and the catfight, I felt my heart sink.
It sank further when Schumski implied I had something to do with Ambassador Wu’s death. After he spoke to the detective who’d been at Steve’s, he said I had the opportunity to put poison in the ambassador’s salad when I went to the kitchen.
“Why would I tell the man about the China brides, then kill him? That makes absolutely no sense at all.”
He didn’t see it that way, but he was stretching it to charge me with Ambassador Wu’s death, so he settled with suspicion of only one homicide, along with embezzlement and fraud.
A little while later, while I cooled my heels in the small interrogation room, they got statements from a couple of the CERF staff who’d seen Taylor and me shout at each other, and me warning her not to screw with me. They got a statement from Parker about what I’d found, and how I’d approached him about it and wanted to do my own investigation. Yeah, that didn’t look good. But the last nail in my coffin was when they matched my fingerprints to those on the Valikov Interiors invoices. I knew for certain then that someone had gone to an extraordinary amount of trouble to set me up, to use me as their scapegoat. I had no idea how my fingerprints had gotten on those invoices, but I was hell-bent on finding out.
I got to make one phone call and used it to call my attorney, Ed. After I told him I was in deep doo-doo, he sighed, like he couldn’t believe I was such a pain in his ass, and I decided I’d kill him if he said he wouldn’t help me. Luckily for Ed’s longevity, he said he’d be there as soon as he could get a flight out.
“Whatever happens, Pink, whatever they ask, or say to you, don’t say a word. Understand?”
Kinda late for that, wasn’t it? “I understand,” I said anyway. “Ed, I left Mom at a party hours ago. Would you call and tell her what happened? They won’t let me make any more calls.”
“Does she have her cell phone?”
“Uh, no. It wouldn’t fit in her purse. The party was at Santorelli’s.”
Dead silence. Then he said, “I’ll call.” And then, in a very cold voice, “Remember, say nothing.”
“I remember.”
But it was damn hard not to say anything at all, especially when they booked me for murder and embezzlement, took a mug shot, then locked me up in a room with a lot of extremely sorry-looking women. To be fair, I probably looked pretty lousy myself.
I sat there all night and ignored everyone. One chick tried to pick a fight with me, but I turned away and closed my eyes and she finally laid off.
It’s funny, the things we think of in times of major crisis. All that night, the only thing I could think about was Mrs. Han, and how much she wanted to go home, and how much I hoped that she’d gotten what she wanted. Maybe she was from Siberia, a very unwelcoming, cold place to live, but it was her home, and her people were there. I had people back in Midland, which was also somewhat unwelcoming—a long, dusty stretch of flatland,
