The Butter Churn Murder

Dennis Conti sat at his desk staring out the window. An Essex County, New Jersey homicide detective, he was a bit bored because there had been a dry spell in his assigned sector. Of course, that was good news for residents of suburban Essex County, but it could be hard on a man who reveled in solving murder cases for a living.  His cubicle was large and most of it, except the papers on his desk, was neatly kept.  

It was almost lunchtime. He reached for the phone to call his sometime partner, Shanese Davis, to see if she wanted to grab a quick bite, but thought better of it. Married now, she had recently had a baby with her new husband. No doubt she wasn’t ready for lunches with an antsy colleague. 

His phone rang, which startled him a bit. “Conti here.”

“Good morning. This is Louis Bastedo, Chief of Police in Glen Ridge. I just took the job a couple of weeks ago. You must be Detective Conti, the guy who solved the Poker Club case, right?”

Conti shook his head. The case had gotten a lot of media attention when it was solved. He didn’t hate the attention at the time, but that was three months ago. “What can I do for you chief?”

“We got ourselves a homicide here, first one in almost five years. A 49-year-old woman found dead in her antique shop about 90 minutes ago.”

Conti grabbed his notebook and started writing. He got the woman’s name, Diane Grady, and the shop’s address. “Who found her?”

“An assistant who worked there. Her name is Birdie Thompson. She’s still at the store, pretty upset, too.” The chief, who had worked homicide in Colorado mentioned this to Conti. “If you need any help, let me know.”

“Will do,” he said, noncommittal as usual. “I’m on my way. Did you call the coroner?”

“Yeah, she should be there by now,” Bastedo said. “Want me to meet you there?”

“Up to you.”

Conti felt that surge of energy he always felt when he got a case. Now, only a month shy of his 54th birthday, he had been contemplating retirement in another year. Certainly, his wife, Karen, was in favor of the idea. And, recently, he had been warming up to it too. The question was what would he do when he wasn’t working homicides anymore? He’d had feelers from a couple of well-known companies about doing security work, and while it wasn’t especially appealing, he hadn’t ruled it out, yet. Jobs like that paid well.

Still youthful in his appearance, he kept himself in shape. His six-foot frame could be intimidating at times, which he used to his advantage when necessary. He still had most of his hair, too, all of it black except for a bit of gray at the temples.

He drove to Glen Ridge and quickly found the antique shop. The corpse was still lying on the floor behind the cash register counter. The coroner, Maggie Coe, was examining the poor woman’s body. She heard Conti’s footsteps, and confirmed her suspicion by asking, “Is that you, Dennis?”

He laughed. “Yeah, Maggie, it’s me.” Maggie was the same age as Conti, but Conti thought she looked older. Maybe it was because he knew she’d had a rough life, having buried two husbands far too young, one at 32 the other at 45. “What do we have?” he asked.

“Looks like she was hit with a blunt object. One shot crushed the back of her skull. I’d say between eight and nine o’clock this morning.” She stood and faced her colleague. “An autopsy will tell us if anything else was going on. Her clothing is intact, no sign of a struggle. Not sure there’s going to be much else to go on.”

Conti thanked her and turned to the young patrolman who was standing nearby. “What can you tell me?”

“Not much, detective. When I got here, Ms. Thompson was standing over the body, crying hysterically. I found the decedent’s cell phone, but no purse. Kind of odd, don’t you think?”

“Maybe,” Conti said. He took the cell phone, which had already been bagged. He wrote down the patrolman’s name, Marco Rinaldi. “What else?”

“Well, the till was empty, but I assume the owner emptied it every night before she left the store. If robbery was the motive, they didn’t get much.” He stretched his thin frame. He was a good-looking young man, not yet 30. “I secured the area.”

“Does the store have an operating security camera?”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t turned on. I checked,” he said.

“Have you contacted Ms. Grady’s next of kin?”

“I called her sister ten minutes ago,” Rinaldi said.

Conti took down the sister’s name, Dina Grady Slaughter, as well as her address and phone number.

“Birdie is sitting in her car. She couldn’t handle seeing a dead body anymore. You want me to get her?”

“Do you know either of these women, officer?”

He hesitated. “Yeah, I stop in here once in a while and check on things. Part of the job, I guess.”

Conti told the officer to fetch Birdie Thompson. He met Birdie and Marco at the door. “You want us to talk to her here or inside the store?” Rinaldi asked.

“You can get back to whatever you were doing before you got the call. I’ll take it from here.”

Rinaldi nodded and gave Birdie a hug before he left. Conti led Birdie, who looked to be about 65 years old, into the store’s entryway. “Mrs. Thompson, I’m Detective Conti from homicide. Tell me what you saw this morning, please.”

The woman brushed back her white hair with her thick fingers. She was tall and big boned. She was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. “I came into the store just before nine and called for Diane. She didn’t answer, so I assumed she was rearranging shelves in the back of the shop. I went looking for her. Of course, she wasn’t anywhere to be found.” She started to tear up. “Then I noticed just the tip of her left shoe sticking out from behind the counter over there.” She pointed to where the body was.

“What did you think when you saw her?”

She looked at him as if he’d just asked a stupid question. “She was dead. There was a pool of blood next to her head. Her eyes were open.” She shrugged.

“Ok, what did you do next?”

“I called the cops. There wasn’t anything else I could do.” She sat on the bench in her foyer. She pulled a tissue from her pocket and wiped her tears. 

“And Officer Rinaldi arrived on the scene?”

“Yes.”

Conti was taking notes. “By any chance do you know where Diane’s purse might be?”

“No, but I didn’t look for it and I didn’t touch anything. I knew enough not to do that.”

“Did you notice anything missing? Perhaps a heavy object?”

“Detective, I’m too upset to notice a thing like that. My mind is racing. This is simply awful.”

“I’m sorry for your loss. Did Ms. Grady use her security cameras?”

“Yes, she did. But I think sometimes she forgot to turn them on.”

He pulled out the cellphone Rinaldi had given him. “Is this Diane’s phone?”

“Oh my, no.” She quickly patted her sweater’s pockets. “That’s my phone. I must have left it on the counter.”

He handed it to her and said, “Can you describe her phone?”

“Hers has a protective cover. It’s pink. And her home screen is a picture of her standing at ground zero in New York.”

Conti learned that Diane Grady was divorced and had no children. She lived in a small, two-bedroom apartment in Roseland, not far from Glen Ridge. She had owned the antique store for six years.  

“Can you drive yourself home, or do you need assistance?”

“I’m fine.”

He walked her to her car. When she was ready to open the door, he asked, “How do you know Marco?” He deliberately used his first name.

Her face turned pale. “Oh, he just visits our store a lot when he’s making his rounds. He’s very nice.”

“Who is he visiting?”

She shrugged again. “I don’t know. The shop, I guess. Sometimes he buys things.”

“Thank you.”

The CSI crew arrived to do their work, but something told Conti they wouldn’t find anything helpful. Whoever did this to Ms. Grady had been very careful.

Back at the office, he went to work getting Diane Grady’s phone records. He also placed a call to Dina Grady Slaughter and asked if he might pay her a visit. He had been a bit surprised that Chief Bastedo didn’t join him at the crime scene. He picked up the phone and called him. Bastedo picked up on the second ring.

“Hey, Dennis, sorry I missed you at the crime scene. What are your preliminary thoughts?”

“I don’t have any really, except that it will take a while to piece together what happened. It was a violent crime which leads me to believe she knew her assailant.”

“Yeah, I heard the dame took a whack to the head. A real shame.”

Conti looked at his phone, wondering where Glen Ridge found this guy. “Listen, Chief, I’m going to drive up to the station in about a half hour. Can you have Marco Rinaldi available? I need to talk to him about the case.”

“Mind if I sit in?”

“Not at all.”

Conti drove back to Glen Ridge. On his way there, Karen called. “You won’t believe this but our son-in-law has been traded again. He’s going back to the Yankees.” Stephen Glenn had married their daughter, Angela, just three months ago in Nashville, at the team’s ballpark. Stephen was hoping to go to spring training with the major league team in the spring.

“That sounds like good news. Maybe Angela will move home.”

“I knew you were going to say that,” she said. “I heard about the murder of the antique dealer on the news.  Did you catch that antique dealer case?”

“Yeah, I’m on the way to the Glen Ridge station to talk to the cop who did the preliminary work, if you could call it that.”

“I’ve shopped at that antique shop. It’s very nice. The woman who owned it was interesting. She’s was about 50, right?”

“Yeah, 49.”

“She always tried to look younger. She dressed like a woman who was still on the sunny side of 30.”

“No kidding.” Conti made a mental note. At such an early stage, even a seemingly irrelevant data point might mean something.       

Conti was met at the Glen Ridge Police Department by the chief and Rinaldi. They went into a small, wood paneled conference room and sat down. Chief Bastedo opened a small refrigerator and took out three Cokes. “Ok, what’s up?” My man here tells me he gave you everything he had.”

“Right, I just wanted to ask him a few questions about the antique shop. Birdie Thompson told me he visits frequently.”

Rinaldi’s face flushed. “I go there once in a while. I collect antiques. Is there something strange about that?”

“Nothing to get defensive about Marco,” the chief said. He popped open his Coke can and took a swig. “The detective is just doing his job.”

“She said you buy antiques. What did you buy?”

“How is that relevant?” Rinaldi asked. His remark, met with silence, he said, “Diane gave me an old Erector Set, the kind kids played with in the ‘50s. I didn’t actually buy it.” 

“Okay,” Conti said, “what I’m wondering is whether you might have noticed something missing. Most of these places have an item or two prominently displayed near the entrance, something eye catching, maybe to put people in the mood to look at other things or as a come-on to buy the item.”

Rinaldi sat still for a moment. He picked up his Coke can and put it back down. “Nothing comes to mind immediately.”

“How well did you know Diane Grady?”

“I feel like I’m being interrogated. I just happened to be on duty, so I took the call. What do you want from me?” He picked up his note pad and handed it to Conti. “Have at it. Everything I know is in my notes.”

Bastedo and Conti looked at each other. Conti smiled and said, “I have very little to go on. I was thinking if maybe you knew the woman you might be able to tell me something useful about her.”

“Oh, well, I don’t know anything about her personal life. Sorry, detective.”

Rinaldi left the room. “What can you tell me about this guy?” Conti asked.

“I don’t know him, but the guy whose place I took said I should keep an eye on him. He likes to cut corners and he likes horse racing.”

“What’s your first impression?”

“He just needs a little coaching,” Bastedo said. “For what it’s worth, he was here when we got the call. I sent him out to the antique shop.”

“That’s in his sector, though, right?” Conti asked.

“Yeah.”

Conti left the station and drove to Dina Slaughter’s home. She was surrounded by her family. Her husband answered the door. After quick introductions, Mr. Slaughter ushered his wife and the detective into his home office, a tiny, cramped room filled with a desk, two bookcases and two straight backed chairs. Conti offered his condolences. Dina Slaughter was a petite woman, with short hair and glasses.

“We went to the shop a little while ago. It was locked and there was crime scene tape,” Mrs. Slaughter said. “I don’t know why I feel this way, but I’d like to see it.”

“I’d like you to see it too,” Conti said. “We can go over there after we talk. Okay with you?” She nodded. She was weeping silently.

“Do you know of any reason why someone would want to harm your sister?”

“I’ve thought about that. She was always a bit on the wild side, very unconventional you might say. She was always the pretty one and she enjoyed the attention.”

“Was she ever married?”

“Once, years ago, but it didn’t last long. She was too much for him,” Dina said.

“What do you mean?”

She looked at her husband, who was fingering some books on a side table. He spoke up. “Diane liked men. I don’t mean she was a loose woman, or anything like that. She just got bored with men and moved on.”

“Was she seeing anyone recently?”

Again, Mr. Slaughter answered. “She was, a fellow by the name of Danny Putoff. He’s here. Do you want to speak with him?”

“In a minute. How long was she seeing Danny? Were they getting along?”

Dina responded this time. “Pretty well actually. I think Danny wanted to marry her.”

Conti reviewed some additional aspects of Diane’s life; her finances, how well her business was doing and whether she might be having problems with employees.

“Nothing like that,” Dina said. “My sister was quirky in a lot of ways, but she never ran into any financial trouble. In fact she was shrewd when it came to her business. She kept some collectibles under lock and key that were quite valuable.”

“At the shop?”

“Oh, she would never tell anyone exactly where she kept her most valuable antiques,” she said.

“I see. Did she ever mention specific items?”

Mr. Slaughter laughed. “Nope, never. We’re not even sure any of that stuff ever existed.            

After a couple of glasses of wine, she might say, ‘I can retire any time.’”  

“Is Mr. Putoff aware of these stories?”

“I doubt it.

“Again, Mr. Slaughter answered. “I never heard her talk about her mysterious riches in front of anyone but us.”

“How about Mrs. Thompson?”

“Birdie? I doubt Diane would have told her anything about it,” Mr. Slaughter said.

He covered other areas that might result in conflicts for Diane; vices like gambling, or drug abuse, but the Slaughters couldn’t think of anything that might have led to her murder.

“I need to speak with Mr. Putoff. Would you bring him in here, please? I’ll need to speak with him alone.”

Danny Putoff was a short man with a bulging belly. He had a handsome face, dark hair and looked to be about 60. He had a ponytail with a bad dye job. “Sorry for your loss, Mr. Putoff. I need to ask some questions that might make you uncomfortable.”

“Shoot.”

“Where were you this morning between seven a.m. and nine a.m.?”

“You get right to it,” Putoff said.

“Saves time.”

“I was in bed, sleeping. Got up around eight, maybe.”

“Where do you live?”

“Roseland, but not with Diane. I got my own place.”

“Can anyone verify your whereabouts during the time in question?”

“My cat, maybe.”

“The Slaughters told me you wanted to marry Diane. Is that true?”

Putoff started to cry. “Oh damn,” he said. “Yeah it’s true. I asked her three times. She said she’d think about it.”

“Did that bother you?”

“Of course it did. If you asked the girl of your dreams to marry you, wouldn’t you be upset if she didn’t say yes, right off?”   

Conti thought briefly of his wife Karen. He had asked her on their second date to marry him. Teasing him, she said, “Yes.” They should go right over to Corbo Jewelers on Bloomfield Avenue so she could pick out a ring. The thought made him smile.  “How would you describe your relationship over the last 48 hours?”

“We were supposed to have lunch today.” He started crying again. “I think she was going to say we could get married.”

“When was the last time you spoke to her?”

“We had dinner last night. I left her place around midnight. We didn’t usually spend the night together if you’re wondering. I got a snoring problem.”

Conti had his doubts about Putoff. Something about him raised his antenna. “What kind of work do you do?”

“I used to work for the Ricciardi Brothers paint store, but I was let go a couple of weeks ago. I was an assistant manager.”

Conti knew if he waited this guy would tell him what happened. He jotted a few notes and looked Putoff in the eye.

“I might as well tell you. Save you the trip. I was fired. They said I was stealing paint, gallons of the stuff.”

Again, Conti waited.

“You want to know if they were right?” Putoff shook his head and swore under his breath. “I took two gallons six weeks ago to paint Diane’s living room and kitchen. That’s it. I offered to pay for the paint. They weren’t interested.”

Conti got Putoff’s contact information and went back to the living room to get the Slaughters. There were even more visitors now. He drove Dina and her husband to the antique store. They were met by a Glen Ridge police officer and quickly gained entrance. Now that she was there, Dina wasn’t so sure she wanted to go in. Conti explained what he was looking for. Was anything missing?

They walked in. Dina was sobbing now. Conti asked them to look around. Dina froze. She said, “Oh no! Her butter churn is missing.”

Mr. Slaughter agreed. “That was one of her prize antiques. She kept it right here.” He pointed to a spot off to the right of the counter. There was a round space on the floor that no one had noticed earlier that day. Obviously, something had been sitting there for a long time.

“Maybe she sold it?” Conti asked.

“Never. It was our grandmother’s. I used to have it. It was left to me, but I gave it to Diane when she opened the shop. She promised she’d never sell it.”

“Do you have any pictures of it?”

Mr. Slaughter laughed just a little. “We have pictures. I’ll send them to you.” After establishing they could not tell if other pieces were missing, they left the store. As they drove back to the Slaughter’s home, Conti asked, “Was Diane seriously considering Danny Putoff’s marriage proposal?”

Dina looked at her husband. He shook his head, no. “I think maybe she strung him along for a while, Lord knows why.”

The next morning, Conti got up early and went to the local bakery. He was in the mood for some fresh coffee rolls, a rare treat. He got Karen a jelly donut, her favorite. When he got home the coffee was made. He kissed her and let her peek in the bag to see what he bought. “You trying to make me fat, Detective?”

He laughed and gave her backside a squeeze. “Still room to grow,” he said.

“I know it’s early, but how’s the antique dealer murder case coming along?”

“It is early, so I don’t have any good leads, but I’m going to visit her house on Monday and see what’s up.” Ever since they reconciled after an 18-month separation, she had taken more of an interest in his work. In turn, he was spending more time helping out with her very successful office decorating business. Mostly he carried or dropped off samples for her when he could. But he was good with numbers, so he was helpful with her business accounting too.

Although it was Saturday, Conti paid a quick visit to the paint store where Danny Putoff used to work. As soon as he told the store’s owner why he was there, the guy rolled his eyes. “My brother hired him,” Peter Ricciardi said. “He went to high school with Danny’s son. I’ll say this for him, the guy did a good job. He did whatever we asked. But when inventory started being off every month 10-15 gallons of paint, we knew we had a problem. It didn’t take long to figure out what, or who the problem was.”

“He told me he took just two gallons. He offered to pay for them.”

Ricciardi laughed. “Of course, that’s what he said, but to tell you the truth, this guy had other problems. He could really get into it with people. He had a very short fuse. That’s another reason we let him go.” 

Diane Grady’s house was indeed small. It was also untidy. He met an investigator, named Carla Rembish at the house. She was well known for her ability to make connections between seemingly unrelated things that occasionally broke a case wide open. Rembish was a tall woman, with short red hair, in her late 40s. The first thing Conti looked for was her butter churn. Mr. Slaughter had sent him photos of the churn. Dina claimed it was 125 years old at least, and very valuable. Perhaps, Conti thought, but she surely wasn’t murdered for that. Rembish went through each room first without touching anything. She wanted to get a feel for the place and its owner. While the rest of the house was in need of some deep cleaning, her bedroom was neat, clean, and well organized. “I don’t think we’re going to learn much here,” she said. But after she dug into her bedroom drawers and closet, she changed her mind. “You said this lady was 49, right?” Conti nodded. “Her clothes and her shoes, even her makeup says 29.”

“Yeah, Karen said she dressed younger than her age.”

Rembish went through the drawers of her tiny desk. When she opened the bottom drawer, she called Conti. “Look at this. She opened the two top drawers and pointed out how neatly everything was arranged. But the bottom drawer, full of letters, looked like it had been ransacked.

“I need to get the lab guys out here,” Conti said. He took some pictures before he left. Rembish stayed to begin the meticulous process of searching through Diane Grady’s life.     

That night, Conti’s daughter, Angela, called. “Guess what?”

“Stephen’s been traded to the Yomiuri Giants in Japan?”

“Ha-ha, very funny Dad. Mom told you the Yankees got him back, right?”

“Yes, she did.”

“Well, they invited him to spring training. If he makes the team, we’ll be coming home!”

Angela had earned her MBA from Rutgers. She left a good job when Stephen was traded to the Texas Ranger’s organization and had to move to Nashville.

“Maybe you can get your old job back,” Conti said.

“Already working on it, Dad.”

Conti got a report back from the crime scene investigation unit. He scanned the report, but saw nothing of interest until he noticed the fingerprint match section. The lab picked up Putoff’s prints, which he expected. What he didn’t expect was Marco Rinaldi’s prints were found on her bed post, doors and a few other places. Certainly, he had noticed Rinaldi had acted strangely, but on the surface, it was hard for him to imagine that Rinaldi and Diane Grady would have more than a causal relationship. He was a cute cop, who liked antiques and enjoyed the attention of Birdie and Diane.

Considering the age difference, it hadn’t really occurred to him that Rinaldi and Diane Grady might be sleeping together.  He picked up the phone. Time to talk to Birdie Thompson again. She agreed to meet him at her apartment. While he was driving to Glen Ridge, a new thought occurred to him. What if Danny Putoff had found out about Rinaldi and Diane? That would piss him off. Maybe enough to lose control of himself, even if only temporarily.

When he arrived at Birdie’s apartment, she wasn’t home. There was a note on her door that said, “I had some errands to run. Can we do this some other time?” Conti was annoyed. Things were still quiet in his sector. He decided to drive through the neighborhood to the antique store. The building sat in the middle of a short block about a half-mile from the main road.

There were two other separate buildings, a barber shop and a sports memorabilia store on each side of the antique shop. He visited each one and asked if they had security cameras. The barbershop didn’t. The guy who owned the memorabilia store said he did, but he never turned it on. Looking around the area, Conti realized that someone could get in and out of Diane’s place without being seen, even during the daytime, if he was careful.

He went back to Birdie’s apartment just in time to see her walk into the building, a six- family structure.   He waited ten minutes before going back to her apartment. The sticky note was still attached to her door. He rang her doorbell. Nothing. He rang again, but still not a sound. Finally, he pounded on the door a few times and said, “Mrs. Thompson, it’s Detective Conti. I need to talk to you. If you don’t answer the door right now, I’ll have to take you in for questioning.” He spoke only slightly louder than his normal conversational tone, sure she was just on the other side of the door listening. Sure enough, she opened her door.

“May I come in?”

She opened it wider and said, “I’m not feeling well, but I suppose it’s alright.”

Her apartment was small, but neat. He noticed the furniture was old. Except for the fact that she lived there, the place had the look of an antique shop staged to attract the attention of collectors. “I won’t take too much of your time. I want you to tell me about Officer Rinaldi’s relationship with Diane.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” she said.

“I think you do. Now, were you and Diane Grady friends?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way. She was my boss. We were friendly, that’s all.”

“But you knew she and Rinaldi were more than friendly, correct?”

“If you say so.”

“Birdie, we have forensic evidence that says it’s so. What I really want to know from you is how involved they were.”

She sat down now, unable to hold to her denials anymore. “Yes, they were seeing each other. I warned him that he was making a big mistake getting involved with her. He just laughed and denied there was anything going on.”

“But you knew he was lying. How?”

“She told me about it one day. Said she still loved the young ones. Told me she was getting pressured by Danny to get married and wanted a little fling before she went ahead and married him.”

“Do you have any reason to believe that Danny was aware of the relationship?”

“He might have been. I know he started stopping by more often and calling her more, but I can’t say for sure.”

“Did you ever see Diane and Danny argue?”

“No, but one day, she said something about Marco, how she couldn’t believe it, but the guy was actually getting serious about them.”

Conti looked at her. “What else did she say? Was she interested in getting serious with Marco?”

Birdie clasped her hands together and put them in her lap. “You know, detective, she may have been on the wild side, but she wasn’t stupid. I think she said, ‘I’m going to have to end it with him soon.’”

Conti pulled out a photo of the missing butter churn but didn’t show it to her right away. “Think back to the day you found Diane in the shop. Do you remember now if anything was missing or out of place?”

She shook her head. “No, maybe if I went back to the shop, but I don’t want to.”

“I understand. Do you remember a butter churn?”

“The butter churn? Yes, I do remember. It sits right in front of the counter where the cash register is.” He pulled out the photo and handed it to her. She put her reading glasses on. “Oh, yes, this is it.”

“Are you sure?”

“See those initials? “SG?” She pointed to the letters on the front wall of the butter churn. “They stand for Selma Grady, Diane’s great grandmother’s name.”

Conti smiled. It was progress, but he wasn’t sure how much. He showed her a picture of the area where the churn had been. “Is this where the butter churn was located?”

She studied it closely. “Why yes! Look you can see the mark on the floor where it was.”

He stood and thanked her for her time. “If we need to talk again, I’ll let you know.”

“I hope I haven’t gotten anyone in trouble.”

“Birdie, I can assure you that you didn’t get anyone in trouble, but someone is indeed in trouble.”

He knew he could have another sit down with Rinaldi and sweat him, but he decided to wait. Let him think he’s in the clear. He laughed at himself. The truth was, he might actually be in the clear.

Conti spent the next two weeks caught up in preliminary trial preparations for a case he had solved involving a chiropractor who refused a plea deal in the murder of his partner and would be standing trial on several serious charges. When that work was finished, he finally got a look at the autopsy report on Diane Grady. The coroner found splinters of wood where she had been hit, consistent with some very old wood.            

The autopsy also revealed that the woman had had sex with two different men, sometime in the last 12 hours of her life. It was likely that Putoff and Rinaldi were the men she was with.

He called Chief Bastedo and asked him to meet him for lunch. He told the chief about Rinaldi’s fingerprints on Diane Grady’s bed post and what they’d found on her autopsy. “You think Marco killed the Grady woman?” the chief asked.

Conti said, “Maybe, but Diane Grady had another boyfriend.” He explained then what he knew about Putoff. “I’ve been at this a long time. Based strictly on what we know now, I think one of them probably did it in a fit of jealous rage. The question is which one?”

“How do you want to proceed?”

“My theory is Rinaldi probably knew about Putoff when he started seeing Grady, but Putoff didn’t know about Rinaldi. Now, maybe Putoff got suspicious about Diane’s behavior and started keeping tabs on her. When he saw what was happening, maybe he confronted her and lost it.”

Bastedo scratched his head and smiled. “So, you think he’s the one and not Marco?”

“Maybe, Mrs. Thompson told me that your boy suddenly got serious about Grady in spite of her being more than twenty years older than he was. Maybe she told him she was going to marry Putoff and Rinaldi lost it.”

“I hate to admit it, but Marco, being a cop, would have a better idea of how to cover his tracks.”

“Somebody rifled Diane Grady’s desk drawer. No doubt he wanted to remove something he thought might incriminate him,” Conti said.

“That would have to be Marco, unless Putoff had sent threatening letters to Grady or something like that.”

“I can understand Rinaldi wanting to dispose of any evidence that he’d been fooling around with the woman, even if he had nothing to do with her death. He’d want to cover his tracks to avoid being a suspect. Never a good career move.” He paused for a moment. “I need to think about this. If we need DNA samples, I’ll let you know, but I think it’s fair to assume that we know who Ms. Grady was with before she was killed.”

The next morning, Conti decided to have Danny Putoff picked up and brought in for questioning. The man was wide eyed when he stepped into the interview room. “What’s this about, detective? I got a job interview lined up at one o’clock.”

Conti took a slug of his coffee, ignoring Putoff’s question. He looked through his case file for a full minute before he looked at Putoff. “Sit down.” He pointed to the chair opposite him.

“I don’t have anything to tell you I haven’t already told you.”

Conti stared into his face, noticing he had two days-worth of growth on his face. “Do you know Marco Rinaldi?”

“Glen Ridge cop? Yeah, I seen him around.”

“Tell me what you know about him.”

“He’s young. Hasn’t been a cop long. Does his drinking at O’ Malley’s.

“Were you aware he was having a relationship with your girlfriend, Diane?”

“That’s bullshit. No way.”

“We have his prints on Grady’s bed post.”

“If that’s true, I’ll break his neck next time I see him.”

“You’re threatening to assault a police officer while you’re being questioned by a homicide detective?”

Putoff rubbed his chin. “It was a figure of speech, that’s all.”

Conti wrote down the exchange. He tapped his pen on a phone record report and said, “Now according to her phone records, which I got yesterday afternoon, you had two phone conversations with her, one at five-fifteen yesterday afternoon and one at 12:24 a.m. the day she was killed. What did you talk about?”

Putoff’s eyes narrowed. “The weather.” Conti waited, his eyes fixed on Putoff’s. His body language changed too, signaling that he was losing his patience. The man’s eyes started darting around the room. “I really don’t remember, detective. I probably just called to say goodnight.”

“Hold on a second. You don’t have to say a word. Here’s what I think happened. You found out about Diane and Marco and it really made you mad. She denied it at first, but you kept at her. Then, she told you to get lost. And you decided to take her out.”

“Bullshit, detective. I’d never do a thing like that.”

Conti made another note and relaxed. He pointed to the door. When Putoff put his hand on the doorknob, Conti said, “We know Diane had sex with both of you within a twelve-hour period.”

Putoff froze. He turned to face Conti. “Diane’s dead. That don’t matter now, does it?”

Conti was disappointed in himself. He could have done a better job on Putoff, he thought. Something told him he was getting closer to the truth. But something wasn’t sitting right. He was missing something.

The following day he invited Marco Rinaldi to meet with him at the Essex County prosecutor’s office. He came in, wearing a sheepish look on his face. They sat in the interview room facing each other. “You found out about me and Diane?”

“Tell me about you and Diane,” Conti said.

“There’s really not much to tell. We had a little fling. She was a real firecracker, man.”

“We think it was more than that, for you at least.”

“That must be Birdie, spinning her stories. The old lady has a very active imagination.”

“You knew Diane was in a relationship with Danny Putoff?”

He shrugged. “Yeah, like I said, Diane was a firecracker.”

“That didn’t bother you?”

“It wasn’t like I wanted to marry her or anything.”

“That’s not the way I heard it.”

“Whatever you heard is wrong, man. It wasn’t serious.”

“When she told you, she was going to marry Putoff, that didn’t bother you?”

“She never said that.” We didn’t talk about him. You have any other questions for me, detective?”

“Did Putoff know about you and Diane?”

“You’d have to ask Danny.”

“How well do you know Danny?”

“I’ve seen him around.”

“Where have you seen him?”

“I’m a police officer. I run into a lot of people. I can’t say exactly where, detective.”

Conti let him go. There was something missing. Both men were cavalier in their responses to his questions. Even Putoff’s threat to break Rinaldi’s neck didn’t entirely ring true. One of these men, or maybe both of them, were lying.

Driving up Bloomfield Avenue toward home late that afternoon, Conti had another thought. What if love wasn’t the motive? He pulled his car over and parked. He went back over his notes. There it was. Dina Slaughter had said something about her sister’s claim that she owned valuable antiques. What if Diane Grady had told Putoff or Rinaldi about her hidden treasures?

He pulled into a Shop-Rite parking lot and called the investigator he’d worked with at Grady’s house, Carla Rembish. “Take a look at your report on the Grady case. Did you find anything like records of some valuable antiques?”

Rembish asked him to hold while she searched. “There is something, a photo of a William Bowman duck decoy. Somebody wrote the number 650 on the page and the word “foundry.”

“Did you find a duck decoy in her attic?” He knew the answer. Saying it made him feel better.

Carla laughed. “Right, it was there and my husband and I sold it. Bought a Range Rover.”

“You at your desk?” he asked.

“I am.”

“Do me a favor. Look that up, the duck thing, I mean.”

He heard Carla tap some keys. “Oh, boy! Whoever William Bowman was, some of his duck decoys are very valuable, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth.” 

He tried to picture the antique shop. According to Dina Slaughter, no one knew exactly what Diane had been referring to when she said her retirement was set. He doubted she would have told either Putoff or Rinaldi about it, but he wondered about Birdie Thompson. The woman had worked in antiques at one time. What if she had told Birdie and the woman in turn told Rinaldi the secret? Might she have inadvertently caused Diane’s demise?

He drove to Birdie Thompson’s apartment. He rang her bell and she answered right away, surprised to see him again. “Come in and have a seat. I’m making a cup of tea. Would you like one?”

He politely refused and he remained standing. When she came back to the living room carefully carrying her tea, he thought she seemed a bit more nervous than the last time he visited.  He waited until she was seated. “Have you solved the case?”

“Not quite, but maybe you can help me move it along. We’ve learned that Diane owned some very valuable antiques. When we went through her house, we found her records. We know she had a William Bowman decoy duck, very valuable.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“Did she ever discuss her prize collectibles with you?”

The old woman shook her head no. She was staring at her teacup.

“Birdie, I think you do know what I’m talking about.”

“She might have mentioned it, once. I’m not sure.”

“Did you ever mention it to either Danny or Marco?’

Birdie gave Conti a cold stare. “I told you once before detective, I don’t want to get anyone into trouble.”

Conti stood looking at her, returning a cold stare. She didn’t flinch. “I’ll be back soon.” He left her apartment and went back to the office. He sat thinking things over, but not making much progress. He decided to call Shanese and talk it over with her. He could hear the baby crying in the background. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”

“These days it’s always a bad time partner. How’s everybody in the office doing?”

“Good. The captain misses your cinnamon rolls, though.” In addition to being an excellent detective, Shanese Davis was an excellent baker. He told her about the case and asked if he could send her what he had. They had worked together on cases before, more so in the last couple of years. She agreed to take a look.

That night, he was watching an American League playoff game, pitting his beloved Yankees versus the surprising Los Angeles Angels, when his phone rang. It was Shanese. “Dennis, I have an idea about where that duck is. Cole’s mother lives in Clifton.” Cole was her husband. “We go over to her house and drive right by a Blue Foundry Bank. There’s a branch in Glen Ridge, I checked. Now I’m thinking maybe she stashed the duck in a safe deposit box, number 650.”

Dennis thought that over. “Wow! If we find that decoy duck in a safe deposit box, there goes my theft theory.”

“Yeah, but if it’s missing, the love triangle thing is probably off the table. You might want to do a background check on Birdie Thompson, just saying,” she laughed.

“Good idea. Thanks Detective Davis. Say hi to Cole.”

The next morning, he went to the Blue Foundry Bank, in Glen Ridge, just a couple of towns over from his house in Claremont. The bank manager listened to what Conti wanted, nodding his head as he listened. “We heard about Ms. Grady’s death. It was a shock to all of us. She was a customer for a long time. However, I must tell you that she was here the day before she died. I accompanied her to her safe deposit box at her request. She took out what looked like a very old duck decoy. I imagine it was a rare antique. She told me she wouldn’t need the safe deposit box anymore.”

“Was anyone with her?”

“You mean in the safe deposit room?”

Conti thought about that for a second. “Did anyone walk into the bank with her?”

“I think so, yes. An older woman with white hair, rather tall, I’d say.”

“Did she come into the safe deposit room?”

“No.”

“When Ms. Grady left with the decoy duck, did she place it in a bag or something?”

“She had a box that was cushioned all around it with bubble wrap. She sealed it before we left the room.”

Conti thanked him for his time. As soon as he got in his car, he called the office and got one of the technical assistants to run a background check on Birdie Thompson.

Two days later, Conti had Birdie Thompson’s background check. At the age of 28, Bertha Wilder, (her maiden name) had been found guilty of grand theft for stealing valuable antiques from her grandmother’s antique shop. She spent about two years in prison in upstate New York. After prison, she married a man named Thompson and relocated to New Jersey.

Conti had enough for probable cause now. He could secure a search warrant of her apartment, but he doubted the duck decoy would be there. He decided to talk to her again. When he got to her apartment, he got lucky. Her door was open and she was about to leave. There was a suitcase in the hallway. When she saw him, she blanched. “What do you want now?”

He held up her background report and said, “For starters, Bertha, where is the William Bowman duck decoy?”

“Duck decoy? What are you talking about?”

“Let’s get something straight. We know what we’re looking for, a very valuable, rare antique.   Very soon, we’ll find whoever bought it. When we charge them with receiving stolen goods, I’m pretty sure they’re going to give you up. So, let’s stop the nonsense, Birdie.”

She dropped her arms to her sides. “I didn’t do the killing,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. She sat in her recliner.

“Who did?”

“Rinaldi. He hit her with that bloody butter churner. Stupid. He hit her so hard he broke it.”

Conti nodded. “Where is the duck?”

“I sold it to a dealer in upstate New York the day after Diane died. He came and got it. I really needed the money. I wanted to retire and live decent for once in my life.”

Conti had her walk through the way the crime was committed. Diane had told her she had the duck and planned to sell it so she and Putoff could retire and move to the Jersey shore. “When I told Marco about the duck and Diane marrying Danny, he got upset, which I knew he would, “I told him without that duck, she couldn’t retire and move anywhere.” She rested her hands on her knees and rocked back and forth. “Right off, he knew what I was suggesting. We came up with a plan. I was to get most of the money because I had the buyer.” Tears were rolling down her cheeks now. “I was going to go back to the Finger Lakes to be near my sister,” she said.

“I went to the bank with her the morning she picked it up. When we got back to the shop, she showed it to me.”  

Conti was listening intently. He felt a bit sorry for the woman. Then he realized that one way or the other, she got Diane Grady killed. “Go on,” he said.    

“We figured if he could get her to into the shop and keep her busy, I could take care of getting the duck.” She looked at Conti and shrugged her shoulders. “While he was screwing her on that filthy couch in the shop’s back room, I took the duck, which was still in the box hidden behind the counter. I put it in my car. I was going to leave when I remembered I left my phone on the counter, where you found it,” she said.

“Why did Rinaldi kill her then?”

“They got done too fast, maybe. Anyway, they came out just as I was walking in to get my phone. She saw right away the box was missing. She looked at me and said, ‘Where’s the box that was under the counter?’ I said, I don’t know, Diane. I guess she figured it out when she turned to him and saw the look on that fool’s face. As I recall, she turned back to me. Before I could say, I’ll get it for you, she started screaming at us. Rinaldi panicked, grabbed the butter churner, and hit her.”

“How much of the money did you give Rinaldi?”

“I gave him $20,000. I think he had some gambling debts he wanted to take care of.” She had tears flowing now. Nothing ever works out for me.”

Conti called Chief Bastedo and gave him the news. He told him to send a car over to pick up Birdie. He also asked him to have Rinaldi at the station when he got there. “He’s here now. Shall I arrest him?”

“Murder for starters,” Conti said.