by Delia James
His words jolted me hard. “What do you mean?”
“I’d been so focused on getting the newspaper up and running, I didn’t pay attention to what was going on with Aunt Dot.”
He was obsessed, Laurie Thompson had said. He didn’t care. But Laurie was angry, and from the outside, it could be tough to tell the difference between passion and obsession.
“I was so used to her being able to take care of . . . well, of anything. If I look into this stuff, into the house and Brad and the Maitlands . . . what if I find out there was something I could have done, or should have done, to save her life, and Brad’s?”
“Then you need to know that.”
“Why?” he asked me, and Colonel Kitty, and the world in general.
“Because no matter what you find out, not knowing is worse. You’ll never be able to stop imagining the possibilities, and it’ll eat you alive.”
His jaw tightened, and for a minute I thought he was going to argue. Colonel Kitty licked his cheek. Then, in a display of that special feline indifference, he turned around and started vigorously cleaning his hindquarters.
I watched for a minute. “Frank?” I said.
“Yeah?” He blinked heavily.
“Um, I’ve got some news for you.”
“What?”
“Colonel Nick Kitty is a girl.”
Frank stared at me. Then he stared at the cat. Colonel Kitty lowered her one back leg and turned, and Frank stared again.
“Awww, Nick,” he groaned. “You been holdin’ out on me!”
“Maybe she was afraid you wouldn’t respect her lifestyle choice.”
“I’m a bleeding-heart journalist. I am all about diversity!”
I laughed and he laughed and Colonel Kitty got to her feet and stalked away to the windowsill with great dignity, which just got us laughing again.
“Thanks,” said Frank when we finally quieted down. “I needed that.”
“Thank the cats,” I said. “Alistair’s been a real help since this whole thing got started.”
I expected him to make some snarky comment, but he didn’t. “Well, maybe I can start living up to the family standard. I started looking into a few things since we talked.” He waved one hand toward the map of Portsmouth taped to the wall. I went over to get a closer look. “Maitland and Associates has been on a buying spree.”
“Maitland and Associates has?” The map was decorated with red and blue pushpins as well as lines of yellow highlighter. “The company itself? Are you sure? Have you got copies of the documents?”
“Yes, I’m sure, and of course I do,” Frank said as he came to stand beside me. “I was trying to find some kind of pattern in the purchases, or any significant difference between the properties Brad handled and the ones Ellis handled himself, and . . .”
“Can I see them?”
Frank frowned, but he shrugged and rifled through one of the stacks of folders on the coffee table. Colonel Kitty strolled over to sniff my Keds in case I’d accidentally dropped any bits of tuna. I perched on the sofa arm and picked her up. Alistair was having a bad effect on me. I was finding it hard to think straight without a cat to hold on to.
Eventually, Frank came up with a thick sheaf of legal-sized paper. I had to set the cat down so I could flip through it. I also may have uttered a few of my brothers’ more colorful exclamations.
“Something wrong?” inquired Frank.
“I can’t tell if they’re the same ones!”
“Same ones as what?”
“I went to Brad’s office before . . . before I’d found out he was dead. I thought with all his talk about Dorothy having copies of something important, there might be some clue there, or maybe even the originals of whatever the heck had gone missing.”
“And?”
“I was right. There was a whole file there, with Dorothy’s name on it, or at least her alias.”
“Aunt Dot had an alias?”
“Or maybe Brad assigned it to her. I don’t know. It was Dorothy Gale.”
“Why am I not surprised? What happened then?”
“I didn’t get out fast enough,” I admitted. “I ran into Ellis Maitland instead. Anyway, he looked over the documents and said they were for a whole set of properties he knew nothing about. He also said the papers had all been signed by his mother.”
Frank stared at the map and ran his hand through his hair. “Did you actually see the signatures? Can you remember any addresses?”
I shook my head. “He put the file away before I could see anything at all.”
“Okay. Okay. We need to be logical about this. We cannot be talking about the same set of properties. Ellis isn’t stupid. If he was committing fraud, he wouldn’t be altering documents that had already been filed. It’d be too easy to check.”
“Darn. I was hoping it would be something obvious.”
“Maybe it is. Maybe Brad was working with Elizabeth Maitland to commit real estate fraud.”
Brad and Elizabeth in this business together? That wasn’t a combination I’d considered. I’d been too fixed on Brad and Dorothy.
“They could be buying properties up cheap and then flipping them, or something like that. Or using shell companies or straw-man buyers to hide the profits from the IRS.”
“I thought the Maitlands were rich. Why would they need to do something like this?”
Frank made a face. “I’ve never met a rich person who didn’t want to be richer. It also means Elizabeth could afford to bribe Brad to help her.”
Brad, who had been out of work for so long, and who had a house and a car and two kids who would eventually need college tuition. He must have been going out of his mind trying to figure out how he was going afford it all. I could tell Frank was thinking something similar.
There was another possibility. I bit my lip. If Brad was taking bribes from Elizabeth to help commit fraud, he could also have been taking them from Dorothy, who might have wanted to expose Elizabeth.
I was still figuring out how to say this to Frank when a hard knocking sounded through the door. We both jumped. Colonel Kitty meowed loudly and disappeared behind the couch.
“’Scuse me a sec,” said Frank as he went to open the door.
I saw Kenisha first. She was in uniform, radio clipped to her shoulder and sidearm clipped to her belt and everything. I swallowed. This was an official visit and she wasn’t alone. A short, white, beefy man in a pale blue sports coat stepped into the apartment and held out his hand.
“Hello, Frank.”
“Hi, Pete.” Frank shook the man’s hand. He looked disappointed, but in no way surprised. “Hello, Officer Freeman. I thought you guys might be coming around.”
Pete shrugged. “It’s the job.”
“Hi, Kenisha,” I said.
“Hi, Anna.” She nodded to me, but her expression remained closed. This was going to be strictly business.
“I guess you must be Anna Britton.” Pete shook my hand too. “Detective Pete Simmons.”
So, not the famous lieutenant, then, which was something. I couldn’t tell, though, if Detective Simmons was any improvement. Kenisha’s face was as set and still as stone.
“Nice to meet you.”
Pete Simmons was a rumpled fireplug of a man with broad hands and a round, red face. His sandy hair had started to thin. His blue sports jacket strained around the shoulders and his checked shirt had seen better days.
“Well, I guess it’s like I told you on the phone, Frank.” Detective Simmons stuck his hands in his pockets and jingled his keys. “We’re asking some questions about Brad. Just making sure about things. If you want to do this later . . .”
“No. It’s not going to be any better later.” He glanced at me. “Should Anna go?”
The sharp glance the detective gave me was at odds with his awkwar
d act from a moment before. “Actually, we’ve got a few questions for Miss Britton as well. So, if you wouldn’t mind staying . . . ? This shouldn’t take long.” He pulled out a notebook and flipped through it.
While Frank cleared a stack of books and papers off the other leather armchair for Detective Simmons, I pulled a chair out from under the dining nook table and sat. Colonel Kitty immediately jumped up on my lap and rubbed against my shoulder.
“Okay, okay,” I muttered, and scratched the cat’s ears.
“You and cats,” Kenisha came over and rubbed Kitty’s back. But then her whole tone changed. “What have you been doing?” she breathed.
I swallowed and stared at her. Kenisha frowned back at me, scared and angry. This could not be about the tuna casserole. She must have found out about my visit to Maitland and Associates, which meant the rest of the coven knew about that too.
Before I could muster a reply, Kenisha took up a post at Detective Simmons’s shoulder. A shiver ran up my spine and I hugged Colonel Kitty closer.
“So, Frank, I understand you and Brad had been arguing lately?” Simmons was saying.
“That’s right,” said Frank.
“What about?”
“I rented Aunt Dot’s house to Anna.” He nodded toward me. “Brad had been angling to get hold of the property, and he was pretty upset about it.”
Detective Simmons made a note. I watched Kenisha, hoping for some kind of sign, but she was busy looking around the apartment, at the books, at the map, at Frank, at anything and everything except me.
That shiver was back, and it was spreading.
“From what I hear, the real estate market’s been pretty brisk lately,” said Simmons. “You wouldn’t think one house would mean that much.”
Frank shook his head. “Brad and Ellis have both been after the house since Aunt Dot died. I’ve never been able to figure out why.”
“Huh.” Pete flipped a few pages. “Now, Miss Britton, according to Officer Freeman, you and Brad were seen arguing in Raja Rani recently. You want to tell me what that was about?”
Of course the police would be interested in Brad’s movements over the past few days. How was I going to steer them toward looking for the other person—the one who maybe helped Brad and his car into the river—without implicating Frank? I couldn’t exactly tell Simmons about my Vibes and visions.
I opened my mouth to answer, but Kenisha cut me off.
“Better tell him about the break-in, Anna.”
“Break-in?” said Simmons.
I might not be picking up any Vibes, but I suddenly had a very bad feeling about this conversation.
It turned out Pete Simmons was an extremely patient man. He listened while I told the whole story about following Alistair into Dorothy’s house, about looking around for the cat and finding both the cat and Brad Thompson. Simmons didn’t interrupt, not once. He didn’t even ask any questions until I’d finished.
“But Brad was gone before Frank got there?”
“Yes.”
“What made you stop by that day in particular, Frank?”
Frank shrugged. “Nothing, really. It had been a while and I wanted to check on the place. There’d been a break-in before.”
“Sure, sure, sure. I remember that.” Pete made another note. “And Brad said he was looking for something?”
“It wasn’t the first time he’d been in there, either.” I told Simmons about our conversation/argument in Raja Rani. “He seemed to think the computer had been stolen because somebody else had been looking for these ‘copies.’” I paused and looked at Kenisha again. She wasn’t looking at me. She was staring out the window. “I think I know what the copies were of,” I said slowly.
Pete arched his eyebrows. “Oh?”
I told them about how I’d gone down to Brad’s office the morning he died and about what happened afterward. If, as I suspected, they already knew, it would be better for everybody if I just came clean, myself included. I also I told them about my little talk with Ellis Maitland. Detective Simmons remained entirely calm, taking notes with professional speed. Kenisha kept her gaze on the window and the chestnut tree outside.
“And this was all before you knew Brad was dead?” Pete asked. “You’re sure?”
“Yes. I’m sure.”
“What was it took you down there in the first place?”
Warning bells sounded in the back of my mind. This was going no place good. Especially since I could not tell Detective Simmons the truth; at least, not the whole truth.
“I was trying to figure out why Brad was so interested in the house that he tried to break in,” I said. “Since he was only worried about copies, I thought he must know where the originals were. I thought if he had them, he might have decided to hide them in plain sight somewhere.”
“In plain sight?” Detective Simmons flipped a page. “Under the name Dorothy Gale?”
Everybody was looking at me, Kenisha and Colonel Kitty included. “Yes.”
“Where’d you get that name?”
“I guessed it,” I said, but that sounded hollow even to me. “Dorothy Hawthorne was a fan of The Wizard of Oz.”
“That’s some guess.” Simmons tapped his pencil against his page. “So, Miss Britton, after having a public argument with Brad Thompson, you go his office. You don’t know him well, you don’t know he’s dead, but you’re interested enough that you give a false name to get a hold of some documents that don’t belong to you, and that you had not at that point told the police about. Then what?”
There are moments when you feel the world crack apart and reassemble around you. This was one of them. My vision spun and whatever I’d meant to say dried up in my throat.
“I was just looking for some kind of connection between Brad and Dorothy,” I croaked finally. “That’s all.”
“What kind of connection?”
“I . . . I don’t know. But I figured there must be something. Brad was so interested in the house.”
“Sure, sure, sure,” said Pete again. He was looking at Frank, at the map, at me. “The thing is, it’s pretty common knowledge that Dorothy and the Maitlands did not get along. I’d really hate to find out that feud was getting ugly.” He got to his feet.
“What you mean, Pete,” said Frank, “is you’d hate to find out I’d put Anna up to something.”
He shrugged. “I think Miss Britton here is capable of getting up to all kinds of things on her own. Ellis also told us that her grandmother and Dorothy were still in touch, isn’t that right, Miss Britton?”
Oh. No.
Oh, no, no, no.
“Well . . . I . . . yes, I did tell him that, I think.”
Pete’s smile was patient. “So it sure looks like this whole thing is moving along family lines, doesn’t it?” Detective Simmons read over his last page one more time before putting the notebook into one pocket and the pencil into the other. He got up and strolled across to the map with its pushpins. “Working up an article about the real estate market, Frank?”
“Maybe,” answered Frank carefully. “It’s big news these days. Recovering local economy and so on.”
“Well, good luck with that.” He was looking around again. “I think I got everything I need. Miss Britton, I might want to talk to you about one or two more things. You’ll be in town?”
“Um, yes.” I had the sudden feeling I’d better be.
Detective Simmons fished out a card and handed it to me. “If you’ve got anything else you want to say, you can call me at this number. You too, Frank.”
“So, you’re treating Brad’s death as suspicious?”
Detective Simmons smiled. It was a very engaging smile. Probably it put a lot of people at ease. “Now, you know the lieutenant would have my head if I said anything to a reporter.”
“Off the record, Pete. Bra
d was a friend. I was out looking for him half the night.”
“Yeah, Sean and Sean McNally said you looked pretty upset too.” I felt a lump form somewhere in the pit of my stomach. I should have been relieved. Because if Sean and his dad were speaking up for Frank, it meant he had an alibi, right? Right?
The detective was jingling his keys again. “Off the record, Frank, I think Brad knew something he couldn’t live with anymore.” He turned, but he turned the long way around, so his gaze swept across the entire apartment, me included.
Kenisha didn’t look back as she followed him out the door. I could feel her worry and anger beating against my skin as Frank closed the door.
“I thought you said your grandmother hadn’t talked to anybody in town for years,” he said.
“She hasn’t.” I’d thought I was being so smart. How had I failed to see how this would look to the police? Because I hadn’t thought about it. I’d never thought Ellis would actually tell the police about what had happened. But then, I hadn’t known Brad was dead either. “I lied to Ellis when I was in his office to try to get him to talk. I didn’t think he’d tell anybody about it.”
“Uh-oh,” said Frank.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Uh-oh.”
39
I DIDN’T DO much over the next few days. Nobody did. It was like Brad’s death had drained all the initiative out of us. I rattled around Dorothy’s house. I read her journals. I tried to work. I tried to pick out some furniture and rugs for the house, but I couldn’t even focus on shopping on the Internet. I pulled what I recognized as weeds from the garden and dug grass up from between the flagstones. Alistair prowled the house with me and slept curled up on my pillow. Martine came over every day. So did Val. None of us saw Kenisha. Julia said she was focused on the case.
I wished I could focus on anything else.
I didn’t go to the funeral. Maybe that was cowardly. What I told myself was that I was staying out of the way. Considering Colin’s attitude about anybody associated with Dorothy, I didn’t want to risk setting off a public argument. At least that was what I told myself. The truth is, I didn’t want to risk running into Pete Simmons at the funeral and having to answer any more of his questions.
