“I know,” Fran said. Her mind was still boggling about the note and the cash. Someone must have planted it there, of course, but who? And why? Emily got along with just about everyone. Fran couldn’t think of any enemies she would have, much less common enemies with Byron Stratford.
“Anyway, I’m doomed,” Emily said. “Just try to see that Waverly gets looked after. Persuade Vanessa to hire a new nanny.”
Fran managed a smile. “Actually, she’s pretty hopeful you’ll get out. She said she was confident you’re innocent, and that you’ll get out soon.”
Emily didn’t smile back. If anything, the lines in her frown only got deeper. “Another example of how she doesn’t live in the real world.” Then she hurried to add, “But at least she believes I didn’t do it. I was scared everyone would turn on me.” Emily looked down at her hands and whispered, “Even you.”
“Oh, get out of here,” Fran said, annoyed. “I would never do that. Of course I believe you’re innocent. And I would never turn my back on you.”
“Your…” The young cop seemed to run out of steam after just one word. Then he took a deep breath, staring resolutely at his watch, in an obvious attempt to avoid eye contact. “Your time is up now.”
“Okay,” Fran said, then quickly turned to Emily again. “Come, give me another hug.”
Emily hurried over without a sigh or undue pause. “Please find out who did it,” she whispered into the space between the bars. “Please.”
“I will,” Fran said, though her self-doubt was already kicking in, and probably with good reason. What did she know about investigating? Beyond her mother’s love for a British gardening mystery show called Rosemary & Thyme, where two middle-aged women gardeners solved crimes together, and a couple of other TV mysteries, Fran was clueless. “I will,” she said again to Emily, trying to work out what on earth she was going to do.
If she’d had money, she would have thrown a great wad at a private investigator until he dredged up the culprit red-handed. But she hadn’t even been paid her fee for the party, and knew it would be highly insensitive to bring it up. Her cash reserves were dwindling, but she had enough to pay Mrs. McCabe for another two weeks—only because the kindly old lady was giving her a discounted rate for a long stay.
“Come on now,” the young cop said, trying out an authoritative voice, but only sounding like a toddler trying to boss fully grown adults around.
“Bye, Emily,” Fran said, and hated doing so. It sounded so final. How could she leave with her good friend locked up in a cell?
“See you,” Emily replied, which sounded much better.
Fran let herself be led away by the young cop, who had a touch that was light and tentative one minute, jerking and rough the next.
“And get Anna to help you!” Emily called out after her. “She walks everyone’s dogs. Maybe she can find stuff out.”
Fran nodded and turned to give her a little wave. “I’ll do my absolute best, Em,” she said. “See you real soon, okay?”
The police station was a big one, and it was quite a way back to the front desk, through a maze of corridors. Fran was glad the cop was there with her, or she’d have gotten lost, for sure.
But she was not at all glad when they turned another corner to find a cop striding along, his head buried in a file. Pascal. He looked up at them, and as soon as he saw Fran, his expression darkened. “Francesca Finch,” he said.
Fran gulped, wondering if she wasn’t supposed to be there. “Yes?”
Pascal read out a number from his paperwork—Fran’s cell number. “That’s yours, correct?”
A feeling of uneasiness was spreading through her. Something wasn’t right. Something wasn’t right at all. “Yes, it is.”
“Keep it on at all times,” he said firmly. “And you’re staying at the Old Farmhouse with Molly McCabe and Leon McCabe, is that correct?”
“Yes,” Fran said, her feeling of dread only spreading like a pool of blood.
“Do not leave town. Do not move accommodation. And do not switch off your cellphone. Are we clear?”
Fran felt her hands shaking and she clasped them together, trying to stop it. “Yes, that’s fine,” she said. “Am I…” She couldn’t let the word ‘suspect’ pass her lips somehow—it just wouldn’t come out.
“You’re a childhood friend of Emily’s?”
“We went to high school together. We’ve been friends since we were twelve, although we hadn’t spoken in a long while before she invited me here.”
Pascal’s eyebrows shot up. “Is that a fact? Any way you can verify that, Miss Finch?”
“Uh…” Fran’s brain felt like a dog chasing its own tail and never catching it. “I guess…you could look through all my records and see that she isn’t there?”
Pascal looked back down at the papers and curled his lip. “Yes, well, remember my instructions. Or you’ll regret it.”
Then he pushed past them and strode on down the corridor.
“Sir?” Fran called out after him, suddenly bold enough to ask him why he was asking her all those questions. Was she really a suspect? In a heart-stopping moment, Fran realized he might have thought Emily had written that note to Fran herself. He didn’t turn around, and the young cop only gave her a helpless shrug for comfort.
As they walked down the dim corridor back to the entrance, Fran wondered if Emily had actually been framed, or if someone had put the bag of cash and the note in the wrong room by accident. Someone from outside, who didn’t know the house very well. Maybe they’d been snooping inside during the party, when Byron had been shot, and the message was left for the shooter. But it didn’t make sense, even then. Because if the note was still with the money, it meant they hadn’t left with it as they’d planned, for some reason.
The whole thing all felt like one huge knot of string she would never be able to untangle. And the price of her inability might just be Emily’s freedom to live a normal life.
“Goodness,” Fran said, struggling as Jerry pulled hard on the leash. “These dogs aren’t as mild as they look, are they?”
Anna flashed a grin. “Nope. They might look like nothing but big lollopy softies, but they’re strong, too, and energetic. I mean, they’re totally harmless. They’d never bite. But they’re more boisterous than you might think.” She held the leash with a firm grip, her steps hard on the sidewalk as Ben pulled her a little more quickly than she’d have naturally gone.
Fran had been dubious when Anna had suggested their walk. “Now?” Fran had said, looking out the window, incredulous. The sun was beating down onto the roadway, and everything seemed to emanate midday heat.
“Trust me,” Anna had replied with a smile, “there’s nothing like it. You just have to shower afterward. Then you feel like a million dollars.”
So Fran had shrugged and decided to give it a whirl. And now she was out in the open, the bright rays blazing down on her and the air thick with heat. Sweat had both her body and face wet. She’d given up on wiping it away a few streets before when she’d realized it just sprang up again two seconds later and all that extra movement in order to wipe it away was only making her agitated. She’d left her jacket in the Stratford mansion, where they would drop Ben and Jerry back later. Her sundress was pretty much wet through, but it was hard to care. She so rarely went out in the full blaze of the sun, not caring if she sweated or not. It felt gloriously liberating.
“So who do you think did it?” Anna asked.
“Did what?” Fran had allowed herself to be carried into the sweet escape of the moment. Then she made a quick snap back to the darker side of her reality. “Oh right, um…” She shook her head. “Really, I have no idea. I didn’t know Mr. Stratford that well.”
“Me either,” Anna said, sounding a little bitter. Fran—her mind beginning to run away with itself because of the situation—was beginning to wonder if Anna was only coming around the rich and famous to try and get close to them. Maybe it wasn’t about the dogs at all. Maybe i
t was about the money. Or the fame. Or perhaps she was a journalist, trying to pry into the secret lives of the Hamptons’ social elite. As soon as those thoughts popped into her mind, Fran shoved them right out again, feeling awful. Anna clearly adored dogs, for one thing.
“It could have been anyone at the party,” Anna said with a sigh. “It seems crazy to even try and investigate, but we have to free Emily.”
“Of course,” Fran said resolutely. That was the only thing that was pushing her through her self-doubt and complete lack of experience. Emily had to get free. Not just for her own sake, it looked like, but for Waverly’s, too. “There were so many people there,” she said, trying not to get discouraged. “Where do we start?”
Chapter 13
“You have a list of all the guests, right?” Anna said.
“Right,” Fran replied. She’d had to patch together a guest list from Waverly’s ‘special best friend list,’ a half-hearted scribbled list Emily managed to wrangle out of Byron, and a neighborhood watch list Emily had found in the bottom of the takeaway menu drawer. She’d noticed the McCabes were nowhere to be seen on that list.
“I think we need to investigate each one,” Anna said. “One by one.”
“But that’s hundreds!” Fran burst out. “It would take forever, trying to work out which one of them had a grudge against him or whatever.”
“All right,” Anna said, a tiny bit of sharpness to her words. “What do you suggest?”
“We should work it the other way round.” Suddenly Fran felt confident, when she knew she didn’t agree with Anna’s idea. It was strange, really. “We should think about who had a grudge against him. Then look more into them.”
Anna shrugged. “That makes sense, I guess. It’s a bit hard to know if we’re doing the right thing, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like, if we’re doing it how investigators would do it. Like, I don’t know if they follow a particular order or whatever.”
Fran shook her head, trying to keep up as Jerry tugged on the leash. “That’s true. I guess we’ll have to improvise.”
“I guess.” After a couple of moments of silence, when a gorgeous breeze swept through and cooled Fran’s skin, Anna said, “Well, Sandrine was definitely mad with him.”
Fran nodded. “Because of the book. But come to think of it, so was Vanessa. You know, because he wanted to be mayor and she didn’t want any political attention and all that?”
Anna’s eyes grew round and wide. “That’s true. I hadn’t even thought of that. And I guess she’d… I know this sounds bad, but I guess she’d be the one to get all his stuff.”
“Not sure,” Fran said. “I swear Emily was talking about prenups. Which would mean… I guess if she did sign one, his money would go to Waverly?”
Anna’s voice was sharp as a knife. “And I bet Sandrine would be over the moon about that.”
“Right,” Fran said. “But it would probably be in trust, I think. My grandma gave me and all my brothers a few thousand dollars each, but my mom’s the trustee. We can’t get any of the money until we hit thirty! Maybe Waverly will get hers later.”
Anna gave her a smile. “Though probably not that late. Your grandma doesn’t sound like the most trusting type.”
Fran shook her head, remembering her beloved old grandma, the memories floating back to her. The smell of freshly baked bread, in her little house where the cupboards smelled like dust, the bathroom like lavender and the kitchen like tangerines. How it felt like a special occasion to be able to put on her grandmother’s floral apron and make a casserole or an apple pie together. Grandma Janet had a sharp mouth and a quick temper at times, but her heart was always in the right place, and Fran never doubted for a moment that she loved and cherished her. “She was probably right about making us wait that long,” Fran said with a chuckle. “Just before I came here, I blew three thousand dollars on this party planning business with no prospect of making it back.”
Anna gave her a friendly smile. “Hey, at least you believed in yourself. You took steps toward your dream. I bet you learned something, right?”
“I guess.”
“And you made back your money plus more with Waverly’s party.” Anna grinned. “I know, ‘cause Emily told me how much you made. Girl! I need to get out of the dog walking business and into party planning.” She was still laughing, but even then she bit her lip and looked in Ben and Jerry’s direction. “Sorry, boys. I didn’t mean it.”
Fran gave her a smile back. “You know, I never thought of it like that. I guess maybe it did work out for the best in the end. And I know much better than to do something like that now. If I had to start over, I’d start with much smaller parties, children’s parties and stuff. Not trying to get ahead of myself and trying to plan and cater upscale business functions all by myself.” She shook her head and smiled disdainfully at her former self.
“But you don’t have to start over,” Anna said cheerily. “Because you have another job. Remember, you told me about Oliver Forthstrup.”
“Right.” Then her mind snapped back onto Emily, and that stab of guilt came back right along with it. Whenever she realized she wasn’t thinking of Emily all the time, with laser focus, trying to get her out of jail, that guilt stabbed away. “So we know Sandrine had a grudge, and Vanessa too. You know who I was thinking? Now, don’t read anything into this, but I just have to say it. Promise you won’t say anything?”
“Promise,” Anna said earnestly. They came to the shade of a huge tree and stopped for a moment. Even the dogs came to heel, panting.
“What about Toby Georgiou? He really didn’t look thrilled about the business deal going on. Maybe…now I guess my imagination is just getting crazy…but maybe something’s going on, and he thought murder was his only way out?”
Anna shrugged. “I guess it’s a theory. But it sounds a little like a movie.”
“I know,” Fran said, nodding. “But I don’t know. There’s something not quite right about that whole situation. I should talk to Matt about it more, I guess.”
“Matthew Stratford, do you mean?”
“Yeah,” said Fran. “He was at the party and he gave me a ride this morning, saying he was going to meet Toby Georgiou.” She felt a little happier even just thinking of him. “He’s a really nice guy.” She grinned. “And not so bad to look at, either.”
“Oh right.” Anna’s eyes had gone dull. She cast a nervous glance at Fran.
“What is it?” Fran asked, beginning to feel as nervous as Anna looked.
“Nothing, really. So what was their meeting about?”
But Fran could tell that question was just to avoid the situation. She would have left it alone, but a feeling of unease was creeping through her. “Seriously, Anna, what is it? As soon as I mentioned Matt, you changed. What’s up?”
Anna sighed. “You like him, don’t you?”
Fran wasn’t quite ready to admit to her crush yet. It felt like a little exciting secret, somehow. “He seems like an awesome guy, like I said. And he’s good looking, sure. Why? You date him or something?”
“Not a chance,” Anna said, so scathingly it took Fran aback.
“So…?”
They set off walking again with the dogs, out of the shady spot under the tree and into the intense heat. It was getting less and less comfortable, and Fran hoped they’d finish their loop back to the mansion sooner rather than later. All of a sudden she noticed the unpleasant stick of her sundress, and she was sure the spot at the top of her forehead was burning.
“Look, just take this all with a grain of salt, okay?” Anna said. “It’s just, I heard he was really bad to his last girlfriend. Really bad. But it might just be a rumor. The ex herself isn’t exactly the world’s most truthful person. That’s what I heard anyway. I was at her family’s home doing some dog training in the gardens, and she and a few friends were by their pool, talking about it. She was venting so loudly I couldn’t help but hear.”
&
nbsp; Fran felt her heart sink. “Maybe it was another Matt? What was she saying, anyway?”
“Something about…him being two-faced, or two-timing, or something. Basically it was him sneaking around, and lying about being with another woman, stuff like that.” She gave the gentlest touch on Fran’s arm. “I’m sorry, but it was definitely him. Matt Stratford, she said.”
Fran realized then how overinvested she must have looked to Anna. And, furthermore, how overinvested she actually was. She’d just go check out this Ethiopian food with him—and only as a friend—and then she’d never see him again. Or maybe she’d just never see him again period, and go sample the Ethiopian cuisine by herself. Although she wouldn’t be able to get there.
She realized, with somewhat of a jolt—she wasn’t used to making anything like that much money—that she could buy herself a car as soon as she got her payment for Waverly’s party. She’d had an ancient Chevy Nova back in her hometown, which ground to a halt every other week, it seemed. Thankfully, her next door neighbor had been a mechanic, so she usually only had to pay for parts. But just a couple of months before coming out to Little Hampton, the poor little Nova had given up the ghost. “That new engine will set you back ten times what this old lady’s worth,” her neighbor had said, shaking her head. And no way was Fran able to foot the bill. But now…well, she wouldn’t be buying the latest BMW, but she’d be able to afford a nice little used car once her check cleared, no problem. “Never mind,” she said, shaking it all out of her head. “That’s not important now. What’s important is making sure Emily gets free.”
“Absolutely.”
“I say we think about Toby Georgiou and find out more about this business deal,” Fran said. “Think about it. He was at the party, up at the mansion.”
Murder in the Park (Fran Finch Cozy Mystery Book 1) Page 8
