The Sproles house, two doors up, was almost the identical model as the Vitole house. I rang the doorbell and waited. A woman answered the door.

“Yes?”

Marsha Sproles was a pretty woman in her mid-thirties. The pictures I had of her didn’t do her justice. She was standing in a darkened doorway when I took them, and she had just come from a roll in the hay.

Today she wore a house dress that neither flaunted nor hid her trim figure. Her brunette hair was pinned up, and she wore just a hint of blush and lipstick. The all-American girl next door. I couldn’t blame Vitole for going for her.

She too reacted to my appearance. What was this battle-worn, beat-up, and bandaged guy doing on her doorstep? Certainly not selling Girl Scout cookies.

“Mrs. Sproles. I’m detective Bentworth.” I flashed the badge. It worked again.

“How can I help you?” she asked.

“This is about the murder of your neighbor, Mario Vitole.”

She got a pained look on her face. I couldn’t interpret its meaning.

“Yes. Terrible, wasn’t it?”

“I need to talk to you about the murder taking place in front of your house. Do you know why he was there?”

“No.”

A lie. We both knew why he was there. Except she didn’t know I knew.

“I was in the house and heard the shot,” she said. “I ran and looked out the door. He was lying in the street.”

“How long from when you heard the shot until you saw the body?”

“Less than a minute. I had something on the stove and had to turn it down.”

What presence of mind. Tend to the soup, and then go see why there’s a corpse in the street in front of your house. I didn’t pursue the illogic of that.

“Did you see anyone else out there?” I asked.

“No. The other policeman already asked all these questions.”

“Yes, ma’am. Sometimes a witness recalls details they had overlooked before. It’s routine to do a follow-up interview.”

“That makes sense,” she said. “Would you like some coffee? Or tea?”

“No thank you,” I said.

She got up to pour herself a cup of coffee. I wished she’d have offered a drink. But then I’d have had to do the I’m-on-duty routine, so what would be the point?

“Mrs. Vitole said that you and she have had a recent falling out. Is that true?”

She let go of a big sigh as if I had just opened a door that ought to be left closed. “I suppose you could call it that,” she said. “Stella’s a jealous woman. She thought Mario and I were having an affair.”

Bingo. The affair is in the air.

“Were you?”

“Of course not.”

“Did your husband share her suspicions?”

“I don’t think so.” Now her voice was worried. “I think he would have said something.”

“Where was he when the shooting took place?”

“At work.”

“Where does he work?”

“Arnold Locksmith and Security.”

Things were starting to fall into place. That was interesting. And maybe relevant. The husband of the adulteress and the wife of the cheating husband and victim worked together.

“With Mrs. Vitole,” I said.

“Yes. He hired Stella last year as dispatcher. To dispatch the service trucks.”

“Is Mr. Sproles a locksmith?”

I needed a suspect who could open the trunk of a Rolls Royce.

“No. He’s general manager.”

“Does he have other duties besides management?”

“Sometimes when they’re shorthanded, William goes on service calls.”

“So he does have locksmith skills.”

“Not at a very technical level. He can install locks and fix alarm systems and like that.”

“Can he pick a lock?” The sixty-four dollar question.

“I don’t think so. Why do you ask?”

“Just gathering information. Now, did you say that you saw a Rolls Royce parked at Mr. Vitole’s house earlier that same day?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Why did you think that was significant?”

“The other detective asked me if I’d seen anything unusual. A Rolls Royce parked in this neighborhood is unusual. That’s all.”

It was time to spring it on her.

“Ma’am, are you aware that Mr. Vitole had a snapshot of the two of you embracing in your doorway?”

“What? What snapshot? What do you mean? Have you seen such a snapshot?”

“Do you think Mrs. Vitole might have found it and shared it with your husband?”

“What are you suggesting? You people caught the man who killed Mario. That big shot financier. It was on the news. Why are you out here—”

“Just some routine follow-up, Mrs. Sproles. I’ll be in touch if anything comes up.”

Chapter 21  

Investigating a murder means pissing people off. Maybe you get to apologize later, but for the most part you interrogate people, suggest one form of involvement or another, and watch for their reactions to form instincts about who the bad guys are. If it works right, the practice points you in a direction that helps you close the case. Which makes pissing people off worth it.

I had just pissed off two ladies in a nice neighborhood, one who had recently become a widow and the other who had been cheating on her husband. Now I was about to piss off the husband.

Arnold Locksmith and Security was on the edge of the wrong side of town. Not a place you’d want to leave your expensive car parked. It didn’t worry me. Nobody would steal my car. If anything, they’d leave me another one just like it.

The one-story building was a half block long and wide. Behind it a parking lot held about five vans with the company’s logo on the side, the same logo that decorated the front of the building over the main entrance. The logo was the only part of the business that looked elegant.

The receptionist greeted me with a nice smile. She was a teenager, maybe just out of school. Or a dropout. I showed her my badge.

“Whoa!” she said, even though I wasn’t moving. Except to put the badge away before somebody saw what it was.

“Can I help you?” Her name tag said Pamela.

“I need to see your duty roster, Pamela,” I said.

“My what?” You’d think I’d asked to see her underwear.

“Your log of when employees work and where they’re assigned. I’m investigating a murder.”

“Oh, you mean Mrs. Vitole’s husband?”

“That’s the one. Can I see the roster?”

“We don’t have one. Do you want to talk to the general manager?”

“Not yet. You seem like a bright girl. Maybe you can tell me. Was anyone in your company absent from work the day Mr. Vitole got shot?”

She typed on her computer and said, “Everybody was here that day.”

“Mrs. Vitole too?”

“Yes. Until the policeman came to tell her.”

That gave Stella an alibi. One less suspect.

“How about when somebody goes out. Without a duty roster how do you keep track of where everybody is?”

“We keep a record of the service orders.”

“Was Mr. Sproles in the office that day?”

She referred to the monitor. “No. He took one of the trucks out for a service call.”

“Can you make me a copy of the service order?”

“Sure.” She printed the document and gave it to me. I folded it and put it in my pocket.

“Is Mr. Sproles here now?”

“That’s the door to his office.”

“Thank you, Pamela,” I said.

I knocked.

“Come in,” a man’s voice said.

I opened the door and went into William Sproles’s office.

Sproles was middle aged, balding, and every bit the couch potato I saw from across the street the other day.

“You’d be detective Bentworth,” Sproles said. “My wife called and said you were at our house. Please sit. I wouldn’t want you to fall down in my office.”

He seemed pissed. She must have told him what I’d asked her.