by Lillian Bell
I turned. “He buried Broderick Gunter a few days before he disappeared. Gunter worked for Canty. I think there might be a connection there. Maybe Dad knew something that Canty didn’t want him to know.” Maybe Dad had figured out the corruption scheme and had confronted Canty instead of Wilburn.
“And you think Canty killed him?” Mayor Wilburn’s voice was horrified.
I shrugged. Could my dad be chopped up into tiny pieces and distributed in the concrete of a dozen construction sites in northern California? Could that be why we never found him? “Maybe. Or maybe Dad felt like he had to make it look like he was dead to keep himself and us safe.”
“No, Desiree. No.” Wilburn crouched down to pet Orion, color returning to his face.
“Are you saying that because it couldn’t be true or because you don’t want it to be true?” I asked.
“I don’t know. One thing I’ve learned is that we’re all capable of things we didn’t know we could do. I never thought I’d do anything to hurt this town, but I have. And now I have to pay for it. When do we get started on this staying ahead of the scandal?” he asked.
“There’s no time like the present, right?”
Chapter Seven
The Verbena Free Press
October 10
By Desiree Turner and Rafe Valdez
Mayor Confesses to Wrongdoing
Mayor Wilburn has revealed that he has accepted money and other gifts in exchange for steering construction contracts toward Canty Construction in a long and detailed interview. Speaking to Free Press reporter Desiree Turner, Wilburn said, “I’m so terribly ashamed. I love this town and everyone in it. I’ve let them down.”
When asked why he had accepted the gifts, he said, “I don’t make much as mayor and it is pretty much a full-time job. For a while, I made it with my savings, but those are running out.”
According to Wilburn, he returned the last attempted bribe. “I couldn’t keep living like this. I’d done wrong and I had to stop. I returned all the money and the contract went to a different construction company.”
Wilburn says that he plans to step down from his office and sell his home. “I hate the idea of leaving Verbena, but I don’t feel I can show my face on the street anymore.”
*
The next day, we put Frank Fiore to rest. As always, after Uncle Joey had wheeled him in, I did a quick check to make sure everything looked right before his daughters arrived. He looked pretty darn good for someone who had been as ill as he had been. Daisy came in while I was checking. I steeled myself for getting reamed out for suspecting her sister of doing something wrong, but either she had forgiven me or Iris hadn’t said anything.
She put her hand on his shoulder. “Aw, Dad. I’m sorry.”
I looked over at her. “He had a hard time at the end, didn’t he?”
“Yes. It seems so unfair. He really suffered.” She cocked her head to one side. “He was such a good dad. He made me feel so special all the time. He used to call Iris and me his little flowers.”
“Those are good memories to focus on.” I had more than a few of those. Hiking with Dad at Cold Clutch Canyon. Surfing. Him cheering for me at volleyball games as if I was in the Olympics. I smiled, then bit back a yawn. Rafe and I had been up late the night before finishing our article about Mayor Wilburn to make sure it was part of the morning’s paper. It had been close to two o’clock when he’d pulled a bottle of Wild Turkey out of his lower desk drawer and we’d toasted our scoop.
The bourbon had warmed my stomach and given me a tingle or was that because Rafe had come around from his side of the desk to sit closer to me? “Strong work, Turner,” he had said. “Very strong.”
“You weren’t too shabby yourself.” I’d clinked my glass against his. Orion had gotten up from where he’d curled up in the corner—on a blanket Rafe had put out for him—and had pushed against me, clearly ready to go home. All he’d done, however, was somehow push me until I was off balance and tip me right into Rafe.
Rafe’s eyes had widened in surprise and, for a second, our faces were inches apart. Orion barked and I’d put down my glass and said I needed to get home.
I shook myself back into the present.
Daisy said, “I don’t really want to remember this last bit too well. He looks pretty good now, though.”
“He must have been really handsome in his younger days.” He had a strong nose and a cleft chin. It was a handsome face.
“Oh, yeah. Totally like that guy from Under the Tuscan Sun. Raoul Bova?”
I looked in. “I can see the resemblance.” I also noticed something wrong with his hand. His pinky finger stuck out at an odd angle. Uncle Joey didn’t usually make mistakes. I reached in to straighten it, but Daisy stopped me.
She held up her hand. Her pinky finger went off in the same direction. “It won’t straighten,” she said. “It’s genetic apparently.”
“Interesting,” I said. “If you don’t need anything right now, I’m going to go check on the guest book and the programs.”
I left her gazing at her father. I checked on everything else and greeted people as they came in. Olive, Henrietta, and Grace arrived and took their usual spots. I folded up their walkers to lean them against the wall out of the way.
“Frank’s getting a nice showing,” Olive observed.
“He always was popular,” Grace said with a chuckle.
Olive gave her hand a little slap. “That was years ago. Frank hasn’t had the energy to flirt for years.”
“People remember even if you’ve been sick a long time,” Henrietta said. “And he certainly was.”
“He was lucky that Iris was willing to give up so much to take care of him. She did a beautiful job. Anywhere else, he probably wouldn’t have lasted as long as he did,” Grace said.
I felt extra bad that I had suspected her of wrongdoing.
“I’m not sure she did him any favors,” Olive said. “He might have been better off if he’d checked out a little earlier.”
“She certainly would have been,” Henrietta said. “I can’t imagine how much money they ran through keeping him alive. She’ll be lucky if there’s a pot left to pee in when it’s all settled.”
“Don’t know what she’ll do if there’s not anything there. She hasn’t worked as anything but his caretaker since before she came back home and I doubt that deadbeat of an ex-husband of hers will help with much.” Grace shook her head.
All three clucked their tongues.
“Nice article this morning, by the way, Desiree,” Olive said nudging me with her elbow. “Quite the scoop you and Rafe cooked up. I don’t think anyone even suspected the mayor hadn’t been thoroughly on the up-and-up.”
Except Violet, of course. She’d suspected enough to have a photo of him accepting bribes. She’d known who to watch and how to watch them. Maybe it was part of always looking for a way to fit in. “Oh, I’m sure there were other people who were starting to nose around. We just got there first.”
“That’s not the scuttlebutt that’s going around,” Grace said.
I snorted. Scuttlebutt moved faster than wildfire around here and wildfires could move damn fast. “Oh, really. What does the scuttlebutt say?”
“That you stumbled across some kind of clue that someone else might have just tossed aside, but you followed it up instead.” She looked up at me, one eye squinted shut. “They’re not quite sure where you stumbled across that first clue, though. Care to share?”
I shook my head. “A reporter never reveals her sources.”
“Fine.” Olive sniffed. “We’ll figure it out, though. Just you wait and see.”
That worried me a bit. The last thing I wanted was for the three of them to somehow put themselves in danger by poking into Canty Construction’s business. It might very well be the reason my father had never come back from his early morning surf. “I promise I’ll share as soon as I can, okay? Until then, maybe stay away from this one. Titus Canty might be more dangerous than h
e seems.”
“What does that mean?” Grace demanded.
“It might mean nothing. I just want you three to stay safe, okay?” I pointed to my eyes and then to them to indicate that I’d be watching them then went back over to the front where a crowd was beginning to bunch up near the entrance. Daisy was in the center of the crowd. I made some subtle suggestions for people to move to their seats and the crowd broke up a bit.
“It’s always been like that,” Iris said at my elbow.
I jumped. “I’m sorry. What has?”
“Daisy. She was born first and she makes sure she stays first in everything.” Iris shook her head. “Everyone always flocks to her. I’m always the one coming up behind everyone and mopping everything up. Doing what needs to be done while nobody even notices.”
I could relate to that. “People notice,” I said. “I’ve heard a number of people talking about what good care you took of your father.”
Iris gave me a strange look and seemed about to say something when were were interrupted by a teenaged girl coming up beside Iris. She had that leggy gazelle look that a lot of teenagers have. Her hair was glossy and her eyes were bright. “Mom?”
“Where are you going to apply for school, Rose?” An older gentleman asked the girl.
She smiled, revealing a set of braces. “I’m looking at Stanford, Berkeley, and UC Santa Barbara right now.”
“Good schools,” he said.
“She’s got great grades and test scores. She won the regional science fair, you know. All about genetics. I think she has a good chance,” Iris said, puffing up a bit.
“Oh, I’m sure. Maybe she’ll get a scholarship. Some of those places are so expensive these days.” The man shook his head. “Of course, you’ll have some money from Frank to help with that.”
Iris suddenly looked like she was barely keeping her temper. “I have it covered,” she said. “I can take care of my child.”
“Of course. Of course.” He started to cough. Daisy came over and said, “Oh, Uncle Leo, let me help you find a seat. Do you need a cough drop?” She pulled one out of her pocket and they walked away on a cloud of honey, lemon, and menthol.
Rose looked at me and rolled her eyes a bit.
“Is everyone asking you the same set of questions? Where are you applying? What do you want to study? I remember my senior year here. I felt like I should wear a sandwich board with the answers to those two questions on it.” One more of the reasons I’d been happy to skedaddle out of here.
“The questions do get a little repetitive. I get it. They’re important decisions. It doesn’t help that much to keep talking about it, though.” Rose shook her head and laughed. “Cool article in the paper this morning.”
I laughed. “Kids read newspapers still? I thought print was dead.”
“I read it online,” she admitted. “Still, who knew Verbena had so much crazy stuff going on? I mean, Mayor Wilburn? Taking bribes? Crazy.”
I knew what she meant.
A young woman I didn’t recognize came in. White, tall, and thin, with an athletic grace to her movements. Iris’s hand went to her mouth. “Oh, Jenny, you didn’t have to come.”
The woman put her arms around Iris. “I know. I wanted to, though. I’ve been with you guys so long you feel like family. You know Frank was one of my favorite patients, too.”
I looked over at Rose. “Hospice nurse,” she mouthed. I nodded. That was nice of her to come to the service.
“He loved you, too, Jenny,” Iris said, her voice quaking a bit.
“Are you okay? Remember to take care of yourself.” Jenny held Iris out from her and looked her up and down. “You were such a dedicated daughter, so conscientious, so scrupulous. Absolutely fastidious. I know it was exhausting. Be sure to pamper yourself a bit now.”
Iris laughed. “Somehow getting a pedicure doesn’t seem high on my priority list right now.”
“Well, then take a walk or a nap or a trip to the coast. Anything. Promise?” Jenny asked.
Iris nodded. “I promise. Just as soon as I get Dad’s affairs squared away.”
Pastor Campbell came in. I ushered everyone to their seats and the service started.
Olive was right. Frank did get a good showing. I moved over to the side of the Magnolia Room. Out of the way, but around in case I was needed.
*
The last twenty-four hours had been a whirlwind. Finding Violet’s blackmail photos of the mayor, figuring out what the photos meant, confronting Mayor Wilburn, writing the article, then Frank Fiore’s funeral. Fatigue dragged at my legs, making every step seem like a huge effort. Orion looked even more tired than I felt.
After I got back from the Lawn of Heaven Cemetery where Frank Fiore was laid to eternal rest, I headed straight up to my room and collapsed on the bed. Orion curled up on the rug. I set the alarm on my phone for twenty minutes and shut my eyes, still with all my clothes—even the pantyhose!—on. When the alarm went off, it felt like I’d only closed my eyes for seconds, but I knew from experience if I slept much longer than that, I’d never get to sleep that night. I hauled myself upright. Orion lifted his head, sniffed the air once, then set his head back down and closed his eyes.
I stripped out of my clothes and took a quick shower. With my hair still wrapped up in a towel and the rest of me wrapped up in a terrycloth bathrobe, I snuggled back under the covers. I wasn’t quite ready to go back out and face the world yet. My eyes lit on Violet Daugherty’s shoebox. I hadn’t had a chance to go through the rest of it. What other treasures did she have in there? I snagged it from the top of my desk where it sat and pulled it over to me on the bed and flipped the lid open.
There were the photos of the very flexible couple on the lat pull and the grumpy neighbor. There was also a photo of a man sniffing a shoe followed up by one of him licking the same shoe. I set those aside. I didn’t know him and I doubted it would be at all newsworthy. Dad used to say that pot had its lid. Maybe ever shoe had its sniffer, too.
The other items were more mysterious. I looked at the thumb drives and the DVD. I hesitated to plug them into my own laptop. What if there was a virus or something on them? Violet’s laptop? I had fewer qualms about that. I did my contortionist maneuver again to get the laptop and fired it up, then I plugged in the DVD. It took a second to come up, but then I saw video of a woman pulling up to a curb in a minivan, letting her children out, then taking a little glass bottle out of her purse and dumping it into her travel mug before driving off. In fact, there were three sequences of the same thing on what looked three separate occasions. I recognized the street she was driving on, too. If you squinted, you could see the roller slide at Manor Park in the background. It was the park right next to the elementary school. This took place right here in Verbena. After watching them, I backtracked and zoomed in on the bottle. Video quality got decidedly worse the closer I zoomed in, but I was betting on vodka. Everyone always said it was odorless. That had not been Jasmine’s and my experience when we’d tried to sashay past her mother after an evening spent drinking out by the edge of the creek with a bunch of other high school seniors. We’d both been grounded for weeks.
I typed diabetes and alcohol into a search engine, curious to see if there might be some connection that would explain Vodka Mom having insulin as well as a minivan. I sat back, chewing on the side of my thumb as I read. There was definitely a connection. There were several ways drinking too much alcohol could trigger diabetes in a person. Booze can make a person’s body less sensitive to insulin and cause them to develop type 2 diabetes. Drinking way too much can cause an inflammation of the pancreas, which can then trigger diabetes. It wasn’t any kind of proof, but it did give me some ideas.
I picked up the fingerprint card. That one was still baffling. I put that with the photos. Then I put in one of the thumb drives. A whole set of photo icons came up. I started clicking on them. Most of them were of people I didn’t know. I didn’t even recognize them. A lot of them were of people doing wh
at looked like pretty ordinary things, then again the mayor accepting an envelope from a guy in a suit looked pretty ordinary when you didn’t have context for it. Once you knew that the man in the suit was the head of a construction company known for bribing city officials, it looked a lot different. It still wasn’t proof of anything, but it had been enough to get us asking questions.
I was about halfway through the photos when my phone buzzed. It was a photo from Jasmine of a wine bottle sitting on a café table. A message followed it. “How fast can you get here?”
I snapped Violet’s laptop shut. “Twenty minutes.”
*
I met Nate and Jasmine at Tappiano’s for Hometown Happy Hour where drinks were half price if you could point to your photo in any one of the dozens of Verbena High Year Books that Mark Tappiano kept around. We sat out on the patio so I could keep Orion with us, a light breeze playing across us and rustling the leaves of the linden trees planted along the sidewalk. Monique had brought out a water bowl for Orion as well as wine for us. Jasmine raised a glass of Zinfandel and said, “To our very own Christiane Amanpour. Everyone’s talking about your article.”
I tried to keep the smile off my lips. After all, it wasn’t good to find corruption in your town. I couldn’t help it, though. It was a solid article. “Thanks.”
“How did you figure it out?” Nate asked, clinking his glass against mine, too.
I shook my head and mimed locking my lips with a key and throwing it away.
He sighed. “Fine. Have you found out anything more about Violet?”
I bit my lip and didn’t say anything.
Jasmine set her glass down with a bump. “They’re connected, aren’t they?”
“I didn’t say that,” I protested.
“You didn’t have to. It’s written all over your face. And in your whole body, to be honest.” Sometimes it really sucked to have a best friend who’s a therapist. She was way too good at reading me.
Nate leaned in. “Violet knew about the mayor?”
I looked around to see who else might be listening. Nobody was near. “She did. I found some … something in her house that pointed me in that direction. Mayor Wilburn confirmed it. She was blackmailing him.”
