Chihuahua of the Baskervilles (14 page)

“Maybe he thought the first guy wasn’t any good.”

Angus scanned the letters. “This is the same detective, but these reports are from twenty years ago.” He flipped to the last page. “Oh, I don’t believe this.”

“What?” Michael rose up, banging his head slightly on the bottom of the file drawer. “I’m okay.”

“Glad to hear it.” Angus took the file to the desk and pushed aside a stapler and a dirty mug so he could lay it flat. “Take a look at these.”

Michael came over and paged through the papers. “Why would anyone name their kid Betsy Baskerville?”

“That’s the married name of Charlotte and Thomas’s daughter-in-law.” Angus pointed to a relevant paragraph. “Her maiden name was Elizabeth Widmer, until she married their son, Randolph Baskerville. Betsy Baskerville is Cheri’s mother.”

“‘Betsy Baskerville, patterns of behavior March through April,’ blah, blah,” Michael read. He flipped to the next page and his eyes widened. “Paternity test?”

Angus nodded. “Apparently our Thomas has been a paranoid bastard for a long time. He suspected Cheri wasn’t really his granddaughter.”

“And is she?” Michael scanned the page. “According to the test, she is. This report doesn’t say if they found out whether Betsy Baskerville was sleeping around.”

Angus slid out the next set of stapled sheets. “Says here that evidence of extramarital activity is ‘inconclusive.’ The detective didn’t start work until Betsy was already pregnant.” He scanned the rest of the page. “Reading between the lines, Randolph suspected his wife might be cheating on him, but he didn’t follow up on it until Thomas insisted. The detective says that often a woman will give up an illicit liaison when she finds out she’s going to be a mother.”

“So she might have been fooling around before they hired the detective, or it might have all been in these two charmers’ heads,” Michael said.

“That’s about the size of it.” Angus shuffled through the papers to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. “What I want to know is how Thomas could afford to pay for all this snooping and legal work.”

“The paternity test was twenty years ago. He still had his lumber business then, right?”

“I’m thinking of the more recent investigation, on his own wife. Surely Charlotte wouldn’t foot the bill for him to have her followed.”

Michael closed the second file drawer and opened the bottom one again. “We’ve got bank statements right here.”

Angus smiled benignly. “I can see you’re getting the hang of this.”

Michael pulled out a folder and brought it over to the desk. “See if you can find the most recent bills for the lawyer and detective.”

After a moment, Angus said, “There are bills from the detective for the last two months, totaling three thousand dollars. Looks like Thomas has the lawyer on retainer. He gets eight hundred a month, due on the fifteenth.”

Michael frowned. “I don’t see any checks written for amounts that large.” He pointed to the statement. “This is the joint account for Thomas and Charlotte, with two automatic deposits every month.”

Angus looked. “Probably Social Security. The amounts are too odd to be an allowance.”

Michael nodded. “They add up to a nice chunk of change when you don’t have to pay room or board, but it’s not enough to cover the lawyer and detective.”

“Could Thomas have had some other source of cash?” Angus wondered.

“From what? Selling drugs? Walking the streets? Seems unlikely. There’s another option, of course.”

“What?”

“Someone else paid the bills for him. A partner.”

Angus thought for a moment. “Bob Hume?”

Michael nodded. “Maybe the açaí-berry business is better than we thought.”

*   *   *

In Charlotte’s room, Suki unzipped her calf-high boots and stripped off her velvet leggings. The waist cincher she wore looked complicated, but had a hidden zipper on the side. Free of that and her long-sleeved white shirt, she stretched to one side and then the other. Finally she shimmied out of her La Perla bra and panties and donned a black silk robe with red dragons.

After getting ready for bed, she lounged in a chair and stayed up until past midnight, answering e-mails and surfing the Internet. Eventually she yawned, got up, and draped the robe over the chair’s back. Suki hadn’t slept in anything since she was five, and wasn’t about to start now. Charlotte looked plenty clean.

As she walked across the room, Lila came out from under the bed, bounded up the little wooden stairs, and pranced onto the bedspread.

“That side,” Suki said, pointing.

Lila obeyed.

Chum lifted his gray muzzle from where he lay in the exact center of the bed.

“You, too. Up.” Suki patted the spot where she wanted him to be.

Chum heaved himself to his feet, went over to Lila, and flopped down with a sigh.

Suki lifted the covers and got in. Making dogs obey wasn’t particularly hard, in her experience. You just had to know who was boss, at your very core. She switched off the bedside lamp and began her presleep Kegel exercises. Around thirty-four, the sound of intermittent creaking in the hall outside reached her.

She slid out of bed. Lila showed signs of following, but Suki held up her hand, palm out, and the dog subsided.

The crack under the door showed no light from the hallway outside. Suki listened intently before opening the door and looking outside. She slipped into the deserted hallway, still naked, then closed the bedroom door noiselessly and stood in the dark.

Downstairs, the front door opened and closed quietly.

Suki ran lightly downstairs and pulled the curtain aside from the window.

Ellen Froehlich walked quickly down the driveway, wearing her coat and carrying a shoe box in addition to her purse. She unlocked her car, got in, and drove away.

Suki watched a moment longer. Then she went back upstairs and tried the door to Ellen’s room. It opened.

Moonlight from two windows showed that Ellen was a tidy woman. The quilt on the four-poster bed lay unrumpled, and the small desk under the windows had a minimum of clutter—an engagement calendar, a work light, and a pencil cup, which also held two pairs of scissors and a seam ripper.

Suki closed the curtains before switching on the small lamp and looking at the contents of the desk’s two drawers. Aside from the usual jumble of pens, envelopes, and tape, they contained sewing supplies and catalogs for thread, trim, and fabric.

Closing the drawers, Suki wondered if she would hear Ellen’s return if she searched inside the closet. Probably not. She turned off the desk lamp and wondered what to do next.

Areas of the desk glowed faintly where spilled paint had been imperfectly cleaned from the wood’s grain. Her gaze wandered and came to rest on the pencil cup. Standing, she could see almost to the bottom, where something shone faintly.

Suki turned the light back on. Using the largest scissors like a tweezer, she pulled out a small V of fabric, perhaps a third of an inch square. A seam ran down the center. She turned off the light.

The fabric glowed.

Thirteen

Michael woke to the sound of a knock on the bedroom door. Beside him, Angus lay on his back, mouth open, snoring gently. Early-morning light shone through the curtains.

Michael got out of bed, not bothering to be quiet, and took a quick look around to make sure they had returned all the files to their places. They had, and Thomas’s keys were safely out of sight. Behind him, Angus mumbled something and rolled over.

The knock came again.

Michael pulled open the door. “Yeah?”

Ivan blinked at him. He wore dressy slacks and a shirt with an expensive sheen, but his clothes were rumpled, as though he’d been up all night.

The smell of stale cigarette smoke assaulted Michael’s nose. “Can I do something for you?”

“I want to talk to Thomas.” Ivan looked past him, to the lump on the bed, and his eyebrows rose considerably. “I will wait until later.”

“You can wait forever, but it won’t help. Haven’t you heard?”

Ivan’s forehead wrinkled. “Heard what?”

“Thomas ran after the ghost last night and was hit by a car. He’s dead. Charlotte’s in the hospital. They thought she might have had a heart attack, but it looks like it was just shock. They hope she can come home this morning.”

Ivan’s mouth fell open slightly.

“What did you want with Thomas?” Michael asked.

Ivan shook his head slightly, as if to clear it, then patted his trouser pocket. “He asked me to play twenty dollars for him, and it won.”

“Ah.”

Ivan turned. “I have to … uh…” He wandered off.

“See you later.” Michael closed the door.

Angus yawned and sat up. “I think you have restless-leg syndrome. You kept kickin’ me.”

“I meant to kick you. You kept oozing onto my side. That was Ivan, by the way. Looks like he’s been up all night.”

“Did he say what he wanted?”

“Thomas gave him a twenty to play at the casino, and he won on it.”

Angus grunted. “Lucky bastard.”

After washing and dressing, they went into the kitchen, where they found Suki and Ellen seated at the table with cups of coffee.

“Any word on Charlotte?” Angus asked, getting a cup from the drainer on the counter.

“They said I can pick her up this morning at nine.” Ellen glanced at her watch. “I was supposed to have a phone meeting with a distributor this morning.”

“Couldn’t Cheri pick Charlotte up?” Angus asked.

Ellen gave a humorless laugh. “She lost her license for driving drunk. I think that’s the main reason she dates Jay, so he can shuttle her around.”

“Maybe Cheri would like to go with you to the hospital,” Angus said. “She seemed pretty eager to see her grandmother.”

Ellen shook her head. “Cheri doesn’t get out of bed before ten. I already went up and knocked at her room. She yelled something unintelligible and threw something at the door—probably a shoe.”

“Cheri and Jay broke up last night,” Suki said.

“Oh, great.” Ellen pushed back her chair. “Now she’ll go back to asking me for rides. Before she got Jay, I used to have to sneak out of the house.” She went to the sink and ran water in her coffee cup.

“Is that why you left the house late last night?” Suki asked. “To avoid giving Cheri a ride?”

Ellen shut off the faucet with a deliberate motion and turned to face them. “I really don’t appreciate your nosiness. For your information, I bought some wine yesterday. I can’t keep it here, because Cheri periodically goes through our rooms looking for something to drink. By the time I remembered that I needed to take it to my friend’s house, it was late, but I went anyway. Regardless of any business issues we have, my friendship with Charlotte means a lot to me.”

Angus got up from the table and stood in front of her with his hands clasped. “Ms. Froehlich, we’re very sorry to have made you uncomfortable. I hope you’ll understand that we have Charlotte’s best interests at heart.”

Michael brought a cup of coffee and two cookies to the table. “Ellen, do you suppose Cheri could have gone into your room to look for liquor, seen the glow paint, and got the idea to make a ghost from that?”

“That’s entirely possible,” Ellen said, sounding slightly mollified.

“And while I’m sure she didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” Angus continued, “she does seem like a lass who enjoys drama.”

“That’s an understatement.” Ellen reached over and took her purse off the kitchen counter. “Listen, I’m sorry I flew off the handle. It’s certainly in my best interests to keep Charlotte safe. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.” She looked at her watch again. “And now I have to go.” She walked down the hall to the front of the house, grabbed a jacket, and left.

“Nice save, Angus,” Suki said, when she heard Ellen’s car start up. “Sorry about that.”

“Don’t give it a second thought.” Angus resumed his seat and leaned toward her. “So Ellen took a little jaunt last night? Do you think she was telling the truth about the wine?”

Suki shook her head. “Who puts wine in a shoe box? Also, she could have just locked it in her car. There’s more. Just a sec and I’ll show you.” She went down the hall toward the stairway.

“Does a wine bottle even fit in a woman’s shoe box?” Michael asked Angus.

“Maybe a half bottle. I suppose it depends on the size of her foot.”

Suki came back and put a scrap of fabric on the table. “I found this in the bottom of Ellen’s pencil cup on her desk.”

“You searched her room?” Michael asked.

Suki shrugged. “Just her desk.”

“Good lass,” Angus murmured. He poked at the scrap with his finger. “What is it?”

“It’s a piece of fabric that glows in the dark. And remember how Ellen said she hadn’t actually made a costume with the glow paint? If that’s the case, why does this piece of fabric have a
seam
?”

“Interesting,” Angus said.

“Wait till you hear what we found last night,” Michael began.

Angus put a hand on his arm. “Not in the house. It’s too easy to be overheard. We’ll go out to breakfast and talk on the way.” To Suki he said, “Can you put that back in Ellen’s room without anyone seeing you?”

She nodded. “I could hear Cheri snoring through her door, and Ivan’s shower is running.” She picked up the scrap of fabric. “I’ll be right back.”

*   *   *

They went out to breakfast and filled each other in on what they had found. When they had breakfasted and were back outside, Angus led the way down Manitou Avenue.

The weather had warmed considerably. Michael unzipped his coat and said, “I could get used to eating out on someone else’s dime. Are we staying just through the Emma Crawford Coffin Race?”

Angus put his hands in his pockets. “That’s the plan. I wish we could stay longer, if only because I’m worried about Charlotte Baskerville. She’s very vulnerable.”

“Or maybe she’s safer, now that Thomas isn’t around to try and get her committed,” Michael said. “Those detective reports should help her get over her grief faster. Thomas really was a bastard.”

“I wasn’t going to show her, but I suppose she’ll find them eventually,” Angus said. “I hate to think how she’ll feel when she finds them.”