Framed (18 page)

“I suppose. It’s too late for his business, though.” She thought for a moment. “You know what? I think he really lost it a couple of days before he ended up in the hospital.”

Sue’s ears perked up. “Really? What set him off?”

“I don’t know. I gave him this phone message, see, and he just went bonkers. Didn’t you hear him?”

“Was that the day Tom DiAndreo talked to him?” They shuffled forward again as another customer collected his order.

“Yeah, I think so. Yes, that’s right, we were getting ready to walk out when Tom came in and took charge of him.”

Sue chewed her lip. “Do you remember the message?”

“It was just something like, ‘go ahead with what we discussed’ or something like that.”

“Who was it?”

“That’s just it, I don’t know. It was a guy. I asked his name and he just said, ‘He’ll know.’ So I told Jemmie and he started swearing.” Sandy shrugged. “Oh well, I guess we’ll never know.”

Sue heard her number shouted out. “Well, good luck,” she told Sandy as she stepped up to the counter. “That’s me,” she said to the girl at the register. “Three bowls of chowder.”

She agreed to the bread and oyster crackers that came with the chowder and paid the bill. As she headed back to Brush & Bevel, her mind struggled to correlate dates. What could have happened last fall to re-ignite Jemmie’s terror of frogs? As far as she could recall, there hadn’t been any of the little creatures anywhere near the shop or the mill. Male frogs made a lot of noise in the spring as they tried to impress their ladies, but the mating season would have been long past. Besides, not even the vociferous spring peepers could make themselves heard over the rushing of the river on the other side of the park. Jemmie’s reawakened fear must have had some other cause.

Elsie and Ginny greeted her return with hungry appreciation, and for a while, there was only the occasional slurp or contented sigh. Ginny crumbled her crackers into her chowder, while Elsie floated them whole. Sue winnowed out the chunks of clam and set them aside. “I love the chowder,” she explained at Ginny’s raised eyebrows. “I just don’t like all the chewing.”

“I just sort of swallow them whole,” Elsie said. “They are rather tough.” She scraped the bottom of her bowl with a spoon and then wiped up the last few drops with a chunk of bread. She sighed with contentment. “Mark sure does make real good chowdah.”

“Okay, to business.” Ginny pushed aside her bowl. Her fingers toyed with the remains of her bread as she passed out lists of things to be done before the unveiling. “Look this over and see what you think.”

“Whoa!” Sue exclaimed, looking at the tasks listed under “Publicity.” “Who gets to call the Boston TV station?”

“I’ll take care of that,” Ginny said. “You two are in charge of decorating the shop. I’ll want flowers, nice big bouquets. Elsie, can you borrow those red velvet rope things from your church again?”

“They’re renting them out now, especially for a commercial event.”

“Fine. And a couple of pillars for the flowers, okay? I’ll leave it up to your good taste. Just check with me about prices. Sue, will you take charge of doing another banner like we did for our last artist show? And talk to the janitor about lights like he did then, too. They were nice.”

“How about some natural items, Ginny?” Elsie suggested. “Maybe some birch saplings in big pots or something like that, to suggest a forest?”

She considered it. “Let’s think about that. We’ll need lots of room so I don’t want to take up floor space with decorations. Oh, how about some sprays for the mantel and such? You could use branches and ferns for that.”

Elsie nodded, thinking. “We can put some things together, I think. Maybe even find some trilliums in the woods.”

“Trilliums are endangered,” Sue objected. “You’re not supposed to pick them. We could use lilacs, though. And what about food?”

“The Chowdah Bowl will cater, as usual, and I’ll get the wine. Or how about champagne? It’s such a special event.”

They were discussing the menu when someone rapped on the door. Ginny looked up in annoyance. With all the lights off except for the ones over her desk, none of them had expected any interruptions. Sue really hoped to finish up the meeting early.

The rapping continued. The three women looked at each other, their tension unvoiced. “Shall I get it?” Elsie suggested.

A muffled voice came from outside. “Sue, are you in there? Come on, I see your car here. Sue?”

She got to her feet and peered around the room divider that provided some privacy to Ginny’s desk. “It’s Tom DiAndreo,” she said. “I’d better let him in.”

He burst in as soon as she unlocked the door, waving a packet of photos at her. “Have you told anyone about this? Anyone at all?”

“And good evening to you,” she replied calmly, although her voice betrayed her quickening heart rate. “Come on back here to the desk. And no, I haven’t told a soul, I promise.”

He lowered the envelope and followed close on her heels, crowding her. “No one, Sue? It’s critical. No boyfriend or girlfriend, even?”

“I haven’t even told my cat, and she died three years ago. I may be impulsive, but I’m not stupid. I could see what those things were. Here, sit down and have a soda. By the way, welcome home.”

He plopped into the chair she pushed forward for him, staring at her. “Do you realize what you’ve done? Do you know what’s in this package? You could get me in so much trouble—hell,
you
could be in so much trouble!”

Ginny stood up for her employee. “She has answered your question, Tom, so must you harangue her? Now, calm down and tell us all about it. Oh, and wasn’t today your swearing in with the state police? Congratulations.”

“How was Cancun?” Elsie added. “Did you and Donna have a good time?”

He looked nonplussed at their united front. “Thanks,” he said, reluctant to let go of his urgency. “Cancun was great, and I did get sworn in this afternoon. She didn’t tell you anything about this?” He waggled the package at them.

“Not a word,” Ginny assured him. “What’s in there?”

Tom passed a hand over his eyes and swallowed some of the soda. “Motive for murder, I think.” He let their stunned faces confirm their ignorance of the envelope’s contents. Sue sat still, sure of herself, while Ginny and Elsie exclaimed over his terse comment. He let them get over the first shock. “I was cleaning out my desk at the Westford cop shop this evening. I printed out these photos from her camera. Then I found the newspaper articles she sent me.” His face flushed and he wagged a finger at her. “In the first place, you had no business taking the pictures you did, pictures of the contents of the box we all found in the woods that day Jemmie followed us. It could be considered tampering with evidence. The only thing saving you is that the Douglass police force doesn’t know you did it.”

“I didn’t tamper with anything,” Sue objected. “I took the pictures and put everything back in the same order. Nothing got lost or changed. The Douglass police have all of it. Not my fault if they haven’t followed up.”

He glared at her, but she had a point. “All right, so she took the pictures. If I hadn’t been away on leave, I would’ve talked to Douglass anyway. But not only that, she went nosing around in the newspaper files and copied some of them, too.”

“Newspapers are open to anyone who asks. I asked. All I did was send you copies of the articles. Besides, I paid for the copies.”

Ginny forestalled Tom’s retort. “So what did she take pictures of, Tom?”

He sighed. “Appraisals. I’d have to get a jeweler to look at them, but they seem to describe jewelry made for Abby Bingham by Jemmie Demarais.”

“Well, we all know he made things for her,” Elsie said. “What’s the big deal?”

“There are also appraisals of the same items, signed by another jeweler. Thing is, there is a big difference in value from the appraisals Jemmie gave her.”

They digested that for a minute. Ginny voiced the obvious conclusion. “He cheated her.”

“It appears so.”

“And she found out.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Uh-oh, indeed.” Tom leaned forward to emphasize his next point. “There is nothing to prove he cheated her. She could have been the one who got the diamonds replaced by zircons—which is what the appraisals show. Jemmie’s papers say there were diamonds, and the other appraisals say they’re zircons. Anyway, she could have been setting up a switch on Jemmie for all we know.”

“But how would that benefit her?” Elsie asked.

Sue shrugged. “If she could ‘prove’ he cheated her, even if he hadn’t, she could have gotten money out of him. Or other things.”

“But that would mean…she would’ve had to have another jeweler in on the scam,” Ginny mused. “That’s getting pretty complicated, isn’t it?”

Tom nodded. “Here’s one scenario…Abby wants money for something or other, maybe for a divorce or to give to Berger. She can’t get it from her husband, so she resorts to this scheme to blackmail Jemmie. But it backfires when he refuses to pay and he kills her and the artist, too.”

Ginny and Elsie both protested. “She wouldn’t do anything like that. She was
nice
, Tom.”

“People can be really devious.”

“Jerry wasn’t,” Ginny said. “I knew him well. He was the least devious man I ever met. Besides, Jerry didn’t need money. He was doing great.”

“Maybe so. That’s one scenario. Here’s another…Abby paid for diamonds but got zircons. She got suspicious for some reason and confronted him or threatened him with the evidence. Bang, she’s dead.”

“But why kill Jerry, too?”

Tom shrugged. “He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or Jemmie knew about their affair and arranged it to look like a murder/suicide. If so, he did it well, and I’m not sure he would’ve been capable of it. There is another possibility, though.” He looked at Sue.

She squirmed in her chair. “When I was at the newspaper a few weeks ago reading the files about Jerry and Abby, I ran across an article about motor vehicle registrations in Douglass. It just caught my eye as I was scrolling through the microfiches, but when I thought about it later, after we found the box, it bugged me. I checked a few things out, and it looked to me like someone was monkeying around with insurance somehow. I did a little more checking, but then I got scared and left it all for Tom when he got back.”

“Probably the smartest thing you’ve done all spring. I told you, this stuff is best left to the professionals. But Sue was right. Someone was trying to get their company vehicles insured at a lower rate by registering them in a town that has a lower risk. I did a little research myself before I came over here, and it turns out the company did their insurance business with Mike Bingham.”

He let them think about it for a while. Sue caught his eye and raised her eyebrow in question. He nodded. She bit her lip.

“But I don’t see,” Elsie began. “What does that have to do with Abby’s jewelry? And anyway, Mike was so upset about her dying he—well, you know. He came in here and threatened me.”

“That’s why I got scared, Elsie,” Sue said. “I think Mike was overcharging this company—it was a construction company—for their insurance and pocketing the extra fees. Then I think he got Jemmie to make diamond jewelry to launder the money. What if Abby found out about it? And then she found out Jemmie wasn’t using diamonds?”

Sue glanced at Tom, who nodded for her to continue. “It gets worse. I started thinking how he could maximize his winnings, so to speak, and I thought…what if he forced Jemmie to use fake diamonds? And then later on, he might stage a theft of the fake jewelry and claim insurance for the real thing. He could make a lot of money that way.”

“But if Jemmie went to the police,” Elsie objected.

“I think Mike would have threatened him with frogs.” Sue chuckled, but she wasn’t joking.

Ginny frowned. “Now, really. Okay, so he’s afraid of frogs, but I just don’t believe that would have kept him from protecting himself from Mike, and I can’t imagine Mike doing that anyway.”

“You didn’t see him in the woods,” Elsie told her. “He was doing all right until Mac put the frog in his hand. Then he went absolutely bonkers. Like his mind just snapped.” She hesitated. “I can imagine Mike doing something like that. After all, I saw him here, remember.” She shivered at the memory.

“He was crazy with grief,” Ginny protested.

“Well, maybe he’s crazy with greed, too,” Sue replied.

Tom jumped back into the conversation. “One of the things I plan to do is call out to Montana and see if there’s been any jewelry thefts since Mike moved out there. But—”

There was a shattering crack and the crash of glass exploding. Tom leaped up, one hand reaching for the weapon under his jacket, but he stumbled and fell to the floor. The women cried out in alarm. Shouts and frantic barking came in through the blasted window. Footsteps pounded away from the door, and then there was a scream.

“Don’t let him get away!” someone yelled.

“No!” Tom shouted. “Stay here!” But his voice faltered.

“You’re bleeding, Tom!” Ginny cried, bending over him. “Your jacket is all full of holes. Are you all right?”

The noise outside increased as bystanders gathered. Above the human voices, they heard a dog’s growl and the pained whimpering of a person in distress. “Okay in there?” someone called.

“Tom’s hurt!” Ginny yelled back. “Call the cops and an ambulance!” She slapped her forehead. “
I’ll
call them.”

A man Tom didn’t recognize rushed in, calling Elsie’s name. “I’m okay, I’m okay!” she answered him as she fell into his arms. “Oh, Frank, what are you doing here?”

The man’s voice was muffled in her hair. “God, Elsie, what is going on? Why is Mike Bingham here?”

Tom managed to sit up and tried to brush away Sue’s hands. “Bingham? That was Mike Bingham? Did anyone catch him? Dammit, Sue, I’m okay. Did anyone catch him?”

“We got ’im,” said another voice from the door. “The dog’s got ’im. He’s not going anywhere.”

Tom heard Ginny on the phone with the emergency services and Elsie reassuring Frank she wasn’t hurt. The name clicked in his head—Frank was Elsie’s husband. “Sue, go find out what’s going on, would you?” His voice sounded thin and he ached abominably, but though a hundred points of fire seemed to bore into his back, all his systems seemed to be functioning.