Deadly Appraisal

by Jane K. Cleland

  “Eddie just called me,” I said when she picked up. “Guess what? He’s moving away. He closed the business and took a job in Tulsa.”

  “You’re kidding!” she exclaimed.

  “Nope. Can you believe it? Anyway, he sounds fine. You know what that means?”

  “We need a new caterer.”

  “Exactly. Get me some possibilities, okay?”

  The reality sank in: In all likelihood, Trevor Woodleigh hadn’t disguised himself as a waiter during the Gala. Unless Eddie’s lying. I didn’t think that Eddie would deliberately mislead an investigator if he thought he had information that would help find a killer. But I could easily imagine that he would take a more flexible view of truth telling when it came to discussing an idea he’d probably see as far-fetched, and that occurred during an event that was, to him, old news. In the hours before he drove off to start a new life, he might have decided that it would be easier to fib and say he knew the entire wait staff—at least a little—than it would be to get more deeply involved in an ongoing murder investigation.

  I shook my head, aware of feeling unreasonably sad and apprehensive. I liked Eddie okay, but it wasn’t that. What was upsetting was having to endure more unwanted change. Nothing stayed stable, it seemed. Nothing.

  Gretchen buzzed to say that Wes was on hold, and on a whim, I decided to take his call.

  “Josie,” he complained when I was on the line, “you didn’t call me back.”

  “I wasn’t really up for chatting.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m in kind of tough shape right now.”

  “What do you mean, ‘tough shape’? According to the reports, you’re okay.”

  “What reports?” I asked.

  “The official statement from the police.”

  “What official statement? What did it say?”

  “Just what I told you,” he replied impatiently. “Why? Is it wrong? Did they exaggerate?”

  This was the Wes I knew, wanting to acquire new information, not share that which he already possessed.

  “No, no, I guess it’s fair to say, all things considered, that I’m okay.”

  “Fill me in. Specifically, what’s your condition?”

  His wording made me feel as if he wanted a report on the status of a specimen in a jar, not an update on a woman who’d been attacked.

  “I hurt, what do you think?” I responded petulantly.

  “How bad?”

  “Wes, you’re flipping me out here. Why do you want to know?”

  “For tomorrow’s paper.”

  “Wes, I swear to God, if you print one word, I’ll . . . I’ll steal your pencil and snap it in two. Off the record, remember?”

  “Even about your condition?” he asked, sounding shocked.

  “Yes,” I said firmly.

  He sighed, the sorrowful sound of Wes expressing acute disappointment. “All right,” he said, sighing a second time, “no problem. Let’s start again. Are you okay, really?”

  “More or less, I guess. I’m a little shaky, a little scraped, and, to tell you the truth, a lot frightened.”

  “Could be worse, right?”

  “Oh God, Wes, you smooth talker, you.”

  “Huh?”

  “I hardly know the words to tell you how touched I am by your concern.”

  “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  Getting Wes to understand that he sounded like an insensitive jerk would be like asking a squirrel to bark. I gave up. “What do you want, Wes?”

  “We need to meet.”

  “Why?”

  “I have news.” His lowered tone implied importance.

  “Good or bad?”

  “I don’t know. Interesting.”

  Wes using the word “interesting” reminded me of that ancient curse: “May you have an interesting life.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Josie—” he whined.

  “Wes, give me a break. I’m battered, bruised, and exhausted.”

  “I understand,” he said, apparently trying to placate me, as if he were doing me a favor by being so flexible. “Let’s meet later this afternoon, then. You pick the time. We can meet at our regular place—the dune, okay?”

  “I can’t,” I said again.

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t exactly scramble up a sandy hill right now. My ankle’s pretty badly sprained.”

  “Just at the edge, then. You can sit in your car if you want,” he said, sounding as if he were making a great concession.

  “No,” I said slowly, trying to gather my thoughts before I spoke, “that won’t work. It’s not going to be so easy speaking to you privately.”

  “How come?” he asked.

  “The police are sort of, you know, protecting me,” I said.

  “Oh, wow, yeah, I hadn’t thought of that. I get it. So for you and me to get together, you’ve got to figure out how to slip away from them.”

  “No, Wes. I don’t want to get away from them. I want their protection.”

  “Then how are we going to meet?” he asked.

  I shook my head in mute amazement at Wes. For someone as smart as I knew him to be, he sure could sound dumb. It was one thing to be focused, but it was another to lose sight of important side issues. I decided to ignore the implication that my safety was secondary to his nailing a story, thinking instead about the issue at hand—I wanted to hear his news.

  “Maybe,” I ventured, “we can cover everything on the phone. Anyone checking the records knows we’re talking anyway.”

  “They’d learn that calls were made, but not the content of those calls. What if your phone is tapped? We can’t assume it’s not.”

  True enough, I thought. “If you come here,” I said, “I’ll arrange it so we can talk privately.”

  I could meet Wes at the edge of the paved parking lot, out of sight and hearing of the office, near a cluster of birch trees at the rear of my property. I glanced at the spot. The white-barked trees were spectacular with their lush gold and smooth, soft yellow leaves shimmering in the sun. Too open, I realized. It would be more private to meet in the deserted tag-sale area. I told him to park down the street and walk through the woods to the tag-sale entrance on the far side of the warehouse. “I’ll be at the door,” I said. He agreed to be there at one fifteen, but only after a little more give-and-take, and his impatience made me wonder what he had up his sleeve. Wes was tactless to the point of rudeness, but he usually had the goods.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I

  must have fallen asleep again, because I woke up dis-oriented and upset. Hairs prickled on my arms and my heart pounded as if I’d awakened from a nightmare—but if I’d had a bad dream, I couldn’t remember it.

  I looked around fretfully, straining my neck. My office was quiet, the phones were silent, and no one was nearby. My fearful awakening seemed inexplicable. It was eerie and unsettling. Stretching gingerly, I looked at the clock. Only a few minutes had passed.

  To throw off my hazy discontent, I decided to do some research, and I figured I’d start with Lewis, the photographer, who might still stock cyanide. I could understand why Trevor felt betrayed by me, even though from where I sat, it was he who betrayed Frisco’s and, by extension, me. But I couldn’t understand how his rage could lead him to plot to kill me.

  I couldn’t imagine him doing such a thing. Then I could. Then I’d tell myself I was being foolish. Then I’d recall Max suggesting I was doing a head-in-the-sand thing. I was on an emotional roller coaster and it was exhausting. But one thing was likely: If he did kill Maisy, he got the poison from Lewis.

  I Googled “Lewis” and “photographer” and “New York City” and got more than a hundred hits. The first link connected me to the National Art and Antiques Photographers Association’s Web site, and there I learned that Lewis had died two years ago. According to the site, his widow had closed his New York City studio shortly after his death and then moved to Scottsdale
. If the studio was closed, Trevor couldn’t have acquired cyanide there.

  As I allowed myself to relax a little, my father’s words came back to me: Irrational and random events happen, he told me, but not nearly as often as people would have you believe. If it’s not logical, it’s probably not true.

  That Trevor was guilty of murder was illogical, and therefore, it probably wasn’t true. His release from prison a day before Maisy’s murder was, it seemed, nothing more than a coincidence of timing. Sure, he could have acquired the cyanide from another source—or even hired someone to kill me. But I just don’t believe it, I thought. It’s just not credible that he’d sneak into a fancy community event like the Gala and slip cyanide into a drink. Nor that he’d hire someone to kill me with poison or by running me down. Too dicey.

  In fact, I felt reassuringly closer to answering the most basic question springing out of Maisy’s death: Was she the target? Or was I? It’s not me, I concluded, overwhelmed with relief.

  The tag-sale room gave out to a large uncovered area separated from the parking lot by a tall wooden fence. During nice weather, we put several table displays outside, but the rest of the time, the space was empty.

  Just before one fifteen, I opened the door in the fence that gave access to the parking lot and waited. Within minutes, Wes came trudging out of the woods at the rear of the property, brushing aside low-hanging branches as he stepped onto the asphalt. He saw me and hurried over.

  Inside, we sat on high stools in back of the cash registers. I left most of the lights off, so anyone outside looking in couldn’t identify us. There was a crossbeam under the counter at just the right level for me to rest my left foot, and by pushing my stool up to the wall, I could stretch my leg out and take advantage of it while also getting some back support. I wasn’t in pain, exactly, but I was uncomfortably aware of my various muscle pulls and skin abrasions.

  “Your face looks pretty torn up,” Wes remarked as he got settled.

  “Yeah,” I agreed, wishing he’d used less descriptive language.

  “Are you ready for a shockeroonie?”

  “A ‘shockeroonie,’” I repeated, eyeing him warily. “I’m not sure.”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “Right. Sort of. Okay, tell me. I’m ready to be shocked.”

  “Guess who Maisy consulted last week?”

  “Who?”

  “Britt Epps.”

  I stared at him, his pudgy cheeks puffed with pleasure at delivering hot news.

  “Wow,” I said. “What do you figure that means?”

  “I don’t know. What do you think?”

  I turned away and stared out the salt-stained window on the far side of the room. The trees were close to the building back here, mostly evergreens, dark and thick.

  “Gala business, maybe,” I ventured.

  “Not likely, since she paid him in cash.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked, amazed at Wes’s ability to uncover potentially significant information.

  “A source,” he said.

  “How good a source?” I asked. “This might mean something.”

  “It’s solid,” he insisted. “A source in Britt Epps’s office verified the payment.”

  “So Britt wasn’t trying to hide the cash,” I said, thinking aloud.

  “It looks that way,” Wes agreed. “Why, do you think it’s significant?”

  “If it were a business matter, she’d have used a Guild check. Even if it was personal, but in the open, she’d write a check. Paying a lawyer in cash is unusual.”

  “That makes sense,” he agreed.

  “I mean, think about it. Lawyers are expensive, you know? It’s not like buying a fifty-cent newspaper or even fifty dollars of food at the supermarket.”

  Wes nodded, reached into his inside coat pocket, and pulled out his notebook. He wrote something, then looked up and asked, “What could it indicate?”

  I thought for a moment. “She didn’t want someone who had access to her checkbook to know that she was consulting a lawyer. Like her husband, maybe. Or perhaps she asked Britt to do something illegal or unethical and didn’t want to leave a paper trail. And Britt,” I speculated, “wanted to be sure that no one thought he was doing anything other than on the up-and-up, so he made darn sure the cash payment was entered into his company’s books.” I paused again while Wes jotted notes. “Also,” I added, “it could be that she tried to bribe him. And just because the payment was recorded doesn’t mean that he didn’t accept the bribe.” I shrugged again, a small one, as my shoulder muscles announced the move. “Or maybe it was about the divorce, and Britt was the only lawyer she knew except for the one she and Walter used as a couple, and she wanted someone who would be her lawyer, not their lawyer, if you know what I mean.”

  “That explains her choice of Britt, but not the cash.”

  I nodded. “Okay—maybe it’s really simple. It’s possible that it’s just that she was one of those people who pays for everything in cash.”

  “I can check that out,” Wes said, scribbling a note.

  “How?”

  “Charge records,” he said.

  “How can you access her credit-card receipts?” I asked, appalled that he was able to uncover Maisy’s financial information with such ease.

  “I have sources,” he said in a lofty tone.

  Wes and his sources. I wish I had them, I thought, the question about how Maisy had paid, or planned to pay, for her around-the-world cruise in the forefront of my mind.

  “What do you think about this?” he asked. “Maybe she was in cahoots with him about something.”

  “ ‘Cahoots’? About what?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they were stealing money that had been donated to the Guild.”

  I looked at him straight on. “Do you think it’s possible?”

  Wes shrugged. “Britt Epps has a top reputation, so probably not,” he replied, sounding disappointed.

  “Was that the hot news?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I think Maisy and Britt having a relationship outside the Guild might be significant, don’t you?”

  Wes’s use of the word “relationship” got me thinking. Could Maisy and Britt have had a little something on the side? Nah, I thought, not possible. “I have no idea, Wes. None. I don’t know anything about anything.”

  After Wes left, promising to call me as soon as he got more information, I limped over to the bank of windows at the rear and stood staring out into the sun-flecked forest. Think, I told myself. Be methodical.

  A squirrel caught my eye as it dashed across the leaf-strewn grassy patch at the edge of the woods, an acorn in its mouth. “Hurry, baby,” I whispered. “Get home!” It disappeared into the underbrush. I shut my eyes and leaned my head against the cold glass. It hurt my neck and I grimaced and pulled back.

  I pressed myself to process Wes’s information quickly so I would know what to do next. As I stared into the middle distance, the PA system crackled and Gretchen announced that I had a call—Chi.

  I took it in the tag-sale room, back over by the cash registers. He gave me his cell phone number and told me that he was on-site and ready to go. He added that after today, I probably wouldn’t see him, or anyone on his team, often or much, unless, of course, I needed help, but they’d be there. I didn’t know he had a team, but I liked the sound of it. He told me to call him if I was going to do anything out of my routine, so they could plan for it. I thanked him and hung up, comforted to know Chi was in place.

  I sat for a while longer, weighing my options, considering alternative plans; then when I was ready, I locked up and headed into the warehouse. By the time I reached the front office, moving slowly, ready for another painkiller, I knew my next step.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  W

  ould you run upstairs and get my purse?” I asked Gretchen after I’d settled myself into a guest chair positioned near her desk. “Sure,” she said. She hurried toward the warehouse, glad
to have a way to help.

  While she was gone, I used her phone to call Pam Fields.

  “Pam,” I asked after a brief exchange of greetings, “by any chance, did you find that brochure? You know, the one for the cruise ship?”

  “I’m sorry, Josie, I haven’t had a second to look. I promise I’ll get to it today.”

  “That’s fine. What I’m really after is the name of the travel agent Maisy used. Do you know it?”

  “I should remember,” she said slowly, as if she was thinking hard. “I know she mentioned it. But I just don’t recall the name. I’m striking out for you today.”

  I reassured her that it didn’t matter and she again promised to track down the brochure.

  I called the Guild. A woman answered, maybe Maisy’s assistant, and I said, “Hi, this is Josie Prescott. I’m hoping you can help me.”

  “Of course.”

  “Maisy always told me how happy she was with the Guild’s travel agency, and I’m calling for the name.”

  “Sure,” she said. “We’ve used them for years. It’s Victory Travel.”

  The address was close—a storefront in a strip mall only about a five-minute drive away.

  “A travel agent? Going somewhere fun?” Gretchen asked provocatively, overhearing me reading back the address. She handed me my purse.

  “Afraid not. It’s for a friend,” I responded, keeping it vague.

  “Want me to enter the information into our vendor file?” she offered.

  “Good idea.” I handed her the slip of paper.

  While she typed, I dug out the bottle of painkillers from the bottom of my purse.

  “All set,” she said, passing the paper back.

  Under Gretchen’s vigilant observation, I swallowed the pill.

  “How are you doing?” she asked.

  I made a face.

  “Do you think you should leave—you know, take the rest of the afternoon off?”

  “I’m fine, really. Besides which, Detective Rowcliff is coming at four and I should be here.”

  “He could meet you at home,” she argued.

  “I’m okay,” I said dismissively as Eric entered the office from the warehouse. Glad for an excuse to take the focus off of myself, I turned away from Gretchen to ask him how the pickup at Verna’s house had gone. I was glad to hear that there’d been no problems—no discrepancies, no breakages, and no attitude from Verna. Good news, and a relief.