by Libby Howard
“One of the companies was co-owned by Tracey Abramson who owns the Humble House foundation. Turns out that Spencer Thompson was his partner and they didn’t part on good terms. Abramson has been trying to buy the business out from Thompson for the last year and close it down, but Thompson has been holding out on him. I’d gone to talk to Abramson and he pointed me to Thompson’s secondary business, telling me to look into it.”
The expression on Keeler’s face remained unchanged. “So, you’re thinking Tracey Abramson killed Spencer Thompson, but told you about their disagreements and the name of Thompson’s new company first?”
I winced at the derision in the detective’s voice. “Maybe he wasn’t planning on killing him at first but having me expose what his new company was doing. Then he discovered Thompson’s business practices weren’t just unsavory, but actually involved embezzlement, and killed him instead.”
The man eyed me over the rim of his glasses. The silence extended for an uncomfortably long time. “And you have proof of this embezzlement?”
I tapped the title documentation. “He was getting lowball appraisals for the properties, then selling them to himself and flipping them at the closing table for a profit. When I met with Tracey Abramson, he told me he thought Thompson was too aggressive and that the LLC was going to hurt the reputation of his non-profit. I don’t think he knew about the double-dipping.”
“And you’re saying that he discovered the embezzlement within the last few days? And he knew about this Brockhurst Properties, and knew there was something shady about that?”
I nodded. “So Tracey Abramson definitely has motive. And opportunity. And probably means. I’m assuming anyone can buy a box of rat poison.”
“I can hardly see Tracey Abramson murdering by rat poison,” the detective commented dryly. “He’s more of the hire-a-hitman stereotype, don’t you think?”
“He’s just as good of a suspect as the wife,” I shot back.
His eyebrows went up and he tapped the stack of copies. “You’re saying that Spencer Thompson had a ton of money in private and business accounts, all of which the estranged wife stood to inherit upon his death, but she’s not a good suspect?”
I felt my face heat up. “I’m saying Tracey Abramson is just a good a suspect. I don’t think Marissa Thompson is guilty of her husband’s murder.”
He tapped the stack again. “She was there in his office, yelling at him about three hours before you came in, and stood to inherit a lot of money upon his death.”
“Poison requires planning. It’s not a heat-of-the-moment, yelling-in-the-office kind of murder,” I shot back. “I doubt Marissa Thompson carries rat poison around in her purse. And I doubt her husband let his coffee sit there on his desk for three hours before taking a sip.”
He blinked. I felt somewhat vindicated as he leaned back in his chair and regarded me.
“Poisoning is a woman’s method of murder. And it wasn’t rat poison. It was a botanical.”
I absorbed that bit of new information and regrouped.
“Well, I doubt she was carrying a foxglove plant around in her purse, either. The fact that Spencer Thompson was killed by a botanical agent in his coffee proves that this took a lot of planning and preparation. That’s not the sort of killer that’s going to bring notice to himself by yelling at the intended victim in front of his entire office full of coworkers.” I purposely emphasized the gendered pronoun, stung that the detective as well as my boss were insisting the killer was female simply due to the method used.
“I’ll look into Tracey Abramson,” Detective Keeler grudgingly informed me. “But I doubt he’s our killer.”
I huffed, thinking the detective was very narrow minded.
“So tell me about this Brockhurst Properties.” He sat back up in his chair and began looking through the stack of copies. Progress. At least he was taking me seriously and not dumping the whole batch in the trash and showing me the door.
“When things went south with Tracey Abramson and he was being pushed out of their partnership, Spencer Thompson started Brockhurst Properties to continue his real estate flipping. But the problem quickly became cash flow. He had enough to buy the first few houses but couldn’t move them fast enough to free up cash for additional purchases. Somehow, he’s getting the money to buy these other houses, and it’s not coming from personal assets.”
“You think he’s stealing.”
“Yes. Specifically, we…I mean, I… suspect he might be using identity fraud to take out fake mortgages on these homes, buying them at the foreclosure sale with the money he got from the mortgage, then flipping them.”
“Doesn’t sound like the sort of thing a smart man who has been successfully running a scam on his partner would do.”
“I think it’s a short-term strategy to build up enough money to fund his real estate investments and possibly buy out Tracey Abramson. I don’t think he intended it as a long-term thing. And I think he’s got a partner on the inside.” I pointed to the papers. “Peabody Mortgage underwrote all these loans, all to different lenders.”
“And why should I look into this? It’s hard to prosecute a dead man, you know.”
“It’s still a crime,” I insisted. “Identity theft. Mortgage fraud. And it’s possible that someone at Peabody needed Spencer to die.”
His eyebrows went up. “So somebody at Peabody Mortgage drove from…” he looked at the papers, “from Philadelphia, just so he could poison Spencer Thompson’s coffee?”
Well, when he put it that way, it didn’t seem very plausible. “It might have happened. There was an emergency. They were about to get caught. The guy hauls down here to meet with Spencer Thompson, but it doesn’t go well—”
“And he runs outside, clips some leaves off the landscaping, and runs back in the office to dump them in Spencer Thompson’s coffee when his back is turned.”
This sounded a lot better when I’d thought it was rat poison, or even an overdose of blood pressure medication. Maybe the key to who killed Spencer Thompson wasn’t motive, it was means. The type of poison used had to be a limiting factor in all this.
“What kind of botanical was it?” I asked, my mind whirling. There was a lot of information someone could gain over the internet regarding poisonous plants, but knowing how to identify the correct shrub, which parts to harvest, how to process it safely, and how much to use would take more than a quick afternoon’s search.
“We won’t know that until the lab results get back. It was clearly a botanical because there were traces of crushed, dried flowers and leaves at the bottom of the coffee cup. The woman in the office with Spencer Thompson said at first she thought he was having an allergic reaction to something. He was clutching his chest like he couldn’t breathe, but also spitting. He stumbled and fell to the floor and began having spasms.”
I frowned. “Maybe it was an allergic reaction to something.”
“No allergies according to his medical records, his friends or coworkers, or his wife. And the M.E. said Thompson had severe blistering to the soft tissues of his mouth and throat and mucus membranes, as well as his upper digestive tract. Someone poisoned his coffee. And that someone knew exactly what they were doing.”
“And Spencer Thompson didn’t notice a bunch of dried flowers and leaves floating around in his beverage?” Now I was the skeptic, eyeing Detective Keeler with raised eyebrows.
“There were just a few bits and they were tiny. The M.E. believes that whatever plant it was, the killer crushed them and basically used the ‘juice.’ The small amount of debris in the bottom of the cup were probably remnants of the distillation process and not delivering the actual poison dosage.”
“And you seriously can see Marissa Thompson distilling plant bits in a pot in her kitchen?” I asked incredulously.
“You can see Tracey Abramson doing that?”
Good point. Tracey Abramson would have hired a hit man and had an ironclad alibi. Thompson wouldn’t have died by poison. He
would have just vanished, only to be found three years from now chained to some cement blocks at the bottom of a lake.
“Besides, Tracey Abramson isn’t on the list.” Detective Keeler slid a photo over to me. It showed the visitor’s log from the receptionist desk, with little notes about which employee the visitors were seeing. My name was on there toward the bottom. Marissa Thompson’s was on there close to the top. And in between were five other unfamiliar names.
“So unless Tracey Abramson hired one of these people,” the detective continued, “then he’s not our murderer.”
Our. I looked up at Keeler with a puzzled frown. “Why are you showing me all this? I thought you weren’t big on sharing information about cases, especially to a Jessica Fletcher wannabe.”
He chuckled. “You know, that old lady solved a lot of cases. And you seem to have a pretty good track record yourself. Pickford speaks highly of you.”
“Miles likes that I supply him with muffins, cookies, and scones.” I laughed.
“Can’t fault a man for that. You make one mean muffin, Mrs. Carrera. And as wild as some of your theories are, you clearly have either connections or methods of research that aren’t available to me. Well, aren’t available to me without getting eight signatures on a budget request and waiting three months for approvals.”
“So, we’re working together now?” I stuck out my hand.
He eyed it and leaned back in his chair. “No, we’re not working together. Consider this a temporary cooperation because I’m definitely wanting to be in the loop on anything else you dig up on this case, and I get the feeling you’re not going to be so willing to share that information with me unless I’m a bit forthcoming on my own here.”
I lowered my hand and stood. “Don’t be silly, Detective Keeler. I just want to see justice being served.”
He turned to his computer, clearly dismissing me. “Then go help me serve justice, Mrs. Carrera.”
I headed into the office, letting J.T. know all the juicy details I’d discovered last night thanks to Violet and her diligence. Then I typed up all the details including the bank account number and copies of all the paperwork Violet had given me, added up my hours into an invoice and turned it all over to J.T. by lunchtime.
The rest of the afternoon was spent doing skip traces, which were blissfully familiar and almost meditative in their monotony compared to the Thompson case. It made me wish for the time when I hadn’t had my investigator’s license and had just sat a computer all day, tracking down those who defaulted on their loans. By five o’clock, I felt downright relaxed as I finished up my work, packed my laptop and a few files I might want to review over the weekend, and headed home.
The weekend. Happy hour on the porch. Madison’s cross-country meet. A spa day with Daisy, and maybe, just maybe I’d finish that scarf I’d been working on for the last few weeks.
A blissful weekend. I couldn’t wait.
Chapter 18
“More wine?” Daisy started pouring before I’d even nodded. We had quite the crew here for our happy hour on my front porch. Lars and Kat were over, chatting with the Tennisons about the likelihood of getting the pothole on our street fixed before winter set in. Bert Peter was taking a break from the never-ending job of sorting through the contents of his late uncle’s house across the street. Olive was here straight from work in her business suit, briefcase propped against my porch railing as she cradled her wine in one hand and gestured wildly with the other. Suzette was nodding in agreement with her, occasionally chiming in about the difficulty of finding quality accounting clerks to replace interns returning to college. Violet had even come by, standing shyly off to the side and cradling her untouched glass of Chardonnay as she listened in on Olive and Suzette’s conversation. I’d introduced the young woman when she arrived, and hoped for her to make some friends, or at the very least connections she could use when trying for her next job. Judge Beck was right. Her talents really were wasted at the county tax assessor’s office. All she needed was for someone to see her ability under the shiny new college degree and scant job experience and give her a chance.
“Whoa,” I told Daisy as she continued far past the halfway point on my wine glass. “I’ve got some work to do tonight. Passing out on the couch at six isn’t in my schedule.”
My friend scrunched up her nose but pulled the bottle away. “It’s Friday night, Kay! I don’t like you working late all the time like this. I don’t like you ducking out of our morning yoga early, either. Am I gonna have to have a talk with your boss?”
I grinned, liking that my friend seemed to relish her power over my “boss.” “Do not screw up my new promotion,” I told her. “And technically it’s not work anymore. We’ve pretty much done all we can do for our client. Right now, I’m trying to figure out a murder. And help someone not get evicted from his home, although I think that’s taken care of.”
I did want to get Melvin Elmer hooked up with a lawyer, though. Yes, he was dying, but I hated the thought that some slimeball of an identity thief had caused him all this grief and was getting away with a hundred grand of his home equity.
“Another murder.” Daisy added a splash of wine to her own glass, then took a quick drink. “What’s happening to our little town? First that party planner, then poor Mr. Peter, then Holt Dupree, then Luanne Trainor. Things are getting out of hand. Lay off the murder. Someone needs to burn down a building or kidnap a dog or something.”
“No, someone does not need to commit arson or steal a dog,” I retorted. “And not all those murders were in Locust Point. Luanne was murdered in Milford, and Holt was technically outside the town limits when he died.”
“Still, that’s a whole lot of foul play in six months. I assume you’re talking about that investment guy? I heard his wife offed him for the money. What’s to investigate?”
“I’m pretty sure she didn’t do it. This wasn’t a heat-of-the-moment crime. Someone planned this out and took a lot of care with it.”
“Mistress? Business rival? Someone he cut off in traffic earlier that morning?” Daisy took another sip of wine. “Do tell, Detective Carrera. Who do you think did the deed?”
“Well, the person I had as my primary suspect doesn’t seem too likely after I found out the method of murder,” I confessed. “It would have taken a specific sort of knowledge and a lot of forethought, and that doesn’t seem like the method he’d go for. Or the wife either, for that matter.”
“You can’t just leave me hanging with that,” Daisy protested. “I’m imagining all sorts of things. Beheaded with an ancient katana? Slowly devoured by ants only found in the depths of the Amazon jungle? Catapulted into the highway at rush hour?”
“No!” I laughed. “It’s not public knowledge. I probably shouldn’t tell anyone.”
Daisy rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on. I can keep a secret. And it will probably be all over the papers tomorrow anyway.”
She was right about the papers, but not about her ability to keep a secret. Daisy was a horrible gossip, although she was good about keeping personal stuff private.
“Okay, okay. It was poison. A botanical. I know the effects, but not what it was. We won’t know that until the labs come back, and I might not know that until it goes to trial unless Detective Keeler is in a sharing kind of mood.”
“A botanical?” Daisy shook her head in disbelief. “Like plants? Like strychnine-flavored romaine in his salad or something?”
I shrugged. “I really don’t know plants beyond the herbs in my garden and some flowers. I know there are things like foxglove that used to be used in poisons. I know there are a lot of toxic wild plants like pokeberries, but not what might be used to kill someone.”
“Ask Dora,” Daisy urged.
“Dora Tennison?” I turned to look at the woman and her husband talking with Lars and Kat.
“No, Dora the Explorer.” Daisy rolled her eyes. “Yes, Dora Tennison. She’s a Master Gardener. Have you seen her yard?”
It was
my turn to roll my eyes. “Just because she’s a genius with roses doesn’t mean she knows toxic plants. Unless you’re implying Dora Tennison killed Spencer Thompson?”
“If Dora Tennison needed a financial advisor, she’d go to whoever is managing that trust fund she and Phil have been living off of for the last forty years, not some Fullbright and Mason dude working in a cubicle down in Milford. She’s not all about roses, you know. She and Suzette go hunting mushrooms together every spring. Ginseng, too. And she taught a seminar to those survivalist whack jobs last fall on how to gather food after the zombie apocalypse or something. The woman knows her plants.”
Huh. Guess I needed to chat with Dora Tennison. The awkward thing was that I barely knew the woman. Yes, she was on my porch with her husband drinking wine, but that was because I’d made it a point to invite everyone on the street. She and Phil lived a few houses down from the Larses, and as Daisy had said, even though they were my age, they were both trust fund people with abundant free time and not much in common with me. Actually, I’d made a lot of assumptions based on their immaculate lawn, immaculate house, and immaculate six-figure cars in the garage that they didn’t have a lot in common with me, but maybe those assumptions were wrong. Kat Lars was pretty cool and they seemed thick as thieves over there talking together. And she couldn’t be too stuffy if she went hunting for mushrooms and ginseng with Suzette and offered seminars to survivalist preppers.
I made my way over to them, hovering around the edge of their conversation and feeling a bit like Violet at the moment.
“Kay has an herb garden,” Kat announced, giving me a quick smile. “Not that size of yours, Dora, but just as lovely. You should have her show it to you.”
Yes, because the Master Gardener really wanted to see my scraggly thyme and lanky oregano.
“Just some kitchen herbs,” I told her. “Nothing special. I added catnip this year for Taco.”
“Oh, I bet he loves that. Do you have any flowering plants?” Dora smiled at me. She was really a lovely woman, but as intimidating as the Queen of England. Her snow-white hair was in an elegant French twist, her makeup as impeccable as her understated but clearly expensive pantsuit. “Your back yard would be perfect for a native-plant wildflower garden, or perhaps some heirloom roses with a chalk-stone pathway.”
