The Secret, Book & Scone Society

by Ellery Adams

  “I wonder if he likes her as much as she likes him. She’s got it bad for that builder, but he might just be another married man having a fling. They’re a dime a dozen, those men,” June said, making tsk, tsk noises with her tongue.

  Nora tensed and gripped the frame so tightly that it would easily snap into pieces if she were to apply a little more pressure.

  “Annette might be in love with Collin,” she said when she’d mastered her anger. “Then again, she could be keeping this—” she paused, realizing that there was another photograph tucked behind the first. Pinching it by the edge, she only had to pull it out halfway before she recognized that she was looking at a black-and-white image capturing Annette and Collin in flagrante delicto.

  “Damn, that woman is flexible.” June declared. “But who took this picture?”

  Since this was an excellent question, Nora removed the photo and brought it closer to the flashlight beam. “It’s kind of grainy. I’m thinking it might be a still frame from a video.”

  June’s eyes widened at this. “So Annette could have filmed herself with Collin and then printed this?”

  “Exactly. Which means Annette Goldsmith is either smitten with Collin Stone or she plans to blackmail him. Unfortunately, since we couldn’t hear their argument, we don’t know how she feels.” Nora placed the photographs back in position and brandished the nail clippers. “Want to give the file cabinet a shot?”

  “Yes, I most certainly do,” June declared, and followed Nora over to the closet. Nora held the flashlight while June engaged in her first lock-picking experience. It took her a little longer to open the file drawer, but when she succeeded, a slow smile spread across her face. “Why does that feel so good?”

  “It’s a useful life skill. Now let’s see what’s inside this Pandora’s box.”

  Nora remembered reading the file-folder labels during her tour of the model home. Removing Neil Parrish’s file, she placed it on the floor and snapped photos of the HUD statements. She repeated this with the papers inside the folders designated F.G. for Fenton Greer and V.M. for Vanessa MacCavity.

  Collin had a file as well, but his paperwork seemed to consist of the endless sheaf of documents required to turn a piece of farmland into a housing development. Neither Nora nor June knew enough about land surveys, zoning, easements, right-of-way, utilities, permits, site photos, or the environmental-impact statements to determine whether everything was aboveboard.

  “Look how many Miracle Springs officials had to give their stamp of approval to this project,” Nora said, pointing at several names and signatures. “They can’t all be corrupt. There just wouldn’t be enough money to go around. I’ll take images of a few of these, but my gut says that this file is in order.”

  June murmured her agreement. “I hope we find something in Fenton’s. He obviously screwed up or his body wouldn’t be in a human-sized file cabinet right now.”

  The rest of Annette’s files were filled with blank sales forms, homeowners’ checklists, and contracts. Nora took copies of each to peruse later on.

  “We have to replace everything exactly as we found it,” she told June. “Annette is a serious neat freak. She’d notice if her stapler was moved by half an inch.”

  Satisfied that they’d returned the files to their correct positions, Nora tried to lock the file cabinet with the nail file. She struggled for five minutes before conceding defeat.

  “She’s going to know someone was here now,” June said.

  Nora replicated one of June’s customary grunts.

  The women shut the closet doors and faced each other.

  “We should search the rest of the house,” Nora said.

  “I’ll go upstairs. No sense your putting more strain on that ankle.” June tapped her watch. “But this is a cursory search. We’ve been here long enough and in my experience, the things people don’t want others to see are either thrown away or kept under lock and key.”

  As Nora entered the kitchen, June’s comment about throwing things away stuck in her mind. She decided to peek into the trash can, which she knew was located in the cabinet under the sink. Considering how much time had passed since Fenton’s death—let alone Neil’s—Nora expected to find only the detritus of the lovers’ takeout meal. Grateful for the gloves Hester had given her, she dug under the food-sticky boxes, balled-up napkins, and plastic cutlery until she saw that the lower layers of garbage comprised mostly paper coffee cups and plastic water bottles.

  Nora noted at least four water bottles at the bottom of the can.

  Not very eco-conscious, are you, Annette? she thought, and unintentionally dislodged a takeout container with her elbow. The box teetered on the edge of the can before falling into the gloom behind it.

  “Shit,” she muttered.

  Getting down on her knees, she used the flashlight to retrieve the box and to make sure food hadn’t splattered out of it and made a mess. It hadn’t, but she did spy a wadded paper behind a bottle of glass cleaner. She retrieved the paper and began to smooth it out, and her pulse quickened as she realized that she was unfurling a train schedule.

  It was the current month’s schedule and included timetables for multiple towns in western North Carolina. Miracle Springs was one of the towns.

  This could have easily belonged to a potential buyer, Nora thought, but she didn’t believe that. Her instincts were firing, and when she saw that the date penciled in the corner coincided with Neil Parrish’s death, she felt that the schedule was somehow significant.

  Nothing else on the first floor was of interest, and when June came down from upstairs, she told Nora that she’d found nothing useful.

  “Are you ready to go?”

  “Yes,” Nora said. “We can review everything when we get back to Miracle Books.”

  Hester nearly leaped on them from behind the tree trunk when they approached. “That took forever!” she cried softly. “I kept imagining all of these horrible scenarios, from Sheriff Hendricks kicking in the front door to a horde of zombies coming out of that copse of trees back there.” She pointed. “Can we please get the hell out of here?”

  “Absolutely,” Nora said.

  It was only when they were safely settled in June’s car and en route to the bookshop that the three friends breathed normally again.

  “I can’t believe we did it,” Hester said, sounding giddy with relief. “We just broke into a house. We are badasses. We came and went like ninjas!” She shadowboxed in celebration.

  Nora and June exchanged nervous glances and then Nora swiveled in her seat to face Hester. “We weren’t exactly ninjas. Annette will know that someone was in her office because I wasn’t able to relock her file cabinet or desk.”

  Hester’s hands fell heavily to her lap. “Do you think they’ll suspect us?”

  Nora tried not to think of the Shakespeare 2000 rose placed on her cash register. “No,” she replied, hoping that neither of her friends heard the lie in her voice.

  Chapter 13

  Promises make debt, and debt makes promises.

  —Dutch Proverb

  Worn out from a full day’s work followed by a nighttime B-and-E stint, the three women reconvened at Miracle Books only long enough for Nora to print copies of the images she’d taken of Annette’s files.

  After distributing the copies, she said, “We should all try to research these documents. I don’t know if we’ll find anything—most of the info focuses on the personal and financial data of buyers—but something might strike us as suspicious. We need evidence of a crime. Hard proof to present to another law-enforcement agency.”

  “Like what?” Hester asked.

  Nora had no answer. She was a bookseller and a bibliotherapist, not a financial guru. Still, she didn’t want their group to separate on a low note, so she showed June and Hester the train schedule.

  “I wonder whose handwriting is on here.” June put her fingertip to the wrinkled paper and looked at Nora. “Just touching this thing gives me a bad f
eeling. Did Annette kill Neil?”

  “It’s possible,” Nora said. “She wasn’t on the train with the others from Pine Ridge. She drives to Miracle Springs every day.”

  “I could see a woman luring a man to the edge of the precipice,” Hester said. “Maybe Annette told Neil about the lovers’ padlocks. After telling him about our local legend, she asked him to take her to see it.”

  June looked pensive. “Once there, she could have played damsel in distress. She’d need help getting down the slope in heels. And then.” She mimed a pushing motion. “No one would be the wiser if she left the model home for fifteen minutes or so. Especially since she parks her car in the garage.”

  “Do Annette’s numbers look like the ones on this train schedule?” Hester asked Nora.

  Nora shook her head. “Everything she gave me was printed from documents on her computer. There were no pencils on or in her desk. She uses a Montblanc pen. Our Realtor has expensive tastes.”

  “Which she might kill to defend,” Hester said. “And if not her, the sheriff. Or Dawson. Our suspect list has several names.”

  “Neil handled the financial side of Pine Ridge Properties.” Nora gestured at the printouts each of her friends held. “That’s why I think the mystery behind his murder lies in the numbers. Neil wanted to come clean about his company’s shady dealings. Something financially shady. Let’s find it and regroup tomorrow.”

  Hester pointed at the train schedule. “Do you have a safe place to keep that?”

  “Yes. Here.” Nora tapped the top of the eglomise-style Asian coffee table positioned in the middle of the circle of chairs.

  While June stared at Nora in befuddlement, Hester bent over the table and studied the chrysanthemum flowers painted on its mirrored surface. Two were ballet slipper–pink, two were pale peach, and two were cotton-candy blue. There were also two figures on the table—a man and woman—dressed in courtly robes. The man stood on a bridge. The woman, on a rock. Both figures held scrolls and at first glance, they looked like strangers seeking a quiet place to read. Upon closer inspection, it was clear that the man and woman were only pretending to read. Their coy gazes were fixed on each other.

  “Where?” Hester asked impatiently. “I don’t see a drawer or anything.”

  Nora moved to one end of the table, gripped its mirrored edge, and tugged. A narrow slit appeared in the center of the table between the man and woman. Nora pushed her fingers into the aperture and continued widening the gap. When she was done, she revealed a letter-sized space with a keyhole staring back up at them like a brass eye.

  “Ooohh,” June breathed. “Where’s the key?”

  Smiling, Nora said, “You know how people read different books in different places? I keep a book here at the shop to read during my downtime.”

  Hester looked at her like she’d lost her mind. “Yeah. What does that have to do with the key?”

  Nora ducked into the ticket-agent’s office and retrieved The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult. She pulled out her bookmark—an aubergine-colored satin ribbon trimmed with white lace. Dangling from the bottom, like the charm from a bracelet, was a tiny brass key.

  Fitting the key into the lock of the secret compartment, Nora raised the hinged panel and showed her friends the velvet-lined storage cavity so skillfully hidden by the table’s maker.

  “What’s in the box?” Hester asked.

  “I’ll show you when Estella can sit in her chair,” Nora said, pointing at the chair Estella had chosen when the Secret, Book, and Scone Society had last met as a foursome.

  June picked up the train schedule and laid it in the nook with the reverence of one placing a rose on top of a coffin. “Then let’s do our damnedest to get her out.”

  * * *

  In the haven that was Caboose Cottage, Nora stripped off her clothes and tossed them in a heap on the floor. She put on pajama shorts and her Book Lovers Never Go To Bed Alone tank top and shuffled to the kitchen for a glass of water.

  As she was turning off the tap, she spied the vase of roses Jed had given her. She put down her glass and drifted over to the vase. The blooms were completely open now, like sails filled with wind, and the roses breathed a heady perfume into Nora’s living room.

  Nora thought of the rose left on her cash register by Collin Stone. She thought of Jed, and of how he knew something was incongrous about Fenton Greer’s body, but had remained silent so as not to risk his new job. She thought of Neil Parrish, a man who’d made mistakes, but had committed to making amends, no matter the cost. And though she tried not to—and fought against it—she thought of the man who’d once been her husband.

  Anger made the jellyfish-shaped burn scar on her arm pulse and Nora glanced at it in disgust. Her mouth drawn into a taut line, she grabbed the roses and yanked them out of the vase. Ignoring the water dripping onto her bare thighs and cascading down her calves, she carried the flowers to the kitchen window and tossed them out into the night.

  * * *

  The next day, Nora got up early to research the documents from Annette’s file cabinet. While the coffee brewed, she opened her laptop and spread out the HUD statements on her coffee table. She began by reading several articles on obtaining home loans written so that even a Luddite could understand how the process worked. Though these detailed pieces reinforced what Nora already knew, it wasn’t until she stumbled across apiece from the crime section of a Midwestern newspaper that she felt she’d discovered a new and noteworthy term.

  Because the focus of the article was primarily on the sentence given to an Indiana man accused of mortgage fraud, it was relatively short, but Nora was particularly interested in the reference to straw buyers. She opened a new window and entered those words into Google’s search box.

  The first result was a link to a government page hosted by the Department of Insurance, Securities and Banking. According to the site, straw buyers were people with good credit who allowed other people or companies to use their names and personal information to obtain mortgage loans. These straw buyers didn’t intend to occupy the home for which the mortgage was taken and were usually paid money for their role. Nora also learned of a second type of straw buyer. Unlike the first type, each of whom was complicit in the mortgage fraud, this straw buyer was unaware that his or her personal details were being used to apply for a loan. Without his or her knowledge, this buyer became the victim of a mortgage-fraud ring.

  These rings can be made up of a group of people such as a lender, appraiser, broker, land developer, builder, settlement attorney, real estate agents, etc., who are all taking part in a scheme. The participants then split the proceeds, Nora read. She glanced out the window, her mind turning over everything she’d just read.

  “How can I tell if I’m looking at mortgage fraud?” she asked aloud, addressing the pile of HUD statements.

  Returning her attention to the screen, she scrolled to the bottom of the page where she saw a paragraph inviting District of Columbia residents who suspected they were victims of mortgage fraud to call a toll-free number.

  “North Carolina must have a similar agency,” Nora murmured, and felt a thrill of hope. If she failed to draw any solid conclusions from the statements in her pile, she could call her state helpline and report that she believed her name and personal details were being used in a mortgage-fraud ring. She knew she’d be asked to supply a copy of her HUD statement before a federal agency would consider her claim, which meant she needed to make an appointment to see Annette Goldsmith as soon as possible.

  After examining the statements over another cup of coffee and a breakfast of vanilla yogurt topped with wild raspberries and blackberries, Nora found only one anomaly. According to the Federal Housing Authority, the minimum down payment home buyers were expected to come up with was approximately 3.5 percent of the total purchase price. Most banks, however, preferred a 20-percent down payment. For a house at the Meadows, that meant putting down a whopping 60,000 dollars. And yet, none of the approved buyers in Neil P
arrish’s file had been required to put more than $15,000 down.

  Perplexed, Nora did a little more reading on down payments and learned that lower percentages could be obtained by applying for a home loan through government-sponsored companies. But Neil’s clients had all gone through Madison County Community Bank.

  Nora scanned over rows and columns of numbers. She had no idea if the appraisal fee or title-insurance fees were fair or grossly inflated and when she saw how many hits she got after starting a search on fair closing costs, she knew she didn’t have time to read the results.

  Instead, she unplugged her cell phone from the wall charger and dialed Annette’s number.

  Annette answered with her customary greeting, but a new, guarded note had entered her tone.

  “I hope I’m not calling too early,” Nora said. “But I was thinking about what you told me about the best lots being snapped up, and I thought I should come by sooner rather than later.”

  “What time did you have in mind?” Annette asked, sounding more cordial.

  Nora hesitated. “If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like to head over now. It’ll take me at least fifteen minutes because I’ll be on my bike.”

  “Your bike?” There was a slight pause. “Ah, that’s right. I’d forgotten that you don’t drive.”

  Nora found Annette’s reply a bit odd. It was as if she’d just been discussing Nora with someone else.

  Gooseflesh erupted on Nora’s arms as she recalled the rose on her cash register.

  Had Annette been talking about me? To Collin? Or Sheriff Hendricks? Did she suspect me of breaking into her office?

  Despite the knowledge that no one could see into the living room of Caboose Cottage, Nora found herself shoving the printouts into a file folder and glancing wildly around her tiny house for a place to hide the folder. On a whim, she tucked it between two boxes of cereal on her highest kitchen shelf.