When they were facing each other again, she asked, “What did you want to—?”
“Never thought your mother should have sent you away,” he said. “Counseled her against it. Understand why she did it, but I told her, nothing good’s come out of England since Margaret Thatcher.”
“Does that include my mum?” Chelsea asked.
“Bah.” He waved away her question. “Your mother was a gem, but she was an American. A real citizen. Took the test and everything.”
“I know. I’m an—”
“You been educated over there,” he said. “Spent, what, fifteen years there? The formative years.”
“Thirteen. And that doesn’t make me any less an—”
“Came back with that hoity-toity accent and everything. I told Maeve sending you there was a mistake.”
Chelsea’s heart raced. “What are you implying?”
“Not back five minutes, and you’re already planning to wreck the company your father built.”
The dog growled.
Her heart raced. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Andris, but—”
“Your father loved this town. Half the reason he started his company was to save it, and in one fell swoop, you’re gonna destroy it.”
“I am not—”
“And the company won’t survive. Mark my words. Businesses that produce cheap, disposable clothes are a dime a dozen. What makes Hamilton different is our products last. They’re well made. Won’t be that way if a bunch of slaves are sewing them together in Southeast Asia.”
“I quite agree,” she said.
But he didn’t seem to hear her. Just continued rambling. “Peter loved this town.” His eyes got watery. “Loved the people here. Thought Maeve did, too. But then your daddy wasn’t in the grave six months before she sent you off to be educated by Eurotrash.” He shook his head. “And now you’re planning to destroy—”
“I am planning no such thing.” Chelsea’s voice had risen, and she forced a deep breath to calm her anger. “I thought you were on the board.”
“I am, but…” His voice faded. He lifted his hat and rubbed his bald head. “The idea was floated at our last board meeting. Everybody said they were against it.”
She started to speak, but Dylan squeezed her arm. She glanced at him, and he shook his head slightly.
Fine, then. She’d wait.
“But I could see it in their eyes, the greed.” Mr. Andris’s gaze flicked to Laura’s house. “That woman would sell her soul if she thought it would pay her bills. She’s got debt out the wazoo.”
“Her daughter is in full-time care,” Chelsea said. “That must be expensive. It’s not greedy to want to care for your family.”
Mr. Andris only smirked.
Dylan asked, “Who floated the idea of relocating the factory?”
Mr. Andris leveled his gaze at Chelsea. “Your mother.”
“Certainly not. Mother wouldn’t have—”
“Not like that.” He waved his hand toward her. The action sent him off-balance, and Dylan reached to steady him.
The dog growled again, and Dylan stepped back and touched the handgun hidden beneath his golf shirt.
She’d rarely met a dog that scared her, but this one looked eager to dig its teeth into her neck. Seemed Dylan felt the same way.
Mr. Andris’s lips pulled down as he shook his head. “Maeve introduced it, saying someone else had suggested it. When we asked, she refused to say who. I just figured it was…” He met Chelsea’s gaze.
Who else had assumed she’d been the one to suggest it?
Mr. Andris continued. “She said she wanted to bring it out in the open, and then she explained all her reasons why she wasn’t in favor.”
“Of course not,” Chelsea said. “Nor am I.”
“So it wasn’t you? The rumors aren’t true?”
“Hamilton Clothiers belongs in Coventry.”
Mr. Andris held her gaze a long moment, then nodded toward the house. “What were you doing with Laura?”
Dylan answered before she could. “We had some questions for her. I’m a private investigator. We’re trying to figure out who’s trying to kill Chelsea, and why.”
Mr. Andris looked from Dylan to her. “If what you’re saying is true, then it’s obvious, ain’t it? Greedy people”—again, the old man’s gaze went to the house—“wanna see the factory shut down in Coventry. Lower costs mean higher profits, higher profits mean more money in shareholders’ pockets.”
So not a disgruntled employee angry she was going to move his job, but an angry shareholder angry she was keeping them from cashing in?
But the shareholders… There weren’t very many. Hamilton was a family company, always had been. There were just a handful of shareholders. Herself, Uncle Frank, and a few people who’d invested at the beginning, helped Daddy and Mum to get started, people like Mr. Andris here.
“How many shares do you own?” Chelsea asked.
Mr. Andris chuckled. “Not enough to kill over. Not that I would.”
“How about Laura Blanchette?” Dylan asked. “How many does she own?”
Mr. Andris’s eyes sparkled. “More’n me. But I don’t know for sure.” He nodded to Chelsea. “You own the most by far. That uncle of yours owns a good portion.”
“I’m aware,” she said.
“You should have all the information you need in your office,” he said. “If you ever decide to get to work. Or maybe you don’t wanna take over the company.”
“I do. I intend to, but—”
“She was pushed off a cliff Monday,” Dylan said. “And shot at yesterday. You might want to give her a break.”
The humph told him what he thought of that. “I’m an old man. I care about HCI because”—he gripped Chelsea’s arm—“I love this town. And I loved your father. Loved him like my own son. Your grandpa and I were best friends. I watched Peter grow up. Frank, too. Frank was average, but Peter… Peter was something special. Peter was exceptional.” He let go of her arm and stepped back. “You’re all that’s left of Peter and Maeve Hamilton, you and the company they built. They wanted you to have it, to control it one day. Either you gotta take the helm, or you gotta get someone else to, someone besides that moron uncle of yours. If you don’t, they’re gonna steal it right out from under you.”
She swallowed at the vehemence in his voice.
“Sir,” Dylan said, “you said something about understanding why Mrs. Hamilton sent Chelsea away for her education.”
“Ayuh. Not rocket science. After Peter was murdered, she was scared.” He nodded to Chelsea. “Scared she’d be next.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
That evening, Dylan still didn’t know what to make of all they’d learned.
They’d left Arthur Andris and Laura Blanchette back in Coventry. Even though it had only been midafternoon, it was clear by the paleness in Chelsea’s cheeks and the way she’d limped that she needed to rest. And he needed to process all they’d learned.
After he helped Chelsea to her room in Angel and Donovan’s B and B, he went into his room—with the light blue walls, the white curtains, and the four-poster bed that looked straight out of the eighteenth century—and called Eric Nolan in Nutfield.
“Prints at the cabin turned up nothing,” Eric said. “None of them matched those on file for Zeke Granger. Not shocking. The man had planned murder. Surely he wore gloves.”
It would’ve been nice to confirm Dylan’s suspicions. He thanked Eric and dialed Cote, who’d had just as much good news to share.
“Paid a visit to Granger’s place in Plymouth.” The detective’s gravelly voice was gruff. “He lives in an apartment over a garage. Lady in the house said she hasn’t seen her tenant since Sunday, but he called Monday afternoon to say he had a family emergency and was headed out of town. He asked if she would feed his cat while he was gone.”
“Have you searched the place?” Dylan asked.
The man huffed, then coughed. “On what grounds?�
�� After another cough, he cleared his throat and continued. “All we got is a sketch of a guy who might sort of look like Granger and a sketch of a license plate that may or may not have been near the site of a car accident. Both sketches were drawn by an autistic guy who’s afraid of his own shadow.”
The police couldn’t search it, but Dylan could. He’d have never considered an illegal search—breaking and entering, if he wanted to be technical about it—when he was a detective, but now… His goal then had been to put bad guys behind bars. His goal now was to keep Chelsea safe, no matter what.
Cote said, “Looks like Neely’s guys are focused on the angry-employee angle, interviewing people who work for HCI, people who’ve made their feelings about the relocation rumors known.”
That was good. It meant Dylan could focus on other facets of the investigation. He filled Cote in on everything they’d learned that day, including the conversations with Tabby Eaton, Laura Blanchette, and Arthur Andris.
“What I wanna know,” Cote said, “is what’s Granger got to do with it?”
“What do you know about him?”
“Used to work for HCI in their shipping department,” Cote said. “Got fired eight years ago for stealing. Company didn’t press charges.”
“Were you involved then?”
“Sure,” Cote said. “I recommended they throw the book at the guy, but Mrs. Hamilton… She was a softie. Didn’t want to send him to prison.”
“If he was guilty,” Dylan said, “and she didn’t press charges, then he owed her. Why would he murder her?”
“You’re gettin’ ahead of yourself,” Cote said. “We don’t know he did. All we have is that drawing, and that drawing proves nothing. Even if his car was there, doesn’t mean he caused her wreck.”
True. But he looked like the guy who’d been shooting at Chelsea and the guy Dougie had seen on the mountain. And he’d disappeared after Chelsea was pushed from the cliff. Too many coincidences, and Dylan didn’t believe in coincidences. “When are you going to talk to Dougie?”
“The special ed teacher and I are going there tomorrow afternoon. I’ll know more then.” The man blew out a raspy breath. “If he saw the accident…”
“And you’re keeping that interview quiet?” Dylan asked. “We don’t want Dougie to become a target.”
“Been at this since you were swinging from the monkey bars. I know what I’m doing.”
Except Cote’d blown the first interview he’d done with Dougie. “And you’re working on finding Granger?”
“Got the whole state looking for him,” Cote said.
“How about family members, friends—?”
“Working on that, too. I got one of my guys looking into his family. Trust me, Dylan. I got it.”
After Dylan hung up with Cote, he showered and left his room. Donovan and Angel had gone to Nashua—celebrating somebody’s birthday, he thought—so, aside from him and Chelsea, the place was empty.
He paused at Chelsea’s door. Quiet in there. Maybe she’d fallen asleep. He headed down the stairs and out the back door onto the lawn that looked out over Clearwater Lake.
Like Lake Ayasha, this lake was small, rimmed in tall trees, and sparkling in the evening sun. The buzz of boat engines carried as he settled on one of the Adirondack chairs set on the hill at the edge of the yard. He’d brought his notebook and studied it now, hoping something new, something he’d missed, would jump out at him.
Why would Zeke Granger want Chelsea dead? When he’d been fired from HCI, she’d been a teenager at boarding school in England. The guy lived in Plymouth now. Did he grow up in Coventry? He made a note to ask Cote about that.
Even if Zeke had been from Coventry, he was seventeen years older than Chelsea. It was doubtful the two had ever crossed paths. Did Granger carry a grudge against her for some reason? Maybe he didn’t like rich people in general, or maybe he wanted to hurt Chelsea to get back at the company for firing him.
Maybe. But it felt flimsy.
It made more sense that Granger was working for whoever wanted her dead. Maybe Cote would be able to discover a connection to somebody.
“Mind if I join you?”
Chelsea stepped around the second Adirondack chair. Her hair was wet, her makeup scrubbed off. In the evening light, she looked like a carefree teenager, not a twenty-five-year-old woman wracked with grief.
“Please,” he said. “Did you get something to eat? Angel left a plate of cold cuts and a salad.”
“I found a piece of cold fried chicken.”
“Seriously? How’d I miss that?”
She slipped into the chair beside his. “There’s more. Angel said to help ourselves, so…” She glanced his way, a shy smile on her face. “I hope she wasn’t just being polite.”
At one time, when Angel was his CI, he’d have suspected that everything she said was for her own benefit. But now he knew her better. “She wouldn’t have offered if she hadn’t meant it.”
Chelsea stared at the view in front of them. “It’s charming.”
It was nice, no doubt. A dock jutting out over the water, a fishing boat floating beside it. “Nothing like the view you have from your house, though.”
“True.” The single word carried a wistfulness he hadn’t expected. “My house… it sits above it all. Separate. From town, from the company, from the people. Uncle Frank lives about a mile down the street, but otherwise… It’s how my life has been since Daddy died. Before, I was a normal girl who went to a normal school and did the normal things kids in Coventry did. I played soccer and took dance and went trick-or-treating with Tabby in her neighborhood. We’d go to the lake in the summers, swim, go tubing. We’d ski in the winters.”
She paused a moment, sighed. “When my father was killed, everything changed.”
The sun’s fading light shone on her skin, making her face glow. Still, the sadness lingered.
“Mum pulled me from school and all my activities. She hired security, had me driven everywhere by two bodyguards, male and female, neither of whom made any effort to talk to me. Not that it was their job, but without my activities, without school, with Mum trying to run the company without Daddy…”
She ran her fingers through her damp hair, pulled it over one shoulder. She didn’t glance his way, didn’t catch him staring.
“About… oh, seven years ago, I think, the Patriots played a football game in London, and I wanted to get tickets. I was plenty old enough to go to a football game by myself. But when I mentioned it to Mother… not asking permission, mind you, just an offhand remark about how I wanted to educate my English friends about real football—she insisted it wasn’t safe. Even with the goonies”—she glanced at him, her lips tipped up at the corners—“my nickname for my security team, Mum was sure I’d be in danger. She reserved a box. All I’d wanted was to go to a football game like an ordinary American, and instead, I was trapped in a glassed-in box at Wembley Stadium.” She tapped her fingers on the arm of the chair. “My friends thought it was great fun, and you probably think…”
When she didn’t finish, he said, “I think it makes sense that you want to live your own life, to be free from the constraints that come from wealth.”
Tilting her head to one side, she asked, “Does it? I have no idea. I’ve spent half my life looking at the world as if from that glass box. Distant, separate. Even at boarding school, I was different—the American girl with the funny accent. I worked hard to fit in, worked hard to cultivate this accent that’s so inconvenient now. I just wanted to be one of them.”
She wasn’t a snob. She didn’t know how to behave like a regular person because she’d never been allowed to be one.
Standing, she sent him a smile that was tight at the corners. “I’ve had every advantage, and I know that.” A breeze lifted her hair, blew it across her face. She pushed it behind her ears. “So many people truly suffer in life, and here I am complaining that I had to watch the Patriots from a luxury box, something most people never have t
he opportunity to do. I’m wealthy, and my future is secure.”
He stood beside her, looked down at her “Is it?”
The smile faltered. “Assuming I survive, I have a company to run, a duty to—”
“Is it a duty you want, though?”
She scrunched her eyes as if confused. As if nobody had ever posed the question.
“I have no doubt you’ll be great at it,” he said, “but were you ever given a choice? Did your mother ask you if you wanted to run Hamilton?”
She walked toward the lake. “I always understood my responsibilities.”
He kept in step with her. “I don’t doubt that, Chelsea. But do you want it?”
The sun had dropped below the trees behind them. In front of them, the first few stars twinkled in the dark sky.
They crossed the narrow beach and reached the shore. Around them, frogs croaked and crickets chirped. The water lapped the sand, a gentle rhythm to the evening.
“We’re the same in a way,” she said finally. “You feel a duty to protect people because of what happened to your sister. If she hadn’t died, what do you think you’d have done with your life?”
He thought back to the life he’d lived before. That boy seemed like a child from a fairytale, a child with no connection to who Dylan was today. “I was nine. Her death shaped me. I can’t imagine what I’d be doing now, or who I’d be, if she were still here.”
“That’s it, isn’t it?” She turned to face him. Her blue eyes were shadowed now, barely discernible in the darkness. “We can’t see another path from the one we’re on. We can only go forward.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chelsea stared at the ceiling long after she’d shut off the light. She desperately needed sleep, but her mind churned from all they’d learned that day. The company she loved, the company that had fed and clothed and housed and educated her, the company that had been her family’s lifeblood her entire life, was in shambles, and Chelsea couldn’t understand why. How could it have fallen apart so fast? Mum had only been gone… Chelsea calculated the days. Ten.
Legacy Reclaimed Page 16
