One Foot In The Gravy by Delia Rosen Read Free Book Online Page B

Gwen. Someone drilled him. With a drill. Up the nose, into his brain. Then they let him fall through the hole in the floor.”
    I tasted bagel high in my throat. “Jesus.”
    “Now, everyone claims that everyone else was pretty much there all the time and no one saw Hoppy leave. So whatever happened was quick.”
    “He could have gone out the back,” I said.
    “How?”
    I explained the layout. I was still thinking about a drill bit being rammed up his nose. Someone would have to be awfully close and intimate to pull that off.
    “So he may have slipped out the back and gone upstairs for a private rendezvous—”
    “Under the pretense of checking a ball game,” I added. “But why bother explaining? Why not just disappear?”
    “Because—and I’m just spitballing here—Rhonda might not have been the only one he was chocolatecoating.”
    “Ecch. Don’t.”
    “Since when are you so priggish?” She could picture Grant smirking, his handsome lips curled to one side, his strong jaw showing just the hint of manly five o’clock shadow, his gray eyes soft and . . . reading an email while he talked to her.
    Pop!
    “I have been known to eat a Mars Bar or Hershey’s Kiss from time to time,” I told him. “I don’t want to think of Hoppy and Rhonda when I’m feeling indulgent. But getting back to his harem, do you have any idea who else might be in it?”
    “That’s one reason I’m calling,” Grant said. “The other being how the hell are you?”
    “We already covered that,” I reminded him.
    “No, I mean really.”
    “I’m really busy. Trying to grow the business. Last night didn’t help.”
    “I can see where it wouldn’t,” Grant said. “Like selling the house from The Amityville Horror .”
    “God, DB, it’s not that bad,” I protested. “I mean, we survived a van with leeches painted on the sides.”
    “Come again?”
    “Never mind,” I said. My brain had moved on. “Other women, other women . . . I don’t know, but let me ask Thom and the waitstaff.”
    “Thanks. Obviously, it would be women who were at the party last night and within earshot of his proclamation. Deputy Chief Whitman makes that to be Hildy Endicott, Mollie Baldwin, Helen Russell, and of course Lolo.”
    “Hildy and Mollie are members of the Foxes,” I said. “Helen I don’t know.”
    “Sister of John Warden Russell, founder of the—”
    “H3 Group,” I took a wild guess. “The venture capitalists.”
    “None other. She’s the majority shareholder.”
    “I’ll talk to you later,” I said. “And thanks.”
    “What for?”
    “For the image of a power tool being stuffed up Hoppy’s nose,” I said. “You know, there was a box of tools in the corner of that room.”
    “We know. The drill was in there—forensics found blood samples belonging to the victim—but no fingerprints except those of the electrician, and those were smudged.”
    “Wiped clean or was the perp wearing gloves?”
    “We don’t know,” Grant said. “But that’s a good get: Deputy Chief Whitman noted that Ms. Endicott was wearing gloves and that they were smudged. She claimed it happened when the roof came down and she was covered with dirt. It’s possible. She was nearby.”
    I thanked Grant again—this time for real—and hung up. There was a lot to think about and a lot I didn’t want to think about ever again. First, though, I had a call to make. One that might point me in the right direction.

Chapter 5
    According to the morning paper—or rather, the morning online paper, which isn’t a paper—the Hopewell funeral was being handled by the most upscale place in town, the Hubbard Eternal Rest Home. It might just as well have said “Bluebloods Only” on the big, carved wooden sign on the lawn. No one else could afford them. My father and uncle had been buried by Chan’s, the same Asian family that provided us with our whitefish.
    That raised the question of who was paying for this. It was obviously coming from Hoppy’s