The Weekenders

by Mary Kay Andrews

  “If she was having an affair with him, why would she kill him?”

  “I don’t know,” Riley admitted. “Maybe because he was the reason her old bank went under? I don’t know all the ins and outs of the banking business. That’s for you people to investigate.”

  “Which we are doing. As is the FBI,” the sheriff assured her.

  “Ask the FBI to tell you who Samuel Gordon is, why don’t you?” Riley asked.

  “I don’t have to ask. I already know. He was the lawyer in Wilmington who set up those dummy corporations, presumably for your husband. I’ve left several messages on his answering machine, asking him to call me, but he hasn’t responded yet,” Schumann said.

  “I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting to hear from Mr. Gordon,” Riley said. “Unless they have long distance in heaven, that is.” She stood up and gave the sheriff a sweet smile. “As one amateur detective to another, I’ll give you a tip. He’s dead.”

  44

  After the sheriff was gone, Riley opened her laptop, intending to continue her job search. But she was still seething from the injustice of being considered a suspect in Wendell’s murder. She was fed up with being his victim. If the sheriff couldn’t find his killer, maybe she’d have to take matters into her own hands.

  She sat back and thought about Melody Zimmerman. Not a very likely looking murderer but, as she knew, looks could be deceiving. What, exactly, did anybody know about the woman, beyond the fact that she worked at the bank and was perpetually overshadowed by the showy, nosy Andrea Payne?

  Riley decided to start her search with a call to her best friend, but her phone rang just as she was picking it up.

  “Hey,” Parrish said. “Word on the street has it that Sheriff Schumann paid you a visit this morning. Did he have any news?”

  “Wow, that was fast. I guess I shouldn’t underestimate the power of the coconut telegraph. How’d you hear?”

  “I saw Evvy in the village. She was pretty ticked off that she’d been banished from her own home.”

  “She’d be even more ticked off if she knew Sheriff Schumann considered her and me and the rest of her family prime suspects in Wendell’s murder.”

  “Evvy?” Parrish laughed. “Get real.”

  “That’s what I told him. I also told him he should take a good look at Melody Zimmerman’s motive and alibi.”

  “Damn!” Parrish said. “You know, this totally slipped my mind. Ed told me awhile back that he’d heard through the grapevine that Wendell was having a fling with some young chick who worked at a bank. No names mentioned. He said it was strictly locker-room stuff.”

  “Parrish!” Riley said. “You’re just now mentioning this?”

  “I know, but he swore me to secrecy at the time, and anyway, I didn’t think it had any bearing on his murder, and I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “I bet the chick was Melody. That’s why I was getting ready to call you. What do we know about her?”

  “Not much. She lives in a kinda nondescript seventies cottage on the south end. I think it actually belongs to an elderly relative who lets her live there rent free in return for keeping it up.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Don’t rush me,” Parrish said. “Okay, here’s something else. I was just reading the Belle Isle Country Club’s online newsletter. Her picture was posted as being a new member.”

  “Just now? But I see her there all the time.”

  “She probably either used her relative’s membership or sponged off Andrea Payne.”

  “Okay, that’s something,” Riley said. “How much does it cost to join the club these days?”

  “We’ve been members for so long, I have no idea what the initiation fee is.”

  Riley opened her laptop’s browser and pulled up the Belle Isle Country Club’s Web site. “Hang on, I’m looking. Hmmm. No mention of the fees. I guess it’s considered gauche to put it out there for the unwashed public to see. Sort of a ‘if you have to ask, you can’t afford to join’ mind-set.”

  “I’ll text Ed and ask him to find out, and then I’ll call you back,” Parrish said.

  “Cool. In the meantime, I’m gonna see what I can find out about Melody online.”

  * * *

  Melody’s LinkedIn profile wasn’t terribly informative. She’d attended college at UNC-Charlotte, and her current job description was vice president of lending, Baldwin Community Bank. Her Facebook listing wasn’t much better. Photos of dogs, funny dog videos, a few selfies of Melody and Andrea Payne at the beach, and some glowing color photos of Belle Isle sunrises. Riley tapped the sunrise photo to enlarge it. It was fairly generic, showing a glowing orange orb casting a molten glow on the surf. There was a strip of beach, but it could have been almost any strip of beach on the East Coast. On the far right corner of the image, she could just make out the arm of a familiar-looking wrought-iron chair. She maximized that detail.

  “That bitch,” she fumed. The chair was one of a pair she’d personally dragged home from the Hickory Furniture Mart sample sale and placed on the master bedroom balcony of the house at Sand Dollar Lane. If she’d had any doubts before, they were gone now. The only way Melody Zimmerman was snapping sunrise photos that included that chair was if she’d spent the night in that master bedroom. And Riley was certain she hadn’t stayed there alone.

  “Gotcha,” she muttered. She took a quick screen shot of the photo, just in case Melody decided to delete the photo in the near future. Other than that one slipup, Melody was disappointingly discreet with her social media posts. Her relationship status was single, and Riley couldn’t find a single photo that included anybody who even remotely resembled Wendell Griggs. She didn’t seem to have an Instagram or Twitter account.

  Most of the hits she found for Melody were professionally related. Items from banking publications announcing her job promotions, a couple of items from her college alumni magazine, and a brief profile from a “Women in Banking” newsletter.

  Riley scribbled some notes. Melody was thirty, a hometown girl who’d grown up in Southpoint, and had a degree in business administration. The profile noted that her first job out of college was at a law firm in Wilmington. Had she worked for Samuel Gordon, the lawyer who’d set up Wendell’s dummy corporations? The article didn’t mention it. She might have to do some more digging. After leaving the law firm, Melody had worked as a clerk at a Bank of America branch in Wilmington before starting to climb the career ladder at first Coastal Carolina Bank, and now Baldwin Community.

  Her phone rang, and it was Parrish.

  “Ed talked to one of his buddies on the club’s membership committee. Initiation fees are pretty steep these days—like twenty-five thousand!”

  “Wow. How do all these young families we see hanging out at the club afford that kind of a hit?”

  “I’ve wondered the same thing,” Parrish said. “I think it was something like five thousand when we joined, and at the time I thought that was all the money in the world.”

  “I think Daddy probably fronted us our initiation fee as a wedding gift,” Riley said.

  “Ed’s friend also told him that Wendell was one of Melody’s three member sponsors, the others being Andrea Payne, and somebody named Myrtice Zimmerman. She’s probably the relative who owns the house Melody lives in.”

  “Twenty-five thousand dollars is a lot of money for a single woman, especially one who doesn’t even own her own home here,” Riley said. “What kind of money do you think a vice president of a small community bank makes these days?”

  “Not that much,” Parrish said.

  “So, she either has a sugar daddy or an outside source of wealth we don’t know about,” Riley mused. “I Googled her and didn’t come up with any useful info. However, I did find a possibly incriminating photo on her Facebook page that must have been shot from the balcony outside my master bedroom. At sunrise,” she added.

  “So, that’s interesting, but it isn’t exactly a smoking gun,” Parrish pointed out.r />
  “I know. What are you doing in the morning?”

  “I was going to go grocery shopping in town. Ed will be in on the late afternoon ferry, and David and Amanda are coming down, too. I’m ridiculously excited because I haven’t seen him since Mother’s Day.”

  “What’s the occasion?”

  “Helloooo? Riley? Tomorrow’s Friday. And Sunday is the Fourth of July.”

  “Already? I guess I’ve lost track of time. I feel like I’ve been living in some weird alternative universe ever since Maggy and I got here Memorial Day weekend.”

  “You’ve had some stuff going on,” Parrish said. “Why were you asking about my plans for tomorrow?”

  “Just wondering if you’d like to come along on a little stakeout operation.”

  “What? You’re going to follow Melody Zimmerman around? How do you plan to do that? She knows you, Riley. She’d spot you in a minute. Anyway, what do you hope to accomplish?”

  “I just want to see who she sees and what she does on a typical day in the life,” Riley said. “No biggie.”

  “That’s what you say now,” Parrish said warily. “I know you, Riley Nolan. You’ve got something else up your sleeve. Something that could get us both in hot water.”

  “With whom? My dad’s dead and so is yours, so it’s not like our parents are gonna put us on restriction or take away our cars for missing curfew. You said Ed won’t get here until late afternoon. What could it hurt for us to do a little après-shopping sleuthing?”

  “I just know I’m gonna regret this,” Parrish said.

  “No you won’t,” Riley assured her. “It’ll be just like old times when we used to stalk cute guys back in high school. What time do you want to pick me up for the ferry?”

  “Lord help me. I’ll see you at nine fifteen.”

  45

  Riley hopped on Parrish’s golf cart Friday morning and gave her the thumbs-up sign. “Let’s roll.”

  Parrish studied Riley’s appearance. Red-and-white-striped tank top, denim boyfriend jeans, and sandals. “I’m surprised you’re not dressed in a blond wig and dark glasses to go incognito.”

  Riley donned the sunglasses she’d perched on top of her head. “See? I’m fairly anonymous just like this. It doesn’t take much.”

  “Hah!” Parrish said. “You still get recognized as the TV chick everywhere you go.” She handed Riley a sun visor that had been hanging from the cart’s rearview mirror. “Here. Put this on.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. People in town and on the island know me, but that’s because of my family, plus I grew up here and I’ve been coming here my whole life. To the rest of the world of broadcast journalism I’m just another over-the-hill hag. Literally, I am yesterday’s news.”

  “I take it the job search has yet to turn up a big-bucks offer from one of the networks?”

  “The search hasn’t even yielded a callback from my agent,” Riley reported.

  “But you just started looking last week, right?”

  “Right. Now can we talk about something else? Like a game plan for the stakeout? I was thinking we go by the bank, to make sure Melody’s there. It has a big plate-glass window, so we should be able to see her from the street.”

  “Then what?”

  “We find a good parking place for your car—in the shade so we don’t roast to death, then we take turns watching in shifts. We can use my car to go to Harris Teeter.”

  * * *

  “What exactly are we waiting for?” Parrish asked, as they sat in her car under the sparse shade afforded by a crape myrtle across the street from the Baldwin Community Bank.

  “If Melody comes out, we follow her, see where she goes, and what she does,” Riley said.

  “Brilliant! Maybe she’ll lead us to the two-by-four she used to wallop Wendell in the back of the head,” Parrish said, rolling her eyes.

  “Do you have a better plan?”

  “Yes. Leave the stakeouts to the cops.”

  “I would if the cops were interested,” Riley said. “Go on, get your groceries, and run your errands.”

  “I’ll be back in an hour,” Parrish said.

  * * *

  Shortly after eleven, Parrish popped the trunk of her car and stashed her groceries in the cooler she kept there. She slid onto the passenger seat. “Anything exciting to report?”

  Riley yawned. “Nothing.”

  “Let’s ditch this and go get some lunch,” Parrish urged.

  “No way. I want to see where she goes at lunchtime. Maybe she’ll meet an accomplice or something. But you go, if you’re hungry. Just bring me back a sandwich.”

  “Nope. I said I’d take a shift and I will. See ya.”

  * * *

  Riley was back in forty-five minutes. “Any movement?”

  Parrish was sipping from a bottle of water. “She went out right after you left and came back twenty minutes later with a takeout bag from Onnalee’s. Melody’s quite the dedicated banker.”

  “She didn’t meet anybody?” Riley asked, disappointed.

  “I followed her, but she must have called in her order, because she stood around at the front of the café, alone, waiting for her food, then walked directly back here. It’s been pretty busy in there,” Parrish said.

  “Hmm.” Riley handed a paper-wrapped sandwich to Parrish. “That’s chicken salad with lettuce and tomato.”

  Parrish took a bite and chewed. “Thanks.”

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe this is a total waste of time.”

  “Not entirely,” Parrish said, delicately wiping her hands with a paper napkin. She took out her cell phone, tapped the screen, and scrolled through her photo feed. “Take a look at that.”

  Riley removed her sunglasses and stared at the photo. “That’s Melody, all right. What am I missing?”

  Parrish shook her head. “I forget you’re totally not into fashion.” She took the phone away and maximized a frame that showed Melody walking out of the café.

  “See that cute little dress she’s wearing? That’s a Jason Wu, from his spring collection. Sarah Jessica Parker wore the same thing, but in green, in last week’s People magazine. I looked it up online. It retails for eighteen hundred dollars.”

  Riley squinted at the dress. “For that? Really?”

  “Um-hmm. Those pumps she’s wearing? Those are Louboutin.”

  “Even I’ve heard of them,” Riley said. “What, something like two hundred, two hundred fifty dollars a pair?”

  “In your dreams. Those are ostrich skin, six hundred dollars, on sale. Also? That tote bag where she stashed her lunch? Calfskin, Prada. Two thousand dollars easy.”

  “You’re sure it’s not a knockoff?” Riley asked. “I mean, I bought a knockoff Kate Spade bag down on Orchard Street the last time I was in New York for forty dollars.”

  “Yeah,” Parrish said. “Bootleg. Ugh. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that purse. You need to quit carrying that thing. It’s an embarrassment.”

  “Oh.” Riley studied the photo again. “Who knew?”

  “I did,” Parrish said crisply.

  Riley did the math. “She’s walking around wearing over four thousand dollars’ worth of stuff.”

  “More than that,” Parrish said. “I can’t see the logo from these pictures, but it looks like those are Chanel cat-eye sunglasses. That’s another six hundred dollars. I also can’t tell about the watch from this distance, but just based on what she’s wearing today, Melody likes timeless, classic style. If I had to bet, I’d say that’s a Cartier tank wristwatch, and they start at around two thousand dollars. Let’s say she’s wearing, conservatively, nearly seven thousand dollars’ worth of designer goodies. They must be giving away free samples to the employees of this bank.”

  “Damn, Parrish, you’re good at this.”

  “I keep up,” Parrish said. “Here’s the thing I’ve been thinking about. Melody is a very clever girl. She’s definitely got expensive taste, but she’s careful not to wear anythi
ng too flashy, like one of those giant blinged-out Louis Vuitton logo bags that all the rappers carry. Nope, it’s understated and quiet.”

  “Like Melody,” Riley said. “The question is, how does somebody who works at a community bank in Southpoint, North Carolina, afford all that stuff?”

  “Not to mention a twenty-five-thousand-dollar country-club membership,” Parrish reminded her.

  Riley thought about it. “Even if she was Wendell’s mistress, it’s hard for me to imagine him buying that stuff for Melody. I mean, he liked to think he was always buying top-of-the-line, but you said it yourself. He was a star-fucker. He totally would have gone for the Louis Vuitton, and not the Prada. Just look at the fancy purse he gave me for my birthday. I never said anything, but it was way too ostentatious for my taste.”

  “So she shops for herself. Wonder what kind of car she’s driving these days,” Parrish said.

  “Nothing fancy,” Riley said, pointing toward the parking lot. “I noticed her pulling into the ferry parking lot Memorial Day weekend. It was a perfectly ordinary silver compact.”

  “Too bad.”

  * * *

  Shortly before four o’clock, Parrish walked briskly back to her car and got in the driver’s seat. “Whew. Somebody was in the ladies’ room at the drugstore. I thought I was going to wet my pants. Anything new?”

  “Nothing. It’s almost quitting time,” Riley said. Let’s hang around and see if she goes someplace else, or heads back to the ferry. Is that okay?”

  “Yeah. Ed texted me just now. He got tied up in traffic leaving Raleigh, so he’ll be doing well to make the seven o’clock ferry.”

  “What time will the kids be here?”

  “I’m not sure. They’re flying on a buddy pass because Amanda’s dad works for the airline. They’re supposed to call when their flight gets into RDU. So I’m just having boiled shrimp and a nice green salad tonight. They can eat that whatever time they get in.”

  A flash of silver caught her eye, and Parrish pointed across the street, at a silver Kia about to make a left turn out of the bank parking lot. “That looks like Melody now.”