The Azalea Assault

by Alyse Carlson

  “Yes.”

  “Of course he did.” Jake sighed. “Anyway, there was a match on an undeliverable UPS package—a box addressed to Jean-Jacques George at that address.”

  “What was in it?”

  “Full of cash—the difference between what was withdrawn from the Patricks’ account and what Evangeline claimed she donated to Spoons.”

  “So somebody was paying him to… what?”

  “Based on the paperwork, I’d guess he was being paid to stay away from Evangeline Patrick. Neil Patrick sent it.”

  Cam tried to whistle, though she’d never been able to. “And what do we do?”

  “I’d like us to talk to Samantha and Joseph for now—establish what time they were at the Patricks’, but it’s looking more and more like Mr. Patrick had something to do with the murders.”

  “It sure is,” Cam agreed.

  “Do you remember what Rob was asking about that might help with the interviews?” Jake asked.

  Cam shuffled in her seat, suddenly uncomfortable. She figured it was time to finally come clean about some portion of her and Rob’s suspicions. “You remember the picture from the party that showed Ian and Benny? It looked like Ian was giving Benny money?”

  “Our money trail.” Jake’s expression was tired patience.

  “We thought maybe Benny was selling drugs.”

  “Cam, I should take you back home right now!”

  “No! Please! Samantha is fond of me! I’m more likely to get something from her than you are.”

  He sighed. “And that was why you followed Benny? You were looking for his drug connections?” His eyebrows had ascended nearly to his hairline.

  Cam crossed her arms in front of her chest.

  “So Benny is in first place,” Jake said.

  “Not anymore. My main reason fell through, and with all this stuff on Mr. Patrick…”

  “Cam, investigations aren’t solved on guesses.”

  Cam frowned. It seemed to her they must be. A logical guess was far more plausible a way to narrow options than having to know all the facts before even considering any of the possible solutions.

  They arrived at Samantha’s house and rang the bell. It was an elaborate ring, the kind impossible to not hear. Samantha, however, didn’t answer the door.

  “What does Samantha drive?” Jake asked as he walked across the driveway and peeked into the window of her garage.

  “A Jaguar, usually.”

  “Anything else?”

  “She has a convertible, I think—small. It might be a Mercedes. It’s a little like Evangeline’s, but red.”

  “No Volvo?”

  “No. Joseph has a Volvo.”

  “So Joseph and Samantha are both here unless some third party took them somewhere.”

  As Jake said this, Joseph opened the door, disheveled and wearing a bathrobe.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  Cam gasped, then tried to call it back, but it brought a rather smug look to Joseph’s face.

  Jake took a few quick strides back to the front door. “Mr. Sadler-Neff, we came to talk to you and Ms. Hollister.” He sounded ridiculously formal, considering Joseph’s attire. A closer inspection suggested the robe was Samantha’s, unless Joseph liked floral velour.

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible. Samantha’s… well, not decent. If you’d come back in an hour or so?”

  “Mr. Sadler-Neff, this can’t wait,” Jake said. “It’s quite important.” It was the most forceful Cam had ever heard Jake sound. She wasn’t sure Joseph would respond well to his tone.

  “Joseph? Maybe you could just talk to Jake for a few minutes, and I’ll go in and write Samantha a note?”

  “A note?”

  Jake eyed Cam but didn’t stop her. She looked at Joseph earnestly.

  “So she knows how important it is we speak with her. I know where everything is.” It was a lie. The hair on the back of her neck was prickling. She didn’t know if Jake had detected her unease, but Cam knew Samantha would never allow a half-dressed Joseph to answer her door, and it was even more out of character for Joseph. She feared for Samantha’s safety.

  At last, Joseph said, “I guess you could leave a note.”

  “Thanks!” She rushed in, passing him, trying not to let her fear show, though she hoped Jake had somehow sensed it.

  She ducked left toward the office but then crept up the stairs as quickly and quietly as possible. Samantha’s bedroom was empty except for Mr. Tibbles, or whatever his name was, sleeping at the foot of Samantha’s bed. The office, the guest room, and the “day room,” which to a normal family would have served as a fourth bedroom on that floor, were also empty.

  She went down the set of steps at the rear of the house, moving through the main floor, but avoiding the kitchen and living room, which would require her to pass within Joseph’s line of sight. There was no sign of Samantha.

  Finally she went down another set of stairs and rushed through the basement, less careful about noise now, as she was starting to panic and knew she didn’t have much time.

  She found a locked room. She thought it might be the bedroom Jean-Jacques had stayed in. She knocked, quietly at first, then louder.

  There was no answer.

  Cam looked at the lock, just a hole in the door handle. She had a little sister who had liked to lock doors as a child and so knew how to handle a simple lock.

  From the portable bar, the same one that had been rolled outside for the first Garden Delights party and which was now stowed in a basement corner, she took a corkscrew. The point was long enough, so she wiggled it in the hole until it sank farther, then carefully turned it clockwise until it clicked.

  She rushed in and stopped, stunned.

  Samantha looked like one of Joseph’s fantasy princesses. She was unconscious, tied at her feet and wrists and laid across a baby blue satin comforter. She wore a regal white nightgown and robe and had flowers all around her. Thankfully, her chest seemed to be slowly rising and falling.

  Cam began to hyperventilate but then heard shouting, so she ran upstairs.

  “Jake! Arrest him! He’s twisted!”

  She heard a door slamming, footfall, and then Jake shouted, “Freeze, Joseph! Or I’ll shoot!”

  A screeching followed, and though there was then a gunshot, Cam felt certain Jake had shot wide. Joseph had gotten away.

  As Cam reached the door and stepped out, Jake stood there, hands out, one holding his revolver, staring into the sky.

  “I trusted you, Cam. This better be good, because I just shot at a man.”

  “If by good you mean repulsive, then yes. This is very good.” Her stomach continued to clench, and she was glad she’d only had one margarita.

  Jake followed Cam downstairs, and she led him to Samantha. He felt her pulse, then called for backup. He put out an APB on Joseph and requested a police car and an ambulance at Samantha’s home. When he hung up, he reassured Cam that Samantha’s pulse was strong.

  “It was Joseph, this whole time,” Cam whispered.

  “This is at least confirmation he must have drugged her both times, and the first drugging does seem related to the first murder.”

  “That and running. And putting her in Jean-Jacques’s room? In that princess garb?”

  “He looks guilty, Cam. I’m not arguing, but there are quite a few pieces still to fit together.”

  Cam sighed. It was true. She thought, though, that some of the other things she’d learned might help. She told Jake about Joseph’s being protective of Samantha, and then what she’d learned was the true story about Benny’s feelings for Evangeline and how that had reinforced in her mind the idea of the crush as a motive. She shared it all except for the apparent ruse regarding Benny’s deficits. She didn’t feel comfortable blowing that out of the water. She believed Benny and his dad had their reasons.

  CHAPTER 21

  Cam was a little lost in the chaos that followed. As Jake barked orders and descriptions into h
is radio and cell phone, Cam returned inside to tend to Samantha. The poor woman was still out of it, but Cam thought if she woke up restrained, she would panic. Cam certainly would have.

  She knew, however, it was a crime scene, so she didn’t want to do too much. She found a camera in the kitchen and came down and took pictures from several angles, then donned a pair of the latex gloves she’d swiped from Jake. She used scissors to cut Samantha’s wrists free, then heard the sirens arrive, followed by tromping down the stairs.

  Cam had cut all the restraints by this time, but that was as far as she’d gotten. She answered the questions from the EMT about who she was, who Samantha was, how she’d found Samantha, and what appeared to have happened.

  From a daze, she heard someone say something about pumping Samantha’s stomach. Two men arrived with a stretcher, loaded Samantha onto it, and then Cam was left alone in this surreal room of princess nightmares.

  She shivered and climbed the stairs. An officer had arrived to assess the crime scene, so Cam led him to it, again describing what she’d found. She gave him the camera and explained the pictures she’d taken.

  “Glad you did that. I can dust for prints and all, but hard to prove what happened when the body is gone, if there are no pictures.”

  Cam shivered again. He made it sound as if Samantha was dead.

  “Mind if I go?” she said.

  “Leave your number?” the officer asked.

  Cam pulled her card from her bag and handed it to him. He smiled sheepishly, and Cam left the basement, which was now making her skin crawl. She imagined slithery lizards and centipedes on the walls as she scurried out, completely itchy by the time she reached the kitchen where she realized that, once again, she was stranded with no car. Jake had gone after Joseph with another officer, and though he’d left his own squad car, she could hardly take that.

  She swore under her breath and slowed at Samantha’s countertops, and then noticed a few odd keys dangling from hooks next to a bulletin board. She didn’t know what most of them went to, but the Mercedes key was pretty obvious. Samantha’s convertible was nicer than anything Cam had ever driven. She smirked, opened a drawer for a pen and pad of paper, and wrote a note to Samantha about her need.

  When she went to return the notepad, a letter from a lawyer named Schleigel tempted her. The letter was dated only a week earlier. She opened it and saw Samantha had been copied on a will. The will named Jonathan Jacobs Georges as sole recipient of the estate described, though Samantha was to be executor should Jonathan Jacobs be difficult to find. Cam guessed, based on their earlier conversation, this was the will of Jean-Jacques’s father, and this meant Jean-Jacques had inherited everything. She raised an eyebrow but couldn’t make any sense of it, so she put it back in the drawer and then tested a few house keys. She took the one that worked to the officer still in the basement, saying if he left the house with nobody there, could he please lock up and take the key to Samantha. He didn’t pay a lot of attention, but she made a show of putting it on the dresser, and he nodded.

  She then made her way to the garage, breathing a sigh of relief. It was over.

  The car was the most fun she’d ever had at the wheel, though she was glad the Bug had acclimated her to German-made stick shifts, as she feared doing anything wrong in the expensive machine. She drove the long way, singing loudly with Patsy Cline, the only CD of Samantha’s she recognized.

  She considered driving another lap through Roanoke, but decided it was in poor taste to act too giddy after what had happened, so she went home.

  She saw Annie’s car in their driveway and sprinted up to Annie’s apartment to tell her all was resolved.

  The apartment, however, was a disaster. Not that it was ever particularly clean, but at least the furniture was usually upright.

  The kitchen, where she entered, was disturbed only in the toppled chair and a broken glass that had been knocked across the room.

  The living room, however, looked like a cyclone had blown through. Several pieces of furniture had been moved a fair distance, and many of the tchotchkes Annie normally displayed on walls or shelves had been thrown to opposite corners.

  “Annie!” Cam called, nervous now.

  There was no answer.

  The bedroom seemed to have been clumsily searched, and upstairs, in what had once been an attic but now served as an office and darkroom, Annie’s computer had been destroyed, as had much of her photo equipment.

  “Oh no. Oh no.” Cam’s stomach knotted again as she descended and she sprinted down the short hallway, sure she’d be sick in the sink. She managed to hold it back by splashing water on her face.

  She dialed Jake.

  “Yeah, Cam?”

  “He took Annie!”

  “What?”

  “Annie’s apartment’s been trashed. Her car is here, but she’s gone!” Her sobs broke her off. She heard Jake trying to call to her, but she didn’t understand him. She’d sunk to Annie’s kitchen floor, barely aware of avoiding the broken glass, and she pulled her knees up and tucked her face between them.

  She had no awareness of how long she was there, but Rob found her.

  “Come on, baby. Let’s get you downstairs.”

  She shook her head and argued incoherently. Some part of her needed to be in Annie’s space to draw her home.

  “Jake will find her.”

  “No!”

  “You don’t want Jake to find her?”

  “I do, but…” She let out a large sniff. “Jake? You think”—she gulped down a sob—“shouldn’t we?”

  “Cam, you’re exhausted! You had a helluva day!”

  “No! We need to figure it out.”

  “Come downstairs and we’ll try, okay?”

  Cam nodded; that made some sense. So she followed Rob to her own kitchen table and watched as he got out a notebook and pen.

  Rob looked surprised when Cam pulled the notebook to herself and started grilling him.

  “How long did you stay for the margaritas?”

  “Just the one pitcher and nachos. Annie said I looked lousy and needed sleep, and I could tell she was drunk, so I drove her home—her car, obviously. I had to take a cab home, and then another one to get back here.”

  “Well… that’s good. Better not to drive after that.”

  “Nice convertible, by the way.”

  “My need was great,” she joked, gallows humor the only thing that might numb the pain. “What time did you get home?”

  “Maybe eight. I made a protein shake, brushed my teeth, and was in bed by nine.”

  Cam rolled her eyes at the mention of the protein shake. Rob claimed they were healthy, but he only actually drank them when he feared a hangover.

  “Then I woke up when Jake called.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Midnight, I guess?”

  Cam tried to make sense of that. She’d thought she’d left Samantha’s at nine or ten, but time had probably morphed in the weirdness, and so it was certainly possible she hadn’t left until later. It was probably why the officer had been so nice about it.

  “So how do we find Annie?”

  “You’re going to be mad,” Rob said, “but first we wait. Jake swore he’d call when he knew anything. Cam, you have to get some rest, and in the morning, when they know something, I’ll help you with whatever we can piece together.”

  She tried to fight the idea, but her body rebelled. She was exhausted. She lay down, still dressed, on her bed with Rob. His phone was set loud, as she made him prove three different times, and he held her while she slept.

  As promised, Jake called Rob at about three in the morning. A search of Joseph’s apartment had revealed two toy Pomeranians, yappy and demanding, quite a rich fantasy life—though fantasy more of the swords and dragons variety than the Penthouse type—and five thousand dollars in cash that Jake thought meant he looked ready to leave town.

  The clue Jake felt was most helpful, though, one he fortunately shared w
ith Rob, was a stack of newspaper clippings about interest in a property south of Roanoke. Jake didn’t know what to make of it, but Rob thought it might mean something, and so before he woke Cam, he turned on her laptop to search.

  “Cam. Here. I think this is why he’s so interested in that property.”

  Cam jerked herself awake, feeling oddly refreshed from her two-hour nap. Rob explained what Jake had found in Joseph’s apartment, and then she joined Rob at her laptop to look at the article he’d pulled up from the Roanoke Tribune’s online version. It was in the archives, which, thankfully, Rob had access to because he was a newspaper employee.

  Rob pointed out that he’d saved a number of related tabs, and Cam pulled the computer to her so that she could read through them. They described a series of lawsuits in the late 1990s against tobacco companies. Many local tobacco farmers had opted to sell their land, due, the article said, to the writing on the wall. Cam knew that had made Rob cringe—a reporter shouldn’t resort to clichés.

  The series, though, made it clear the landowners who’d sold before the court decision had mostly gotten fair money for their land. The sellers who had waited, however, had gotten only dimes on the dollar, nowhere near the true value for their land.

  Joseph Sadler-Neff had been interviewed, one of a handful of landowners unwilling to part with family land for such a pittance.

  “His elderly mother owns it. It’s the reason my search didn’t catch it.”

  “What search?”

  “I ran a background search on everybody who was even a little suspicious. It’s just part of the job,” Rob went on, as though that shouldn’t be news to Cam. “While he couldn’t afford to farm it with all the increased financial burdens, he’d leased part of it to a man who raised sunflowers, and decided to just let the rest sit idle.”

  “That’s where they are,” Cam insisted.

  Rob nodded. He’d drawn the same conclusion.

  “Why does Joseph have it in for Annie?” Cam asked.

  Rob opened a tab Cam hadn’t gotten to yet.

  Senator Alden Schulz expressed his sympathy for the farmers but said public opinion now sided against tobacco, and in good conscience, the state of Virginia couldn’t legislate in a way that discouraged diversification.