“No, I’ll go out to the stables. You make sure no one unauthorized comes in the bedroom. This stable hand have a name?”
“Carl Totes. He says he’s worked for Miss Brecht for many years. Like I said, there’s evidence that he does reside inside the stables but I think he could be a suspect.”
“I’ll check it out.”
“By the way, Detective, there are six stalls and five horses inside the stable.”
Marge patted him on the back. “Good job, Officer.”
Bellingham tried to hold back a smile but didn’t quite make it. The left corner of his mouth spasmed upward. Through crooked lips, he said, “Thank you, Detective.”
It took three cups of tea and a half hour for the maid to calm down. Her name was Mercedes Casagrande, a thirty-five-year-old native of Guatemala who’d worked for Lilah Brecht for seven years. She wasn’t forthcoming with the answers, but guarded as she was, Decker sensed she wanted to help. She just didn’t want to jeopardize her job or the privacy of her patrona.
They sat at an oval dining-room table, the room furnished in early-twentieth-century pieces. The interior of the house had been done up in the style of Art Nouveau or Art Deco. Decker never could remember the difference between the two periods. As he made chitchat with the maid, she began to relax and answer his questions in halting English.
Decker slipped out his notepad and asked, “How many days a week do you work here for Missy Lilah?”
“I work all the days except Saturday and Sunday. I don’ work on those days ’cause I go to church.”
“What are your hours?”
“Seven to fife. But sometime I work diferente hours. If Missy Lilah need help in the night for the dinner. I work eleven to eight, mebbe nine o’clock. If someone take care of my kids.”
Decker said, “You never sleep in?”
“No.” Mercedes shook her head. “No duermo en la casa, no.”
Decker said, “So you weren’t here yesterday?”
“I work yesterday, jes.”
“But it was Sunday.”
Mercedes looked confused. “I work only four hours. Missy Lilah call me and say house is a mess. So I come. That is not every week. Mebbe I work Sundays one time a month. But only if someone watch my kids.”
“And what time did you leave?”
“I leave fife, fife-thurdy, mebbe. Everythin’ is okay. Missy Lilah tell me she go out with her brother so I don’ have to make dinner.”
Decker smoothed his mustache. “Missy Lilah was going out to dinner with her brother?”
“Jes.”
“Was she with her brother when you left?”
“No, he don’ come yet, but she say she go to dinner with him. She go to dinner with him mebbe one or two time a week.”
“What’s her brother’s name, Mercedes?”
“El Doctor Freddy.”
“El Doctor Freddy?”
“Jes.”
“Does El Doctor Freddy have a last name—nom de familia?”
“Same as Missy Lilah.”
“Freddy Brecht?”
“I thin’ his name is Señor Frederick.”
“Frederick Brecht?”
“I thin’ so.”
“And he’s a physician? Un doctor de la medicina?”
“Sí. He work at the spa. But he don’ work there all the time.”
“He has another office?”
“I thin’ so.”
“Do you know where his other office is? Usted sabe donde está su otra oficina?”
Mercedes shook her head.
Decker said, “You’re doing great. Muy bien. You didn’t see El Doctor Freddy come inside the house?”
“No.”
“Does Doctor Freddy have a key to the house?”
Mercedes scrunched up her forehead in concentration. “I thin’ … jes.”
Decker wrote down: No forced entry and Dr. Freddy may have a key. “And Doctor Freddy wasn’t there when you left to go home.”
“No, he don’ come yet.”
“But Missy Lilah was home.”
“Jes, she come home around four from the spa, all wet. She do very much exercise. She very, very skinny, but es okay ’cause she don’t throw up like muchas mujeres at the spa. She tell me all the women throw up to be skinny. I thin’ that’s no good.”
“I don’t think that’s good either.”
“But Missy Lilah no throw up to be skinny. But she do muchas exercise. Mucho tiempo corriendo. En la calle, en la montaña, todo el tiempo, ella corrió.”
Decker wrote: Lilah obsessive runner. “Does she ever run at night?”
“I don’ know.”
If she did, it would put a new slant on the incident. After dinner with her brother, Lilah went out for a midnight run. Then someone familiar with her habits waited for her to return exhausted from her jog, and forced his way in. After she opened the safe, he attacked her, then tossed the room. That play-by-play would also be consistent with no forced entry.
Decker excused himself a moment, stood and walked around the room, wincing as pain pierced his upper body. Even though the gunshot wounds were in the left arm and shoulder, he found that stretching his spine mitigated the throbbing in his extremities. He extracted a couple of extra-strength Tylenols from his shirt pocket and popped them into his mouth, swallowing without water, the movement as reflexive as breathing. Having worked his way off codeine, then Percodan, he’d been alternating with the over-the-counter analgesics—one day Tylenol, the next Advil. Almost eight months to the day, his recovery was good but still incomplete. The OTC tablets helped take the edge off, but he knew there’d come a time when he would have to learn to live without the medicine and with the pain.
He stretched again, then sat and said, “Mercedes, when you came in this morning, did you notice anything different about the house before you went into Missy Lilah’s bedroom?”
“No, nothing.”
“Everything was in order.”
“Jes.”
“None of the furniture was moved or the vases put on a different table … anything like that?”
“No. Jus’ the door to Missy Lilah’s bedroom is open. She like it closed.”
“But nothing different in the living room, dining room?”
She shook her head.
“The front door was locked?”
“Jes. I use my key to come in.”
“You have a key?”
“Jes.”
“Anyone else in your family know you have a key to her house?”
Mercedes’s face flushed with fear. “Ninguna persona! I keep it in especial place.”
“So you’re positive that no one has the key to Missy Lilah’s house.”
“Ninguna