Dorothy Howell

by Haley Randolph 03 - Shoulder Bags; Shootings (v5)

  “He wasn’t exactly the successful businessman he pretended to be,” Shuman said.

  “What was he into?” I asked.

  “Charleston is on the coast,” Shuman said.

  I didn’t know that since I wasn’t taking a geography class until next semester, plus since there was no such thing as Charleston Fashion Week, my family had never been there.

  “Lots of coastline, inland waterways, rivers in and around Charleston,” Shuman said.

  “You’re thinking drug smuggling?” I asked. “Does the FBI investigate that kind of thing? I thought the DEA handled that stuff.”

  Shuman got quiet again, then said, “Could have been a joint operation. My guess is that the FBI is more interested in finding out what happened to their undercover agent who was working the case, then went missing.”

  A few ideas flew through my head but I didn’t want to say them out loud. This wasn’t a good point in the conversation to look like an idiot.

  “Best guess is that Buckley faked his own death,” Shuman said.

  “He must have figured out that the undercover FBI guy was onto him and whatever he was smuggling,” I said. “So he murdered the FBI agent, put the guy’s body into his car, then set it on fire so it would look like an accident?”

  “That’s the theory.”

  “How could he do that? I mean, with DNA and everything.”

  “The body in Buckley’s car was burned beyond recognition,” Shuman said. “At the time, the cops, the coroner, and the family had no reason to suspect anything was wrong. Buckley was a well-respected businessman from a prominent family. Everybody figured it was him in the car.”

  “Just a tragic accident,” I said.

  “Undercover agents don’t check in every hour,” Shuman said. “A couple of days probably passed before the FBI got worried.”

  “So I guess when they didn’t hear from their undercover guy, they went looking and found out that Ed—the guy they’d been investigating—had died in a car crash.”

  Shuman shrugged. “By then, it was all over with. Funeral, burial, everything.”

  We sat there for a minute, both quiet, both of us thinking.

  “All of this is just a guess, right?” I asked. “They didn’t exhume the body or anything, did they?”

  “No,” Shuman admitted. “They wouldn’t want to do something like that and then be wrong. Not with a prominent family of attorneys involved.”

  “So to prove their theory, the FBI would need to find Ed Buckley alive,” I said.

  Shuman nodded and sipped his coffee.

  The whole thing creeped me, but it made sense. It explained why special agents Paulson and Jordan had showed me a photo of Ed Buckley. If he’d actually murdered one of their agents, they’d be hunting him big time.

  But that didn’t answer my biggest question.

  “What’s any of this got to do with Tiffany?” I asked.

  “Damned if I know,” Shuman said.

  CHAPTER 12

  It was a Louis Vuitton day. Definitely a Louis Vuitton day.

  After talking with Shuman last night and hearing about everything the FBI and the Charleston homicide detectives suspected had happened with Ed Buckley, I knew I had to talk to Virginia Foster this morning, and the only way I could hold my own against her and her Fendi bag was with a Louis Vuitton.

  The Sinful handbag flashed in my head. I absolutely had to find one. And I would, somehow.

  I stood in front of my bedroom closet looking over my clothes. Everything was hung in order: dresses, skirts, pants, capris, blouses, tops, jackets; then, further categorized by long sleeve, short sleeve, casual, dressy, slutty, and finally by color—dark to light.

  Of course, I had nothing to wear. Not even with all the things I’d bought in Europe stuffed in there. How did that keep happening?

  I might have to adopt a strict say-no-to-separates policy.

  Mom always said that when in doubt, wear black, so I put on a black skirt, sweater, and peek-toe pumps and appraised myself in the mirror. The dark outfit set off my Louis Vuitton perfectly.

  I didn’t want to put Virginia off completely with our dueling purses. I was satisfied that my outfit made me look only slightly snooty.

  Even Mom knows when you have to pull back.

  Virginia had mentioned that she was staying at the Hyatt in Santa Clarita, which was near the Holt’s store and the mall—I could run into Macy’s and check for a Sinful bag while I was close—so I drove over.

  At this point, nobody I could think of but Virginia could give me any info on Tiffany and her life back in Charleston, or explain how it was connected to her brother-in-law Ed Buckley, the missing special agent, or drug smuggling—except for the obvious reasons, of course.

  Was Tiffany involved in drug smuggling along with Ed? I didn’t know. I’d already majorly misjudged her the first time I met her. Was I doing it again by even thinking she might be less than the prestigious attorney everybody claimed she was?

  Maybe she was hiding from the FBI? Was that why she’d suddenly left Charleston a few months ago, changed her appearance, and come to California?

  That made sense.

  Or was she hiding from her drug smuggling partners?

  That made even more sense.

  All of those ideas were possible but didn’t explain why an attorney from an old-money law firm had gotten involved in drugs in the first place. Or how she’d fooled her prestigious, high-profile family.

  I hoped Virginia could answer some of those questions for me.

  I left my Honda with the valet and went into the Hyatt. The hotel was new, really big, and built at a busy intersection that only travelers who wanted a lot of shopping close by would find desirable—which, I thought, made it the perfect location.

  The lobby was open and airy, done in creamy yellow tiles and dark woodwork. The lobby was circular with huge columns and a round light fixture overhead. I used the house phone to call Virginia’s room. She sounded surprised to hear from me, and more surprised to learn that I was in the lobby.

  I could have called her this morning when I got up, or from the car on the way over, but cops on TV never did it that way. They always thought that if they called ahead, the person they wanted to question might bolt before they got there, and sometimes they did. It made for some really cool chase scenes. So since I didn’t have backup—and couldn’t run very fast in peek-toe pumps—I decided I’d better go with the element of surprise.

  Virginia exited the elevator a few minutes later looking sharp in Vera Wang pants and jacket, and wearing sensible shoes. No purse. I pulled my Louis Vuitton in front of me where she’d be sure to see it and be jealous.

  “Haley, it’s so good of you to stop by,” Virginia said, and gave me a quick hug.

  Up close I could see that she still looked tense, worried, like maybe the strain of being here, away from home, sitting alone in a hotel room all day, waiting to make funeral arrangements for her best friend, just might be getting to her.

  Not that I blamed her, of course.

  “Let’s go have some coffee,” Virginia suggested.

  We got a table in the hotel’s restaurant. The place was elegantly furnished with dark wood tables. It was pretty quiet—too late for breakfast, too early for lunch. That was no reason not to eat, of course.

  “I’ll have a slice of your sugar-free apple pie,” Virginia told the waiter as he poured our coffee.

  Damn. That’s why I hated dining with women who were skinnier than me. They never ate anything good, so I always felt pressured to not eat like a truck driver in front of them. Forget pigging out on dessert, or eating three rolls from the bread basket, and no way could I order the mega-calorie fish fry platter when all they got was a petite salad with that crappy lite dressing.

  Still, I had to stay mentally sharp for our conversation. This was no time to let a late-firing brain cell cause me to miss some vital piece of info.

  “I’ll have a slice of chocolate cak
e,” I said to the waiter. “A half slice.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  “And would you put a little vanilla ice cream on it?” I asked.

  “Certainly,” he said. “Perhaps some hot fudge on top?”

  “Oh no, I couldn’t possibly—well, okay,” I said. “And make it a whole slice.”

  See how committed I was to solving this murder? I was willing to make whatever sacrifice was necessary to stay mentally sharp and figure everything out, by eating a slice of straight-to-my-butt chocolate cake with all the extras.

  “How are you holding up?” I asked Virginia.

  She sighed wearily. “More than anything I want to go home. The police haven’t released Tiffany’s…body yet. I don’t know what’s going on. Just one delay after another.”

  “I’m sure her family back in Charleston is having a rough time,” I said, because it seemed like a good way to introduce Tiffany’s background into the conversation.

  But Virginia didn’t answer. She pressed her fingers to her lips and turned away.

  Oh my God, I hoped she wouldn’t start crying. I wasn’t good in a crying situation—unless I was the one in tears, of course.

  “Have you heard from Rita?” Virginia asked.

  My stomach rolled a little. Rita was hardly the person I wanted to discuss—let alone be reminded of—today.

  “I’ve phoned her several times but I haven’t heard back from her,” Virginia said, sounding a bit mystified.

  “She hasn’t been at work lately,” I explained.

  Virginia shook her head. “I called her home phone number, too. Tiffany had given it to me sometime back. I’ve left a number of messages for Rita, but she’s never returned a single call.”

  Okay, that was weird.

  Jeez, I really hoped Rita wasn’t lying dead somewhere.

  Maybe I should check the trunk of my car again.

  As much as I didn’t want to think about Rita, this did present a good lead into what I’d come to talk to Virginia about. I rolled with it.

  “So how did Tiffany and Rita meet?” I asked. “Did Tiffany ever mention it to you?”

  The waiter appeared with a tiny sliver of apple pie for Virginia and a gargantuan piece of chocolate cake covered with a mountain of toppings.

  I resisted the urge to lay my face down in it.

  “In Los Angeles,” Virginia said. “The Fashion District.”

  Okay, that surprised me. Lots of people who came to Los Angeles thought that just about every city in Southern California was L.A. They said they were going to visit L.A. when it was really Anaheim, or Pasadena, or just about anywhere. But Virginia knew exactly.

  “Tiffany and Rita just ran into each other?” I asked.

  Virginia picked up her fork but didn’t take a bite of her pie.

  “That’s what Tiffany told me,” she said.

  The Fashion District was a big place and it was almost always crowded. It seemed pretty weird to me that they could meet that way, but, oh well, stranger things had happened.

  Like my life, for instance.

  “They got to talking,” Virginia went on. “Rita had the idea for the purse party business.”

  Which she stole from me.

  I shoved a hunk of cake into my mouth.

  “And since Tiffany wasn’t working at the time, she had the time to spend in the Fashion District shopping and buying handbags,” Virginia said.

  Which was why the two of them could have more parties than Marcie and me.

  I scooped a huge spoonful of ice cream into my mouth.

  “Rita knew people who would book parties with them,” Virginia said, as she toyed with a flake of her pie crust. “I understand the two of them were quite successful.”

  “But why would Tiffany do that?” I asked, fighting off brain freeze. “She was a really successful lawyer. Why would she leave everything—her job, her friends, her family—and come all the way to Los Angeles to sell knockoff purses?”

  And be Rita’s friend, I almost added.

  Virginia stared down at her plate for a few minutes, then placed her fork alongside her pie and pushed it away.

  “It was something Tiffany felt she had to do,” she said softly. “I wish…if only…”

  I was pretty sure she wasn’t rethinking the apple pie and I felt kind of bad asking her anything more, but what else could I do? I couldn’t have shoveled in a few thousand calories for nothing.

  “So what about her brother-in-law, Ed Buckley?” I asked.

  Virginia touched her fingers to her lips once more, and looked away. She shook her head.

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she said, finally turning to me again. “This is all so…it’s all so upsetting. If you’ll excuse me?”

  Virginia left the table without another word and disappeared out the door, leaving me alone with two desserts and the fear that I’d pressed her too hard for info.

  But, jeez, all I’d done was ask about Ed. Virginia was the one who’d brought him up to me in the Holt’s breakroom the other night, plus she’d mentioned him to Shuman, too.

  With Virginia gone and no hope for finding out any new info, there was nothing to do but leave—after I finished my chocolate cake, of course.

  The sugar had my brain buzzing pretty good, sending all sorts of random thoughts through my head. The first was to note that Virginia hadn’t touched her apple pie—it was sugar free so, really, who could blame her—the other was that she didn’t seem all that anxious to find out who had killed her best friend. I mean, come on, if she couldn’t keep it together to answer a few questions, how concerned about finding Tiffany’s killer could she be?

  Since my brain cells were firing like microwavable Jiffy Pop, I let them keep sparking in whatever direction they chose. The Sinful handbag flashed in my thoughts, followed by my Louis Vuitton and Virginia’s Fendi bag.

  Life was in the details—or the accessories, as my mom liked to say. It always came down to the handbag.

  You can tell a lot about a woman by the purse she carried. Virginia’s Fendi told me she was organized, competent, successful, had money and knew how to spend it on nice things that mattered.

  Was that the sort of woman who’d fall apart in a public restaurant, over a slice of apple pie—sugar free at that?

  Probably not.

  I corralled a chunk of cake, ice cream, and fudge with my spoon, and slid it into my mouth, waiting for the next flurry of brilliant, sugar-coated ideas to blast through my brain.

  Nothing happened.

  I tried again, this time with extra hot fudge.

  Virginia was hiding something, I suddenly realized. That was why she didn’t seem all that anxious to help with Tiffany’s murder investigation, or even talk to me, for that matter.

  But why?

  Then it hit me—and I hadn’t even had another bite of cake.

  Oh my God. Oh my God. The night Virginia had come to Holt’s asking for Rita, she claimed she’d just arrived from South Carolina. But was that the truth? Had Shuman checked out her story? Did the FBI even know Virginia was here? Had they questioned her at all? And if they did, had they bothered to verify her story?

  Maybe Virginia had lied about everything.

  Maybe Tiffany wasn’t really her friend, and the family hadn’t asked her to come here, make the arrangements, and bring Tiffany back to them.

  My mind was racing now, like a bobsled careening down a high-caloric luge run.

  Why was Virginia so worried about Rita? Why did she keep calling her? Was it just for cover? Did Virginia really know something about Rita’s whereabouts?

  Oh my God. Virginia could have been here for days, for all I knew. And that would mean—

  Virginia could have killed Tiffany, and maybe Rita.

  Oh, crap.

  CHAPTER 13

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked.

  Evelyn lifted her chin, drew in a breath, and nodded.

  “Yes,” she declared. “Ye
s, I have to.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s roll.”

  To my knowledge, Evelyn hadn’t been out of her house in months. After what Evelyn called “the incident” last fall caused by “that certain someone,” she had locked up tighter—well, tighter than her own front door. So it surprised me that now, all this time later, she was willing to go out again.

  Or maybe it was simply that I’d suggested it the other day.

  I released the locks, dead bolts, and chains on Evelyn’s front door while she turned off her security system. I opened the door and stepped outside.

  Evelyn didn’t follow.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Nobody’s out here.”

  I didn’t know if Evelyn actually thought “that certain someone” was constantly lurking in her shrubs, waiting for her to step outside so he could cause another “incident,” or if something else, something rooted deep in her psyche was holding her back.

  Why couldn’t they cover something important like that in my health class?

  Or maybe they had.

  Anyway, all I knew was that Evelyn had told me she was ready to get out of the house and had asked me to take her for a drive.

  “I’m being silly,” Evelyn said, lingering inside her front door, twisting her fingers together.

  “You haven’t been out in a long time,” I said. “It’s okay.”

  “You’re very patient,” she said.

  Patient wasn’t what I did best, but for some reason, I could pull it off for Evelyn.

  She paused another moment, drew in one more big breath, and stepped outside.

  I wondered if I should have brought sunglasses for her, like those prisoners get when they’re released from solitary confinement. Then I wondered if I should take Evelyn’s arm and help her down the sidewalk.

  But she didn’t seem to need either. Evelyn squared her shoulders and walked with me to my car parked at the curb.

  “I’ve been out before,” Evelyn said, as we got inside. “A few times. A friend took me for a drive.”

  “Yeah? Who?” I asked, as we pulled away.

  “Oh, look,” she said, leaning forward a little, and pointing to the house on the corner. “They’ve painted their trim. I wonder if I should paint mine, too.”