by Vickie Fee
The craftsman rewrapped the sign in a large chamois cloth, and Larry Joe carried it out and loaded it into the bed of his truck.
I couldn’t wait to see Winette’s face when she saw it. Since Winette, as the chairman of Residential Rehab, often holds meetings with volunteers and benefactors in the conference area at Sweet Deal Realty, Mr. Sweet had agreed it would be appropriate to hang a sign with the RR logo in the office. The sign could also be transported to special events, and even outdoor gatherings since it’s made of stainless steel. I had already arranged a spot for the sign to be displayed at the entrance to the murder mystery dinner at the country club on Halloween night.
Larry Joe carried the somewhat unwieldy sign into the office at Sweet Deal Realty. Mr. Sweet had already placed one of the hangers on the wall but had waited to make sure it was perfectly positioned before attaching the final hardware. Larry Joe helped him, and the two of them lifted and hung the 44” × 38” sign on the back wall behind the conference table.
The previous afternoon I had casually inquired to Winette about her schedule to make sure we could surprise her.
Larry Joe and I loosely draped the sign with the cloth so that Mr. Sweet and I could do a dramatic unveiling for Winette when she arrived. Then my husband gave me a kiss and headed off to work.
“I sent Winette a text telling her to let me know when she was heading this way,” Mr. Sweet said in his usual deadpan manner.
“Won’t that make her suspicious?”
“Naw. I’m always asking her to stop by the bank or the title company to pick up or check on something. I figure she should be finished with her meeting any time now.”
I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down behind Winette’s desk. Mr. Sweet regaled me with the details of his latest retail development project.
In a few minutes the phone on his desk rang.
“Oh, hi, Winette,” he said. “Yeah, I thought I needed you to run by the title company, but I talked to them just a few minutes ago and we’re good to go. So you can just come on to the office unless you’ve got other business. All right, good.”
He hung up the phone and turned to me. “She’ll be here in about five minutes.”
I felt a rush of excitement. Mr. Sweet and I both leapt up from our chairs as Winette came through the front door.
“What are you two up to?” she asked in a wary tone.
“Liv here has a little surprise for you,” Mr. Sweet said.
“Winette, come this way, please,” I said, walking over to the sign. Mr. Sweet ambled over to the conference area, but kept a distance from Winette and me.
I lifted the cloth off the sign and quickly looked over to Winette for her reaction. She clasped both hands to her face, covering her mouth and nose and shaking her head.
“I don’t know what to say,” Winette said. “It’s beautiful.”
“It’s portable, too,” I pointed out. “You can take it to events, and I already have a spot reserved for it at the fund-raiser this weekend.”
She stepped over and hugged me as tears streamed down both our faces.
“I should be mad at your for messing up my makeup like this,” she said, grabbing a tissue from the box on the conference table and dabbing mascara streaks from under her eyes.
Then she said in that down-to-business voice of hers, “As much as I love it, I hope you didn’t dip too much into our fund-raiser money for it.”
“I didn’t dip into our fund-raiser money at all. Marcus worked out the design with Mr. Goddard, who donated his labor and expertise to fabricate the sign, and Mr. Sweet paid for materials,” I said, looking over to see that Mr. Sweet had disappeared into his back office.
“That old coot. He’s really just an old softie under that gruff exterior,” Winette said with affection. Then she raised her voice a bit, and added, “You’re not fooling anybody with your tough-guy act. I know you can hear me in there.”
“Don’t you two have work to do?” he asked before closing the door.
When I left to go upstairs to my office, Winette was still admiring the handsome sign.
* * *
Di had packed a change of clothes and drove directly to my house after she got off work at three-thirty. She slipped into her civilian clothes, and we set off to the hotel.
Lucinda’s beefy bodyguard met us in the lobby. At first he wasn’t agreeable to allowing Di to go up with us in the elevator, since he had been informed that only I was meeting with Lucinda. But I convinced him that I had some information of interest to Lucinda and the lady with me was the source of that information.
We walked down the hall and entered the sitting room of Lucinda’s suite. She invited Di and me to sit on the love seat while she sat down across from us in a plump club chair. Mitzi was loitering in an interior doorway until Lucinda shooed her away.
“I don’t have a lot of time, Liv. But since you’ve been helpful during my visit I agreed to see you,” Lucinda said. “What’s this all about?”
“This is my friend, Di Souther,” I said. “I’ll come right to the point. She shared with me that she saw you having lunch with Pierce Davenport in a private dining room at Red’s on Sunday.”
I paused, hoping for a response, a confession, some juicy details.
Lucinda simply said, “And . . .”
“And,” Di picked up the conversation, “since I knew Liv was somewhat acquainted with you, I asked her advice about what I should do with this information, as it might be relevant to an ongoing murder investigation.”
Lucinda shifted her gaze from Di to me. “Liv, am I to understand that I’m still being followed? First by that hairdresser and hotel clerk, and now by this friend of yours?”
“In the first place, Sindhu is not a clerk; she and her husband own this hotel. Second, Di was not following you,” I lied. “She simply happened to be in the little shopping center across the street from Red’s when she saw you and Pierce arrive. She thought it was you, but went inside the restaurant to get a closer look. Face it, Lucinda, you’re a celebrity. It’s hard for you to go anywhere unnoticed. And around these parts, someone driving a Bentley doesn’t exactly blend in with the scenery.”
“I guess not,” Lucinda said. “It’s not that mysterious. Pierce and I went to college together, along with Morgan, of course,” she said, dismissively.
“You can see how this little college reunion might not seem so innocent in light of the not-so-well-kept secret of Morgan’s ongoing relationship with Pierce,” I said. “I just wanted to hear you out before I decide what, if anything, I should tell the sheriff—or Pierce’s wife.”
“I don’t care what you tell Pierce’s wife, and I doubt he does, either,” Lucinda said. “As for Sheriff Davidson, I think he and I have a pretty good rapport,” she said, cocking her head to one side and twirling a lock of blond hair around her finger.
“I doubt your rapport with the sheriff is quite as cozy as Di’s,” I said, punctuating the word rapport with air quotes. I looked over at Di, who put on a perfect little Mona Lisa smile right on cue.
“I see,” Lucinda said, exhaling a heavy sigh of resignation. “I don’t appreciate being quizzed on personal matters, but I would like to avoid publicity if possible. What exactly is it you’d like to know?”
“Just the truth,” I said. “You could start with why you really agreed to speak at the PWAD retreat. And don’t give me that line about you and Morgan being old college roommates.”
“You can believe it or not,” Lucinda said, “but that’s basically what it came down to. It’s true that Morgan and I haven’t been close in the past few years, but we were close while we were in college together. This probably doesn’t speak well for me, but Morgan and I were actually a lot alike back then. We thought it was great sport to steal boyfriends from our sorority sisters, including from each other.
“So when Morgan started dating Pierce, who was pretty much big man on campus, I immediately set my sights on breaking them up. And I did.
“Only that time instead of laughing about it, Morgan was really and truly hurt. She was actually in love with Pierce and believed the feeling was mutual.”
Lucinda went on to explain that after Pierce, who was a couple of years ahead of them, graduated and moved away, Morgan tried to pretend it was no big deal. The two of them went back to stealing boyfriends for fun, but things were never quite the same between them.
“I remember later, when a mutual friend told us Pierce had gotten married, Morgan put up a brave front. But later I heard her sobbing in the dorm bathroom,” she said. “I wasn’t at all surprised to hear that Pierce had married a U.S. senator’s daughter. He’d been president of the Associated Student Body and had political ambitions even in college.”
Lucinda told us that a couple of months ago Morgan had sent some fabric swatches in the mail and asked her which she’d prefer for a bridesmaid’s dress.
“I took the bait,” Lucinda said. “I called her up and asked her who the lucky guy was. She said it was Pierce.
“I said I thought Pierce was already married, and she told me that he wouldn’t be for much longer. Then she launched into telling me about all the plans they were making for the future, including Pierce having his sights set on moving into the governor’s mansion someday.
“She was absolutely giddy. She told me it had always been Pierce and she knew they’d eventually end up together. She asked me if I could come for the retreat so the two of us could start planning the wedding. I knew Morgan well enough to know she didn’t have many female friends, which explained why she was asking a college roommate she hadn’t talked to in at least two years to be her maid of honor.
“I’d always felt badly about breaking up Morgan and Pierce. If I’d realized at the time she actually had feelings for the guy, I never would have gone after him. I figured being in her wedding was the least I could do to make it up to her,” Lucinda said, finally relaxing and slumping down in her chair.
“That still doesn’t really explain why you met with Pierce,” I said. “What did you two talk about?” I almost added “for over an hour,” but caught myself. I didn’t want to admit we really were spying on them.
“I guess I wanted to apologize for how I acted in college, coming between him and Morgan,” she said. “Mostly, we just reminisced about our college days and shared some memories of Morgan. She really could be a lot of fun.
“We talked about parties and a wild spring break trip a bunch of us took to Pensacola. Pierce remembered the dress Morgan wore to his fraternity formal, which was ridiculously revealing even by frat standards. We talked about how Morgan always drank those health shakes and went jogging every morning, even after a late night out. She was a health freak even back then. Pierce said he couldn’t help thinking about that when he first heard about Morgan’s death. It struck him as ironic for such a health nut to die from drinking herbal tea.
“And, of course, he went on and on about his exploits on the football field. Pierce always had a big ego. Silly college girls, like Morgan and me, chasing after him probably didn’t help matters.”
“Did he seem broken up over Morgan’s death?” I asked.
“Not really,” she said. “But then Pierce isn’t really the kind of man to display his emotions—you know, tough guy, ex-jock.”
“What did he say about his wedding plans with Morgan?” Di asked.
“He said it was all complete fiction, that he and I both knew Morgan had a penchant for making things up—which is true. He said he and Morgan had always enjoyed each other in a romantic sense, but they had never talked seriously about marriage—in college or since. He seemed to think Morgan was just playing me, making up the whole wedding thing to get me to do her bidding, and making herself look like a big shot by roping her celebrity pal into speaking at her little nothing businesswomen’s retreat.
“That’s the truth. Tell the sheriff whatever you like,” she added.
Lucinda showed us the door, and I left feeling more confused than ever. Di and I walked silently to my SUV.
“I tend to believe Lucinda’s telling the truth,” I said, as we pulled away from the hotel.
“Me too,” Di said. “Then again, she does make a living putting on a phony psychic act and trying to convince people that ghosts are real. Do you think I should tell Dave what she said—on the off chance he’d actually listen?”
“Not yet,” I said. “Wait until after I have a chance to talk to Bryn. I’ll try to talk to her tomorrow.”
“Are you going to tell her about Pierce’s meeting with Lucinda?”
“I have a feeling she already knows,” I said. “She had to have known about Pierce and Morgan, since everybody else in town did. She’d have to be a fool not to know—and Bryn doesn’t strike me as a fool.
Chapter 17
I phoned Bryn first thing Wednesday morning and asked if there was a convenient time I could drop by to talk to her for a few minutes. She said to come by about eleven-thirty, that she had some open time in her schedule before lunch. At 11:20, I locked up and walked over to the chamber of commerce office, located on the back side of town square. It’s adjacent to a parking lot shared by the chamber and other offices, as well as the restaurants and businesses that face the courthouse.
I walked into the entry. Bryn’s office door was ajar. She stood up and walked around her desk to peek through the door, then motioned for me to come through.
“Hello, Liv,” she said. “Have a seat. What can I do for you today?”
I can’t say Bryn and I were close, but we had served together on various community projects and committees and I considered her a friend. I felt badly about what I was about to say.
“This isn’t exactly a social call, Bryn, so I won’t beat around the bush,” I said. “Lucinda Grable claims that Morgan told her Pierce was getting a divorce and that Morgan and Pierce planned to be married. She says Morgan even asked her to be her maid of honor. We also know that Lucinda and Pierce met Sunday afternoon in a private dining room at Red’s. Normally, I’d consider this none of my business. But this information could have a bearing on a murder investigation, so I feel obligated to tell the sheriff. Since you and I are friends, I wanted to speak with you first.”
“I see,” Bryn said. “Well, I have no problem believing Morgan would tell such a tale to Lucinda or anyone else. But if Lucinda did meet with Pierce, which I don’t doubt, he would have told her that Morgan’s story about getting married was a bunch of nonsense.”
“So you knew that Pierce and Morgan were having an affair?”
“Of course I knew,” Bryn said. “I’m not a fool. And I even told the sheriff when he interviewed me at the retreat center that I knew about Morgan and Pierce, which I assumed made me a suspect. But while Morgan was obsessed with Pierce, she didn’t exactly reserve herself for him alone, so there are plenty of other suspects on that score. And Pierce wasn’t faithful to Morgan any more than he is to me.”
“Did you know Pierce had also been involved with Lucinda, at least when they were in college?” I asked.
“Oh, sure,” she said. “Pierce liked to brag about that once she became a celebrity. Not to me, of course, but I always hear about these things. Some people think it’s their Christian duty to inform me of all my husband’s misbehavior.”
“I’m truly sorry to be one of those people, Bryn,” I said sincerely. “But I felt it was only fair to talk to you before going to the sheriff.”
“I understand that, Liv,” she said. “I don’t enjoy talking about this, but I do understand that someone has been arrested for Morgan’s murder and some people in town have serious doubts about her guilt. The sheriff has to look at every possibility to make sure an innocent person doesn’t go to prison. I frankly have some doubts about Jasmine’s guilt myself.”
“Why is that?”
“Morgan was really and truly unstable,” she said. “She periodically made crazy and even threatening phone calls to me—usually after Pierce had broken thi
ngs off with her, which he had done again recently.
“The Monday after the retreat there was one of those crazy phone calls on the answering machine here at the office. Here, I’ll play it for you. I saved it, just in case,” she said before pressing PLAY on the answering machine.
Ghosts are real and you may join them, unless you accept the truth.
Click.
The voice sounded weird and otherworldly. The caller was obviously trying to disguise her voice.
“At first I assumed it was another call from Morgan, but when I looked at the time stamp, I realized the call must have been made after Morgan’s death,” she said.
“Did you tell the sheriff about this?”
“No. I thought about it, but I figured it was just a prank call. As I said, I’ve had calls like this before. But I have wondered since then if it could be Lucinda.”
“It does sound kind of like that recording of the ghost voice they played for us out in the cemetery at St. Julian’s,” I said. “I think you should play it for the sheriff.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Bryn said. “I guess I’ve been trying to avoid thinking about Morgan or the call or the whole murder business. But if there’s even a chance it has something to do with Morgan’s death, I have an obligation to share it with the sheriff.”
Just then, I noticed an odd mist seeping into the room. It grew suddenly thick and surrounded us like a fog around our ankles. It didn’t smell like smoke, but we weren’t taking any chances. The two of us sprang from our chairs and hurried out the front door.
“What in the world was that? Should we call the fire department?” I said, digging in my purse for my cell phone.
“It doesn’t smell like smoke,” Bryn said, sniffing near the doorway. “Let me take a peek inside and see.”
