“What was she referring to?”
He sniffed back the tears and told her what happened. Austin had apparently thought someone at work was into him, but he was wrong. “I made an idiot of myself,” he whispered, glancing around the crowded café. “Shelby was threatening to spread the tale wide over social media. She could be a real biotch sometimes, you know?” He pulled a tissue from his sweater pocket and dabbed at his eyes. “You won’t say anything, will you?” he asked, a catch in his voice.
She put her hand over his on the table. “Not a word, I promise.” He was so young, and so vulnerable.
“That’s why I miss Natalie. She loves me for who I am. I wish I knew where she went!”
“That’s one thing I’m trying to figure out, and if I can just find out what happened to Shelby, maybe they’re related. The other day after I saw you, I got into Delaney’s office. I wanted to poke around, but I didn’t have enough time. I believe that he had the opportunity to kill Shelby. I’m not saying why I think that, but trust me . . . he could have done it. I don’t know if he did, though, and I didn’t have time to check out his files.” She smiled across the table. “I’d love to have a peek at them, and I wonder if you have any ideas of how I might get into the office when there is no one around.”
Unexpectedly, Austin grinned, his eyes gleaming with mischief. “Sweetie, you came to the right place. You want it, you got it.” He dug in his sweater pocket and brought out a ring of keys. “You could say I’m a collector.” He jingled them. She reached out, but he snatched them back and looked around the café. “One of the things I’ve collected lately is keys, and I just happen to have a key to the Meadows agency office.” He slipped two keys off the ring and held it out. “The big silver one is mine to the back door, and the gold one is to the employment agency. I’ll give this to you to on one condition.”
“Yes?”
“If you get caught, don’t tell them the key came from me!”
She smiled and took the key. “No problem at all.”
Twenty-three
ONCE HOME SHE toyed with calling Glenn Brennan back and arranging to meet him somewhere that afternoon, but she had too much to do. Instead, she called her friend. “Valetta, feel up to some snooping before the Dickens Days stuff this evening?” Jaymie asked, holding the phone against her shoulder while stirring brownie batter.
“You know me well enough to know the answer. Where do we meet?”
Jaymie explained about Austin loaning her his key to the employment agency, and her plan to look at the files and computer to figure out what was going on with the Natalie Roth case and Shelby’s involvement, and whether it all led back to Delaney Meadows.
“Sounds cool. You want to meet there?”
That was the great thing about a friend like Valetta; no need to convince her, she was up for anything. Even trespassing. “Yeah. Just at dark. What time is that?”
“This time of year? About five.”
“I knew that,” Jaymie said, with a chuckle. “But they’ll still be open then. Six o’clock; I know the offices in the building close down at five, even the call center.”
“You got it. I’ll wear my cat burglar outfit.”
The afternoon went quickly, but not quickly enough for Jaymie. She spent three hours at the manor, playing the part of an early twentieth century housewife, and baked cookies in the antique oven, which she was beginning to get the hang of. A couple of classes of kids from the elementary school came through; one of those last-week-of-school outings that keep excited kids interested. She did her best to make it sound interesting and everyone got to try a cookie, which they enjoyed. She left as soon as she could and sped home, changed, ate a sandwich and called Valetta. “Meet you there, fellow burglar?”
“Will do.”
As soon as the sun sank, it became bitterly cold. She stuffed her mitted hands in her parka pockets and walked briskly through the quiet streets, the way to the Belcker Building familiar now. Austin had told her that his key was to the back door of the building, so when she saw Valetta, dressed similarly to her, she motioned for her to follow her down the lane and around to the back. The parking lot was not quite carless, but just then a group of stragglers came out chattering and laughing together. Jaymie and Valetta turned toward each other, as if lingering while waiting for a ride, or to chat before departing the workplace.
Once the last two cars had cleared the parking lot, Jaymie looked at Valetta. “Ready, partner in crime?”
“I am if you are. And it’s not a crime, it’s a worthwhile enterprise to find out who killed a girl. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be taking part.”
“Thanks for those pearls of wisdom,” Jaymie said, her chuckle coming out on puffs of steam. She pushed the first key into the lock and turned, and the door opened readily. They were in. Jaymie led the way upstairs to the Meadows Employment Agency. The door key worked, and they entered the dark office.
They stood inside for a moment, getting their bearings.
“Are there any windows to the outside?” Valetta asked.
“I don’t think so. Why? And why am I whispering?”
“We can turn on lights, right? If there aren’t any windows to show the light on the outside?”
Jaymie felt by the door, flicking on a light switch. The reception area leaped in to brilliant relief and she blinked, let her eyes adjust to the bright light then led the way around the desk and into the office. “Let’s snoop in some of the offices, then go to Delaney’s. I have to think that’s where we’ll hit the jackpot.”
Together they carefully searched the offices along the corridor. It appeared that Delaney’s employees mostly worked on the employment agency end of things. It was legitimate, as Valetta had conveyed with her story of Brock finding an assistant through them. They discovered references to placements of local graduates with Fortune 500 companies in the airline and tech industry, as well as an international hotel chain. Delaney Meadows was, to some extent, who he said he was.
“But I find it odd that no one else in the office seems to be involved in this DM Models business.”
“And the dating business,” Valetta added.
“Yeah, he shrugged that off when we talked, saying it was just starting. It’s time to look into his office,” Jaymie said, checking her watch. “We’ve got another half hour or so before I have to go and work the Dickens Days. Glenn Brennan phoned me earlier today; he has something he wants to tell me about Shelby’s family, something Shelby told him. I wonder if it has anything to do with her brother, Travis. Oh, and Jakob texted me earlier; he wants to meet me at the band shell at nine.”
Valetta smiled. “He’s the real deal, isn’t he?”
“I’m not saying a word! Let’s get a move on so we can get out of here.” She led the way to Delaney’s office. “I keep thinking that maybe Shelby found something out about his involvement with Natalie Roth’s disappearance, and that’s why she’s dead. Because of that notation in his planner I know he was supposed to be at the Dickens Days event, and probably meeting with Shelby. And I have independent verification that she was intending to meet someone there and didn’t want anyone else around when she did it. I suspect, too, that she was blackmailing him. That’s where the money came from, the dough she was using to finance her disappearing act to Florida.”
“But what made him kill her?” Valetta asked. “What happened with Natalie Roth?”
“I don’t know. I’m hoping I find something out.”
She led the way into his office, pulled off her parka and sat down at his desk. She flicked on his computer, wondering if it was password protected, but it wasn’t as far as she could tell. Sloppy or lazy. And odd for someone who she had heard was secretive. “Maybe you could start going through his personnel files, if they’re on paper?” Jaymie said.
“Will do.” Valetta tossed her coat aside, grabbed a rolling chair from
another office and sat down by the wooden file cabinet.
Jaymie took some time to puzzle out his filing system on his computer. He had compartmentalized his files so that the employment agency was up front, with the DM Models business buried in anonymous file names. The dating website info was buried even deeper. No wonder he didn’t worry about password protection. Once she figured out how to search the appropriate files, it got her nowhere. It would have helped if she knew what she was looking for, but she was randomly trying to tie him into Natalie’s disappearance, so she was searching any file attached to her name. So far she had found her digital resume and a list of emails in the modeling business files.
She sighed deeply. Was she going to have to read through the emails one by one? She’d start in reverse chronological order, beginning with the last ones first. “Finding anything?” she asked, looking over at Valetta.
“I think so, but it may not mean anything.”
“What is it?”
“It’s just an oddity. I’m in the dating website paper files. Did you know that he printed out the file and application of every person who has signed up?”
“Why would he do that, I wonder?”
“I don’t know. But what’s weirder is, I’m looking through these just after looking through his DM Models file, and noticed that there are an astonishing number of the girls from the DM Models site who are apparently also looking for love . . . but under a different name.”
“What?” Jaymie turned and eyed her friend, paying closer attention. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I’ve looked through the DM Models profile pages and seen lots of the headshots given. Gorgeous girls and a few gorgeous guys, all local. Then, when I leafed through the dating profiles, I’m seeing the same photos crop up. So, either all these gorgeous model-type folks want to work, and also find love under assumed names, or the dating profiles are fake. I suspect the latter.”
Jaymie sat back in her chair and thought about it. “I suppose they could be doing online dating, too, but it feels off, doesn’t it? Why would every one of them choose a fake name?”
“They wouldn’t. Something is wrong.”
Jaymie randomly typed in some key words in the computer search box, and one of the results looked promising. She clicked on it, and there popped up a spreadsheet with a list of names and variations on those names. There was a list of Ashleys with last names starting at Anderson and going down to Washington. There were men’s names, too, like John, which had last names exactly the same as Ashley. “Very strange,” Jaymie said aloud, and explained what she was finding.
She backtracked and looked at the file the spreadsheet was in. There were photos in it, all headshots of young to middle-aged men and women, all attractive. And then she found a list of document files labeled Contact 1, Contact 2, and so on. She brought up Contact 1. “Listen to this: ‘I hope you don’t mind me writing to you. I came across your profile and was immediately struck by your beauty-slash-good looks. Your smile is enchanting-slash-handsome. Would you consider corresponding with me?’” She looked up from the monitor. “What the hell is this about?”
“It sounds like every scam letter I get in my email or on Facebook that starts, ‘Dear one, I saw your profile and was attracted by your smile,’ meanwhile, my profile is of a kitten with a ball of yarn.”
“I get those, too, and my profile pic is an old eggbeater. Sure, nice smile.”
Valetta laughed out loud.
“This is the one labeled contact two,” Jaymie said. “It reads: ‘Thank you so much for responding to my bold email. I’m new at the whole online dating thing and a little shy. Maybe we can take this conversation to email instead of the dating site? I’d love to share my deepest feelings with you.’” She looked up, wide-eyed, at Valetta. “Does that sound like anyone you’ve actually talked to in real life? And here is contact three: ‘I’d love to come visit you, but I’m afraid I just can’t afford to take time off work. I’m supporting my elderly mother who has Alzheimer’s-slash-cancer-slash-blindness, and her care is very expensive. I would so love to meet you though, and worship you the way you deserve. Those who have let you go must be fools not to value you, your smile, your warmth, and your beautiful—brackets blue brown gray—eyes.’”
“Okay, let me guess. I’ll bet contact four is a plea for a loan so he—or she—can come visit and yet still pay for the care of his poor aged mother with Alzheimer’s slash cancer slash carbuncles!”
“It’s a dating scam,” Jaymie said, sitting back in the squeaky chair. “That’s what Delaney Meadows has set up.”
“And he’s using the pictures he’s gotten from the models as the profile pictures. Why not just look online for pictures?”
“Maybe he’s afraid those will be noticed. I know some scammers have been caught that way, by using someone’s photo who finds out.”
“Yeah, but local would-be models? I wonder if—”
“Shh, Valetta, what was that noise?” Jaymie said.
They were both silent for a long moment. Nothing.
“Probably just the heating system or something,” Valetta said. “Anyway, I’ve read a lot about these romance scams. Brock sends me links about them all the time. I think he’s afraid I’ll fall prey to it. As if!” She snorted a laugh.
“But how does this connect to Natalie’s disappearance and Shelby’s murder?” Jayme mused. “I feel like the two must be connected, but I guess I should keep an open mind. They may not be.”
“Let’s start with Natalie. She was working for DM Models, right?”
“Right. According to her father she had just started and had a job set up in Korea, but we know she never left the US.”
“We don’t know why, though, or where she went, or with whom, or how.”
Jaymie sighed, discouraged. “We know next to nothing.”
“But we do know what happened to Shelby.”
“Sure; she was murdered by someone who likely knew about her plans to disappear and place the blame on Cody. That’s why I was thinking it could be Travis, her brother, but she may have confided in others that I don’t know about. One thing I do know is she was writing in that journal here, at the Bean & Leaf and probably kept the book here while she wrote in it. Someone that she worked with, even Delaney Meadows, could have read it and gotten the drift. If they had a reason to get rid of her it would be ideal to use the journal’s hints to place the blame on Cody and away from the real perpetrator. Someone texted him to get him to Queensville that night, if I’m to believe him.”
Valetta had been flipping through the dating profiles and frowned suddenly. “Wait, I saw this picture in the DM Models.”
“Yeah, you already figured Delaney was culling photos to do a romance scam on guys using the model photos.”
“But this one,” Valetta said, flapping it in the air, “happens to match up with someone you know.”
Jaymie snatched it away from her friend. “That’s Natalie Roth!” she said, “But the profile name is Ashley Nash. And it says . . . it says she had been corresponding with a guy named—”
“What are you doing in my office?”
Jaymie gasped and almost fell off her chair as she looked up to find Delaney Meadows standing in the doorway. The noise she had heard must have been him letting himself into the office! There was no clever way out of this. She stood and faced him, shivering, the nerves hitting her in a wave. Valetta looked scared out of her mind, too. “I’m trying to find out what happened to Shelby Fretter.”
He looked startled, and she worried that she had stupidly tipped her hand. If he killed Shelby, he was dangerous. If he didn’t, then he should have no reason not to let them walk out of there, or call the police to charge them with trespassing. But he wasn’t going to do that; they had uncovered enough already to at least know he was involved in a scam. She was paralyzed by fear as she watched him slip his han
d in his trench coat pocket.
He brought out a gun. “You just had to keep being snoopy, didn’t you?” he said, shaking his head. “You just couldn’t leave me alone. I’d hoped I had at least until the New Year before everything went belly-up.”
“Meaning before you were caught?” Jaymie asked, her voice trembling.
He nodded. “You’re worse than Shelby,” he said. “You,” he said, pointing the gun at Valetta. “I know you. You’re that gabby pharmacist, aren’t you? Lily goes to you all the time for her meds.”
Valetta nodded. “She needs them to cope with you.”
“Me? She’s the one who’s impossible, demanding, whiny . . . Anyway, shut up and get down on the floor with your back to the wall. Sit cross-legged, hands where I can see them.”
She obeyed.
“And you, Miss Troublemaker, you I don’t want anywhere near her.” He looked around his small office. “Just sit over there,” he said, waving the barrel of the gun toward the other wall. “And take that wheeled stool, turn it upside down and hug it. Now!”
Jaymie did as she was told, sitting across the office from Valetta, hugging the small upside-down stool. She thought his next move would be to tape her wrists together, but instead, he paced the office for a long minute, silent. What was his game plan? He didn’t seem to have one.
He looked panicked, his eyes darting from Valetta to Jaymie and back and around the room. Nothing made sense yet, as much as she tried to figure it out. It was like a collage of random facts sewn into a crazy quilt of happenings with no discernible pattern. Except for what she had just learned about who Natalie was supposedly dating, matched on the dating website.
“What are you going to do?” she asked Meadows as he paced.
He turned to her, wild-eyed. “I don’t know. Everything is a mess now. And all because of you,” he said, pointing the gun at her. It trembled with every movement of his hand.
Almost fainting with fear, Jaymie met Valetta’s gaze, her eyes wide.
White Colander Crime Page 26
