Murder Actually (11 page)

“So, you're a lawyer?”

Strike one. Ever since Grant I was wary of the law.

“I
was
a lawyer,” he corrected gently. “And what do you do, Elspeth? When you aren't sleuthing.”

“I'm a writer.”

He looked surprised and then gratified. “Really? Anything I might be familiar with?”

I mentally passed over my catalogue of romance books and shook my head. “No, they're rather specialized; just a small academic audience.”

“So, you're a mystery?” he grinned and put down his mug. “I suppose that means I'll have to get to know you better.”

We smiled at each other as the door opened and a pair of tourists peeked inside.

“Are you open?” The man called out.

Edgar stood up. “I guess it's as good a time as any to open my doors. It's been a pleasure
not
doing business with you, Elspeth. I hope I see you again…soon. I'd love to hear more about your detective work.”

I turned to leave the shop and as I glanced back he was eyeing me speculatively. I felt a warm glow as I hurried down the street. I wasn't about to say Edgar Allen Archer was better than lemon meringue pie, but he was already running a close second.

I was almost to my car when I noticed Julia hurrying towards me from the direction of the All Hallows Police Department. She stopped two feet away and eyed me suspiciously.

“Why do you look like that?” she demanded.

“Like what?”

“Like you just caught Moby Dick.”

I elected not to tell her about Edgar Archer just yet, she'd have us married with kids before Christmas.

“Can't I just be in a good mood for no reason?”

“I guess, but it's weird.”

“What were you doing at the police station?”

“Recon… gathering Intel.”

“In English, please?”

“There's been a break in our case!”

I noticed some amused looks from people passing by and lowered my voice. “What kind of break?”

“The police took down the tape at Inkwell. We can go investigate the scene of the crime.”

 

 

 

I cautiously stepped through the front door at Inkwell, half-expecting to find another dead body lying on the floor. But there was nothing except the sun shining on rows of shelves and the intoxicating aroma of musty books and fresh coffee.

Charlotte Whipple was unpacking boxes behind the counter and smiled at us as we walked in. “Hello, ladies. It's nice to see you under better circumstances.”

“We're glad you're back in business.”

She nodded. “From your lips to God's ears. You have no idea what even a few days of closure can do to an independent owner. On the bright side, I've already had a bunch of ghouls come to look for bloodstains, and they all bought copies of
Haunted All Hallows
. I'm thinking about setting up a haunted display; maybe even get a few of those kooky ghost groups through here to get some free publicity.”

Julia's voice was hot with indignation. “We're not kooks! I'm a founding member of the Hudson Valley Paranormal Society and I'll have you know we're serious scientists…”

I interrupted Julia before she got started on EVPs and EMFs and ESPNs.

“I'm sure Charlotte didn't mean it the way it sounded, Julia,” I said soothingly and then turned back to Charlotte. “That's a great idea. You could decorate with old antiques for a spooky effect, you know, candlesticks, stuffed ravens, antique books…I'm pretty sure Thrubwell Antiques has some stuff you could use.”

Charlotte's expression underwent a subtle change, switching from open to guarded. “Maybe,” she said cautiously, “but it's a bit pricey for me.”

“Have you bought anything from there lately?”

She shook her head. “No, why?”

“Well, Mr. Thrubwell was telling me someone bought something from there and commissioned Violet Ambler to get it for them. I was wondering if it might've been you.”
She looked relieved. “No, I do all my own shopping. Speaking of antiques, have you met Edgar Archer yet? He just opened a shop on English Street.”

“Yes, I met him.” My tone was noncommittal but she smirked knowingly.

“He's very attractive, isn't he?”

“Yes, he's a good-looking man.” If Charlotte was waiting for me to declare my intentions she'd have a long wait. “Julia and I were just going be ghouls and take a look around the store, if you don't mind.”

Charlotte waved a hand. “Look all you want. I'm running a deal on all my used hardbacks, buy one get one half off, so keep that in mind while you're sleuthing.”

Julia almost ran up the stairs and I followed at a slower pace, remembering the last time I made that walk. By the time I got to the top Julia was already on her hands and knees in International Classics. The space smelled like disinfectant and there were some discolored splotches on the floor I preferred not to think about.

“Don't you think the police already did that?”

Julia stood up and dusted off her pants. “They always miss something; just ask Ms. Weebles.”

It didn't seem worth pointing out that: 1) Ms. Weebles was a cat; and 2) she was a fictional cat. I walked over towards the window, where the strong afternoon light was warming the ancient oak planks.

“The police are very thorough. It's not as though they would've missed something right underfoot…”

The words were hardly out of my mouth when I felt something under my foot. I looked down and noticed a small object wedged in the floorboards.

“What's wrong?”

“There's something here.”

Julia bounded over and grabbed my shoulder. “I told you!”

I ignored her and picked up the object. It was a large black hairpin; the old-fashioned type that no one used anymore. Or, almost no one.

“It's just a hairpin.” Julia sounded disappointed. “Anyone could've dropped it.”

“I don't think so, Julia. Hardly anyone uses pins like this anymore unless they're going to prom. The only person I've ever seen wear them is Sabrina Elliott.”

“Sabrina! Well, I guess she might've been up here. She buys a lot of books.”

I shook my head. “That might explain the pin. But it doesn't explain the other clue.”

“What other clue?”

“There's blood on it.”

Julia regarded me with admiration. “
Meowser
, as Ms. Weebles would say.”

We both started at the sound of a cough and turned to observe Charlotte Whipple standing at the top of the stairs. I shoved the hairpin into my jacket pocket and turned to face her.

“I forgot to mention I'm also running a special on my biographies and memoirs,” she said.

“Thanks, we'll keep that in mind.”

She stood there a moment, hovering uncertainly. “Do you need help with anything?”

I shook my head. “No thanks, we're almost done.”

“Okay, don't forget to check my new releases on your way out.” She turned and walked

back downstairs and Julia and I looked at each other.

“How long was she there?” she whispered.

“I have no idea, but probably long enough for her to hear us mention Sabrina Elliott.”

“Let's get out of here.”

I carefully replaced the hairpin in the floorboards and we went back downstairs.

“Thanks, Charlotte,” I said brightly.

“You didn't find anything you wanted?” Her tone was vaguely reproachful and Julia grabbed a book from a stack near the register.

“I'll take this one.”

I looked at the title and raised a brow. “
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for None and All
. I didn't even know you liked Nietzsche.”

“No one really
likes
Nietzsche. He's just something you have to endure.”

Charlotte smiled. “I wish more people shared your opinion, Julia. That one's been on the shelf for quite a long time.”

“Nietzsche and I are glad to help.”

“C'mon, Julia.”

We stepped back outside and Julia put her new book in her bag. “What's next on our agenda, Sherlock?”

I thought for a minute. “Let's go to Captain Swift's Inn.”

“Business or pleasure?”

“Hopefully business. It's the hotel Jasper visited the afternoon he died.”

“Sounds sordid.”

“I'm sure it will be.”

 

 

Captain Swift's Inn might've been habitable at its grand opening in 1974, but the seafaring gentleman had obviously undergone a reversal of fortune since then. The brown paint on the doors and windowsills was cracked and faded and the dull green of the balustrades discolored with age. Three floors of rooms overlooked the parking lot and at one end a dingy white sign shamefully proclaimed itself
Office
.

Julia looked around and shuddered. “This reminds me of the hotel in Grand Rapids when we went to the Gerald Ford Museum in ‘87. Worst. Vacation. Ever. Presidential animatronics should be outlawed.”

“C'mon, let's go.”

We walked in the office and glanced around apprehensively. A small, ferret-like man sat behind the desk, smoking and reading a dog-racing guide. A television set blared at us in Spanish and a moldering sandwich on the counter was animated with the happy buzz of flies. Julia grabbed my arm and moved to stand slightly behind me. I thought for someone who earned a living in PR she was remarkably sheltered.

“Can I help you?” The man behind the counter smoothed back his hair with one hand while keeping a tight grip on his smoke with the other. He looked us over and then looked at Julia again.

“Have you seen this man?” I held up the picture of Jasper Ware I had clipped from the
Gazette,
and he glanced at it and then at us.

“You two cops?”

“No, just interested parties.”

He laughed, revealing a sinister collection of yellowed teeth. “I might've seen him. What's in it for me if I did?”

I wasn't sure what the going rate was for information at Captain Swift's, so I opened up my purse and took out a twenty. Shady Dirtstash, as I'd decided to call him, took my money and reluctantly removed the cigarette from his mouth.

“Yeah, I seen him. Like I told the cops, he used to come here pretty regular; checked in at twelve and out by four, my kind of customer.”

“How often would he come?”

Shady shook his head. “Dunno, maybe once a month, maybe more.”

“When did you last see him?”

“Last Monday.”

“Was he alone?”

Shady laughed. “They never are. He had a woman with him.”

“What did she look like?”

“Tall, blonde, pretty. Kinda like your friend there.”

I was baffled, and not just because he thought Julia was prettier than me. I'd been expecting a description of Sabrina Elliott. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, she was real classy looking, we don't get too many like that around here.”

I could believe it. “Did you ever hear him use her name?”

“Yeah, Sugar.”

“He only called her Sugar? He never called her by a real name?”

He glared at me angrily. “What makes you think that's not a real name? My first wife's name was Sugar.”

“Sorry, it's a lovely name, very sweet. Did you ever hear him use a last name?”

“Nope, just Sugar.” Shady put out his cigarette and leaned across the counter. “Now that I answered your questions, I got one of my own.” He leered at us suggestively and Julia drew in her breath. “Do you girls want a room? It's free if I get to watch.”

Julia made a sound somewhere between a groan and a whimper and I shook my head. “No, thanks. We have everything we need.”

We were almost to the door when the oily voice stopped us again. “Don't you want to hear about the other lady?”

I turned back and noticed he was regarding us with an expression of distasteful satisfaction. I pulled a very reluctant Julia towards the counter.

“What other lady?” I tried to keep my voice tough and professional.

Shady smiled and pulled a Kool from his crumpled packet. “Smoke?” We shook our heads and waited as he lit up and exhaled. “There was two girls that dude met here. I only told you about the one.”

“What did the second one look like?”

He shook his head and grinned. “Cost ya extra.”

I nudged Julia; there was no reason for me to incur all the costs of our expedition. She reached in her bag and fished out a twenty.

“What did the other woman look like?” I demanded.

“I never really got a good look at her, I just seen her from the car. She had dark hair, pretty, wore big sunglasses.”

Great. It could be anybody. “Did you see what the car looked like?”

“It was a dark green SUV. I think it was a Range Rover.”

Jasper's car; that didn't tell us much.

“Did he mention her name?”

“Nope. She looked too good to even get out of the car. Kinda snooty.” He leaned over the counter and laid a clammy hand on mine. “If there's anything I can ever do for you ladies, just call me; I'm real discreet.”

I stared at him in disgust as Julia pulled me out the office door. She stepped onto the sidewalk and shuddered.

“Yuck! That guy was super-gross. I can't believe Jasper came here to get it on, or that he convinced anyone to come with him.”

“I guess he figured he'd never meet anyone he knew here.”

“He figured right! I need at least a hundred showers.”

I opened the car and we got back inside. “Well, his descriptions didn't sound like Sabrina, but if she was meeting Jasper she might've been wearing a disguise.”

Julia shook her head. “No good ever comes from wearing a blonde wig. Do you remember what happened the Halloween I went as Dolly Parton?”

There are some events that should never be recorded in written form. I shook my head. “I still can't believe Sabrina resumed her affair with Jasper after the way he treated her.”

We drove back towards All Hallows and I dropped Julia off at her office at Essex.

“Call me if anything happens,” she said.

I promised I would and headed out to Point Savage. I was almost home when I decided to make a detour and turned down Main Street. Ware Realty was in a federal style row house, and I stopped to examine the glossy advertisements for condos, bungalows and vacation cottages splashed across the Regency bow window before pushing open the front door.

“Hello?”

My voice echoed in the small space and I glanced around a sea of white. The style was ultra-modern and minimalist, two of my least favorite things, with white expanses of walls, thick, white carpet, and white and chrome furniture in sleek designs. A reception desk stood near the front door, and a second desk, presumably Alex's, was against the back wall. Long rows of white bookshelves and a glass topped conference table completed the hipster, magazine look, bought wholesale from a Scandinavian closet.

I walked over to Alex's desk and stood looking down at financial papers and real estate listings. I noticed some correspondence and picked up a page. It was an invoice marked ‘overdue' from a contractor at Pinnacle Estates.

I put down the paper and frowned. Pinnacle was a new housing project just outside All Hallows. At its conception, it was designed to appeal to high-end buyers fleeing the New York pricing market, but construction faltered along with the economy and then halted pending an injunction from the All Hallows Historical Society. The society maintained that the land Alex had acquired was part of the Heritage Project, a federally protected historic preservation area, and thus immune from development. It was rumored Alex was in deep financial trouble over Pinnacle.

The front door opened suddenly and a young woman dressed in a blue and orange geometric sundress stood at the door. She blinked at me across the sea of white.

“Can I help you?”

I smiled and held out my hand. “I'm Elspeth Gray; I'm a friend of Alex. I was hoping to catch him here.”

She moved a few of the papers on her desk and sat down heavily. “I'm Megan, Alex's secretary. He's out at the construction site.”

“Construction?”

“Pinnacle.” She said it with a gloomy sigh and I saw her adjust the invoices on her desk.

I adopted a sympathetic expression. “I read about it in the
Gazette
. Is the litigation still pending?”

She opened one of the coffees and took a sip. “I don't think it will ever stop.”

“What happened? I mean, how did no one realize the land was part of the Heritage Project?”

“Alex was so excited about the project he rushed the title search and missed the paperwork. Now we're scrambling to save what we can from the deal. It won't be much. Do you know anyone who's hiring?”

I shook my head and she moodily returned her attention to her computer screen. “Neither do I.”

I wished her well on the job search and went back outside. The white color scheme had been oppressive and I was glad to be back in messy, disorganized nature. I glanced down at my watch and saw it was almost four. If I hurried I could probably still catch Alex. I took the two-lane highway running to the north of All Hallows and fifteen minutes later had reached The Pinnacle.

The new subdivision consisted of about twenty gorgeous homes set on a cliff high above the Hudson. As I drove through the winding streets, I noticed at least half the houses were still under construction. Alex's red pick-up was parked near a construction trailer and I parked behind him and went to the door marked
Ware Construction
.

“Come in.”

Alex sat alone at the desk, a series of blue prints in front of him and a troubled expression on his face.

“Hi, Alex.”

He groaned and pushed back his chair. “Elspeth, I really don't have time for this right now.”

“No, no, I'm not here to investigate. Just a friendly chat.”

He eyed me suspiciously and then gestured towards a folding chair. “I could use one of those right now.”

“How's business going?”

“The same as it is for everyone else…lousy.”

“I'm sorry to hear that, but I'm sure you'll be able to weather the storm.”

Alex shook his head; his expression glum. “I wish I shared your confidence but it doesn't look good. The housing market isn't recovering from the slump and these properties aren't moving. The worst part is I have all these historical nut jobs breathing down my neck. Who cares anyway? This was all just wilderness until I bought it. It's not like I'm tearing down Native American villages.”

“The historical society is very devoted to its cause.”

“If you mean they're a bunch of whack jobs, then I agree with you one hundred percent. I just wish they'd find something else to save. Every day I'm behind on this job I owe more money. We can barely afford our own house payment, and you know Coco, she loves to shop.” His tone was bitter, and I raised a brow as he continued hurriedly. “Not that there's anything wrong with that! Coco's from Manhattan and I promised her we would move back there once we got the Pinnacle project off the ground. Coco can be very…demanding. I don't blame her. Once you achieve a certain lifestyle you don't want to go back to living like you did in college.”

“I'm sure it can't be that bad.”

Alex groaned. “It's worse. I've sunk every penny I have into this project and had to get a loan from Jasper as well. I guess the only good thing that's come out of all this is that I don't have to worry about that.”

He caught my expression and flushed. “I didn't mean it like it sounded. It's terrible that Jasper was killed, but at least it gives me some leeway with the loan. Nora isn't in any hurry to collect. She said there's plenty of money in the estate to help out family.”

“Nora's very generous.”

“Yes, she is. She's the best.” He broke off suddenly and stared at the wall behind my head.

“Nora told me you'd been very good to her,” I said encouragingly.

He smiled. “That sounds like Nora. She always has something nice to say about everyone, including her bum brother-in-law.”

“She said you helped her through some rough patches with Jasper.”

“Jasper treated her like crap.”

“I know, but I think you made up for him.”

He eyed me suspiciously but my innocent expression gave nothing away. His own features softened. “Nora is special. Have you ever seen her at work? The way she connects with the kids at her school is really terrific. It would be great to be able to do something like that…something really worthwhile.”

I eyed him a moment. “Why did you get into construction?”

He shrugged. “It was Coco's idea. She figured since All Hallows didn't have any other construction companies it would be an open market. When we started we were making money hand over fist. Then the market tanked. That's when I realized I was in over my head. I've tried to tell Coco how much trouble we're in but she just says we have to wait it out.”

“Maybe she's right.”

“Maybe she is, but I don't know how much waiting a man is expected to do.”

The last remark was so wistful I stopped and stared. He caught my eye and cleared his throat. “I'm sorry, Elspeth, but I really have to get back to work. I expect I'll see you at the funeral?”

He turned back towards his paperwork and I left the trailer. I decided to take the scenic route along the cliffs as I thought about Alex Ware. Jasper's death had been very convenient for Alex and his business. Just in time, really, and as Alex put it:
How much waiting was a man expected to do?

I was so absorbed in my detection theories that at first I didn't notice the car following close behind me. The road out to Point Savage was one-lane, with a large cliff on one side and a wall of trees on the other. It was one of the prettiest drives in the village, and I figured it was a tourist on a leisure drive, slowing down to let them pass.

The car sped up and advanced on my driver's side. I glanced in the rearview mirror and noticed that it was the dark blue car I'd seen before on High Street. I couldn't see the driver, just a vague outline of shape. I nudged my car a little further to the right and waved again for them to pass.