“What other kinds of product do you make?” I raised my voice over the noise to ask.
“We make all the standard size industrial products for…” Margaret named a few stationery brands I recognized that were sold in the local stores.
“What about other specialty-type papers?” I persisted.
Addy had shifted subtly to my side and clutched my forearm.
Madge smiled under her hardhat. “That’s right. You want to see some of our printing projects. Follow me.” She turned on her little beige heel.
“But—”
Addy looked me in the eye and mouthed “later.”
I nodded, puzzled, but with the noise and Madge’s speed, had little choice but to trot to keep up with our leader. She led us quickly through customer service, a room of cubicles and people on phones which made my stomach clutch to think about working in a tight space. We were getting a peek at an area not open to the public, Madge assured us. We sped-walked along a hall with a window into another room with a dozen computer set-ups “where our creative people work,” Madge blathered.
Addy hesitated in front of the window about two-thirds along the way. The screens all faced away from us, so I’m not sure what caught her eye.
“This way, please!” Our leader pushed open the door at the end of the hall. At least it had been quiet in the hall, though my ears would be ringing for some time from the factory racket.
It was getting hard to catch my breath keeping up with Madge, who seemed to be on a mission. So much for getting all our questions answered. We clipped along another large room where presses rolled out orders. “Embossing, of course, is a specialty process,” Madge said.
“Yeah, about that specialty—” Addy shook her head at me, and Madge had never slowed. I wanted to stamp my foot and say “wait!” but when a person was over thirty it just didn’t work as it did for a seven-year-old.
Madge led us back into the lobby and presented us with a goody bag filled with sample papers and gummed pads of “to-do” lists. While she thanked us she took our name tags back and removed the printed paper with our names inside the plastic and wadded them in her fist, squashing them into a ball. She squeezed and released, crinkling the paper. “Thank you for your interest in Emblem Paper Works. I hope you enjoyed your tour.” She showed us out and I’m pretty sure I heard the click of a lock behind us.
I stood on the pebble walk in front of the dark glass windows, stunned. Wilting red striped petunias in a matching pebble concrete planter laughed at me. I wrinkled my nose at the fumes from what I now knew was the delignifying process.
Addy grabbed my arm and turned toward my car. “Want me to drive?” she asked.
“I’m OK. Just…” We got in and buckled up. “I mean, wow, what just happened? And did I hear her say something about…cyanide?”
Addy set her mouth in a grim line. “It’s used a couple of different ways,” she said, almost reluctantly. “Look, Ivy, let’s get lunch. Then I have to go check on things at the office. We…you…it’s hard not to jump to conclusions.”
I put the car in gear, something else niggling my mind. Roaring from the machines still echoed, while the memory of another sound tickled my eardrums. “Well…cyanide was the cause of Ivanna’s death.”
Addy squirmed and straightened her blouse beneath the safety belt. “I don’t think we should be putting one and one together and coming up with four.” She played with a fraying edge of the strap.
“But…” I prompted.
“I caught a reflection, back there…in that hallway.”
“Ha!” I signaled and pulled out of the acres of blacktopped parking lot for Emblem employees. “Tell.”
“Something about a framed photo at this one work station made me stop. I couldn’t see the picture under the glass, but I definitely saw wings and the word feather reflected from the computer monitor. But it could have been anything.”
“Background color?”
“Lavender.”
I drove back into Colby and stopped at a café a few doors down from the bridal boutique. By mutual agreement we kept our public conversation to safe topics, like pets and my wedding.
After dropping Addy off at the office where she could check in on her patients, I headed for the Flower Shop to catch up with Roberta. I had to finalize boutonnieres and corsages but I really hoped to find Ruby. Yes, Officer Dow had asked me, friendly like, to stay away from her, but if we came across each other in public, it wasn’t my fault.
Inside, I glanced around, hoping to spy Ruby. No such luck. Roberta pushed the nose of her little gold watering can amongst the dark leaves of potted nasturtiums and lemon cyclamen. Her bracelets jingled a happy little dance. She smiled when she saw me. “Be right with you!”
She set the can down and wiped her hands on her cheerful checked green and white apron. “Corsages, right? Come on over to the counter. I’ll get your file.”
“And boutonnieres,” I said. “We decided to go ahead and get them for extended family.” There were so few of us, so why not? We sat on high wood stools and pored over names and numbers.
Roberta held up four swatches of ribbon. “And the colors, then?”
“Right!” I’d forgotten we hadn’t finalized that and indicated the darker, almost purple rose and fern green I’d settled on. “Amy will order the table centerpieces from you.”
Roberta slipped an invoice from the folder and waved it. “Here it is. Potted plants? What a cute idea!”
“Aunt Roberta!” Ruby hustled into the checkout area from the back workroom. “I got another one.” She stopped short at the sight of me, looked down at the screen of her phone, and back up at me. My hands were in plain sight and not attached to any electronic devices.
“How do you do that?” Ruby asked.
“Do what?” I replied.
Roberta unhooked her legs from the rungs of the stool and dropped her plump self to the floor. She rounded her counter where we’d been sitting on the store side to the check-out side and peered at her niece’s screen.
“Honey, she’s been sitting right here for the last fifteen minutes,” Roberta told Ruby. “You must have heard us.” Roberta took the phone and held it out for me to read.
“I had the radio on back there. But she’s like, an expert,” Ruby said. “She knows how to schedule and bounce stuff so it seems like it’s not coming from her.”
“Why would Ivy want to do that?” Roberta asked, still holding the phone in front of me.
Yur a loser and always wil b. give up now, I read. “This is the type of text Officer Dow said you’d been receiving?” I switched my attention to Ruby. Her new haircut significantly softened her imposing jawline and her mustache was hardly noticeable. The red dyed hairstreaks detracted from her less friendly features. Her eyes were pretty, now that I could see them better. Brown and wider, somehow, in a less puffy face. Properly applied mascara helped. Someone must have worked with her on that.
Ruby nodded, took the phone and raised her thumb.
“Wait! Before you delete that, don’t the police want to see it? I…um, also may be able to trace it,” I said.
“The cops have a bug on it. On you!” she said and smashed her thumb on a button, presumably to delete the message.
Rats. Well, she hadn’t run away yet. “Why do you think I’m sending these messages?”
“Jason told me you and Stanley Brewer were trying to take Fit’r U for yourselves. Now that Stanley has…” Her voice petered out as she stared at me.
I’d tried to keep from laughing and was failing miserably. Even Roberta might start rolling in the aisles any second.
I held up my hand, the one with the double diamond engagement ring and pointed at the file of flower paperwork spread out in front of me. “Why…” Giggle. Snort. “Why on earth would I go back to Stanley when…” I sobered when I saw she was still puzzled.
“Ruby! Stanley and I were done years ago. Sure, he followed me here, but…he was even cheating on his idea of g
etting me back with Ivanna. I don’t want anything to do with him! Not in a million years. And especially not since I’m about to marry the real love of my life.”
“I’ll give you three and a half million reasons why you might want something to do with him,” Ruby stated and folded her arms.
Roberta squeezed her niece’s shoulders and whispered in her ear.
Ruby widened her eyes. She swallowed and met my sympathetic gaze.
“Oh, I, um, didn’t about the mayor. I mean, I knew about the other stores and all, but…well.” She stared at her phone again. “Why does he stay here in this little podunk place when he’s so rich he can stay in Chicago and not worry about anything?”
“We like Apple Grove,” I told her. “He’s committed to making it a great place to live and work and raise families. And be safe. Ruby, who would send you awful messages like that? You must have told the police what you thought when you filed your report. Would Jason do it?”
I thought about the way Jason Clark had followed her with his eyes the other day when he’d hit the lamp post in front of Mea Cuppa.
“No way!” Ruby trembled. “He wouldn’t do that. He…likes me. Likes the way I turned out.”
“I hardly recognize you myself,” I told her.
The door jingled, and Roberta went to wait on her customers.
“You’ve worked hard,” I said softly. “You look fabulous.”
Ruby peered over my shoulder and beckoned me to follow her to the workroom. We sat on stools in front of a workspace strewn with cuttings and wire and ribbon. The frothy fragrance of baby roses and earthy cut maidenhair ferns tried to take the ugliness of the situation away.
“I thought Ivanna was my friend,” Ruby said as she plopped her face into her hands.
I let questions swirl in my mind before opening my mouth. I needed to tread carefully into new territory if I wanted Ruby to see me in a trustworthy light. “Why wouldn’t she be?”
“She lied.”
I waited, sensing that pummeling her with leading questions that forced her in my direction, wouldn’t get me the information I really wanted. Although I’d settled the answer of how Ruby knew about Ivanna’s money, apparently there was more to the story. I wondered what Ivanna had promised.
“She said I would be the living proof that Fit’r U worked. Everybody would want to join once they saw the improved me. I’d get to teach classes and show off my new looks,” Ruby mumbled into her hands.
I figured as much. Still, I waited.
“I mean, we weren’t BFFs or anything. But she could have at least told me she’d already inherited the money instead of getting my savings to invest in the business. She said it would make the deal legal if I used my own money. And now she’s dead, and what am I supposed to do? I don’t even know if I have a job there if the lawyers make me close down. And that Stanley Brewer…like, she never even talked to me about him!” Ruby raised her face, brown eyes shining with tears and her mouth mutinous. “I should at least get my savings back. Do you think he put his savings in, too? Why did she leave her money to him?”
I patted her shoulder. “Believe me, I’ve tried asking.” I handed her a tissue from my purse. “But if I know Stanley, he won’t cheat you. With Jason contesting the will, nothing is settled.”
She sniffed and wiped her eyes. “Jason said you had a way of monitoring all the calls in town and learned about everybody’s business, like Ivanna’s inheritance.” Sniff. “And got Stanley to come up and trick her into changing her will.”
I choked down my indignation. “I’d never. Even if I could, I’d never do anything like that. My business is pretty much down the drain, anyway. I only work with individuals who want their communications monitored and forwarded. Or their mail. Personal computers are getting so simple hardly anyone needs help setting them up. Same with blogs. There’s so much you can do with smart phones these days that people don’t need my specialty. I still design websites and so forth, and maybe do pet sitting, but since Adam was elected mayor, I spend more time at Mea Cuppa.” I tried to get Ruby to meet my eyes while she shredded a daisy. “Ruby, Stanley dumped me at the altar. I moved here partly to get away from that memory and him. A girl doesn’t get over that kind of thing so easily. Not even for three million bucks. I wasted six years on him, five of which we were engaged. You think I want him back?”
“Ivanna saw something in him. And…well, he is kind of cute.”
Ruby searched my expression, which I’m sure was just short of gagging. I sighed. OK. I had been willing to marry the guy. “I guess.”
She twitched her mouth. “He has this little lost puppy look. He must have really cared for Ivanna, and now she’s gone. When he’s around at Fit’r U, I’m not scared. Of any messages or afraid of failing.”
“It sounds as though you don’t believe Stanley would have murdered Ivanna.”
“No. She wasn’t an easy person to be around, but she let me be a…what, again? I couldn’t say it out loud…oh, ‘silent partner.’”
“That could be.”
Ruby leaned over some tissue paper and pulled out some pieces from a roll to wrap around an arrangement. The sound she made as she scrunched up a torn piece and tossed in the trash reminded me…oh, yes. Madge’s nervous habit earlier at the paper factory sounded exactly like my static crank call. I blinked. I stowed that memory and returned to the moment. “So you signed a contract and all that? An attorney could advise you of your legal rights.” I couldn’t tell her Adam told me he’d seen her at the meeting, though I guess the petition meeting was open to the public. I could see why trust would be a lot better than sharing privileged information between us.
“Yeah, I guess. I didn’t think of that. Stanley is kind of a pushover.” She laughed. “I think he would have taken out the trash if she’d asked. I guess I’d keep a guy like that in the wings, too. Ivanna must have trusted him.”
“Which leaves us to ponder who didn’t she trust?”
18
When Adam came in that night from his trip to Chicago, he twitched his lips when he saw who else I was entertaining in my living room.
He kissed me briefly. “Mom’s fine,” he answered my unspoken question. “Things went smoothly at her place. She was moved to a more secure area, even though they don’t like to do that.” Then he counted heads. Elvis, Mom, Virgil, Amy, Ruby, and Addy. I left Stanley out for the time being, though Elvis would call him if we needed his input regarding information about Ivanna. Adam raised his brows briefly at the sight of Ruby Cook, but he smiled and turned that dazzle toward me. “Let me guess. You’re starting a Neighborhood Safety program?” He slanted a less happy look at Elvis who nodded a fraction of an inch. “Don’t you need Officer Ripple for that?” Adam asked, tongue in cheek.
“Not at this stage.” I handed him a cup of hot cocoa and one of Mom’s macaroons while ignoring male ego telepathy. I had promised to stay out of trouble and having a gathering of friends might not have had anything to do with our…um…conversation about a murder and self-protection against murderers running loose in Apple Grove. “Just a little Saturday evening get-together, Adam. We might discuss issues of mutual safety, but nothing wild. I hope nobody calls the cops on us.” My laugh was flat and echoed. I rubbed my hands together, scraped a kitchen chair into the room for Adam, and sat on the empty cushion next to Addy. “So, Addy and I had an interesting day.” I let the comment hang while I passed the plate of cookies.
Virgil bailed me out. “We did too,” he said, snaking an arm around my mom for a quick hug. “We found some interesting things in the storeroom of the thrift shop when the Good Seeds did our good turn cleaning. Speaking of community service, young lady…”
“I didn’t forget,” I told him quickly, not wanting to divulge his extreme generosity of allowing me to pay the vast majority of his attorney fees with in kind volunteer hours. “You don’t have to worry, I’ll spend lots of time doing good deeds. I love helping.”
He smiled and leaned forw
ard, resting his elbows on his knees and invited, “So tell us, Miss Ivy, what you two young ladies did with yourselves this interesting Saturday.”
Addy snorted and muttered “young ladies” under her breath.
I giggled too and mentioned our stop at the bridal shop for my dress. I fluttered my eyelashes at Adam and said, “No details, though.”
He brought my hand to his lips and kissed my knuckles, then my fingers.
“Did you get the one—?” Mom asked.
Addy answered for me. “Uh, huh.”
I was too busy flirting with my fiancé.
“That’s a relief!” Mom plopped back on the sofa.
“It’s perfect for her,” Addy said. “She’ll knock your socks off, Adam.”
I looked curiously at Mom, wondering what she’d have done if I hadn’t chosen her favorite.
Ruby stared at us as if she’d never experienced family banter. Maybe she hadn’t. She and her brother had lived alone since their parents died. Boyd was still in high school. My sympathy meter rose another notch.
“Then we toured Emblem Paper Works,” I said. “We got to see how wedding invitations are made.”
Virgil’s expression turned thoughtful.
Amy and Elvis shared a gooey gaze that foreshadowed an announcement like lightning forewarned thunder.
Ruby’s mouth hung open. “That’s where Mrs. Clark works,” she said. Her face went a shade toward pale.
I wondered why. “Right. She offered to set me up with a tour when she came over a couple of days ago,” I said.
“She was here?” Elvis sat up. “When? I don’t remember hearing about that.”
“Probably because I didn’t say anything,” I replied sweetly. “She’s a very tortured soul. She begged me to overlook Jason’s mistake accusing me of murder.”
“That sounds like her,” Ruby said and folded her arms. “All sweet and light as she suckers you to her good side.”
Meow Matrimony Page 17
