Hidden Treasure

by Jane K. Cleland

  “Stellar. So was lunch.”

  “Where’s Zoë?”

  “Getting a mani-pedi.” She smiled at Ellis. “Apparently Mom has a hot date tonight.”

  “Very cool,” I said. “And you’re going to spend a few days with Jake.”

  She grinned. “Who says?”

  “I have reliable sources. Say hey for me.”

  “Will do. I’ve got to grab my backpack and hit the road. See ya!”

  When she was in the house, out of hearing, Ellis said, “Tom isn’t talking.”

  “What about Julie?”

  “She’s in the wind.”

  I stared. “Julie? She’d never go anywhere without Tom!”

  “And Santa Claus is real. She finished her shift at the diner at three. A coworker named Allison said she agreed to drive Julie to the Gingerbread House, where she was supposed to meet up with Tom. We’ve talked to Allison. According to her, Julie blew her off. No one else there knows anything except that Julie clocked out on time, changed in a flash, and was gone. Julie’s not at the apartment she shares with Tom, her college library, the home of the family she babysits for, her parents’ trailer, or anywhere else anyone can think of. Wes has been blasting the news we found the box and cat, so I figure she’s gone to ground. I’ve left messages for her. We’ve notified the bus companies and airports to be on the lookout. She doesn’t have wheels, so that’s a help. I’m hoping you can think of something I’ve missed that will help bring her in.”

  “Money. Someone should offer her a job—you know, a couple of hours’ work, high-paying, away from prying eyes, but on a bus route—or better yet, make it some snooty-sounding snob who offers to send a car for her. Julie won’t think it’s a stupid stereotype. She’ll think it’s her lucky day.”

  “I can get Dawn LeBlanc, the undercover cop from Portsmouth, to help. She’s good—you remember her.”

  “She’s terrific, but Julie has already been gone for how long?” I looked at my phone. “More than an hour. It’s five after four. By the time you got the paperwork in order and Dawn up to speed, Julie could be in Florida. She’s probably already in a rig heading south.”

  “Hitchhiking?”

  “If I were her, I’d have headed straight to the nearest truck stop to ask a driver for a favor. Someone is bound to be eager for company. Long distance driving is lonely work.” I smiled. “As to who can play the snooty role, I have an idea.”

  * * *

  Max was eager to cooperate and signed the liability waiver Ellis passed him.

  “This is fine,” he said, handing it back. “I promise to do my best, and you indemnify me from any unfortunate consequences. Give me the details.”

  We sat in Ellis’s office. The rain had started as mizzle, my mother’s word for misty drizzle, while Ellis and I were still standing in the driveway, but by the time we reached the police station, it was drenching.

  I sketched out Max’s role. He took notes, nodding and smiling.

  “This is good, Josie.”

  “You need the voice.” I raised my chin and put enough nasal in my tone to float the Mayflower back to England. “I’m terribly concerned about Mother.”

  Max chuckled. “You ought to try out for Roxie, Josie. You’re fabulous.”

  I laughed. “I can’t sing. I can’t act. I can’t dance. I’m a triple threat, all right.”

  Ellis double-tapped the desk with his knuckles. “A discussion for another time.” He turned to Max. “Can you do it?”

  “No problem.”

  “I’m thinking I want to talk to her away from the police station, where her guard won’t be up.”

  “Forget that,” I said. “Her guard is always up.”

  “All the more reason to try for the element of surprise. I’ll get us an off-site location.”

  “Get me the address,” Max said. “In case she refuses my offer of a limo, I need to be able to tell her where to go.”

  “She won’t,” I said.

  “She might,” he argued.

  “You’re right. She might.”

  We both turned to Ellis and waited expectantly.

  He rubbed his nose for a moment, then stood and walked to the door. “I’ll be back. In the meantime, rehearse.”

  Ellis was back in ten minutes. He handed Max a slip of paper.

  Max’s brows drew together. “Isn’t this Josie’s address?”

  “Next door—a woman named Zoë Winterelli. I’ve cleared it with her and have officers en route, just in case Julie shows up on her own.”

  * * *

  Julie didn’t answer her phone; no surprise. Max, in his role as Mortimer Peterson-Fox, an investment banker who’d been living in London for the last five years, left a message.

  “Ms. Simond,” he said at his haughty best, “my name is Mortimer Peterson-Fox. I understand you are a superb organizer—and that’s what I need. It’s for my mother, who is getting on in years. I live in London, and I’m here on a brief visit. Needless to say, time is of the essence. Mother has accumulated quite a lot, not hoarding exactly, well, not exactly hoarding, I suppose, but close enough for you to get the idea. Things must be culled. I hate to push—I truly do—but I must get things in order. Please tell me you’re available now.” He listed an hourly wage that made me stare. “Don’t think I’m being overly generous. I assure you, you’ll earn it. I can send a car for you. Please call me as soon as you get this.”

  He hung up and grinned.

  I smiled. “You’ve got the part.”

  “I do like to act. It gives me quite a feel … I can’t explain it.”

  Ellis leaned back. “For that kind of money, I’ll help your mom myself.”

  “Was it too much?”

  “No,” I said. “She’ll bite.”

  Two minutes later, Julie called. She was at the Mall at Fox Run in Newington, three miles northwest of Rocky Point, heading, perhaps, for Canada. They settled on the place where his limo would pick her up, and Ellis chose an officer I didn’t know to play the driver, safely ensconced behind a locked divider made of bulletproof glass.

  * * *

  I was in my kitchen peeking out the window when the limo drove up. Ellis and I had both been dropped off by a patrolman, the same one who’d driven me to Belle Vista to pick up my car. Ellis went into Zoë’s house, and I went into mine. He’d tried to get me to stay away, but after I promised to keep out of sight, he gave up. He had two additional police officers with him and sent them to hide in the bushes on the sides of the house.

  The plan went off without a hitch. The police officer pretending to be the driver held the limo door, and Julie stepped out. Between the murky light and steady rain, her hair took on a coppery sheen. He shielded her with an umbrella. She looked around, then started up the walkway. He escorted her to the porch, then returned to the car.

  The officer stood by the passenger side of the car and unbuttoned his jacket. I saw a glint of silver, his weapon, holstered on his left side.

  Before Julie could ring the bell, Ellis stepped out.

  Without pause, Julie vaulted to the walkway. Her sangfroid was fully as unexpected and startling as Lainy’s anguished howls. As I stood and watched, stunned, she streaked across the street and lunged into the woods. A moment later, the driver and the two police officers sprang into action and charged after her.

  Within seconds, they’d nabbed her. The two uniformed officers towed her clear of the woods. As soon as she hit the asphalt, she went limp, and they half-dragged her back. While Ellis snapped on the handcuffs and spoke the words I assumed were to inform her that she was under arrest, she raised her eyes to the sky. She seemed to see through the clouds and pelting rain to the heavens, as if she were praying. A patrol car pulled up. Ellis said something else I couldn’t hear, and Julie shook her head no, no, no. After another brief exchange with Ellis speaking and Julie shaking her head, presumably his asking if she’d be willing to talk about the situation here and now, and her indicating no way, he led her t
o the patrol car. He assisted her in getting into the backseat, placing his hand over her head, protecting her. So much for Julie letting down her guard.

  Two minutes later, they’d all left. I sat on my sofa and did nothing.

  So many people affected by one young woman’s ambition, impatience, and greed.

  Wes called, interrupting my musings.

  “I heard on my police radio that something went down at your house. What?”

  “It wasn’t my house. It was next door. Julie Simond has been taken into custody.”

  “Custody? What for? Talk to me!”

  “Where are you?”

  “Driving up Elliott, about half a mile from the takedown place.”

  “‘Takedown’ is a little strong.”

  I asked him to give me a ride to my car in return for filling him in, and he agreed.

  * * *

  We sat in Wes’s car. The steady rain drummed a persistent beat. A wall of water running unchecked across the windshield blurred the outside world, cocooning us. I stared into space, explaining the inexplicable.

  “Julie just couldn’t take it anymore. She felt like everyone had been taking advantage of her good nature, and she’d had it. She went from being an unpaid helper when she lived in the Gingerbread House with Tom to working two jobs to cover her share of the rent once they moved out. Worse, she felt demoralized doing what she considered menial work. Here she is trying to better herself, to become the first person in her family to graduate college, to become a nurse, and she’s stuck running from tedious job to tedious job, trying to make ends meet. From her perspective, Tom just doesn’t get it. He’s content simply getting by, but Julie has big dreams—a house, nice clothes, a new car. At this point, though, all she wanted was what she thought she earned, what she felt entitled to. If you were to ask her, she’d say that she’s always tried to do the right thing, to be kind and helpful. She quoted her grandmother as saying that the people who help the most get the best lives. She was a true believer … She was wired to help, and she was reared to help, but she wasn’t getting her due.”

  “I get it. She wanted more. So what happened?”

  “Like everyone, Julie knew that Maudie was thinking of selling the presentation box, which meant she had to act before the opportunity slipped away. Julie didn’t know if the jewels on the presentation box were real. No one did. I’m speculating here, but I think I’m on firm ground. If they were, great … if they weren’t, no harm done. I suspect that she wasn’t going to try to sell the box or cat. She was after the gemstones, probably just a couple of them. She might have planned to try to replace the ones she stole with fake stones before anyone noticed they were missing. With any luck, when the fakes were discovered, say, during an appraisal, everyone would assume they’d gotten lost at some point over the centuries and someone replaced them with replicas. I could see her justifying the theft by saying that no one would miss them, yet the money they’d bring to her would change her life, would give her options.”

  “Okay, so that’s the justification and the plan. How’d she pull it off?”

  “She snuck back into Maudie’s apartment after Friday’s lunch, after Maudie left for San Francisco. That’s when Celia arrived. They must have been floored to see each other. Celia was planning a major scam of her own, so she had to be all twitchy from the get-go. I imagine Celia caught Julie in the act of prying a jewel loose. Celia, already frazzled, said she was going to call security—maybe even the police. Julie would have begged her not to, to forgive her, to let her go. She would have promised never ever to do anything like this again. Whether Celia refused or agreed, Julie probably wouldn’t have trusted her to keep quiet, which meant her future hung in the balance. She convinced herself that Celia was an existential threat that had to be stopped. The rolling pin was in the drying rack. Julie grabbed it and struck.”

  “Why didn’t she dig out the jewels then and there?”

  “With a dying woman at her feet? She went into crisis mode. She was in and out of Maudie’s apartment all the time, so she didn’t have to worry about fingerprints, except on the bloody rolling pin, so she doused it with bleach.”

  “Why didn’t she take the rolling pin with her?”

  “I suspect it simply didn’t occur to her. She was completely focused on the presentation box.”

  “Not just the box. She took the bleach, too, which doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Sure it does. Probably she planned to sterilize the grocery cart after she was done with it.”

  “Come on,” Wes said, sounding incredulous. “She didn’t take the rolling pin, but she took the bleach?”

  “She wouldn’t want to be seen buying bleach right after the murder. And don’t forget that time was of the essence.”

  “Okay,” Wes said. “But wasn’t it risky as all get-out for Julie to wheel the box out using Maudie’s own grocery cart?”

  “Not at all. She double-bagged the presentation box so it would be protected from the elements, which means no one would see anything noteworthy. I actually think using Maudie’s grocery cart was smart—she was with Maudie a lot, often wheeling that same cart. Obviously, her plan worked. No one noticed her.”

  “She didn’t pry out the jewels, though.”

  “My guess is that she decided to wait until after the brouhaha died down.”

  “You said she let herself back in,” Wes said. “How’d she pull that off?”

  “She had a key. The first time I met Maudie, the three of us had coffee. Maudie asked Julie to get her sweater. Maudie didn’t hand Julie a key, which means she already had one. In terms of getting into the facility unseen, I did it myself with no problem.”

  “So she wheels the box in the grocery cart to her car. Then what? Where did she go?”

  “The Gingerbread House. I was certain that she’d stashed the box and cart in the shed. She had a key to the shed—I saw her use it. All the guys working on the renovation are so used to seeing Julie in the garden, they wouldn’t think anything of her wheeling in a bag of what they’d assume were supplies, probably for the iris beds. Later, after the crew had left for the day, while Tom was on some job or other, she buried the presentation box in back of the shed. I noticed the freshly torn-up lawn.”

  “Good one! Where’s the grocery cart now?”

  “Well bleached and in some Dumpster, would be my guess.”

  Wes tapped his pen on his chin. “My police source tells me that after lunch on the day Celia was killed, Julie said she went to the diner, that as soon as she got there, she realized she’d made a mistake about the day of her shift, so she turned around and left. But … hello!… if she was at the diner she couldn’t have been at Maudie’s apartment at the same time. Something isn’t jibing here.”

  “She never went to the diner. She told that lie solely for Tom’s sake. She needed a reason to explain why she was late. It never occurred to her she’d actually be a suspect, that she’d need a real alibi, so she just made it up.”

  “No way.”

  “It’s true.”

  “How do you know it was a lie?”

  “Julie said traffic wasn’t bad on Travis or she would have been even later. Travis was closed to repair a water main break.”

  “Gotcha,” Wes said, jotting a note. “You sure ate your Wheaties on this one, Joz!”

  “There’s more. Julie stole the consignment documents and Maudie’s checkbook. Celia had already forged Maudie’s signature on the forms.”

  Wes soft-whistled. “So Julie, thinking it was Maudie’s real signature, saw an opportunity to steal some money by writing a fake check.”

  “I bet she rationalized it by saying she would only take what she was due for all that unpaid labor.”

  “Why didn’t she take the pen?”

  “Why would she? She didn’t need it.”

  Wes shook his head. “Lots of people were up to no good: Celia, Lainy, Julie. All out for a quick buck.”

  “Different situations. Lai
ny simply wanted to finance her dream without saving for it. Celia felt she was out of options—poverty had worn her down. Julie felt she was doing everything right, yet she was just treading water.”

  “All women who felt Maudie or the world owed them,” Wes said.

  “What do you make of that?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. You?”

  “Be careful who you trust.”

  We talked a while longer; then I raced through the buffeting rain to my car and drove home.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Wes’s late-night post revealed that Julie was refusing to cooperate and was being held on a material witness charge. Her court-appointed lawyer told Wes that he was looking forward to meeting with his client in the morning. Wes included a video clip he’d recorded at 9 P.M. of Tom, sitting on the hard wooden bench in the Rocky Point police station lobby. Tom had been cynical about human nature, but now that the dark side was touching him personally, he looked perplexed. It was heartbreaking to see.

  Wes, out of camera view, asked Tom what he was doing there.

  “I need to talk to Julie.”

  “She’s been arrested,” Wes said, “so I don’t think they’ll let you talk to her.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  “Did you know of her plan to steal Maudie Wilson’s presentation box?”

  “There was no plan. There was no theft. Julie’s not a thief.”

  “The police searched your apartment. They found Mrs. Wilson’s checkbook and consignment forms from Prescott’s Antiques in Julie’s bedside table.”

  “What?” Tom squinted at the camera, at Wes. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Detective Brownley’s voice interrupted their conversation, telling Wes to stop recording, and a moment later, the video ended.

  * * *

  The rain stopped overnight, but it was still cloudy, and the temperature remained in the mid sixties. Ty was going to work from home, so he didn’t have to get up before dawn. I made us scrambled eggs around eight. After we finished, Ty went upstairs to his office to set himself up for the day, and I washed up. I was drying the frying pan when Zoë came inside.