Deadly Threads

by Jane K. Cleland

  “That’s completely charming.” I smiled, thrilled on her behalf.

  Gretchen was smart, beautiful, and kind. When she’d been single, I hadn’t been able to understand why men didn’t trip over themselves trying to get her attention, yet before she’d met Jack, she’d endured a long, lonely dry spell. Jack seemed perfect for her. He was a chemist, more reserved than Gretchen, but just as smart and just as giving. He was also head over heels in love with her. I loved watching him watch her, adoration patent in his gaze.

  “Do you want to take tomorrow off, too?”

  “Yes,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Who wouldn’t? But we can’t. Jack has a client meeting he can’t miss at eleven, so we have to get back.” She giggled. “I may be in a little late, though.”

  “That’s fine, just keep us posted.” I turned to Ava. “Ava, the police are bringing back the button. Cara will log it into the lost and found system, then it’s all yours.”

  “Did they find out anything from it?” she asked.

  “No. Too many of us handled it.”

  She nodded. “I’ll do my best to trace it. Maybe looking at it will inspire me. So far, I haven’t gotten anywhere.”

  “All you can do is try,” I said.

  As I walked back to my office, I thought about Wes’s article. He hadn’t written anything about the New York City waitress, Tamara, and I wondered whether he hadn’t been able to validate her story or whether he was still trying. Was It Greed or Lust? Wes had asked in his headline. Or, I asked myself, was it both?

  * * *

  Wes called about eleven. “I got a real bazooka. Major.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Not on the phone,” he said, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “At our dune in fifteen, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “See ya!” he said and hung up.

  Wes’s language was often colorful, but in my experience, he never overstated anything. If he said he had a bazooka, he did.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Wes brought me a mini Coke, one of the old-fashioned glass bottles I hadn’t seen in forever. He used a tool from his Swiss Army knife to pop the cap.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I didn’t even know these little bottles still existed.”

  “I got them at the Rocky Point Gun and Rod Club. Do you know that place? Pretty fancy.”

  The Rocky Point Gun and Rod Club was a private country club, very old-school, with a dress code that included jackets and ties for men and closed-toe shoes for women anytime they were inside the building.

  “Why were you there?” I asked. Wes’s eyes were fiery bright, a sure sign he thought he was onto something.

  “I was checking alibis. Quinn Steiner, Riley’s financial adviser, was scheduled to meet a client there for a drink at about the time Riley was killed, but I can’t nail it down. I think he was late, or maybe a no-show, but the bartender doesn’t remember, and the person he met won’t talk to me.”

  “You think Quinn might have killed Riley?” I asked, bewildered. It seemed bizarre. “Why?”

  “I check out everything and everyone,” he said with a certain haughtiness, as if I should have known that. His tone returned to normal. “With Quinn, there was a huge red flag. He’s insisting that the e-mail Riley sent at noon the day she died asking him to look into the Blue restaurants’ finances was a false alarm. When he met with her later that afternoon, he said he told her that his last full audit of the restaurant found nothing wrong, and since then, he’s only noted what he called minor examples of sloppy bookkeeping. A few expenses were miscoded, for instance, so some categories looked too high while others appeared too low. He says the bottom line is that he found no evidence that anyone was intentionally padding expenses or improperly transferring money. Period.”

  “Why do you think he’s lying?” I asked.

  “I don’t, but what if he is? Maybe he’s doing the miscoding himself to muck up the works and hide that he’s the one skimming cash. He has access to the books, right? He can do anything he wants. If Riley caught on and threatened him with exposure—not only would he lose two important clients, Riley and the Blue restaurant chain, but he might get charged with a crime. Murders have been committed for less.”

  I opened my mouth to argue that Wes was speculating based on nothing tangible, but he interrupted me before I could begin.

  “I know, I know. At this point, it’s all conjecture—but you’ve got to start somewhere, right? And money is one of the most common motives for murder.”

  “Fair enough,” I acknowledged, wondering as I turned to face the choppy water if this information accounted for Wes’s evident excitement. Ragged lines of white froth rose and fell from the shoreline all the way to the horizon. “What does Kenna say?”

  “First off, she denies being a sloppy bookkeeper, but who’d admit being a screwup, you know? She says she doesn’t know anything about anything and that if there’s been any hanky-panky, someone else did it, and she doesn’t know who. What do you think?”

  “I have no idea. How could I?”

  “You knew Riley.”

  I felt my brow wrinkle as I considered his comment. “I don’t know if that’s true, Wes. She played things pretty close to her vest.”

  “Which means she had secrets.”

  “For sure she had secrets,” I agreed, thinking of her work with CHF, “but that doesn’t make them guilty secrets.”

  “True,” Wes agreed, sounding disappointed. “So … here’s another shocker—Riley spent hours at her lawyer’s office on the day she died. Do you know why?”

  Max had said Riley’s will had been filed for probate, so I felt comfortable filling Wes in. I explained about the foundation and her other bequests.

  “Interesting,” Wes said. “She must have been completely pissed at Bobby, huh?”

  “I had the same thought,” I said.

  I recalled Ruby’s seductive tone and edgy message. If Riley had learned that Bobby was unfaithful, she might have gone straight to her lawyer and told him to draft a will so her husband would get nothing. I would.

  “I think I know why,” Wes added.

  I looked at Wes. The fire-hot excitement I’d seen in his eyes earlier flared up again. Quinn and his alibi had been the warm-up act. Here was the main event.

  “I spoke to everyone at the Blue Dolphin,” he said, “but no one knows anything. Or at least, if they do, they’re not telling me.”

  “Which makes sense,” I commented. “Bobby’s their boss, and only a fool bites the hand that feeds you.”

  “Unless someone hates him or envies him or something,” Wes said. “Not one of his employees has anything negative to say about him, though. Actually, they seem to like and admire him. It’s weird.”

  “Why is that weird?” I asked.

  Wes snorted. “How many people do you know who like their boss?”

  I swallowed hard, wondering if my staff faked the easy camaraderie we shared. No, I thought. We really are a good team, hardworking and genuinely fond of one another. I hoped I was right.

  “Some,” I replied, aiming for a neutral tone.

  “Whatever. Even if people try to lie, I have lots of sources, and I usually get the truth in the end.”

  I could believe it. Wes was the most persistent person I knew. Except for myself.

  “Have you heard anything about any other women?” he asked.

  “Where are you with Tamara?” I asked, using the artful technique I’d learned from Wes: If you don’t want to answer a question, ask one. “Has she agreed to talk to you?”

  “Not yet. She thinks my paper ought to pay for her story. As if. I’m still trying to convince her. How about you? What have you heard?”

  I hesitated.

  “I won’t quote you, Josie,” he said, “and I won’t print anything unless I verify it, so it’s not gossip.”

  I nodded. I trusted him, and the reality was that I wanted to know about Ruby and Bobby’s relationship, and Wes was my best
source. I took a deep breath and told him about Ruby’s call.

  As I spoke, Wes jotted notes on his old piece of lined paper, nodding and grinning. It was clear he hadn’t already heard about the call from his police source.

  “Bonzo stuff, Josie!”

  Bonzo, I repeated silently.

  “What number did she call from?” he asked. “Did you see?”

  I gave him the number, thinking how much Riley would hate it that I was talking to a reporter. She’d been so private, she’d hate the media attention her death was garnering.

  As he wrote it down, a gust of wind blew through me. I shivered and rubbed my arms. The temperature was dropping, and the air was thick with moisture.

  “Won’t it be something if it turns out she called from her own phone? Then we’d have it nailed down for sure.” He reached into his jacket pocket and extracted a small photograph. “Look at this.”

  No wonder Wes had called it a bazooka—the photo showed Bobby midstride in an ornate rotunda, smiling. He was holding Becka’s hand and leading her through the crowd. He wore a tux. She wore a low-cut, shimmering burgundy evening gown. She was smiling, too.

  “Where was this taken?” I asked. “And when?”

  He slipped the photo back into his pocket and chuckled. “Cool, huh? I got him dead to rights on this one! It was taken last month at some museum fund-raiser in New York.”

  “I didn’t see Riley in the picture.”

  “Bingo,” Wes said, grinning.

  Was it possible, I asked myself, that Becka and Bobby were having an affair? I was incredulous. Becka was Riley’s oldest friend. You hear about that kind of betrayal all the time, but I still couldn’t imagine it.

  Once, when I was in college, a bunch of us had spent most of a late-night get-together talking about this sort of thing—stealing your friends’ boyfriends. A girl from my dorm named Noreen told us about her uncle, her mother’s brother. He’d fallen in love with his sister-in-law, his wife’s sister, and she’d fallen in love with him. He’d gotten divorced from one sister and married the other one. That had been thirty years earlier. The rest of the family had never spoken to either of them again, but occasional reports drifted back that they were doing well. They’d moved from New York to Tampa and had two kids, cousins she’d never met.

  “What does Becka say about it?” I asked.

  “Nothing. Not to me, at least. I passed the photo on to the police, so probably she’ll be talking turkey soon.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “From a source,” he said, dismissing my question.

  “Have you asked Bobby about it?”

  “Not yet. I want to nail down all my facts first. That’s why your giving me the scoop about Ruby’s call is so great.”

  Was it possible that in addition to sleeping with a Hollywood movie star, Bobby was also cavorting with his wife’s best friend? If it was true that Bobby’s restaurant business needed Riley’s funding, that meant that on some level, she was paying for his flings. I shuddered, partially from the raw dampness that hung over the beach like a shroud and partially from disgust. From where I sat, Bobby was lucky to be alive.

  * * *

  By the time I got back to the office, the rain that had been in the air for days had started up. Fred, Sasha, and Eric had returned with a load of Bobby’s possessions, managing, they said, to time it just right. Two minutes after they returned, it began to pour.

  “Obviously,” I said, smiling, shaking off my umbrella, “you’re living right.”

  “Obviously,” Fred said.

  From the gleam in his eye, I got his unspoken point. “You’re thinking that I got caught in the rain, so that must mean I’m not living right.”

  He flipped up his hands. “I’d never say that to my boss.”

  “No,” I responded, chuckling, “but you’d sure as shootin’ think it!”

  Gretchen, Ava, and Cara laughed. One corner of Fred’s mouth lifted.

  I slid my umbrella into the blue and white porcelain holder we kept near the front door and asked, “Where’s Sasha?”

  “In the warehouse,” Fred said. “She couldn’t wait to get started.”

  I found Sasha in a roped-off area on the right. She’d already begun cataloguing Riley’s vintage clothing collection. Six freestanding racks and two shelving units had been wheeled over to accommodate it.

  “Hey, Sasha,” I said as I walked up. “What do you think so far?”

  “Impressive,” she said without hesitation. “Riley had impeccable taste, both design- and investment-wise. Look at this.” She held up a pale pink and silver lamé evening gown with a pale pink silk net overskirt. The bodice was draped and fitted, while the skirt swirled and fluttered.

  “Wow! Is that a Madeleine Vionnet?”

  Madeleine Vionnet was credited with changing the way women dressed by creating garments that highlighted their actual shapes, unenhanced by padding or corsets, and that flowed and moved. In the 1920s, her ideas were avant-garde to the extreme.

  “Yes. Couture. Look at the stitching.”

  I examined the minute, perfectly aligned stitches that ran in one unbroken line along the hem. “Amazing. She was called the ‘queen of the bias cut,’ right?”

  Sasha nodded. “A reviewer coined that term after she introduced the technique. Her designs created quite a stir in the twenties.”

  “It’s almost ninety years old,” I said, looking at the gown, “and I’d wear it today.”

  “You’d be in style, too,” Sasha said, hanging the Vionnet on the nearest rack. She flipped through several hangers, then extracted a full-length black rayon sequined dress with a matching cape and displayed it for me. “This is a Hattie Carnegie.”

  “It’s spectacular.” The sequins, each one hand-sewn, formed floral patterns that covered the dress from neckline to hem. I scanned the racks. “When I went through the house, I didn’t find receipts or any kind of inventory of the collection, which, knowing how organized Riley was, seems odd. Maybe it’s on her computer. I’ll ask the police.”

  “It would be a huge help if there were provenance info available, that’s for sure.”

  I flipped through a few more garments. “Riley was really something,” I remarked. “I just learned that she bequeathed her entire collection to the New England Museum of Design.”

  “So generations of fashion lovers will be able to enjoy the collection. That’s wonderful!”

  We chatted for a moment longer about Riley, then discussed how best to package the delicate garments for transport to the museum when the appraisal was finished.

  “I’ll be in my office if you need me.”

  As I climbed the stairs, I recalled something my mother had told me before she’d died. I’d been thirteen.

  “My thighs are chunky,” I’d groused.

  “Your thighs are lovely,” she’d responded. “You’re athletic, so you’re muscular. That’s very different from chunky.”

  I’d sighed heavily, unconvinced. “What if I grow up ugly?” I’d asked, bravely revealing my true concern. “Boys won’t like me.”

  “You’re cute as a bug, Josie, so I don’t think there’s any danger that boys won’t like you. Even if you decide that you don’t like your looks, you can take a lesson from Wallis Simpson, who went on to become the Duchess of Windsor. She was known as the best-dressed woman of her generation. She once said, ‘I’m nothing to look at, so the only thing I can do is dress better than anyone else.’ You have wonderful taste, Josie. The lesson is that when you dress well, people perceive that you care about yourself, and they gravitate toward you.”

  “Oh, Mom,” I whispered now, missing her so deeply it felt like someone was pricking my heart. Missing her was nothing new. I missed her every day. She’d been infinitely kind and unwaveringly supportive. She’d never dismissed the fears I’d confided to her, not once; instead, she’d helped me cope.

  * * *

  Upstairs, I called the Rocky Point police station a
nd asked for Ellis. Cathy told me she’d find him and asked if I’d hold on.

  While I was waited, I glanced out the window. Through the pounding rain, I could just make out newly sprouted crocuses and daffodils. Soon their yellow and purple blossoms would dot the forest edge.

  “April showers,” I said aloud, then booted up my computer.

  Ava had sent an e-mail saying she’d had no luck tracing the button and had given it back to Cara. I shrugged as I read it. Finding the owner had been a long shot at best.

  My mind drifted to Wes’s revelations, and I found myself wondering again where he had found the photo showing Becka and Bobby holding hands. I Googled “museum fund-raiser,” “Bobby Jordan,” “New York City,” and “March” and got 4,278 hits. Scanning the list, I saw that Bobby had attended at least three museum galas in March, and his appearances all got huge play in the press.

  Cathy came on the line. “Josie?” she said. “Sorry for the delay. Chief Hunter will be right with you.”

  “Thanks, Cathy.”

  I clicked through to the first site on the list, the Museum of Natural History. Their newsletter featured a photo of Bobby standing with a group of men. Everyone was laughing. The Museum of the City of New York’s fund-raising page had a photo of Bobby posing with the mayor. On the New York Craft Museum’s “Happenings” page, I found the photo Wes had shown me.

  The caption explained that Bobby’s New York City restaurant, the Blue Apple, had catered the gala. They’d uploaded a dozen photos of the event, including one that featured a wider-angle view of the same moment—Bobby leading Becka by the hand through the crowd. Riley was nowhere to be seen.

  I brought up Bobby’s restaurant’s site. He had a page devoted to “Honors and Events” filled with shots showcasing his glamorous life. In one photo, he stood under a gilt dome in a gorgeous rotunda toasting an unseen photographer or someone standing behind the photographer. In a second, he stood next to Ruby under a glinting crystal chandelier. In a third, he was seated at a banquet table with his arm around Riley. Another shot showed Bobby wearing a white linen suit standing on a beach with his back to the camera gazing out over a tranquil turquoise sea. The photos from the Museum of Natural History and the Museum of the City of New York were posted, but not the one from the New York Craft Museum, which made sense. If Bobby was having an affair with Becka, of course he wouldn’t post the image. If he wasn’t having an affair, he wouldn’t post it anyway because of how it might appear to his adoring crowds—or maybe because of how it would appear to Riley or Ruby or both of them. I was certain Bobby would agree that perception matters as much as reality, and sometimes more.