“I am soooo glad to hear your voice,” I said.
“I hear trouble. Are you okay?”
“Yes … sort of … not really. Oh, Ty, Ellis found a love note from Henri in my desk at home. It wasn’t addressed to me or anything, but isn’t that completely creepy? Someone snuck in my house and slipped a love note into my desk drawer.”
“At least now we know why someone broke in, to hide it.”
“True,” I said, thinking how fortunate I was that Ty was confident in my love. No smoke without fire, some men might think or say. Not Ty. Never for a moment did he doubt me. “There’s more.” I could barely get the words out. I sipped some water, then told him about the photo, and was about to describe locating Andrew Bruen when he interrupted me.
“This is crazy, Josie. I’m coming home.”
“Thank you, Ty, but there’s no need. I’m no longer a suspect. The attempt to frame me failed. There’s nothing either of us can do at this point.” I took a breath. “I don’t want to talk about the ugly anymore. I’ll fill you in about the rest later. Tell me about you instead. What’s going on there? Is it going well?”
“Very. They want me to stay at least one more day, maybe two.”
I swallowed disappointment. “Because of good news or bad news?”
“Good news. The initial assessment is done, and we know which programs we’re going to focus on. Now we need to plan the hows and wherefores and so on. The head of training has asked me to be on the roll-out committee. Since getting these programs into the field is top priority, the committee starts meeting tomorrow.”
“Ty, that’s wonderful! What an opportunity.”
“Yeah,” he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “I’m pretty pleased. Except I hate being away from you. Especially now.”
“Me, too,” I said. “You know that if I needed you here, I’d say so.”
“And you know that if you did, I’d be on the first plane out of here. I love you, Josie.”
“I love you, too, Ty.”
We agreed to talk before bedtime, and when the call was over, I pressed the unit to my chest, keeping Ty close for just a moment longer.
* * *
With Ty out of town, there was no reason to hurry home. I tried to put the murder out of my mind, to think about work, but my thoughts kept sliding back to Henri. I picked up the last-minute additions to Fred’s music catalogue copy, including the 1861 Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume violin we’d be auctioning off for Frisco’s, and realized a minute later that I’d just read the first paragraph three times over without a word registering.
All I could think about was whether the murder was related to Lester Markham’s storage unit, and why someone would pick on me. Facts and impressions came in seemingly arbitrary order. I was privy to countless details about both investigations, but nothing I knew seemed to gel. Out of ideas, I decided to write down everything I knew about the situation. Without worrying about order of importance, chronology, or any other variable, I made a list, jotting down anything that might be relevant. When I was done I read it over.
1. The five silent movie posters in Henri’s storage room were valuable, maybe worth as much as $250,000 or more. Drew thought they were worth $80,000, but his information was out of date. Everything was relative, though, since to Drew, $80,000 was a fortune. Robbery was a possible motive.
2. Nothing else in the locker had anything close to that level of value.
3. Someone stole my phone at the Winter Festival and set up the fake Gmail account and downloaded a remote access app. That meant that whoever did those things attended the festival.
4. Essentially everyone I knew from Rocky Point was at the festival, but people came and went. Some people ate and ran. Others lingered late into the evening.
5. Leigh Ann and Henri had plenty of money, cash, to start their business. No one knew where the cash came from, or if they did, they weren’t talking.
6. Henri left everything to his father, Pierre.
7. The day before he died, Henri spoke to a lawyer.
8. Henri said the call from the lawyer was urgent.
9. Henri pledged me to secrecy because I’d witnessed his reaction to the call. Henri said he didn’t want Leigh Ann to know the caller had conveyed bad business news.
10. Scott adored Leigh Ann.
11. Leigh Ann adored Henri.
12. Leigh Ann wanted to be friends with Scott.
13. Someone tried to frame me for Henri’s murder, breaking into my house, planting a phony love note and doctored photograph in my desk, and placing the murder weapon in my car.
14. Whoever broke into my house used a key.
15. That person drove a silver car, a silver Malibu, or a similarly shaped car.
16. Whoever tried to frame me knew how to use photo-manipulation software, which meant everyone who worked at a computer, or most everyone.
I reread the list considering whether each entry was, in fact, true. No one knows what anyone else feels. You can’t. We rely on what people say and do to assess how they feel, and behaviors can be faked to create a certain perception. People do it all the time.
No patterns emerged.
No entry stuck out as especially meaningful, or not.
I reread the list yet again, this time from the bottom up, and still nothing occurred to me.
I had no epiphany. I felt no clarity at all.
Forget the list, I told myself. Consider only motive, means, and opportunity. I nodded, eager to see how the facts fit into those three buckets.
The motive was unknown. Why do people kill? Lust, love, jealousy. Revenge, hate, humiliation. Greed, envy, pride. Any one of those emotions could be building inside someone, festering without anyone else knowing about it. Then when the killer explodes in murderous rage people express astonishment, saying they had no clue. Often there were plenty of clues, if only people knew where to look.
Means was all too vividly known. Anyone could buy a tire iron at any one of a hundred stores in a twenty-mile radius. Pay cash and no one would remember the transaction.
A bird chirped, a high-pitched, urgent sound, and Hank looked up. I swiveled to face the window, but I couldn’t locate it. The sun was low and the tree limbs were shimmying. It looked cold. Hank considered getting up to investigate further; instead, he resettled in my lap.
Motive … unknown. Means … known, but knowing didn’t lead to the killer. Regarding opportunity, there were four times to consider—the January afternoon when the e-mail and remote access had been set up on Henri’s phone, and later when it had been set up on mine; the February afternoon when Henri had been murdered; and the overnight hours when my house had been broken into and the tire iron secreted in my car.
Since the car Scott drove matched the color and model of car seen in the bank’s security film, I started with him.
Scott hadn’t been in Rocky Point the day of the Winter Festival. Or had he? I’d known, at least by sight, almost everyone at the Winter Festival. I had no way of knowing if I simply hadn’t noticed Scott or if he hadn’t been there.
I’d gotten the impression from Leigh Ann that Scott’s weekend visit was his first trip to New Hampshire since she’d moved to Rocky Point, but maybe my impression was wrong. Scott said he didn’t know the area, which is why he’d been driving around while Henri was being killed, but not knowing the area was different than never having set foot in a place. Regardless, Scott had no alibi for Henri’s murder.
Scott could have left Leigh Ann asleep and driven to my house during the overnight blizzard. He’d been the one to tell me Leigh Ann hadn’t slept, not her. I considered the logistics. Scott was a landlord, so it wasn’t a stretch to think he knew his way around locks and keys, at least enough to jury-rig keys. Hank licked my hand.
“You’re wondering whether Henri might have held a different view of divorce from Scott’s it’s no-biggy attitude, aren’t you, Hank? Perhaps he had religious objections. How can I find out? It’s not a question you
can ask a widow.”
Hank jumped down and walked toward the door. Three paces short, he sat down and began grooming, licking his flank with long, sweeping motions of his tongue, as if he had a sudden itch and couldn’t wait to scratch it.
“Well, answer me this, young man. Don’t you agree that I can make anyone look guilty simply by focusing on certain facts and excluding others?” Hank looked up, made a soft mewing noise, then returned to the task at hand. “I agree. It’s why it’s crucial that in thinking things through, I try to determine not only who’s guilty but who’s innocent.” Hank raised his leg like a Rockette and began cleaning his inner thigh. “In fact, I think it’s innocence that matters most.”
Scott might not be the only person who knows his way around locks and keys, I thought. Suzanne might, too. I recalled her saying that to do her job, she had to know how to wield a screwdriver. I wondered just how handy she was.
An image of her came to mind. Her delicate features. Her designer clothes. Her seemingly innate warmth and graciousness. When Suzanne had greeted Henri at their shop and at the Blue Dolphin, she’d welcomed him with familiar delight, her eyes twinkling, her hands outstretched. Maybe Suzanne decided to stay in Rocky Point not because we were all such nice people but because she’d fallen in love with Henri. It couldn’t be; it just couldn’t. Not after the nightmare that led to the Blue Dolphin closing in the first place.* Don’t be silly, I thought, telling myself I was imagining things. Sparkling eyes didn’t prove a woman was in love. If she had loved Henri, though, and their connection was, to her, a relationship laden with significance, not a tawdry affair, and if she discovered that to Henri their relationship wasn’t meaningful at all, that it was about sex, not love, she might have lost it.
I could picture them in the storage room. Henri tells her it’s over. She begs him to leave Leigh Ann, to be with her. He refuses. She turns to leave, sees the tire iron in a box of miscellany, grabs it, and beats him senseless, killing him. Crimes of passion happened.
The saga I’d just constructed was woven out of factual threads, but that didn’t make it whole cloth. If I assigned too much meaning to a fact, or if I interpreted one improperly, the thread it represented wouldn’t hold and the fabric would unravel. Maybe Suzanne’s eyes lit up because she’d just heard she’d been promoted. Perhaps she won at bingo. Maybe she was just a happy gal, and her eyes always sparkled.
Guilt stabbed at me, then receded. I had nothing against Suzanne. My faux-indictment wasn’t personal. I could perform this same exercise with anyone, with everyone. Or at least with everyone who’d attended the Winter Festival.
Like Suzanne.
That night, she could have taken my phone from my tote bag, added the software and e-mail account, and slipped it back into the bag. She could have approached the chair where the bag sat, leaned over, perhaps to see if the winter berries in the centerpiece had a scent, and while there, scooped out the phone. Five seconds, maybe less, was all it would take.
The morning Henri was murdered, Suzanne sat at my guest table with easy access to my tote bag. Sasha and I went to the warehouse to gather up the wall art. Suzanne wouldn’t have been able to photocopy my keys or scan them, not with Cara sitting there. She could have pressed each key into putty, creating exact outlines of the shapes. Cara was on the phone and almost certainly wouldn’t have noticed. Later that day, Suzanne was late for her paint color consultation.
She could have driven to my house during the overnight hours. Suzanne, I recalled, with a sharp intake of breath, drove a silver car, a Mercedes. Maybe Ty was wrong, I thought, and the car barely visible in the bank security camera photo wasn’t a Malibu. A Mercedes sedan has a similar shape.
I laughed, embarrassed. “Well, that proves my point,” I told the air. “I can convict anyone of anything.”
I needed to stop speculating and find the truth, not indict people in a make-believe kangaroo court.
I couldn’t just walk away. I needed to know who tried to frame me for murder. I felt violated. I’d been violated. I needed more information, and I would get it. I had a vested interest in the outcome, two vested interests, as I thought of it, one personal and one professional. I wanted to know, I needed to know, who’d been dastardly enough to try to convince the police that I was involved in Henri’s murder. For my appraisal, I needed to know if the silent movie posters could be sold with clear title.
From what Wes had told me, everything the couple owned was registered in Henri’s name, and he’d left everything to his father. I didn’t know why Leigh Ann wasn’t a party to the business or his heir, and I needed to. Decisions had been made, and I couldn’t imagine that the reasons behind them had died with Henri, which meant that someone else knew. Leigh Ann, certainly.
I thought about Leigh Ann, bubbly usually, yet with an undercurrent of something, I didn’t know what. Discontent? Worry? I had no way of knowing. I couldn’t ask her why Henri excluded her from the business, why he cut her out of his will. I could, however, ask his dad, or maybe I could, if I could think of a business need and come up with appropriately businesslike language. If Henri had confided in anyone, it would have been his father.
I glanced at my computer monitor. It was nearly 8:00, 2:00 A.M. in Paris, too late to call. Neither my French nor his English was good enough to talk to him about issues requiring specific vocabulary anyway, issues like whether he wanted to consign the silent movie posters for sale or have them shipped to him in France, issues like love and passion. I needed a translator.
I reached for the phone, then paused, wondering if I needed to tell Ellis that I planned to call Pierre. Yes, I was calling because of my personal interest, but so what? I wasn’t breaking any laws. I was also calling as an antiques appraiser, and no matter what he thought of my personal motive, there was nothing improper about that.
I dialed Fred’s extension.
“Do you still use Dr. Bounard for French translations?” I asked, referring to a New York City–based art historian.
“Sometimes. It depends on the project. For general translations, I’ve been using Yvonne Linten, a grad student at Hitchens. She’s very nice, and, of course, she’s local.”
I took Yvonne’s number and dialed, getting her voice mail. Darn! I thought.
“Hi, Yvonne,” I told the machine. “This is Josie Prescott. Fred, one of my antiques appraisers, tells me you’re terrific at French translation. I need to make a call to a French speaker in Paris. It’s already too late to call there, so I guess we’ll need to wait until tomorrow. Would you call me back so we can set something up?” I gave her my contact information and ended with “It’s pretty important, so the sooner I hear from you, the better.”
I hate delays. I took my time making decisions, but once the decision was made, I wanted to act. I might not be able to reach Pierre tonight, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t talk to other people. Suzanne, for instance.
Obviously, I couldn’t ask Suzanne if she’d been having an affair with Henri, but there were plenty of other questions I could ask, questions that might help me understand why someone chose me to frame, why she might have thought that I was an appealing or easy target.
Dinner service at the Blue Dolphin would be well underway, so she might be available to chat.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Suzanne was standing in her usual spot by the Blue Dolphin’s hostess stand, and she greeted me with a big smile, yet her manner seemed subdued. She was warm, but not open. Her eyes weren’t sparkling.
“Do you have a reservation, Josie?” Frieda asked, casting her eyes down to the reservation book.
“No, not tonight,” I said. I looked at Suzanne. “I was wondering if you had a moment to talk.”
“Of course,” Suzanne said, covering her surprise with another smile. “Come to the lounge and I’ll buy you a drink.”
Walking toward the lounge, I glanced into the dining room. Leigh Ann and Scott sat at a small table near the window, near the fire.
�
�Leigh Ann’s here,” I said.
“Yes. Scott called this afternoon for a reservation. He told me he thought she needed to get out of the house. He seems genuinely concerned about her, doesn’t he?”
I agreed and followed her to a round table by the window. Jimmy came out from behind the bar, and I ordered a French martini.
“I’m on duty,” Suzanne said to me and asked for hot tea.
Before I sat, I asked, “Would you mind if I take a minute and say hello to them?”
“Of course not. I’ll be right here.”
Scott saw me as I approached, said something to Leigh Ann, and stood up.
I nodded at Scott, then said, “Hi, Leigh Ann.” I leaned over to kiss her cheek. “I’m so glad to see you. You look great.”
She did, too. Her skin had regained its color. Her eyes were clear.
“Thank you, Josie. It’s day by day, but once the shock wears off, well, then it’s just about keeping on keeping on, you know?”
“I can’t even imagine, Leigh Ann. It’s so horrible.”
“It is, but I keep reminding myself what Mama always says about times like this … it’s awful … it’s awful … and then it’s over. That’s how I’m feeling now. Like I’m still in the awful part, but it’s not as awful as it was even as recently as yesterday. Today, I know the awful will be over and I’ll be able to move forward. Yesterday, I wasn’t so sure.”
“Will you join us?” Scott asked, sitting. “We haven’t even ordered yet.”
“Thanks, no. I’m meeting someone for a drink, so I only have a minute.” I turned to Leigh Ann. “I just wanted to tell you I was thinking of you. Let’s get together soon.”
“I’d like that. I was going to call you tomorrow. It looks like I’m leaving for France on Saturday. I think it will be Saturday. It depends on when they release Henri’s body. Pierre, Henri’s father, you remember, Josie, he wants Henri buried in Paris, next to his mother.”
Lethal Treasure: A Josie Prescott Antiques Mystery (Josie Prescott Antiques Mysteries) Page 25
