by Hannah Reed
Right then, Hunter’s cell phone vibrated. “It’s Sally Maylor,” he said. “I better take it.”
And that’s how we found out Holly had been arrested for the murder of Nova Campbell.
Thirty-five
Hunter and I took off for the police station on his Harley. As we breezed through the night, my man admitted that Sally had been keeping him informed as things developed, had kept him in the loop as though he was a member of the investigation team. I had guessed as much. I wasn’t the only one of us with secrets. Hunter had his share, too. Somehow that fact made me feel slightly better.
When we arrived, the cop behind the counter told us Max and his attorney were already deep inside the bowels with a killer whale named Johnny Jay. That isn’t exactly what the cop said, of course, but I easily could liken our chief to Moby Dick. Or Jaws.
While we waited for news, I considered my sister’s dilemma and how the facts must look from Johnny Jay’s point of view.
Nova had demanded that Holly stock carrot juice, so my sister asked me to bring some over. Then, having researched in advance to find the exact poison to accompany the juice, she concocted the potion from water hemlock she picked along the river’s bank (never mind that my sister is afraid of anything having to do with the nat ural world—small insects, bacteria-infested river water, etc.). Johnny Jay would have decided she killed out of jealousy, that Nova was threatening her nice fancy lifestyle, that Holly was protecting her marital status and future wealth. Holly had no alibi, and she was the only one who’d disappeared during Nova’s final moments at the riverbank. “Couldn’t handle witnessing her evil work,” Johnny would say.
My sister was in so much trouble!
A while later, after what seemed like forever, Sally Maylor came out into the waiting room with Patti Dwyre. “You’re free to go,” Sally told her, glancing our way, acknowledging us with a nod before disappearing back down the hall. I heard a door slam somewhere.
I really wished I had Holly’s skill at takedowns. Hunter must have caught a whiff of my intention to do bodily harm to Patti because he got a firm grip on my wrist.
“What happened?” I said to the traitor, trying to shake him off subtly, and failing. “Your water bottle was involved in the murder. Why would Johnny release you and arrest my sister?”
“Because,” Patti said, sounding miffed, which she had no right to be. “I’d left my surveillance bottle in her house. I didn’t remember where I’d lost it until you and I talked about it and suddenly it came back to me.”
“Just like that you remembered?”
“Just like that.”
My heart sunk. “So that’s what you told the chief?”
“Why wouldn’t I? It’s the truth.”
Hunter, sensing that I wasn’t going to lunge for Patti, released my wrist and picked up a magazine.
A thought struck me. A really disturbing one. If I’d kept my big mouth shut instead of calling the police, my sister would be free right now. Instead, I just had to implicate Patti, who in turn pointed her sneaky little finger at Holly. Why hadn’t I seen this coming? Johnny had been dropping hints regarding my sister, but I hadn’t taken him seriously, mainly because he always throws around threatening remarks. I didn’t really think that time was different.
Then Patti said to me, “Don’t go acting all innocent. The chief told me you were the one who squealed on me.”
Doesn’t it just figure? “I had my reasons.”
“And I had mine.”
We traded glares. Right now, I couldn’t trust anybody, least of all Patti Dwyre. But an old adage came to mind—keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
“Sit down and wait with us,” I said to the enemy. “If nothing else, you’ll get a good story out of this, maybe even get your old job back at the paper when they find out you have inside information.”
Hunter rolled his eyeballs but didn’t say anything. He went back to reading.
“Now,” I said once she sat down, “what’s the scoop with Harry?”
“I’m not going back to him, if that’s what you mean.”
“I mean, what’s with him stealing Holly’s truck?”
Patti shrugged. “It’s not Harry’s style to steal, so I’m guessing he didn’t.”
“And how does he know Effie? What’s their relationship?”
Patti shrugged again, although I caught a hint of surprise in her expression before it slid back to a neutral position. “How should I know?”
Until recently, I’d assumed Nova’s death had something to do with the Savour flavorists. Greed. Or competition. Or just spending too much time in the same space with the same project and somebody snapping . . . but what if her death had nothing to do with the team? Had I been chasing a red herring?
“Hunter,” I said to the buried nose, “could there be a connection between Nova and Harry and Effie and Chance?”
The look Hunter gave me once he glanced over? I didn’t like it. Still, when Patti got up and went to the restroom, I finished my thought. “Harry shows up in town, suddenly Patti’s involved in the murder big-time—her water bottle, wet pants and shoes, acting strange . . .”
“She always acts that way.”
“Harry then pops up over at Holly’s house, Patti fingers Holly as the last person around that bottle, and boom, my sister’s in jail.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Hunter said, not really looking like he was going to act on that comment.
“This is my sister we’re talking about!”
To make matters worse, my mother and Grams walked into the station. Hunter really took a major dive into that magazine. I mean really, was a ripped up old copy of Good Housekeeping that fascinating?
I told them where everything stood. Patti came out of the restroom and listened in.
Then Max appeared with his attorney. “She’ll have to go before the judge tomorrow,” he said. “Johnny Jay won’t budge on releasing her until then, so I’m staying here close by for tonight.”
“My baby has to spend the night in jail?” Mom wailed. (I wracked my brain for her past responses to my own incarcerations. “How could you?” came instantly to mind. And, “What are people going to say?”)
Jealousy smacked me right between the eyes. I smacked it back because the two of us have been going rounds for years, and I wasn’t going to let it get me down this time. Everybody has family conflicts. Besides, I had Grams on my side—sweet, loving Grams.
Holly might not be my baby, but she’s my baby sister. I stood up straight and tall and felt superhuman strength flowing through my veins, and I determined to save Holly in spite of her favored position, and I’d do whatever I had to do to prove her innocence.
I might not trust Patti, but I needed her help.
While Mom sobbed and Grams tried to comfort her, and with Hunter ignoring us and buried in his stupid magazine, I gave Patti a sign she recognized. Eyes darting to the door, a little conspiratorial smile, a barely perceptible head thingy in the same direction as my eyes.
And the two of us were off into the night.
Thirty-six
I hated to ditch Hunter without a word of warning, but he hadn’t exactly been sympathetic lately. If living with a man entails constant reprimands and bossy orders and lectures on how I should behave, or react, or feel, then I might as well be back living with my mother.
Part of me, the important part, realized I was acting out in a time of intense stress and who better to take the brunt of my whacked-out-ness than the one I love the most. Well, wasn’t that the truth of human behavior? I should be taking my pain out on someone who really deserved it. Like Johnny Jay or Lori Spandle.
The other part of me, smaller but just as noisy, couldn’t stop going out and looking for relationship problems. Enough of that for now. I’d committed to a course of action and I would take responsibility, something lots of folks avoid.
The first immediate hurdle to overcome involved transportation.
As in, we didn’t have any.
I’d arrived at the police station on the back of Hunter’s motorcycle, and Patti had made her grand entrance in the back of a squad car. What to do? Even if I had Hunter’s keys, I couldn’t drive his Harley. Even if I could, taking his bike would be the stake through the heart of our relationship, dead and gone for sure. Even I knew about certain boundaries and limits.
Grams, on the other hand, had left her keys dangling in her Fleetwood as usual, and my grandmother is the most forgiving soul on the planet.
Grand theft auto! That’s me. Patti didn’t comment or complain one bit, but she wanted to know about Effie Anderson.
We tore out of the police station with me in the driver’s seat, while I gave her my take on Harry and Effie knowing each other, how something had passed between them before Harry was hauled away. We whizzed over to Holly’s house with barely a plan of action in place.
“Who should we start with? Or where?” Patti said, getting out and closing the door as quietly as she could. We’d at least discussed and agreed on one thing—hide the vehicle from sight so as not to announce our visit. We walked up the driveway from a copse of dense, sweet-smelling honeysuckle.
“How about Max’s study?” I said, trying to place its location in my mind, another one of many of the Clue rooms.
“Good idea,” Patti said. With six bedrooms, as many baths, studies, and all those nooks and crannies, it would have taken me a while to find Max’s home office, though I shouldn’t have worried, because sneaky Patti led the way without making a single wrong turn.
We crept up the stairs, past a guest bedroom, where I could hear certain houseguests carrying on together behind a closed door. Yuck. I banished the image of them from my mind and thought a positive thought. At least we had a clear path.
Holly’s husband’s study was all manly leather, Persian rugs, and luxury rosewood furniture.
“Locked,” Patti announced after trying to pull open a drawer from a credenza that spanned an entire wall. She rummaged around in her pocket, came up with some little doodad, and before long we were staring at a long line of file folders.
We dug in, Patti on one end, me on the other.
I found a file with correspondence between the three flavorists, but the contents were gobbledygook to me. Words like miraculin and glycoprotein molecules and carb chains, a reference to the original fruit they based their research on, and several back-and-forths regarding issues with the FDA approving the product. Nothing to raise my antennae.
I just didn’t get why one of that team hadn’t already been charged with Nova’s murder instead of my sister. I mean, aside from their having alibis, which could have been trumped up. In a perfect world, Camilla and Gil should be charged with a conspiracy to take out a coworker. While I searched, I thought about the case again.
Assuming they were innocent—not a welcome option in my book, but one I had to seriously consider—who else wanted Nova out of the way bad enough to kill her? Not Max. He could just as easily fired her if he’d wanted her gone. Unless she had something on him. But even if Max had murderous tendencies and a rock-solid motive, he wouldn’t have invited her to his home for the weekend and then killed her there.
Holly, as I thought before, could also have sent the diva packing at any time. And same thing: Nobody in their right mind kills a houseguest. Besides, it was clear as day that my sister and her husband adored each other, so that stupid article that ran (and got Patti fired) was absolutely ridiculous.
So what next?
“Chance Anderson,” Patti said, as if she’d read my mind and was answering my question.
“What?” I said.
She held up a folder. “I found his file.”
Oh, right. The employment records.
Patti plopped down in Max’s executive office chair, spread out papers from the file, and selected one. She actually swung her legs up on the desk, leaned back, and started reading while I kept going in the credenza, flipping through folder after folder, finding little except more information on Savour Foods and Max’s many business dealings, more than I ever cared to go through. It would take at least a week.
“Chance’s employment background fits with this job,” Patti said, scanning the file. “Groundskeeper for a lot of years, landscaping, gardening, several local references with contact information, all high praise, no suspicious gaps in time.”
“Anything on his wife?”
“Not yet.”
She reached over and clicked a button on Max’s computer.
“You won’t be able to get in,” I told her. Patti might be able to pick a lock like a con artist, but hacking into a computer would take more time than we had. Playing with combinations was a complex, time-consuming task.
“Don’t be silly,” she said, and I watched her dragon tattoo slither on her arm as she used those muscles. “Nobody locks down their personal computer when it’s in their own office inside their own house.”
She had a point. And she was right on, because the computer beeped and kicked into gear.
I gave up the credenza for more interesting snooping.
Patti went online and keyed something into a search, but her fingers were too fast for my eyes to follow the displays. “Nothing,” she said, whizzing back and doing another search. “Humphhh,” she said, sounding puzzled.
I could always tell when Patti was onto something because her whole being became supercharged with energy, sometimes so electric her hair seemed to stand up bushier. And her eyes, like now when she glanced at me, went slightly wild.
We were into Max’s e-mail, which made me more than a little uncomfortable. “We shouldn’t pry into his personal life,” I said, feeling more like a busybody at the moment than a respectable sleuth.
Patti didn’t look up from the screen. “Based on what I’m finding, he doesn’t have a personal life, at least not online. The man is all business.”
“No other woman then?” Where had that question come from and why had I voiced it? Geez. Talk about subconscious thoughts popping through. Never once had that idea spent a single second in my head. Okay, maybe once or twice, but no way would Max actually cheat on my sister.
Patti shook her head, lifting my spirits for once. “Not one single personal e-mail. All work related.”
“That’s the reason they’re so rich,” I told her. “He’s totally focused. When he comes up for air, all he wants is to be with his wife.”
“Isn’t that sweet,” Patti said, dripping sarcasm, her fingers flying. The woman was a certified man hater, never having a single kind word to say about any of them. Maybe Holly could use her psychological skills to help Patti get past her . . . well . . . past. That is, once I got my sister out of this mess.
I tried to keep pace with Patti, but the woman was a computer dynamo. Scrolling, backspacing, clicking away.
My cell phone vibrated, I.D.’ing Hunter. I ignored the call.
It vibrated again. My mother. I didn’t answer.
“We better go,” I said to Patti, already having abandoned the computer for one more pass through the credenza.
“There must be something here,” she said.
“I found Effie’s folder!” I held it up.
And heard voices in the hallway.
“Bring it along. Let’s get out of here.”
“But we aren’t through,” I said. “I’d like to take a look in Nova’s room.”
“The cops already did that.”
“Maybe they missed something.”
A door slammed close by.
“We’re out of time,” Patti said. “We need to go.”
Which was exactly what we did.
Thirty-seven
On the way back to the police station, Patti clicked on the overhead light and skimmed through the singlepage resume Effie had turned in for the housekeeping position.
“Not much in her file,” Patti said, turning the sheet of paper over and finding nothing on the back side. “She’s from C
hicago?”
“Effie and Chance met through an online matchmaking service,” I told her. “If I remember right, soon after they got married, he applied for the job at Holly’s and they moved into the carriage house. Effie took the position of housekeeper.”
“Says she used to be a bookkeeper. I don’t recognize the name of any of the places she worked, but it’s sure a big coincidence that she’s from the same city as Harry.”
“It’s a huge city.”
“The world is a small place,” Patti countered. “Six degrees of separation. We’re all six or less steps away from a mutual connection. We have Harry married to me, then to Nova, and it seems like he might know the Andersons. Effie coming from Chicago shouldn’t be a big deal. But. . . .” She trailed off while we thought about that.
“If Effie knew Harry, though, wouldn’t you have known her, too? Wouldn’t she have known you?”
“Not necessarily,” Patti turned off the light. “Harry had his fingers in all kinds of different business ventures. She even could have worked for him after we were divorced.”
I thought about that. Harry Bruno had been taken down by Holly right in her backyard, mere yards from the carriage house where Chance and Effie were residing. Chance had been missing in action at the time. And Mabel mentioned something streaking at her, throwing her off course and causing her to veer into a tree. Could it have been Chance, going somewhere in a hurry?
It fit. Sort of.
Were the Andersons connected to Nova’s murder?
“Somebody has been setting me up,” Patti said. “We have to clear my name!”
“You!” I said, getting one of those stress-induced knee-jerk reactions and even having to correct Gram’s Fleetwood because I was busy glaring at my passenger. The car wasn’t the only thing crossing the line. “Tonight you implicated my sister. She’s the one in custody, not you!”
Good thing we’d pulled into the station. There was only so much of my neighbor I could take in one sitting.
