“No.” I shook my head. “Have you talked to the police? To Doug? Could they help get your money returned?”
Pat hit the shot glass on the wood so hard I thought it might shatter. “I called them. They said there was nothing they could do if I didn’t have anything in writing. They didn’t even sound sympathetic.”
That didn’t sound like Doug.
“The only way to deal with Chuck was to give him a taste of his own medicine. Treat a bully like a bully. You know?”
Again, Pat and I had differing opinions. “Have you thought about talking to Doug now that Chuck is dead? They’re going through his finances. They might be able to help you recover some of the deposit.”
Pat’s face dropped. “What do you mean they’re going through his finances?”
“It’s part of the investigation. Doug sounded like it was routine.”
“Why? Why would they need to go through his finances if he was killed in a hit-and-run?”
I could tell by the way Pat’s foot bounced up and down in rapid-fire movement that this news was making him nervous. Why? I decided to reveal a bit more about the investigation and watch his response.
“You must not have heard. The police are pretty sure it wasn’t an accident. They think that Chuck was murdered.”
Pat fiddled with the shot glass. “What? Murder?”
“That’s right. They’ve studied the car tracks and determined that whoever ran over Chuck was intending to harm him.”
“Oh no.” Pat rested the glass on its side and sent it spinning like a top. “That’s not good. They’re going to look at me. They’re going to think I did it.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Everything I just told you.” He looked to me. “Wait, you don’t think I killed him, do you? I didn’t. Listen, kid, I didn’t kill him. I was furious at the guy, but I didn’t kill him. Ask anyone. I was here all night. I didn’t leave until well after closing. I have an alibi. My entire staff will tell you that I was here. I was here all night.”
His frantic tone made me suspicious. Shakespeare’s “The lady doth protest too much, methinks” rang in my head.
“No, listen. Why would I have told you all of this tonight if I killed him? That would be stupid. I would never have told you any of this if I were the killer.”
He had a point.
“I told you this because I wondered if Chuck had done the same thing to you. I’m trying to look out for you. People did that for me in this town when I was young like you. I’m just trying to repay the favor. Wouldn’t want you and your pretty wife bamboozled. I’ve heard some rumors about other business and restaurants in town that he was trying to swindle. I thought maybe the bakery had fallen trap to his games, that’s all. You believe me, right?”
“It’s not up to me. I don’t have anything to do with the case.”
“But you and Doug are good friends. You can talk to him for me. Won’t you, Will? Tell him that I’m innocent. I have an alibi, okay?”
“You should really talk to Doug yourself. You know what Doug’s like. He’ll listen. He doesn’t jump to conclusions or overreact.”
Pat clutched my arm. “Will, please. Promise me you’ll talk to him, kid. Promise me that. Put in a good word for me. Tell him everything I told you. Tell him to come talk to me and I’ll lay everything out for him. I’ll tell him anything he wants to know.”
“Okay, relax.”
“No, I can’t have this now. I can’t have any bad press for Rumors. Chuck put me in the hole. I need bodies in the dining room and lounge right now. I swear I didn’t kill him. Not that I didn’t want to.” He let out an uncomfortable laugh. “If someone really did kill him though, I’ll tell Doug who he should be talking to.”
“Who?”
“Jeri. Do you know her? She works for the Festival. She was in here with Chuck the night he was killed, and they were going at it. She threatened to kill him. Right over there.” He pointed to a table near the stage. “In front of about thirty people. If Chuck’s death wasn’t an accident, then I would bet good money that Jeri did it.”
Chapter Fourteen
“I can’t believe my dad learned so much,” I said to the Professor as he loosened his grip on the journal.
He pressed his hands together. “He was a natural. I asked him—well, he would tell you that I begged—on more than one occasion to reconsider a career in pastry and join the force. He declined.” The Professor looked to the espresso bar where Andy was cleaning up for the day. How late was it?
“I can’t blame him. Torte never would have been the same without his early influences.”
I wondered if the same was true for me. I had always questioned why I was drawn to helping Thomas and the Professor. Why I was obsessed with piecing clues together and trying to puzzle through motives. Now it was beginning to make sense. I was my father’s daughter. I had inherited his penchant for investigating. What would he think if he could see me now? Learning that he too had a deep-seated need to bring justice to the world made me feel better somehow.
As if reading my mind, the Professor cleared his throat. “You were your father’s greatest achievement, you know. Even if he had a desire to work as a detective, he never would have wanted to be pulled away from time here—with you and your mother. Torte was his happy place.”
“I can relate.” I smiled, letting my gaze linger on the chalkboard menu. Today’s quote read: “No legacy is so rich as honesty.”
Shakespeare’s words rang especially true in light of the Professor’s recounting of the past. Someone involved in Chuck’s death had not been honest. How had they never figured out who?
“Was it Jeri?” I asked the Professor.
He gave a half shrug. “I wish I could say for certain. That was the most perplexing thing about the case. Everyone connected to Chuck had reason to do him in, so to speak. It would have been easier if he had been beloved, but at each turn your father and I discovered yet another person he had wronged. It began to feel as if all of Ashland had motive and opportunity. The burden of proof was the critical piece that we were missing. I kept hoping for a break. We got close a few times, like with Jeri. But to this day, there’s a killer walking amongst us who has never been brought to justice. That’s a thought that I still cannot stomach. I failed Chuck, I failed his family, and I failed our community.”
I reached for his hand. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. You did your best. Anyone would have struggled in the same situation.”
He tried to smile. “Thank you, but I disagree. It was my duty to solve the case and find the killer. Not to allow someone who brutally ran down one of our citizens to live a life of freedom for these many years. Think about that, Juliet. There’s a killer living amongst us right now.”
The thought sent a shiver down my back. “What about Jeri? Do you think she did it?” I glanced at the clock, trying to keep his spirits up. It was almost closing time. The afternoon had vanished. Thankfully, from the looks of things my capable staff had managed without me. Rosa boxed up the few remaining pastries in the case, and Sequoia restocked the coffee grinders with aromatic beans. I felt like we were close to a conclusion. We couldn’t stop now.
“Perhaps.” He rubbed his temples then stared at the clock on the wall. “Your mother will be done with her lunch and spa afternoon soon. Shall we try to wrap this up before her return?”
There was a sense of urgency in his tone.
“As long as you’re okay with continuing?” I flipped through the journal to see that only a few pages remained.
“We’ve come this far. It wouldn’t be fair to leave you without a conclusion, now would it?” Once again he drifted back in time.
When I left Rumors I felt unsteady on my feet. It wasn’t from the martinis. My second drink had gone untouched. Pat’s confession had rattled me. It made me reconsider everything that Doug and I had learned thus far. Was Pat telling the truth? In some ways I couldn’t understand why he would have possibly told me about h
is financial battles with Chuck if he had killed him. What purpose would that serve? It put more focus and suspicion on him. But, maybe that was his end goal. Perhaps he thought that if he was forthcoming and “honest” about his challenges with Chuck, the police would take his disclosure as a sign of good faith. I wondered what Doug would think. My intuition erred on the side of believing Pat, but this was a murder investigation. I knew all too well that we needed hard evidence and facts.
Where was Doug now? I kicked myself for not making firm plans to meet up. I ducked out the back exit and decided to head to the plaza on the off-chance that Doug was in his office. On my way down Main Street, I bumped into none other than Jeri. She was standing in front of the Mark Antony smoking a cigarette and shading herself from the drizzle with a large black golf umbrella.
There was something familiar about her stance. The way she leaned against the exterior wall puffing her cigarette. It reminded me of the person I had seen smoking the night Chuck was killed. Could I have been wrong? Could it have been a woman smoking?
“You coming in for a nightcap?” Jeri asked, reaching for the heavy iron door handle. “The Stage Door is the who’s who of Ashland tonight.”
Half the ground floor of the Mark Antony had been taken over by the Stage Door, a cocktail bar that was popular with locals and tourists.
“No. I’m on my way to the bakeshop. Just have to tidy up and make sure we’re ready for the morning rush. What about you? Late-night fun or work?”
Jeri filled her lungs with the noxious smoke. “Lucky. I’m on the clock. What else is new? It’s the story of my life these days.”
“Yeah, you mentioned that membership sales are down at the Festival. That’s so surprising because the season has such an incredible lineup of productions and talent.”
“You know who we have to thank for dropping ticket sales?” Jeri held the smoke in her lungs before slowly exhaling.
I stepped to the side to avoid breathing in her second-hand smoke. Why did everyone in Ashland smoke? I could only hold out hope that by the time Juliet was my age, the trend would be passé. “I have a guess.” Riding the high from everything I had learned from Pat, I decided to employ the same tactic with Jeri. “It seems like Chuck had a number of run-ins with businesses in town.”
“Run-ins?” Jeri scowled. “That’s a very kind way of putting it, Will. What Chuck did to the Festival was unforgiveable.”
“How so?” She had finished the cigarette, so I moved under the overhang to avoid the misty rain. The streetlamps along Main Street cast a golden glow on the sidewalk, illuminating puddles of water that had begun to pool. A few cars drove by, their wiper blades trying to keep up with the spray. Most of the shops were closed for the night. A block to the south, the coin-operated laundry mat still had its lights on, and a crowd of college students queued up for their turn at the rows of washing machines and dryers.
Across the street and a half block to the north, the Underground Deli had a sidewalk sign announcing special late-night hours for students studying for midterms. The basement restaurant was themed like the London Underground with a mural depicting the famous train station and tables designed to resemble train cars.
“Didn’t you hear? We talked about this. Chuck was trying to ruin the Festival. Why? I have no idea? Why would he turn his back on the people who gave him his start? Without the Festival he would have been a nobody. Instead of thanking us for helping to build his career and fan base, he kicked us in the gut.” She pressed a black go-go boot on her cigarette butt and squashed it into the sidewalk.
“By encouraging people to purchase tickets at the Cabaret? I don’t understand. The Festival doesn’t even open for another month. It seems like Ashland and the surrounding valley can certainly support more than one theater. You’re doing totally different things after all, and from what I had been told it sounded like Stewart and Shelly are planning to continue to do some side projects for the Festival while running the Cabaret. If anything, the two venues seem symbiotic.”
“Oh they are. Of course they are,” Jeri agreed.
“Then where does Chuck come in?”
“You don’t get it, Will. He wasn’t just encouraging people to buy a ticket to the Cabaret. He was poaching our donors and patrons. I wish I knew why. It doesn’t make sense at all. I told him that. He and I got into it. We had worked together for three years. Why did he suddenly decide to throw me under the bus?” She laughed. “Pardon the pun.”
I didn’t respond to that. “You mean, you personally?”
“Yes. He was wining and dining all of my big donors. He claimed that he could get them premier tickets, backstage passes, access to the cast. You name it. It was all a lie. He was taking their money directly as part of what he was calling an ‘insider’s package.’ His fake scheme involved dinner and drinks—and who knows what other kind of shady stuff—at Rumors, and tickets to our shows and the Cabaret. I had even heard that he was trying to work out a dessert-and-coffee package with you.” A bus sped past us, kicking up spray. We both moved closer to the side of the hotel to avoid getting splashed.
“What?” If what Jeri was saying was true, I was floored. Chuck really had been a master schemer.
“He didn’t approach you, did he?”
“No.” I shook my head.
“Probably because he was starting to get scared. I confronted him. He tried to lie his way out of it. That’s the problem. He’s a good actor, but I wasn’t having it. Maybe someone else would have believed the load of crap he was dishing out, but not me. I’ve been around actors long enough to know when someone is blowing smoke, if you know what I mean.” She rolled her eyes. “I told him that I was going to the police. He freaked. He swore he would hand over the money he had pulled in and promised he would stop immediately. I didn’t believe that either.”
“Wait. Can we back up for a minute? What exactly was he selling?”
Jeri sighed and stared at me like I was an idiot. “I told you. Fake packages. He stole my donor list out of my filing cabinet and started combing through it name by name, offering exclusive actor-led packages. He probably wouldn’t have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for the fact that he had gained celebrity status. Our patrons recognized him by name and felt special—singled out—that someone of his notoriety was personally calling them. They sent checks and cash made out to him.”
“How did you figure out what was going on?” I wished I had brought a warmer coat. The minute the sun set these early spring days, the temperature plummeted.
“It took a while. My job has been on the line for over a month now. I looked like the idiot for ‘misplacing’ our patron list. I never misplace anything. I knew immediately when it was missing from my files that someone had taken it. I just didn’t know who or why. I had to go through last year’s sales ticket by ticket and re-create the list. Once I started making calls, it was evident that Chuck had pulled one over on us. Our patrons would say things like, ‘Oh, I just purchased your special package.’” She twisted her umbrella.
“Did you tell anyone?”
“Of course.” Jeri stared at me in disbelief. “I was about to get fired. I wasn’t going to keep the information to myself. I finally put it all together opening night at the Cabaret. One of my top donors returned my call and told me she had purchased Chuck’s package. I went straight to my boss. I called a meeting of the board and management team for the next morning. Not only was I going to set the record straight to protect my job, but I was going to go to the police. Chuck wasn’t going to get away with what he had done. Not on my watch.”
My opinion of Chuck was completely altered. Jeri’s story matched Pat’s. I was beginning to feel like everyone might have had a hand in his death.
“What about Doug? Have you told him this?”
Jeri nodded. “We had a long chat at my office this afternoon. I didn’t spare him any of the gory details. I shared my insight about who might have run him down too. Not that the thought hadn’t crossed my m
ind, but I’m not into blood.”
Her words made the hair on my arms stand at attention.
“You think you know who killed him?”
“Absolutely. I told Doug he needed to interrogate Stewart and Shelly ASAP. They both put every dime they had into the Cabaret, and when I confronted Chuck, he admitted that I wasn’t alone. It was stupid. I think he said it to make me feel better. Moron. All it did was give me more ammunition to go to the police. He had his own crime ring right here in Ashland.”
“How was the Cabaret involved?” I wanted to ask her about her personal relationship with Chuck, but I wasn’t sure how to broach the subject.
She moved to the side to make room for two men exiting the hotel lobby. “I don’t know. He didn’t give me details, but he alluded to the fact that he bled them dry.”
What did that mean? “Can I ask you something personal?” I hoped that my tone wasn’t too forward.
“What?”
“I noticed you and Chuck on opening night. You looked, well, like maybe there was more to your relationship.”
Her nostrils flared. “No. Not at all. I don’t know what you saw, but there was nothing between me and Chuck.”
Jeri shook rain from her umbrella and closed it. “I should get back inside. There’s a table full of board members and staff waiting to brainstorm how we move on from this. The board has already drafted a letter that we will be mailing to patrons, explaining Chuck’s indiscretions and offering them discounted season-ticket packages. We’re formulating language to ensure this doesn’t happen again. It’s a tricky situation, as we don’t want any of our donors to feel like they got the wool pulled over their eyes, and yet we want to make it clear that ticket packages are only sold through the Festival.”
“That sounds like a challenge. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
“I hope that Doug and his team figure out Chuck’s finances, because I want every cent returned to our patrons. If this ruins our season, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
Nothing Bundt Trouble Page 13