Silent Murders by Mary Miley

beamed, purposely misinterpreting his frown. “I have some information I know you’ll like, and I was hoping you’d be able to share some things with me, but here’s my news: I remembered the name of the caterers who worked the Heilmann party. It was the Cisneros Brothers.”
    He visibly relaxed. “Oh, yeah? Cisneros Brothers. Swell. That’ll save lots of footwork. We’d have found them sooner or later but sooner’s better. You just wake up and remember?”
    “I was out early this morning buying flowers for the studio and a Cisneros truck happened to drive by. It sparked my gray cells. And, um, I may as well confess, I followed the truck to their kitchen and talked to the two brothers.”
    “And?” he asked warily.
    I squirmed a little. “I’m thinking they won’t be there when you arrive. I don’t speak Spanish, mind you, but I had the impression that … well, between the police taking them for suspects and the murderer taking them for witnesses, they decided they’d be better off out of town. The truth is, Esther said nothing to them on the ride home. They were shocked that she was dead. They don’t know a thing. They didn’t see anyone after the party. She was the one who cleaned up the living room and patio while they did the kitchen. I think the killer followed her home in the Cisneros truck after the party. The brother who was driving thought he might have been followed.”
    Carl played with his coffee before meeting my eye. “That’s good to know.”
    “They didn’t hear any gunshots.”
    “There was only one shot, far as we know. We’ll question the neighbors as soon as we get the go-ahead. Maybe they heard something. I’ll tell you one thing, the killer was a good shot. He put a single bullet right in the back of Heilmann’s head, and from a distance, according to the doctor. No powder burns. No stray bullets, either, not in the walls or anyplace.”
    “There isn’t any reason to suspect he was killed during a robbery attempt, is there?”
    Carl shook his head. “Not with seventy-eight dollars in his wallet, an ivory toothpick and a Waltham pocket watch in his trousers, and a two-carat diamond ring on his hand.”
    And a truckload of dope upstairs. “There was hooch at the party. And dope.”
    “Tell me something I don’t know.”
    “Oh, so the detectives found the drugs when they searched the house?”
    “A couple opium pipes, some traces of dope. Several cases of hooch, although after they finished passing it around the precinct, the evidence turned into empties.”
    So they hadn’t noticed the huge stash in the bedroom? Inconceivable. Even a cursory search of the upstairs would have turned up that bedroom full of dope. There was only one explanation: the detectives themselves had stolen the stash and made no mention of it in their report. Can’t say I was shocked. Crooked cops far outnumbered honest ones. Or had the killer taken the dope? It made a darn good motive.
    I was right about one thing. The nothing-to-hide approach melted Carl’s defenses. I continued candidly, “I was wondering if you’ve finished compiling that guest list.”
    “Just getting started. We got about a hundred names from you and your friend, the Pickfords, and a couple others Mr. Fairbanks mentioned, but we haven’t been allowed to work the list yet. It’s kinda awkward asking people when they left a party and not telling them why we want to know, but … officially, Heilmann’s murder isn’t public information. Someone thinks keeping quiet for a while will help catch the killer. Not sure why. Anyway, as soon as we get the go-ahead, Chief wants us to question every single person who was there, and that’ll take a few days. We’ll work the list backward, since the important names are the ones who left last—the ones who might have seen something—and we’ve got that much pretty firm. We’ll start with them.”
    “Could I see the list?”
    He gave it some thought. “I don’t know why not.