Rory wondered if “personnel issues” was code for people quitting. Once word spread about Ian’s arrest and confession, some of the hotel’s employees might no longer want to be associated with the Akaw.
“Sorry about that,” Nixie said when she returned. “As I was saying, the hotel is understaffed at the moment. We’re going to have to push everything out a day. You can continue packing up, but we won’t be able to get the boxes out onto the loading dock until tomorrow afternoon.”
Arika opened her mouth to ask a question, but the convention organizer raised a hand to stop her.
“Don’t worry, everything will be safe here on the floor. But I’m afraid that means no trucks will be able to pick up your boxes until Tuesday.”
Once Nixie answered all her questions, Arika pulled out her phone to inform the moving company she’d hired of the change in plans.
As the convention organizer started to move on to the next booth, Rory asked, “Have you heard anything? About Viveca?”
“Not yet.” Nixie nodded toward the VivEco booth, where two employees had arrived and were pulling boxes out from underneath the tables. “Maybe they know something.”
When the two women headed across the aisle to inquire after Viveca, the temp employees told them the dreadful, but not unexpected, news that the woman had passed away at the hospital.
After giving her condolences and offering to help them pack up if they needed it, Rory silently prayed for Viveca and her family, then headed back across the aisle to tell her mother the news.
Chapter 27
Once the two booths were all packed up, Rory headed across town to Peter’s house to drop off Jasmine’s things. As she wheeled the suitcases up the walkway, she wondered if anyone had told Peter about Viveca.
When he opened the door in answer to the bell, one look at his face and she realized he knew.
“You heard?” she said.
“Hulbert called a little while ago.” Peter helped her bring the cases inside and set them to one side of the entryway.
“Everything that was in her room is in the suitcase and carry-on.” Rory pointed to the roller bag decorated with his wife’s name. “And these are Jasmine’s painting supplies.”
“Thanks for doing this. Let’s talk for a minute. Do you want some tea?” He led the way into the kitchen, where Rory sat down on a chair at the island while Peter put the kettle on the stove. “I hope Earl Grey is okay. It’s all we have. It’s decaffeinated.”
“Sounds good. Did Hulbert have any information on how Viveca died?”
“GHB again.”
“Can’t be Jasmine’s medication this time. The police have it. Unless there’s another bottle around somewhere?”
Peter leaned against the island. “No, that was the only one. There has to be another source. I did a little research just now, after he told me. Seems like GHB isn’t hard to come by. People even make it in their own homes. Looks like water so it’s often tinted blue. Did you know some people use it for weight loss and increasing muscle growth? Seems dangerous to me.”
Before he could say anything else, the tea kettle sang. They suspended their conversation while he busied himself with the cups and tea bags. He set two cups on the island and sat down next to Rory.
“First Jasmine, now her aunt. I have to wonder if there’s some family connection we don’t know about. Something that they were both involved with,” Rory said. “Can you think of anything the two of them did together that would be a reason someone might want both of them dead?”
Peter stared down into his cup as if looking for answers in the tea. “If there is, I know nothing about it.”
“What about some event they both attended where something bad happened? Did they witness anything? An altercation? An accident? That kind of thing.”
“Accident.” Peter looked up from his tea and turned his head to look into Rory’s eyes. “Viveca was involved in an accident years ago. Her fault. You must remember it.”
The way the woman had driven that Ferrari around town, Rory wasn’t surprised to learn she’d crashed a car at some point in time, but she couldn’t recall ever hearing about it. “I don’t remember her being hurt in a car accident. Was it a fender bender or something more serious?”
“She wasn’t hurt. Only minor damage to her car, but the other driver wasn’t so lucky.”
“What happened?”
“It was raining. Viveca was driving fast, too fast like she always did. She skidded and caused another car to go off the road and crash.” Peter told the story as if he’d recited it many times. “Jaz still occasionally had nightmares about it.”
“Why?”
“She was in the passenger seat. Didn’t she ever tell you?”
Rory shook her head. “No, I guess she wanted to put it behind her. When and where was this?”
“Somewhere close to home, Riverside area. I don’t remember the exact location. Around the time Jaz’s mother died.”
That’s probably why Rory hadn’t heard anything about the accident. Everyone was preoccupied with Jasmine’s mother’s illness. Her friend wouldn’t have wanted to worry anyone about a minor accident. Minor for her and her aunt, at least.
“Would the accident have been mentioned in the paper?” she asked.
“I don’t remember seeing anything about it, but I wasn’t really a newspaper reader when I was a teenager.”
They both tried to recall if there was something else from either of the two women’s pasts that might be cause for someone to want them both dead, but neither Peter nor Rory could come up with a single thing.
Peter stared down into his cup. “Brandy called me. She’s upset at you. I don’t know what about. She wouldn’t say.” He looked at Rory and appealed to her with his eyes. “Whatever it is, you two need to make up. Life’s too short.”
Rory patted his hand. “Don’t worry, I’ll call her.”
As soon as she settled down in her car, Rory took a deep breath and made the call. After a heartfelt talk, she invited Brandy to have dinner with her and Liz that evening.
On her way home, Rory wondered if the accident could be the key to both deaths. The reemergence of Viveca into the public eye might have stirred up old wounds. She needed to find out more about that accident.
Rory glanced at the clock on her dashboard. She had time before she needed to get ready for dinner. She turned a corner and headed for the library, glad this was the one Sunday in the month when it was open until five.
When she entered the glass building, she walked straight to the reference desk and asked about back issues of Southern California newspapers. The librarian directed her to a service the Vista Beach library subscribed to where papers across the country could be read and searched. She settled down at a free computer and typed in Viveca’s maiden name. Within seconds, half a dozen articles showed up in one of the Riverside papers.
She read the headlines for each of them, discovering most were feature stories that described local charities the woman had been involved with or talked about her career as a designer and painting instructor.
In a story in the news section, a reporter described a horrific accident in which Viveca and a sixteen-year-old relative had come out unscathed, but the female driver of another car had died, leaving the passenger in critical condition. The photo that accompanied the article showed a vehicle mangled beyond recognition. Rory was surprised anyone had come out of the accident alive, but a teenager who was in the passenger seat had somehow managed to survive. She took note of the driver’s unfamiliar name.
In a later article, the father of the driver who had been killed railed against the police for not arresting Viveca even though accident reconstruction had shown her actions had been at least partially responsible for the other car spinning out of control. For some reason that wasn’t clear to Rory, the authorities declined to prosecute.
She sat back in her seat and thought about what she’d read. Something nudged at her brain. She wondered if a r
elative of the driver who had been killed could have held a grudge for all these years. Her best bet was to try to find out more about the victim. When a librarian warned everyone the place was closing in five minutes, Rory prepared to finish her research outside of the library. She quickly found the obituary of the woman who had died in the accident and printed it out along with the two other articles.
A short time later, she was pulling her car into a spot in the Akaw’s underground parking structure when she spotted Hulbert slumped against the trunk of Viveca’s red Ferrari a few spaces away, looking like a man whose entire world had been shattered.
Rory’s heart went out to him. She locked her own sedan and hurried over to see what she could do to help.
“Hulbert,” she said. “How are you doing? Do you need any help?”
When he heard his name, the man came out of his fog and looked up at her. His face seemed to have aged ten years since she last saw him. “Aurora, I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“I didn’t expect to see you, either. I’m so sorry about Viveca. She was always very nice to me.”
The man blinked furiously as if fighting back tears. In a voice choked with emotion, he said, “She was a lovely woman. I felt so lucky I’d found her so late in life. I miss her already.”
“What are you doing here?” Rory asked. “I thought you’d be home.”
“I was upstairs, checking to make sure the booth got packed up properly. Someone had to do it. It’s just me running things now. My workers tell me you helped them out. I appreciate that.” He laid a hand on the Ferrari. “This was Viveca’s pride and joy. I wish I didn’t have to part with it.”
Rory was wondering why he couldn’t keep it when the man looked at her, a fierce expression on his face. “This is the worst day of my life. Mark my words, I’m going to get back at the person who’s responsible for my lovely Viveca’s death.”
“I’ll do anything I can to help.”
He smiled and patted her on the arm. “You’ve done enough already.”
While Hulbert settled into the driver’s seat of the Ferrari, she headed to the elevator.
Rory sat in the lobby of the Akaw, waiting for Liz to finish teaching her final class of the painting convention, and reviewed the printouts of the newspaper articles she’d found at the library. She read the obituary, not finding anything interesting until she reached the end where it listed all of the deceased’s surviving relatives. One name stood out: Melosia Ortega, described as a sixteen-year-old cousin.
Rory did a quick calculation in her head. The cousin would be about twenty-eight now. She’d never asked the Melosia she knew how old she was but, if Rory had to guess, she’d have said they were about the same age. That fit with the time frame of the accident.
Rory laid the paper on her lap and stared off into space, thinking back to the conversation she’d had with Mel at the karaoke bar. The woman had mentioned an accident she was in when she was young that had inspired her to become a paramedic. Plus, Detective Green had said his girlfriend had relatives in the Riverside area. She didn’t know how common the name Melosia Ortega was, but this couldn’t be a coincidence. They had to be the same person.
For a moment, Rory was too shocked to consider the implications of what she’d learned. She didn’t want to believe the woman she was starting to consider a friend could have killed Viveca. But she had motive. From their conversation the previous evening, Rory knew the woman still harbored anger at the driver who had killed her beloved cousin. As for opportunity, anyone could have spiked the painting teacher’s drink at the meet and greet, including Mel. The woman had even touched Viveca’s glass after her collapse. If she were guilty, she might have planned that to cover up any fingerprints already on the glass. Mel might even have targeted Jasmine because she was in the car with her aunt, blaming her for distracting Viveca while she was driving. And, as someone in the medical field, Mel would probably be more likely to know where to get GHB than anyone else.
Rory tried to picture the event and remember where Mel had been throughout the meet and greet, but she couldn’t say for sure how close the woman had been to Viveca at any particular point in time. The store had been too crowded, and Rory had been busy making sure everything was running okay.
Rory hugged her sweatshirt, feeling a coldness invading her soul. She wished a pill existed that she could take to unthink the thoughts she was having. She couldn’t tell Detective Green what she discovered, but she didn’t want Viveca’s murderer to go free either. Her only hope was that she would find out her suspicions were wrong.
She was trying to figure out how she could determine if Mel was involved in Viveca’s death when Detective Green walked across the lobby toward her. She leaned over and, as unobtrusively as possible, stuck the papers on the cushion, then settled back down on top of them and stared at her phone, pretending to be engrossed with something on its display.
The detective smiled and indicated the spot next to her on the sofa. “May I?”
Rory nodded, even though what she really wanted to say was “no, no, no!”
“Mel told me she had fun at karaoke and that you’re getting together for dinner tomorrow night. Thanks for making her feel so welcome.”
Rory nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
The detective’s eyes narrowed. “Are you okay? What’s going on?”
She wished he could stop being a detective for one minute. “Just sitting here, waiting for Liz, reading some email. That’s it.”
“Uh-huh.” He studied her from head to toe. She suspected he was analyzing her body language. At that moment, she knew she was sunk. He nodded at the sofa. “What are you sitting on?”
Rory glanced down at the cushion. A corner of one of the printouts peeked out from under her butt. Her face reddened. She shifted her position so her body covered the paper completely.
“Have you been investigating when I told you not to?” The detective held out his hand. “Come on. Hand it over. Let me see what you’ve been up to.”
Silently, she stood up and retrieved the papers. Once they were in the detective’s hands, she studied his face, dreading his reaction when he recognized his girlfriend’s name. The seconds seemed like hours as he carefully read each article, starting with the one on the top, the obituary of Mel’s cousin.
She could tell when he got to Mel’s name. A puzzled look came over his face. He looked up at her and said, “Why do you have an obituary for one of my girlfriend’s relatives?”
When she didn’t say anything, he studied the other articles, frowning as he read. After he finished all of them, he sat back in his seat and stared into space. She could almost hear the wheels turning in his head as he digested and analyzed the articles with his detective’s brain.
Finally, he said without looking at her, “Let me get this straight. You think my girlfriend’s a murderer, do you? And these articles are the proof?”
Her mouth opened and closed several times, but she couldn’t think of anything to say.
A steely look in his eyes, he stared at her and said in a quiet tone of voice, “Answer me, please.”
She almost wished he would yell at her. Anything was better than this quiet disapproval.
“I was looking into the accident Viveca was in years ago. I didn’t know until I read the articles that Mel was in the other car. It’s not like I set out to investigate her. I like Mel, but you have to admit she’s a pretty good suspect. If she weren’t your girlfriend, you’d see that.”
Detective Green’s lips tightened. “I see.” He folded the printouts and set them aside. “I’m taking these with me. You really need to stop investigating. Leave that to the professionals.” He drew a flip-top notepad and a pen out of an inside jacket pocket. “Now, I need to ask you some questions.”
“Okay,” Rory said. The sudden coldness in the man’s demeanor disturbed her more than she cared to let on. “What do you need to know?”
“The glass Viveca was drinking from a
t the event today. Are you sure you didn’t touch it? It was on the table in front of you.”
“I’m sure. As soon as I realized whose glass it was, I made sure no one touched it, including me. Well, except Mel, of course.” Rory closed her eyes and pictured the meet and greet, once again trying to remember everything she’d done during the event, from the moment she arrived at the store to the moment she left. “I’m positive I never touched the glass,” she said in a firmer tone of voice.
“Are you sure? You didn’t pour glasses of champagne and hand them out to people?”
“My mom set up the refreshment table. I took care of the signing table. Everyone got their own glasses. Why do you ask?”
“I’m just wondering why your fingerprints are on the glass Viveca was drinking from.”
Rory’s mouth fell open. “I have no idea. Was the GHB in the bottle of champagne?”
“Just in the glass. You said before you didn’t know who gave it to her. Have you remembered anything new?”
“No.” Rory considered the problem for a minute. “But I think I know how we can find out. Stella Nygaard was filming at least part of the event for her painting chapter. Some of the footage may show where the glass came from. I can call her and see if she’s available.”
After Detective Green nodded his head in approval, Rory called Stella and relayed their request. Ten minutes later, the woman joined them in the lobby.
“These three videos are the ones I took at Viveca’s event.” Stella played each of them on her smartphone, one after the other. The first one showed the event from the moment Viveca arrived to right before Arika started her speech. Rory saw the woman with white blonde hair mingling with the other attendees.
They scoured the footage to see if Viveca was drinking from a glass during this period, but her hands were empty. The second video started with Arika’s initial remarks. When it reached the spot where she encouraged everyone to get something to drink for the toast, they watched carefully to see where the guest of honor got her glass.
Paint the Town Dead Page 20
