planks. Quite irreplaceable. I suppose that’s how . . . how. . . .”
Hoppy didn’t see the hole, I thought. “What was he doing up here anyway?”
“Such a silly thing,” she said. “There was a game last night. The Cavaliers? His alma mater? I think that was it.”
“He came upstairs to watch TV?”
“To check the score, I think. He was always a big . . . big . . .”
“Athletic supporter,” I said, though my brain said, “Jerk.”
Lolo nodded tearfully.
“You told that to the police?”
She nodded again.
That would explain why Deputy Chief Whitman was willing to call it an accident. The scenario made sense. “What are you reading?” I asked affably.
“ Murder of a Scoundrel, a roman à clef about the mysterious death of Serge Rubinstein, the infamous swindler and blackmailer. Do you know it?”
“I know of him,” I said. I had read about his exploits when I was at NYU, a womanizer and con man who was found strangled in 1955 in his magnificent Manhattan pad. They never found who did it, though as one investigator put it, “We’ve narrowed the list of suspects to about a thousand.”
I hoped the choice of reading material was purely coincidental. If not, this wasn’t the time to ask.
Since I was there, Lolo insisted on paying me the full amount for our services the night before. She went to the master suite further down the hall and returned with a check. I tried to decline—okay, not too forcefully—not wishing her to think that was why I had come.
“I know that isn’t why you’re here,” Lolo said. “You were concerned about me and I appreciate that so very much. You’re so like your uncle that way. He was a very compassionate man.”
There were a number of misconceptions in that statement—for one, Uncle Murray wasn’t a compassionate man, he was a just a bad composer who thought the next sob story would inspire his first gold record, so he listened to them all—but I let it stand. Lolo said she and the Cozy Foxes would be back later in the week, as usual, as soon as she found out when the funeral for Hoppy Hopewell was.
“I don’t even know who’s arranging it,” she said.
“I’m sure someone will come forward,” I said. “After all, I understand there’s a small fortune involved.”
Lolo smiled crookedly—like when you say, “She’s such a nice woman” to someone who thinks that woman is a bitch—but I left that alone as well. The information was like a Passover seder, a lot of food that needed time to digest. It wasn’t time to go hunting for the afikomen.
I hugged Lolo, who had returned to her book even before I was out the library door. I hurried down the staircase, mercifully missing Lizzie, who I noticed moving about in the far wing with armfuls of laundry.
Five minutes later I was driving back past the brass horses on my way to the deli. Part of me was satisfied and part of me was disappointed. I was sort of glad the story made sense, however comical it was that Hoppy had fallen through a bear rug while looking for the remote to turn on the TV. But a corner of my brain wasn’t buying it, not yet. People could check scores on a cell phone. Why would a social gadfly, especially a hungry one, leave a party chockablock with wealthy divorcées and widows—just before dinner was about to be served?
That was something my dad might have done, but he was long-married and loved the New York Yankees and had no sense of social finesse. But Hapford Hopewell Jr.?
This was one of those situations where while the numbers seemed to add up, my gut told me there was a second set of books.
Chapter 4
I reached the deli at 9:40, just in time to miss the bulk of the morning rush. For us, that meant coffee and bagels with shmear. Though they didn’t call it shmear in Nashville. They called it cream cheese. It was one of the traits that made the celebrated town so quaint.
Thom gave me a look as I arrived. I gave her one back. I was usually there, apron on, helping