Haunted Hibiscus
Page 22
Theodosia was caught off guard. “Needs the . . . ?”
As Elisha stepped up to the window to order her wine, Theodosia and Drayton hung back and exchanged glances.
“Claire needs the money,” Theodosia whispered. She said it with a tone.
Drayton raised an eyebrow. “You’re thinking . . .”
“What if it’s Claire?” Theodosia said, her suspicion bubbling up, even though the idea of Claire as Willow’s killer produced a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Theodosia and Drayton got plastic glasses filled with chardonnay and walked slowly down Church Street. Festivities were happening all around them—face painting, costume contests, craft beer tasting—but they were suddenly laser focused on Claire Waltho.
“If Claire needed money badly enough . . .” Theodosia said.
“And Claire figured out exactly how to get her hands on some money,” Drayton said.
“Just to be clear, you’re talking about Willow’s diamond earrings?”
“I hate to think the worst, but it is possible.”
“Horrible but possible,” Theodosia said.
Drayton sipped his wine, looking worried, then said, “The thing that worries me is, if Claire lied about working at the Norton Simon . . .”
“Then she could have lied about a lot of things.”
“On the other hand, maybe it’s just a misunderstanding on Elisha’s part. She just thought Claire had worked somewhere in the Midwest.”
“Maybe,” Theodosia said. “But it still bothers me. A lot.”
They walked along, thinking, worrying. The discrepancy was clearly bugging both of them.
“You know what? We should just call the Norton Simon and ask them,” Theodosia said.
“It’s late. I’m sure they’re closed by now,” Drayton said.
Theodosia glanced at her watch. “It may be seven o’clock here in Charleston, but it’s only four in the afternoon in California. What do you think?”
“Well . . .”
Theodosia could see Drayton starting to dither. So she made an executive decision, pulled out her phone, and googled the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. As soon as she found the website and phone number she called them.
“May I speak with someone in the registrar’s office?” Theodosia asked when the phone was answered. She said it fast so she wouldn’t lose her nerve.
“Hold, please.” There was a click, a low hum, and then another person came on the line.
“Carol Corcoran here.”
“Miss Corcoran?” Theodosia said.
“It’s Mrs. Corcoran, but that’s okay. How may I help you?”
“I’m doing a quick check on a potential employee,” Theodosia said, making up an excuse on the spot. “Ah, for the Heritage Society here in Charleston, South Carolina?”
“Yes?”
“I’m checking personal references,” Theodosia said. “And I wanted to verify that a Ms. Claire Waltho was employed as one of your curators for, let’s see . . .” She looked at Drayton and shrugged. “Approximately three years?”
There was silence at the other end of the line.
“Mrs. Corcoran?” Theodosia said. “The employee’s name is Waltho. Claire Waltho.”
“I’m sorry, but I . . . have no knowledge of that person.”
“Claire Waltho wasn’t employed at the Norton Simon Museum?”
“Not that I can recall, and I’ve worked here almost thirteen years.”
“How interesting,” Theodosia said. “Okay, I’m sorry for interrupting your day, and I do thank you for your time.”
Theodosia hung up the phone and said, “Claire never worked at the Norton Simon Museum. The registrar never heard of her!”
“How bizarre,” Drayton said. Then, “What does that mean to us?”
“Well, it’s not good. If Claire falsified her employment records, it means she could have graduated to more serious crime.”
“By serious crime you mean . . .” Drayton stared at her.
“That she might have murdered Willow French? I don’t know what to believe anymore. The Claire we know is a sweet, demure, capable woman. However, when people are under great stress, when they find themselves unable to handle a crushing financial burden, they can be pushed to terrible lengths.”
“What do we do now? What’s our next step?” Drayton asked.
“I think we have to confront Claire.”
“We do? When?”
Theodosia sighed. “Right now?”
* * *
* * *
Claire Waltho lived in North Charleston in a neighborhood of working-class homes. They were by no means seedy, but neither were they the real gems—the cute cottages, Queen Annes, Italianate mansions, and Victorian mansions—that were located in that sweet spot of Charleston real estate known as South of Broad.
They walked up a cracked sidewalk and onto a sagging front porch.
“I think there’s a light on inside,” Theodosia said as she rang the doorbell.
They stood there and waited. And waited some more. Nothing happened. Nobody came to the door.
“Perhaps Claire’s not home,” Drayton said.
“Or maybe she skipped the country. Or maybe she doesn’t really have a sick mother she’s tending to,” Theodosia said as she pushed the doorbell again. She was anxious, her heart was racing, and she was bouncing on the balls of her feet. She wasn’t looking forward to a major confrontation, but she knew it couldn’t be helped.
Finally, they heard faint footsteps approaching the front door.
“I think maybe . . .” Theodosia started to say.
Then the front door was swept open and Claire gazed at them through the screen. Her features seemed to tighten as her eyes flicked from Theodosia to Drayton and then back to Theodosia.
No escaping this, Claire, Theodosia thought to herself.
Then Claire surprised them. She pushed open the screen door and, with a resigned look on her face, said, “I suppose I’ve been expecting you.”
“Good,” Drayton said. “Because we know what you did.”
Claire’s face turned chalk white as she let out a small gasp. “What?”
“I think you heard Drayton correctly,” Theodosia said. “We know. We know everything.” They didn’t really. It was all an enormous bluff. But Theodosia was hoping that Claire might panic and start talking. Start confessing and help fill in some of the blanks.
“How did you find out?” Claire asked in a small, defeated voice.
“A lot of footwork and some good guesswork,” Theodosia said. “We also checked your employment record. You never worked at the Norton Simon.”
“Ah,” Claire said. “My little white lie.” She swallowed hard. “You must have overheard me tell Drucilla Heyward that I’d worked there.”
“Why did you lie to her?” Theodosia asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe I thought the Norton Simon sounded better than the Shelby Museum in South Dakota,” Claire said. “More upscale.”
“You were inflating your résumé,” Theodosia said. “Giving it a big fat pouf.”
“And you were trying to tip the odds in favor of Mrs. Heyward donating to the Heritage Society,” Drayton said.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Claire said.
“But that’s beside the point,” Theodosia said. Her heart felt heavy in her chest, but she was determined to forge ahead. To confront Claire with the truth and try to wring a confession from her.
“Are the police involved?” Claire asked suddenly.
“You know they are,” Drayton said.
Claire shook her head. “No, I don’t know that at all.”
Drayton frowned as he shot Theodosia a puzzled look.
How could she not know? Theodosia wondered.
“Wait a minute,” Theodosia said. She was confused. What was Claire talking about? The diamond earrings? Or something else?
“Claire,” Theodosia said. “You need to be perfectly up-front about this. It’s the only way.”
“I know,” Claire said. “And I am being up-front. Really.”
“So tell us about the diamonds,” Theodosia said.
A look of utter confusion appeared on Claire’s face. “Diamonds?” She frowned, not understanding, as she shook her head. “I don’t know . . .”
Uh-oh, Theodosia thought. There’s something weird going on here. We don’t seem to be on the same page.
“The diamond earrings?” Drayton prompted.
“Earrings?” Claire said. Now she looked completely lost. As if Theodosia and Drayton had suddenly started speaking ancient Greek. “No. I thought you came for . . .”
Claire stepped away from them, quickly grabbed something off her fireplace mantel, and came back.
“Here,” she said. “Isn’t this what you’re looking for?”
Claire handed Drayton a small black leather-bound book. It looked old and incredibly fragile. As he turned the antique volume in his hands, he saw it was the missing Edgar Allan Poe book.
Drayton’s eyes practically popped out of his head. “You stole the book?”
“That’s it?” Theodosia said. “That’s what you had to confess?”
“Please let me explain,” Claire said.
“Please do,” Drayton said. His voice was as smooth and cold as glare ice.
“It’s because of my mother,” Claire said. “I was going to sell it to pay for her cancer treatments. They’re . . . experimental.”
Theodosia put a hand on a nearby chair to steady herself. She was completely flummoxed. What she thought was going to be a confession of murder had turned into a terrible sad melodrama about a book and a sick mother.
“You had nothing to do with Willow’s death?” Theodosia managed to choke out.
Claire stared back at her. Her face registered absolute shock for a few moments. And then, finally, a dawning comprehension.
“Wait,” Claire said. “You think I killed Willow?” Now her expression was even more shocked than Theodosia’s. “Oh, dear Lord, no. No, no. I would never have harmed Willow. Not in a million years.”
29
“Well, that didn’t go exactly as planned,” Drayton said. He was sitting in the passenger seat, clutching the Edgar Allan Poe book, as they drove down Meeting Street.
“It really puts us in a pickle, doesn’t it?” Theodosia said.
“You think Claire will sue us for libel? For making false accusations?”
“No.”
“What do you think we should do with the book?”
“Nothing to do but return it to its rightful place at the Heritage Society,” Theodosia said.
“Are you going to tell Timothy how we found it?”
Theodosia stared straight ahead at the road. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“If you tell him the truth Claire will lose her job.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“But if we don’t tell him . . .”
Theodosia slowed her Jeep as she approached a stop sign. She reached a hand up and rubbed the back of her neck where a knot of tension had gathered.
“You know what, Drayton? We have a more pressing problem on our hands.”
Drayton gave her a quizzical look. “What do you mean?”
“Henry Curtis.”
“Oh, him.” Drayton relaxed back in his seat. To him Henry Curtis was obviously small potatoes.
But Theodosia was worried. She thought about how she’d tried to get in touch with Henry for the past couple of days. He hadn’t turned up at Willow’s funeral and he’d been absent from both the haunted house and his job at the Heritage Society. Then, today, out of the blue, he’d called asking to talk. Said it was urgent.
Is it urgent? Maybe so.
“We have to make a detour,” Theodosia said.
“For what? Oh, good gravy. You mean for Henry?” Drayton didn’t look happy.
“That’s right.”
“You think we’re going to hear another faux confession?” Drayton asked. Then he reconsidered his words. “Maybe not faux, because Claire really did take the book. But some sort of gibberish that will send us spinning in the wrong direction?”
“Maybe, maybe not. I’m getting a sneaking suspicion that Henry might have figured a few things out.”
“Concerning Willow’s murder?” Drayton asked.
“Why else would he have called me?” Theodosia drove along for another few blocks, thinking. “We know it wasn’t about the book.”
Drayton opened the book, gazed at it for a few moments, then closed it carefully. “Do you know where Henry lives?”
There was a grim smile on Theodosia’s face. “We’re headed there now.”
* * *
* * *
“This is it?” Drayton asked. They pulled up outside a shabby-looking duplex some two blocks south of the University of Charleston. All around them filmy white ghosts fluttered from trees; orange pumpkins leered from front porches. Even though Halloween was technically tomorrow night, Charleston was already in full celebratory mode.
Theodosia checked the address she’d tippy-typed into her phone. From when Henry Curtis had called her earlier.
“This is it,” she said.
“Looks awful.”
“He’s a student. And an unpaid intern,” Theodosia said. “What do you expect?”
“Better than this,” Drayton mumbled.
“No, this is how kids live. Or at least get by.”
“You think Henry’s even home? Don’t students go to beer dabblers or keggers or some such thing on weekends?” Drayton asked.
“We’ll soon find out,” Theodosia said. “Besides, I expect that he’s expecting me. So come on. Let’s get this over with.”
Drayton remained rooted in his seat. “You want me to go in, too?”
“You can be my bodyguard,” Theodosia said.
That gave Drayton pause. “Do you think you need one?”
Theodosia’s throat felt a little dry as she said, “I sincerely hope not.”
They walked up a crumbing sidewalk, climbed two cement steps, and stood on the rickety porch of a two-story duplex. The place had been painted gray at one time, but now the paint was peeling away from the silvered wood in long strips. Rain, hurricanes, and industrial-strength humidity had that effect on wooden houses in Charleston.
“Here we are,” Theodosia said.
There were two front doors with black metal mailboxes mounted beside each one.
“Which one is Henry’s?” Drayton asked. “Where’s his apartment?”
Theodosia leaned forward and peered at the mailbox that hung next to the left-hand door. There was a faded white sticker with the typed name harrigan. Under it was another sticker with the name curtis.
“This one,” Theodosia said. “He’s got the left-hand side of the duplex.” Drawing a deep breath for courage, she knocked on the door.
“He’s not home,” Drayton said almost immediately.
“Let’s wait and see.” Theodosia waited a few moments, then knocked again.
“Henry’s sitting in a coffee shop somewhere, drinking a flavored macchiato and playing games on his phone.”
Still no answer. Theodosia frowned. “Hmm.”
“Mark my words,” Drayton said.
“Ma
ybe we should check around back,” Theodosia said.
Drayton shrugged. “Personally, I think it’s a wild-goose chase, but . . . okay, I guess we can try the back door.”
The side of the duplex was lost in shadows, but a faint bit of light from a streetlamp halfway down the block shed a small puddle of yellow on a cracked back patio. There was a broken metal picnic table with a bike chained to one of its rusted legs.
Theodosia climbed the three steps up to the back door and knocked. Harder this time because now she had a partial view into a back window and could see that a small light was on inside. So maybe Henry Curtis was home after all. Maybe there was a back bedroom or a back office and he hadn’t heard her knock? Could be.
Drayton shifted behind her. He was tired and getting antsy, ready to head home.
“I’m afraid this just isn’t our night,” he said.
Theodosia put a hand on the doorknob.
Drayton saw the movement of her hand and said, “Do you really think that’s a good . . .”
Theodosia turned the knob, and the door, almost as if it had a mind of its own, creaked open an inch.
“. . . idea?” Drayton finished.
“I think he’s in there,” Theodosia said. Maybe Henry Curtis was scared or upset or maybe he’d been threatened by someone. Whatever. Theodosia decided she was going in and would hopefully find some kind of answer if she could just talk to him.
“Okay,” Drayton said. “But promise me. That’s as far as you’re going to go.”
“Right,” Theodosia said as she pushed the door open and stepped inside.
Theodosia took a few moments to get her bearings. She was standing in a warm, dark kitchen that smelled like someone had either made popcorn or heated up chicken soup in the last couple of hours. There was a tiny light on over the stove, but it shone down on the four burners rather than penetrating the darkness of the rest of the space.
“Henry?” Theodosia called out. “Are you here? It’s Theodosia Browning. You wanted to talk with me, remember?”