Curious how he had noted that detail since I didn’t see him write anything down while we were speaking to Shelley, I asked, “How did you remember that? You never take notes while we’re together.”
He looked up from his notebook and explained, “I have a pretty good memory, but I write down everything important from each day when I get home at night.”
“Really?” I asked in disbelief. I guess I had thought he just remembered all these details and didn’t have to use notes like I had to.
“Sure,” he said with a smile. “Even I can’t recall everything people say days later without some kind of help.”
He flipped through a few more pages as I wondered if maybe I had the stuff to make a good detective. Maybe all I needed was some experience.
“What about the former mayor?” I asked. “What kind of notes do you have on him?”
“Oh, his notes could take up this whole tablet. He’s an interesting guy, that former mayor. I think we can safely say at the very least that he’s a heavy drinker and he’s got a temper on him.”
“Considering we watched him put down five drinks in the span of just over an hour, yes, I’d say we can call him a heavy drinker. You know, I’ve seen him in the bar week after week for years, and I’d never noticed he drank as much as he did last night. He seemed in rare form.”
Alex arched one dark eyebrow as a curious look crossed his face. “Maybe he’s drinking to forget something?”
“I don’t know, but he was definitely putting them away last night more than even my father had ever seen him do.”
Alex smiled. “Guilty conscience?”
“Could be. I want to do some research on him today after I get done at work.”
“Good idea. I did some last night after I got home. Former mayor Girard’s record is pretty clean. He was well-liked by the voters until this last year, but I couldn’t find out why they sent him out of office after twelve years.”
Everyone who was around for last year’s election season could tell Alex about what had cost the mayor his job. It was all anyone could talk about all fall. Although in the big picture it hadn’t really meant much, to the local people in Sunset Ridge a once beloved mayor losing re-election was big news.
“Let’s just say that he butt heads with the wrong person and came out on the losing side of the battle.”
Leaning back in his seat, Alex looked across the table at me with a quizzical expression. “Really? Anyone I’d know?”
I nodded. “Our very own police chief, Dominick Hampton himself. Seems the mayor thought himself above the law one too many times and the chief wasn’t having it. So he let it be known that Jefferson Girard wasn’t the man he seemed to be.”
“Let me guess. Was he caught drinking and driving?”
“You’d think that, but no. Nothing like that. The mayor was caught fudging his property taxes. The poor lady in the town tax office, Annabelle Jarvis, who had been helping him skimp on paying lost her job and moved away from Sunset Ridge a week later. Now if Girard had been found murdered, she’d be the person I’d be looking at for that. She swore he forced her to go along with his cheating scheme, but nobody wanted to hear about it. So they shunned her and sent him from the mayor’s office.”
Alex knitted his brows in what looked like confusion. “There were nearly a dozen people other than us and Girard in the bar last night, and every person who saw him said hi and gave him a big smile as they did it. If they had such a problem with his behavior, it doesn’t seem like it’s still an issue.”
I had to smile at his big city naiveté, if there was such a thing. Coming from a place like Baltimore, he seemed more used to the directness of city people. Small towns weren’t like that. Oh, the citizens of Sunset Ridge had made Jefferson Girard pay for his malfeasance and taken his job away, but he was, after all, a man who’d led the town for over a decade, so it wasn’t like they were going to hold a grudge forever. He’d paid his price, so now he could live his life.
And people would just whisper behind his back from time to time. That was what small town life was like.
“You have to remember where you are, Alex. This isn’t the big city. Things are done differently here. They drove him out of office, but after he publically agreed to pay all his back taxes he owed, everyone pretty much shrugged and went on to the next piece of juicy gossip. You know, like who’s unmarried or who’s sleeping with whom. It’s just the way this place is.”
“Interesting.”
I took a forkful of my danish and enjoyed the taste of the cherry flavor on my tongue. “You’ll get used to it.”
“I’m not sure I want to. I prefer a more straightforward approach to life,” Alex said in a voice tinged with disgust.
“That’s why you’re friends with me. I’m your local connection for straightforward,” I said with a smile.
Some part of me didn’t want him to think that all my hometown had to offer was nasty old biddies who gossiped too much and corrupt politicians. True, it did have them and I hated how nosy the busybodies could be, but Sunset Ridge was so much more and I wanted him to see that.
“You and our favorite policeman, who I see coming our way with a look of determination, if I’m not mistaken.”
I followed Alex’s gaze to see Derek walking up to our table indeed with an expression that said he had something on his mind. Dressed in his blue police uniform, he stood out from the rest of The Grounds’ customers, all of whom now watched him approach us. Tongues would be wagging that afternoon, for sure.
“I’m glad I found you both here. Mind if I sit down?” Derek asked as he pulled a chair from a nearby table.
“Please do. You seem to have something important to tell us,” Alex said as he cleared his coffee cup and plate away from where Derek chose to sit.
“How can you tell?” he asked as he moved his chair close to the table.
Before Alex could answer, I did it for him. “Detective, remember?”
Across the table, Alex gave me a sly grin as Derek looked at me like I’d said something confusing.
“Yeah, well I’m here to ask what you’ve found out so far since I know the two of you are working on the Geneva Woodward murder case. Since I just ran into a big, fat dead end, I’m hoping to hear you’re having more success.”
Feeling particularly vindicated since I’d never believed in his robbery gone bad theory of the case, I asked, “What happened to the thief lead?”
“The state police just called. They searched his place and although he had hundreds of pieces of jewelry, none of them they found matched the inventory Geneva’s insurance gave me. According to their records, not one piece is missing and nothing else seems to be missing from her house.”
“So you found Geneva’s rings in her house?”
Derek thought about my question and shook his head. “No. Now that you bring it up, we didn’t.”
Looking across the table at Alex, I smiled. “So it wasn’t just a murder, after all. Interesting.”
“Definitely. Our murderer had something other than murder on their mind.”
“Great. I thought I was back to square one but now I’m not even there yet. Please tell me you two found something.”
I placed my hand on Derek’s and couldn’t resist teasing him. “We’re so glad you’ve come over to the dark side. Things are way more interesting over here.”
My joking perked him up, and for the first time since he joined us he didn’t look like the weight of the world was resting on his shoulders. “Oh yeah? I’m all ears.”
Alex smiled at me and began telling him about what we’d found out by talking to Shelley and the former mayor. When he finished, Derek looked at both of us and said, “You two have been busy. I’m definitely interested in speaking to both of them.”
“I’m more for Girard, but Alex will probably tell you his mind is still open.”
Derek’s happiness faded slightly, and his mouth turned down into a tiny frown. “Speaking to the former ma
yor might be a little difficult. It’s never just Jefferson you get to deal with, and once that wife of his gets wind that I might think he’s a suspect, it will be all over town. Maybe for now I’ll keep things to myself until I can find out anything more.”
“Do you really think she’ll spread that kind of news?” I asked. “I’d think the First Lady would want to keep that her husband might be a suspect under wraps.”
He sighed like most people did when they thought about dealing with either Girard. “Maybe I’m wrong, but regardless, I’ll have to treat him with kid gloves. He is the former mayor, you know.”
“A former mayor who was cheating on his property taxes,” Alex added with another hint of disgust in his tone. “It’s not like he hasn’t been a part of something illegal before.”
Derek seemed confused by Alex’s comments, so I patted him on the hand again and explained, “He’s not used to how things work around here yet. Give him time.”
I saw by the way Alex opened his mouth to speak that he wasn’t eager to get used to how Sunset Ridge worked, but before he could say anything else Dominick Hampton showed up and joined us at our table. Never a fan of my amateur investigating, he likely wouldn’t be happy at all to find out that I was any part of the Geneva Woodward case, so I braced for the usual snideness he liked to dish out to me whenever he saw me with his brother.
“Derek, a minute of your time, please,” he said as he pointed toward the area back near the restrooms. Derek quickly followed his brother there while Alex and I looked at each other like we both knew what the other was thinking. Whatever Dominick had to say, we wanted to hear it.
“Did I just hear you say Jefferson Girard is a suspect in our murder case?” he asked in a low voice barely loud enough for me to make out.
With his back to us, Derek nodded. “Don’t worry, Dom. I can handle this with the mayor.”
“Former mayor and if he’s part of this, he won’t be getting any free passes from us. If you have good cause, get him in for questioning.”
Alex and I stared across the table at one another but didn’t say a thing. Surprised at his brother’s eagerness to go after Girard, I tried to push out the noise around us to hear what else Dominick had to say, but I was unsuccessful. All I heard was Derek promise he wouldn’t give Jefferson any special treatment.
With that, the chief of police left his brother standing alone, and as he passed us, he tapped his knuckles on our table and smiled down at me. “Poppy. Alex.”
Before we could even say hello, he was gone. Obviously Derek had been able to keep my work on the case secret. Good. I didn’t need to be chewed out by Dominick another time.
Derek returned to the table and replaced his chair at the table next to us. “I better get going since I have some work to do. If you find out anything else, remember your promise, Poppy.”
“I will. Whatever we find out is all yours.”
Turning to look at Alex, Derek extended his hand to shake his. “Good to see you again, Alex. Thanks for your help.”
With the second Hampton brother gone, I couldn’t wait to discuss with Alex what we’d heard. “What do you think of that?”
“He seems pretty eager to see Jefferson Girard mixed up in this.”
What Alex said did sort of make sense. “I guess, but even with that property tax issue, I remember Derek telling me that his brother really didn’t want to have everything go public. He only did it after Girard basically told him he could do whatever he wanted because he was the mayor.”
“Perhaps he has information that we don’t know about? As police chief, he would know about things concerning the mayor’s office that the average citizen wouldn’t,” Alex suggested.
“True, and it is a murder case, so I wouldn’t expect the chief to take any possible lead lightly.”
Looking down at my watch, I saw it was nearly noon. “I wish I could stay and discuss this, but the social page of The Eagle calls. Let me know if you find out anything with our case.”
He just nodded and smiled, like he often did, and as I made my way outside to walk to work, I liked the way it sounded when I said our case. We had a case we were working together, and I was actually helping.
Our case. It had a nice ring to it.
Chapter Twelve
My boss was nowhere to be found by the time I got to The Eagle’s offices, so at least I wouldn’t have to explain to him why I’d likely have to meet with the Founders’ Day committee one more time to write my series of articles. A man particularly disinterested in anything that even hinted at a mystery, he’d never understand how my interview became derailed with talk of who killed Geneva Woodward or why I was even curious about the case.
I settled in behind my desk and opened the file for the article I had due the next day. A fluff piece about the gardens of the residents of Sunset Ridge, it wasn’t exactly going to require much of my writing skills. I received this same assignment every year, and my editor didn’t expect anything new in this piece. The first year I got it, I went out to each garden in town and took copious notes as I spoke to each homeowner about what they’d done to achieve such a beautiful display of flowers. I had details on everything from the type and amount of fertilizer each one used to how many hours a day they devoted to tending their gardens.
My boss’s reaction? Just make sure there are more pictures than words, Poppy. And stop writing as if this is a topic that requires all those details. Then he threw out a quote from Hamlet about words to let me know all the work I’d done would never show up in the paper before he spun on his heels and left my office in disgust at my diligence.
So now I read over my piece from last year, the year before, and every year since the first time I wrote it and cringed at the mediocrity of each sentence. I wanted to do better. I wanted to write something that would really showcase those gardens, even though I’d grown to hate them for what they represented to me.
I didn’t, though. Instead, I did as my editor demanded and only changed a word here and a phrase there, things he wouldn’t notice but that let me feel like I wasn’t merely his obedient lackey.
“Hey you!”
I spun around at the sound of Bethany’s chipper voice and saw her standing in the doorway to my office. Smiling at me, she tilted her head so her blond hair tumbled over to her left shoulder.
“What’s new, caribou?”
“Just doing my yearly homage to flowers. You know, the one that Howard uses to make me understand exactly what my place here is.”
Bethany stepped into my office and sat down in the chair next to my desk. “Don’t let him get you down. Everyone loves your articles. You’re the rock star of the paper. You don’t see that awful editor of yours or any of those reporters getting stopped on the street like you do when we go for lunch.”
I chuckled at her reference to the time we went to eat at The Madison Diner a few months earlier. Something I’d written about the Pumpkin Festival that occurred each October had affected Maria Carson, the owner of Carson’s Floral Shop, and she stopped me on the street to rave about how much she’d loved the article.
“Yeah, rock star, baby. I’ll have to remember that.”
Bethany leaned forward toward me and looked around like she wanted to check if we were alone before she spoke. “So what’s the news on Geneva’s murder? Got any clues you can tell me about?”
“Nothing yet,” I lied, wishing I could tell her more.
She leaned back in her chair and shook her head. “I still can’t believe it. So it’s you and Derek working together? To be honest, I’m putting my money on you solving this. Nothing against Derek, but I’m just not sure he has what it takes to solve a murder.”
“And I do?”
With a giggle, she said, “I’m going with girl power on this one. You’re smart, Poppy. You read people like no one I’ve ever known. If I had your skills, maybe I wouldn’t always date the wrong men.”
Bethany had a terrible track record with men. If her boyfriends w
eren’t addicted to something, they had pasts that inevitably came back to haunt them just when she was sure she’d found “The One.” Her relationships never lasted, but I didn’t think the blame lay completely with her. She simply had bad luck picking men.
But since she always had a boyfriend, none of the nosy gossips in town ever seemed to bother whispering about her. In their strange mindset, it was better for a woman to have a string of terrible boyfriends than avoid the messy drama of bad men and have no man at all.
“How is your current man doing? What was his name?”
Shrugging, she twisted her face into a grimace. “I’m single again. Rex turned out to be another bad one.”
“Ah, that’s right. T-Rex. Now that you’re done with him, I can admit that every time I thought about him, all I could think about was a dinosaur flailing his tiny arms.”
“That I might have been able to handle, but his two-timing me with that ex-girlfriend of his was a no go.”
I touched her arm in sympathy, knowing that even though she sounded okay, it always hurt to be cheated on. “I’m sorry. Is it time for the men suck discussion?”
She rewarded my joke with a big smile. At least I was able to give her that.
“No. There’s no need to state the obvious. Maybe it’s time for me to just admit that this is how it’s supposed to be for me. Or maybe I’m supposed to be a nun.”
Now it was my turn to smile, and with a chuckle, I said, “I think the train left that station a long time ago.”
“Yeah. Woo-woo! So that’s out of the question.”
“Where would you find a nunnery these days anyway, right? It’s just not a job that’s around much anymore,” I teased, gaining another giggle from her.
Behind us, someone knocked on my door and we turned to see Jesse the mail boy standing in my doorway with an envelope in his hand. “Here’s a letter for you, Poppy.”
The Eleventh Hour Page 12