A Branch Too Far (The Leafy Hollow Mysteries Book 3)

by Rickie Blair

  After parking my aunt’s truck, I scrambled into Emy’s waiting neon-yellow Fiat 500. An aging pickup with Coming Up Roses stenciled on the side was too conspicuous for undercover work. Lorne was twisted like a pretzel in the back of the Fiat. Emy pulled away from the curb for our three-block drive to Elm Street.

  Good sense told me not to ask, but curiosity always trumps good sense. Or is that just me? Anyway, I plunged ahead. “Did your mom say anything about her—”

  “No.” Emy’s lips made a tight line. “She won’t give me any idea where she was on Friday morning.”

  Lorne leaned over the front seat. It was hard not to, since he was already hunched over in the tiny vehicle. “It won’t matter, Emy. No one could possibly believe your mom had anything to do with that.”

  Emy slammed on the brakes, and we shot forward against our seat belts. “What is that, Lorne?” she asked, glaring at him in the rearview mirror and biting her lip. She looked close to tears.

  Lorne and I exchanged glances.

  “Nothing at all,” he said, scanning the scenery with great interest.

  We passed the rest of our brief trip in silence. Emy was still biting her lip, looking more worried than I’d ever seen her.

  We cruised by the gingerbread trim and mullioned windows of Lucy’s three-story red brick house. A wrought-iron fence surrounded the front yard, curving into an elaborate pergola over the front gate. The hollyhocks, asters, and chrysanthemums that lined both sides of the walk would have been familiar to any Victorian gardener. They swept up to a wraparound porch that lacked only women in floor-length skirts, gathered in the wicker chairs to sip lemonade, to make the picture complete.

  The only person on the porch today, however, was a twenty-first-century police constable, standing in front of the puce-painted door with his arms crossed.

  “Should I pull over?” Emy asked.

  I ducked my head. “Keep going. We don’t want that cop to see us, and…” Report back to Jeff, I thought, but didn’t say. “Lucy’s property runs through to the other side of the block. Drive around the corner and park at the back.”

  Once we’d pulled up outside Lucy’s back garden, Emy slid the gear into park and turned to face me. “Now what?”

  “Did you bring the key?”

  “Yes. I got it at Mom’s this morning. She doesn’t know I took it.” Emy made a face. “Not yet, anyway.”

  “We can go in the back door.”

  “Won’t that police officer hear us?”

  Lorne leaned over the front seat. “What if I tell him I saw a break-in in progress down the street? He’d have to investigate, wouldn’t he?”

  Emy turned to him, looking contrite. “Lorne, I’m so sorry—”

  He squeezed her hand. “Never mind,” he said softly.

  While they cooed at each other, I mulled over Lorne’s suggestion. “It’s not a bad plan,” I said, “but he’ll be able to identify you if this goes wrong.”

  “We’re not doing anything illegal,” Emy pointed out. “We have a key.”

  “Yes, but if we walked up to the front door with it, that cop would stop us. He must be there for a reason.”

  Unfortunately, that reason was probably that Jeff knew me too well.

  Or not well enough, depending on how you looked at it. I had once vowed not to get involved with him, and here I was, anticipating our first date. What if it didn’t work out? Should I really be getting my hopes up? What if—

  Emy poked my arm, and I jumped.

  “Earth to Verity. Any ideas?”

  I studied the back of the house. “Let’s get out for a closer look.”

  We ducked through the bushes that lined the fence, taking care to stay out of sight. At the back of the house, I stuck my head out to peer around the side. Then I pulled out my phone and disabled Call Display before tapping in the number. A fake emergency call was probably illegal in Leafy Hollow. Or frowned upon, anyway.

  After four rings, a woman’s voice answered.

  “Leafy Hollow Village Hall.”

  “Hello, dear,” I croaked, doing my best to sound elderly. “Someone’s forcing a door near Elm Street. I think they’re breaking in.”

  “Best you call the police, then.”

  “Could you do that for me?” I wheedled, my voice breaking. “I’m in a phone booth. There’s no telephone directory here.”

  “I’m sorry but—”

  “Why are there no telephone directories any more, dear? Does someone steal them?”

  “I don’t know. But you can call nine-one-one—”

  “To report the missing phone directory?”

  “No, no. To tell them about the break-in.”

  “Oh, I can’t do that, dear. I don’t have my glasses on.”

  The woman sighed. “Where is this break-in?”

  I gave her the address of a house three blocks up and one block over, and hung up.

  It took less than a minute before the constable’s radio crackled. He trotted to his cruiser and, with a brief wail of the siren, drove away. Once he’d turned the corner, I motioned to the others. Keeping low, we darted up to the back door.

  Emy inserted the key while Lorne acted as lookout. Within seconds, we were in the darkened kitchen at the back of the house.

  “Lucy’s office is upstairs,” I whispered.

  My phone beeped with an incoming text, a reminder that my phone’s GPS was tracking me—and our clandestine operation. Ignoring the text, I turned the phone off before tucking it into my pocket. “Let’s go.”

  Emy started up the wooden steps at the back of the house. In the nineteenth century, these uneven and painted planks would have been the servants’ stairs. The spacious staircase at the front of the house, lined with Oriental carpet, would have been reserved for the family.

  Emy halted, and I ran into her with a jolt that made my swollen eye sting. Lorne ran into me, causing another jolt.

  “Oh, man,” I said, rubbing my eye.

  We paused to untangle our limbs.

  “Emy, what were you doing?” I asked. “Why did you stop?”

  “The stairs,” she hissed back. “They’re creaking.”

  I leaned my head back with an exasperated sigh. “Who cares? No one’s here but us. Move.” I gave her a little push.

  Emy resumed her climb. The stairs did squeak. Practically every step, in fact. Must have been Lucy’s insistence on authenticity. The Victorians wouldn’t have cared if the servants’ stairs creaked. In fact, it might have helped them ensure the hired help was actually working.

  At the top, we fanned out to check the rooms.

  I was pleased with the team’s precision movements. We’d come a long way since our first covert ops. Some people wouldn’t consider that a desirable accomplishment. Still, if it helped Thérèse… I shut my mind to the possible consequences.

  Lucy’s office was at the back of the house, overlooking the lavish shrub borders of the back garden. That was a plus for us, since no one on Elm Street could see us rifling through a dead woman’s home. I gestured to a table where newspaper clippings and scrapbooks had fanned out from overturned library boxes. “Lorne, can you look through those? And check the cupboard?”

  We set to work.

  Emy slid into a chair at Lucy’s desk and clicked the mouse while I leaned over her shoulder. The machine woke with a musical chime.

  “What am I looking for?”

  “Anything unusual. Start with her chat history.”

  Emy scrolled through the files while I watched.

  “What is… that?” Lorne blurted from the other side of the room.

  Emy and I jerked our heads up. Lorne had opened the cupboard door. And halted.

  A life-sized cardboard cutout of a woman in a bikini and black-ribboned sailor’s cap winked at us. A royal blue banner rested diagonally across her chest with S.S. Sea U Later printed on it. But that wasn’t the interesting part.

  The woman winking at us was Lucy Carmichael.

&nb
sp; We stared at this nautical apparition. Then we took a step nearer and stared some more.

  “Well,” Emy said finally. “I think we can assume Lucy did not spend her vacations with a cousin in Moose Jaw.” She opened the photo library on Lucy’s computer. It didn’t take long to find mementos of her vacations. Lucy had taken luxury cruises to every continent. One photo in particular made my jaw drop—a much younger Lucy, parasailing above the Gulf of Mexico.

  “So she wasn’t afraid of heights?” Emy asked.

  “I guess not. Unless… something changed.” I pointed to a long list of bookmarks. “Try those.”

  Emy clicked on the first. A buxom woman appeared, holding a stick of dynamite in one hand and a burning match in the other.

  “Is that an online dating site?”

  “It is, and so are these.” Emy opened several at random. “Lucy was surprisingly popular. She has multiple accounts on a dozen sites.”

  Beep.

  A message winked on at the top of the screen.

  U there baby?

  “Type something,” I urged Emy.

  With a giggle, she complied. Oooh baby am I…

  Beep.

  Yeess Soooo hot…

  “Ick.” Emy hastily closed the link.

  Other messages popped up.

  Beep.

  S home early. Can’t talk

  Beep.

  Tarentino retro 2nite U watching?

  Beep.

  Which 1 u like?

  This query was accompanied by a selfie of a young woman displaying two skintight tube shifts in a retail dressing room.

  “Don’t answer that,” I cautioned.

  “Really?” Emy smirked. “Shouldn’t we tell her the green one clashes with her hair?”

  I gave her arm a tap. “Never mind that. Check the history on that chat.”

  Emy scrolled through a mind-numbing list of Ooh babies and Whatcha doin’s, until one message stood out.

  U owe $600.

  Similar messages turned up on the other chats. The amounts “owing” ranged from three hundred dollars to three thousand. I jotted them down on a scrap of paper to see if there was a pattern.

  Emy’s brow burrowed. “I don’t get it. Owing for what?”

  My mind churned through half a dozen potential frauds until I hit on the obvious. “I think I know what Lucy was doing.”

  Beep. Beep. Beep.

  Half a dozen messages blinked simultaneously.

  Emy ignored them. “Which was?”

  “Online flirting for other people.”

  “Why? They could do that themselves.”

  “Not everybody is comfortable talking to strangers, Emy.”

  “But still…”

  “Faint text never won fair lady. Think Cyrano de Bergerac, but digital.”

  “It’s a bit creepy, isn’t it? Pretending to be someone else?”

  “No use asking me. I find all online dating weird.”

  Emy narrowed her eyes. “You know, you could—”

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  Beep.

  Emy’s mouse hovered over the exit key.

  I put a hand on her arm to stop her from clicking it. “Lucy wouldn’t do this for free. See if you can find a spreadsheet with matching amounts.”

  It took only minutes of checking recently opened files to find the relevant spreadsheet. Down the left column were dating sites, each linked to a set of initials. The rows across were divided into twelve months, and each month’s box held a dollar amount.

  “Is that what she charged them?” Emy looked dubious. “That’s a lot of money.”

  “Not really. Think of all the work. Clever jokes, little asides, comments on the day’s news. Viral video clips. Instant messaging at all hours. Maybe Lucy’s clients were professionals who were too busy to keep up with it all. Or…”

  Emy eyed me thoughtfully. “Or what?”

  “Or—she may have charged extra to keep the arrangements confidential.”

  “Blackmail?”

  “Not exactly. Some of these people might be married. Or anxious to hide their online identities for other reasons. Maybe they paid Lucy extra for… discretion.”

  Emy’s fingers fluttered on the hollow at her neck as she studied the spreadsheet. “Should we be prying into this? I don’t want to uncover any scandals. I only want to clear my mom.”

  “Me, too. But if the people on this list have something to hide, wouldn’t that make them suspects in Lucy’s death?”

  Emy sighed and pointed at the screen. “Those initials are probably aliases.”

  Guessing cryptic names and passwords was a hobby of mine, thanks to a smattering of Latin gleaned from my mother, a professor of ancient languages. But I doubted it would help in this case. “Let’s print it out and guess their identities later. The ones we think are harmless—or none of our business—we’ll destroy.”

  “Deal.” Emy tapped on the mouse. With a whirr, the printer in the corner spit out two copies of the spreadsheet. I slid them into my bag.

  “What about this romance writer’s website?” Emy clicked to open it. “It’s marked as a favorite.”

  “Try that button,” I suggested, pointing to an “Excerpt” icon under the title, Dishonorable Intentions. The cover that appeared featured a young man with an impressive six-pack, wearing jeans that barely…

  We leaned in to read.

  “Oh, my,” I said.

  “Wow,” Emy echoed. “That’s really… something.”

  We leaned in closer.

  “There’s a whole stack of those books over here,” Lorne said.

  We jumped, not realizing he was standing behind us.

  With a smirk, Lorne pointed to the table.

  The Officer Who Wasn’t a Gentleman was on top.

  That title was familiar. I closed my eyes, picturing the list of names in Sue’s bird blind. Then I reassessed the titles on the table.

  Red-Hot Rogue

  To Trap a Tycoon

  Kiss of the Mermaid

  So, not birds, then.

  Picking up the first paperback, I riffled through a few pages, then stopped to read a passage. Emy came over and stood at my elbow. We read silently for a few minutes.

  “Hmm,” Emy said, picking up half a dozen books. “We should take these for research.”

  “You’re right.” I took a few more.

  “Forget about that,” Lorne said with an impatient shrug. “Check out these stories about the Black Widow trial. There are dozens of clippings here.”

  He handed me one illustrated with a photo taken at the Strathcona bus station. Protestors—held back by a police officer—watched an elderly woman with black hair climb into an SUV. The same picture had been on the flyers handed out by the Leafy Hollow Protection Society.

  But this one wasn’t printed on red paper so I picked up the clipping for another look at the driver. Still, the reflection in the windshield obscured the finer details. I studied the sunglasses, the fedora, and the mustache, then held it out to Emy. “Take another look. Are you certain you don’t recognize this man?”

  She squinted at the photo and shook her head. “Sorry.”

  Lorne pulled out another box to paw through. “Why would Lucy want all this stuff?” he asked, dumping its contents onto the table.

  I drew up straight, pointing. “What is that?”

  Emy swiveled to follow my gesture. Her eyes widened. A gray fedora peeked out from the mound of clippings.

  Lorne picked up the hat and flipped it over. A fake mustache was tucked under the leather rim.

  My mouth gaped. “Lucy Carmichael drove the Black Widow here? Why?”

  I reached for the hat. Before I could grab it, a yell sounded from the sidewalk at the front of the house.

  “Ver-i-ty!”

  I froze.

  “Who’s that?” Emy whispered.

  “Ver-i-ty. Are you in there, hon?”

  No. It couldn’t be. Impossible. I darted down
the hall. At the front window overlooking the street, I craned my neck to peer through a gap in the curtains. The porch roof hid my view of the person standing below.

  The visitor stepped onto the sidewalk, and I drew back with a gasp.

  Patty Ferris stood with her head tilted back, gazing up at the second-story windows. She cupped her hands around her mouth and called again, ponytail bobbing.

  “Ver-i-ty. It’s me, hon.”

  Emy darted up the hall to stand beside me at the window. Her eyes were wide. “Who is that?”

  “A friend from Vancouver. But she didn’t say she was coming here.”

  “Ver-i-ty.”

  “You’ve got to get her to stop yelling or that cop will come back,” Emy said.

  My mind raced over Patty’s earlier mention of a vacation. It never occurred to me that she meant Leafy Hollow. Her timing was a little off. I sighed. Patty’s timing was frequently off. I chewed my lip, hoping she hadn’t brought any baked goods with her.

  Emy shook my arm. “Hurry. That cop will be back soon.”

  We darted down the hall and into the office.

  The crash of breaking glass on the first floor caught us up short.

  “That sounded like a window.” Emy looked alarmed. “Your friend wouldn’t break into the house, would she?”

  “Ver-i-ty!”

  I closed my eyes for a moment, vaguely recalling a GPS tracking app Patty had installed on my phone back in Vancouver.

  Then I scooped up the fedora, the mustache, and as many clippings as I could grab with two hands, dumped them into a box and shoved it at Lorne. “Use the back stairs,” I said before turning to jog down the carpeted steps at the front.

  When I was a few steps down, the front door opened and swung back, crashing into the wall of the foyer with a bang.

  “Verity, watch out,” Emy called from above my head.

  I slammed to a halt, teetering over a pile of glass shards scattered over the steps. It looked like the remains of a crystal vase. Someone had deliberately broken it—possibly to slow me down.

  And that someone might be Lucy’s killer.

  My eyes widened as I realized Patty was standing outside the front door.