by Janet Bolin
My phone rang.
It was Detective Neffting. “I’m at your front door, but it’s locked. I need to talk to you.”
23
A visit from Detective Neffting was never exactly fun and was definitely not convenient at the moment, but I tried not to reveal my reluctance. “I’ll be right up.”
Mona, Haylee’s mothers, and I had arranged to meet Ben and Haylee in The Stash at seven thirty, which was only a half hour away. Neffting could be quick, though, if he decided to wrap up his investigation of Antonio’s murder right away and arrest the first person he came across, which, I feared, could be me, and then he’d haul me off in handcuffs and chains, and I would miss the video of the fashion show, anyway. Just possibly, my imagination was carrying me away.
I grabbed my bag, business plan and all, so I’d be ready to go to Haylee’s after I talked to Neffting. Or to prison, if that was Detective Neffting’s plan.
My dogs and cats wanted to come into the shop with me, but I managed to shut the door at the top of the stairway. They’d probably trot downstairs to their beds and snooze.
Detective Neffting wasn’t shy about peering into the shop as I rushed to the door and unlocked it. He didn’t smile. That wasn’t unusual, but I took it as a bad sign, anyway.
I led him to the fabric cutting table, which was rapidly becoming an interrogation table. At least we could lean on it while we talked. Not wanting to appear the least bit threatening, I shoved all three pairs of scissors into drawers.
He merely raised one eyebrow. “I believe you told me that Anthony Drudge, or Antonio, as he’d been calling himself, pinched at least one young lady, and that bothered you.”
“I hope it would have bothered you, too.” I couldn’t quite keep reproach off my face or out of my voice.
Perhaps I went too far. A trace of anger may have pulled at one corner of his mouth. “Of course it does. I believe you also told me that Mr. Drudge’s comments about sins upset you, also.”
“Not as much as pinching Macey. The threadly sins comments annoyed me, especially on behalf of my seventeen-year-old assistant, Ashley—”
“Who struck Mr. Drudge after he allegedly pinched the other girl, am I right?”
Why did he have to rehash my earlier statements when I was in a hurry? “Dora saw him pinch Macey. I only saw Ashley push his hand away from Macey’s backside.”
He scribbled in his notebook, then asked, “What other ways did Mr. Drudge upset you? Was there anything he said, did, wrote, told you, or that you heard about?”
“There was nothing in particular. He was generally annoying, like when he chomped on candies, especially over a PA system, and he was also very full of himself. Everything was about him.”
“Did he make any proposals to you?”
“He offered me the chance to design and model those four outfits in his fashion show. The funds he planned to raise were supposed to go toward scholarships, so I accepted.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes, but it was really minor. It was obvious that he was trying to be funny, and he made a rude suggestion into the microphone to the fashion show audience. He said that if I wanted to commit adultery—which I didn’t, and don’t—all that I would require was a married man, and he seemed to think he was the perfect candidate.”
Neffting didn’t look up from his notebook. “Anything else?”
“He was flirtatious backstage after the fashion show, but I made it clear that I wasn’t interested, and he backed off.”
“Did he mention anything about why, for instance, he chose to open a fashion school?”
“No. At first, I figured he had experience in fashion and design, and I guessed he had decided that a design and modeling school would be a good fit in a village nicknamed Threadville. But he didn’t seem to know much about fashion.”
Neffting said nothing. He was obviously waiting for me to continue.
“I don’t know if anyone wrote the narration Antonio gave at the fashion show or if he ad-libbed, but he never used specific fashion terms. The closest he came were the words ‘lovely’ and ‘beautiful.’ If he actually knew much about fashion, he hid it well. Also, he reminded me of some of the would-be entrepreneurs that Haylee and I met while we were investment counselors in New York City, before we came to Pennsylvania. The aspiring entrepreneurs had an idea, a large dose of optimism, and some of them had more than their share of . . .” I paused, searching for the right words. “The ability to stretch the truth. Some of them started companies that failed, so they kept trying something new. Antonio’s widow strikes me as fitting that mold, also. They don’t—didn’t—seem to have the right personalities to work for other people, so they opened their own company. TADAM may not have been the first. I wouldn’t be surprised if either or both of them had been conning people out of money and running scams for several years.” There, I’d said it.
He tilted his head to one side. “You knew them well?”
“I talked to Antonio a few times in the store. He’d mentioned that his wife was the school’s administrative assistant, but I didn’t meet her until the fashion show rehearsal.”
“Yet you’ve made a lot of guesses from a short acquaintance.”
“As I said, I’d met people like them before.” I pulled my bag toward me. “And I found something today that supports my theory about Antonio and the founding of TADAM.” I pulled Antonio’s business plan out. “Someone stuck this under a bolt of fabric in my shop today. I gave it a quick read-through and was about to take it over to Haylee to see what she thinks.” I handed the business plan to Neffting.
He unfolded it and looked at each page for a few seconds, long enough to get the gist. When he’d turned over the final page, he looked up at me, obviously waiting for me to say more.
I explained, “Haylee and I read a lot of business plans. The entrepreneurs hoped that our clients might invest in their companies.” I stabbed a finger at the back of the last page of Antonio’s business plan. “We would have turned this one down.”
“Why?”
“The funds he expected to raise from the fashion show were ridiculously inflated. Also, he talks about tuition from three hundred students, but I haven’t seen more than about fifty.”
“Were you struck by anything else about the document?”
“The plan seems to be more about building a mall outside the village than about running a thriving fashion design and modeling school. But his plan of taking over downtown Threadville would never have worked. For one thing, none of us would have given in to pressure to move to a mall. For another, if a mall were built, the center of downtown Threadville would die. It would become only a college campus.”
“Three hundred students would generate a lot of commerce.”
“Which wouldn’t be useful if there were no stores, or if the students had to drive out of town to shop.”
“Tell me again how you came upon this document.”
I backed to the rack of mid-weight linen and lifted the pale blue bolt. “It was stuck underneath this. I found it this evening.” I shoved my hand underneath the bolt. “There’s nothing there now.”
“Did you put the business plan there?”
Had I been unclear? “No, I noticed that the top of the bolt was higher than its neighbors, and when I tried to push it down, it wouldn’t go, and I found Antonio’s business plan stuck there.”
“When had you seen it before?”
“Never.”
“How long could it have been underneath that bolt of fabric?”
“It had to have been put there today.” I pushed the blue linen back into position, then ran my hand across the tops of the beautiful fabrics. “Last night when I closed the shop, the tops were even like they are right now.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“And Anto
nio Drudge did not personally give you that business plan?”
“He did not.”
Neffting continued bombarding me with questions. “Did you hear about it before his death, or otherwise know what was in it?”
“No.”
“How do you think that business plan got there today, four days after the man’s death?”
“Someone put it there, and I think I know who. His widow, Paula, was here this morning. She brought a dozen TADAM students for what she called a ‘field trip.’ She said that Antonio had arranged the field trip with me. Maybe she believed that, but he hadn’t.”
“And you saw her place the business plan underneath that cloth?”
I smoothed the blue linen. “No, but she was carrying a large bag, and she was over here while I was over there.” I pointed. “I could see Paula’s head and shoulders, but not her hands.”
He wrote in his notebook, then looked up at me again. “Why would she leave her late husband’s business plan in your shop?”
I returned to my fabric cutting table. “It doesn’t make sense, does it? Unless for some reason she was reading it and someone came close and she didn’t want to be caught with it.”
“She was attempting to read secretly in a shop full of people?”
“That doesn’t make sense, either.” Before he could agree, I blurted, “What if she arranged her husband’s death?”
Neffting’s eyes started to widen, but he let his lids droop and became very still.
I admitted, “I’m thinking aloud here. Nearly everyone who was backstage at the fashion show could have inserted a Jordan almond into Antonio’s jacket. Someone kept moving the chair it was on into the way of the models—”
“Who?”
“I never saw anyone do it, though I moved it out of everyone’s way at least twice. Most of us probably touched that jacket at one time or another. Antonio’s assistant, Loretta, was backstage near that chair most of the evening, and so was Paula. She was nearest the chair at the end of the awards ceremony, which is when I accidentally kicked something away from under the chair. At the time, I assumed it was one of the candies, but it could easily have been that vial of medicine. Maybe I almost caught Paula in the act. So, let’s suppose that Paula gave him a candy-coated almond and hid his medication . . .”
Watching me intently in a way that could cause the guilty to confess to a multitude of crimes, Neffting stayed quiet.
But I wasn’t guilty, so I plunged ahead with my latest, not fully thought-out theory about Paula. “And what if Paula wanted to make it appear that someone else tried to kill her husband? Suppose she chose me as her scapegoat. She could have put the vial of medicine and the unused Jordan almonds in my cubicle. Then to make doubly sure you would suspect me, she could have told you that Antonio had shown his plan to me, and that I’d become livid about being shunted off to a not-yet-built mall outside the village. She could then have suggested that you should get a search warrant and look for that plan on my premises.” I glanced across the street at The Stash. “This afternoon, she took a bunch of students to Haylee’s shop. I haven’t talked to Haylee since then, but I’m going over there after we’re done here. I’ll ask her if Paula claimed that Antonio had arranged a so-called field trip there. Maybe Paula hid a business plan in Haylee’s shop, also.”
Detective Neffting kept a poker face. Maybe I had guessed correctly about what Paula had told him about me. And maybe Paula was now becoming his chief suspect in her husband’s murder . . .
I asked Neffting, “If Antonio had a business plan that involved doing something sneaky against the people of Threadville, would he have shown it to us?”
Naturally, Neffting didn’t answer.
I went on, “And if I had murdered Antonio because of his business plan, would I have hidden it in my shop? Wouldn’t I have gotten rid of it long ago?”
“Criminals often make mistakes.”
Well, that helped. Not really. But with any luck, he was referring to Paula, not to me.
Or maybe he was thinking of someone else. I suggested, “As Dora Battersby and I told you, a note that we found in the paper soccer ball and that she must have shown you was typed and said ‘Pay up or else.’ Have you figured out who Antonio’s silent partners were, or who else may have lent Antonio money and then carried out the ‘or else’ part of that threat?”
“Mr. Drudge borrowed from legitimate banks.”
“Banks? Plural? Let me guess. He kept taking out new loans to pay off old ones, and he kept taking out bigger and bigger loans.”
Neffting did not refute my theory, except to say, “He bought the TADAM mansion for a dollar, and by the time it was renovated, it could have been worth more than the amount he’d put into renovating it, which could have justified larger and larger loans.”
“Could have. Also, might not have.” I challenged him with my eyes, but he didn’t back down and didn’t explain.
He didn’t haul me off in handcuffs, either. He asked, “You said you’re about to go to Haylee’s shop?”
“In a few minutes.” I didn’t want to tell him about the video we planned to watch. Even if he had a copy of it, he might want to confiscate the one that Kent had promised to let us see. “We’re meeting to discuss a play that Mona wrote. She bought all the supposedly threadly sinful outfits from the TADAM fashion show and is planning to use them as costumes in a play she’s calling The Seven Threadly Sins.”
He cocked his head. “Is that what’s known as making lemonade from lemons?”
Vicki never laughed at his wisecracks, but I grinned. “I guess so. It’s to be a fund-raiser for the TADAM scholarship fund, and in return, she’s going to be on the scholarship committee. That could give my assistant a better chance at winning a scholarship.”
“I see.”
And I was sure he also saw that the good citizens of Threadville were capable of a little collusion.
But that didn’t make us murderers.
He added, “Mona may have a long wait until those costumes are released. So don’t rehearse too hard.”
Neffting did have a sense of humor, but still, he didn’t come close to smiling.
“Okay. There’s something else.” I went to my desk in the dogs’ pen, took out the sketches that Antonio had given me, brought them back to the cutting table, and plunked them down. “Antonio told me that he had designed the clothes and drawn the sketches for the outfits we modeled in the fashion show, but on Monday evening in a class Loretta and her fellow teacher Kent gave, Loretta drew a dress. After seeing her style of drawing and printing, I’m almost certain that she made the sketches that Antonio gave me, and that Loretta, not Antonio, printed the design instructions accompanying the sketches. Maybe she discovered that he was pretending that her work was his.”
“May I see?” He studied them carefully and handed them back. “So you’re saying that his—we’ll call it appropriation for lack of a better word—his appropriation of her designs made her angry enough to kill the man who hired her to draw those designs in the first place? A few minutes ago, you were telling me the widow killed him and is trying to cast the blame on you. Then you came up with a theory about moneylenders.”
“It could be any of them,” I said a little more heatedly than I meant to. “Or some combination working together. I’m just trying to tell you everything I observed around the time of his death.”
“I appreciate that,” he muttered.
His appreciation wasn’t very convincing, but it was enough to encourage me to tell him more. “At first, Loretta was very angry at him for his seven threadly sins trick. Later, she hid her anger and tried to spin his behavior. She said he’d only been trying to cause us to be creative.”
Neffting wrote in his notebook, then looked up at me. “Thank you, as always, for your theories about people, their motives, means, and opportunities. Now, give me
time to talk to Haylee before you go barging over there. Feel free to talk to her about the business plan you found, but please wait until after I speak to her.”
Barging? “Okay.” But I did need to talk to her. We probably didn’t want Neffting barging into The Stash and discovering that we had a copy of that video. If we had it yet.
Maybe we did have it. As Neffting crossed Lake Street toward The Stash, Kent left Haylee’s shop. Neffting stopped him and removed his notebook from his pocket.
Quickly, I called Haylee.
24
Haylee answered right away. Her voice was full of smiles, as if she’d been joking with Ben. I dashed the smiles from her voice with the information that Neffting was on his way to talk to her, and she might like to hide that video.
With Haylee, I didn’t have to go into long-winded explanations. “No problem,” she answered immediately. “Ben will put Kent’s thumb drive in his pocket.” In all its glory, the smile returned to her voice. “There. He did.”
Disconnecting the call, I hoped that Neffting wouldn’t commandeer our phone records. He’d think that I had called Haylee to warn her about the business plan.
With any luck, she didn’t know a thing about it, and her innocence would be plain to see, even to a detective used to searching out guilt.
However, I couldn’t help some brilliant smiles of my own. Haylee was with Ben, and she’d sounded very happy.
To keep anyone besides Ben from interrupting Neffting’s and Haylee’s conversation, I dialed Mona and told her the meeting was being delayed until eight.
“I’m in charge of setting rehearsal times,” she reminded me in queenly tones.
“But we’re ‘rehearsing’ in Haylee’s store, and it’s not free at the moment.”
Naturally, Mona wanted to know why. I didn’t dare say that Detective Neffting was there. Mona would undoubtedly develop a whopping crush on the man. Telling her that Ben was with Haylee would have an even worse outcome. “Customers stayed too long today,” I managed.
