by Mary Maxwell
“Simone Oldham?” I didn’t try to disguise my astonishment. “Walker’s daughter was threatening him right before he died?”
“She was,” Dina said. “Something related to money that he’d promised to give her so she could open an art gallery in Denver.”
“Had you heard about that before?” I asked. “I mean, when you were interviewing Simone and Brent after their father’s death, did either of them mention Simone’s plans for a gallery?”
“They didn’t,” said Dina. “For now, I want to keep that quiet, okay? Simone isn’t aware that her brother found the phone. She thinks it’s still missing, which is something that she’d told us the day after her father died.”
“Simone claimed his phone was missing?”
“She did,” Dina said. “After we searched Oldham’s office, car and house, we couldn’t find it. So we asked his son and daughter. Brent told us that he had no idea, and Simone said her father had lost the phone the morning of his death.”
“She actually offered that explanation?” I said.
“Over and over,” Dina said. “My theory is that she misplaced it after her father was killed. But in the chaos and anxiety, she actually couldn’t remember where it might’ve ended up.”
“And where was it?” I asked.
“Brent found it in the basement at his father’s house,” Dina said. “It was in a drawer with boxes of nails and screws.”
“Maybe Simone put it there for the time being,” I suggested. “Maybe she was afraid that someone would hear the messages that she left for him.”
“Possibly,” Kate said. “Or maybe her brain was so scrambled as a result of her father’s death that she thought hiding it in the basement would be good enough until there was a chance to destroy the thing.”
I heard a car door slam on the far side of the street. It was Simone. She was standing beside her car, looking morose and tousled.
“I could ask her right now if you’d like me to,” I told Dina. “She just got here.”
“Don’t worry about it, Katie. We can deal with that later. Right now, I want to figure out if her disappointment about the money could’ve pushed her over the edge.”
“Do you really think she could be capable of killing her father?” I asked.
“Anything’s possible,” Dina said. “Half the world is already whacko, and it feels like the other half is starting to lean in that direction.”
CHAPTER 23
I was in the Sky High kitchen the next morning cutting chilled sticks of butter into cubes for another batch of sweet potato biscuits when Zack came through the door.
“Have you seen my phone?” he asked.
“Not since last night,” I said.
He plopped down on a stool and slumped back against the counter.
“Jared usually finds his in the sofa cushions,” Julia offered from the front line. “Or one of the kids hides it in the freezer.”
Zack laughed. “No kids yet, so that’s not on the list. But I appreciate the tip about the sofa. Maybe I’ll run upstairs and check. Do you mind, babe?”
“My sofa is your sofa,” I said. “But if you find any loose change, we may need to split it.”
“Sounds reasonable,” he said, getting up and heading for the door. “Be back in a flash.”
While he was upstairs, I went back to work on the biscuits. It was a standing weekly order for one of our most loyal customers. Doyle and Mary Anne Stellard had been good friends of my grandmother. They started the tradition the very first week that Nana Reed was open until six months ago. When Doyle passed away, Mary Anne stopped the custom because the order was more for her husband than anyone else. But a few weeks later, she’d called to let us know that she would once again be coming in every week for two dozen biscuits, one for her and one for the neighbor that attempted to resuscitate Doyle on the day that he suffered his fatal heart attack.
I was thinking about Doyle and Mary Anne’s fifty-year marriage when Zack came in again from the back deck. He was holding his phone overhead triumphantly.
“I must’ve been really out of it last night when I left,” he said.
“You were,” I said with a wink. “But it was pretty late.”
“Yeah, that’s true.” He gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. “Hey, Katie?”
“Hey, Zack?” I said.
“There’s an envelope nailed to your front door,” he said. “I didn’t want to mess with it, in case it’s super personal or something private for the wedding, but I wanted to let you know.”
I thought for a moment or two. I wasn’t expecting anything to be delivered. And I wasn’t doing anything surreptitious for the wedding. It also seemed strange that someone left it attached to the apartment door upstairs when I’d been downstairs in Sky High since before sunrise.
“Was it addressed with my full name?” I asked.
He shook his head. “First initial and last name.”
I felt a pang in my stomach.
“Was the outside smudged with orange dust?” I asked.
Zack nodded. “How’d you know?”
I held up my hands, still slick with butter.
“Paper towel?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Can you please call Dina?” I said. “Let her know that I heard from the Doritos guy again?”
Zack smiled. “The Doritos guy? Should I be jealous, babe?”
“Not in the least,” I told him. “This is related to the Oldham case.”
“I’m sorry, Katie.” His face flipped from silly to serious as he dialed Dina’s number. “I didn’t know.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “But I might not be able to meet you after work. I have a hunch that I’ll be working late at the station tonight.”
CHAPTER 24
An hour later, I was in Dina’s office with Tyler Armstrong, staring at the message that had been in the envelope that Zack had discovered earlier. After he’d left Sky High, I hurried upstairs with a large freezer bag and disposable gloves to protect the integrity of the evidence while I was taking it to CCPD Headquarters.
“Looks identical to the first one,” said Tyler. “With one exception.”
I studied the message again:
YOU ARE GETTING CLOSER.
BUT WHY DID ED LAMPERT SEEK BAD JUJU & KILL WALKER?
“Good catch, detective! I hadn’t noticed that yet.”
“What is it?” asked Dina from behind her desk.
“They misspelled Lambert’s last name,” I said.
She got up and walked over to the small table between the bookcase and the doorway. Two sheets of crisp photocopy paper, reproductions of the letter and envelope, sat in the center of the round Formica surface.
“Do you have surveillance video on the back staircase at Sky High?” Dina asked.
I nodded. “I checked the footage,” I said. “The envelope was left by someone wearing a dark hoodie, probably black or navy blue, along with nondescript black pants and hiking boots.”
“Can you see the face?” asked Tyler.
“No,” I said. “They walked in from the woods in back of the property, so it’s probably someone familiar with the area. But the hood is pulled forward and he or she kept their head down the whole time.”
“What did the techs say?” Tyler asked Dina. “Any prints on the envelope or sheet of paper?”
“None,” she said. “They’re checking for trace DNA and anything else that might be helpful.”
“Besides confirming that the orange powder is also from Doritos?” I asked.
Dina looked at me, and blinked a few times before returning to her desk chair.
“I just don’t get it,” she said after sitting down again. “Someone is teasing us about getting closer, but they’re being a little too obvious to point the finger at Ed Lambert. It must be a ruse.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“Well, they’ve pointed at both Danny Cargill and Ed Lambert,” Dina said. “But they both have alibis for
the day that Walker Oldham was killed. Cargill was on jury duty, and we’ve confirmed that Lambert was at his wife’s bedside in the Regional Med Center. She had an adverse reaction to a new prescription, and Lambert drove her to the Emergency Room that morning around six. They both remained there until she was released at eleven o’clock that night.”
“Any chance he could’ve left the hospital, driven to Oldham’s office and back again without anyone noticing?”
“Not unless someone hacked the hard drive in the Med Center Security Department. We’ve been through every frame of the footage from that day. We’ve got Lambert arriving in his wife’s room about thirty minutes after she was admitted, he went to the cafeteria once, the gift shop twice, and the chapel three times. But he never left the property and the Lambert’s car was in the valet lot the entire time.”
“Okay, so that sounds pretty definitive,” I said. “Why would whoever sent this note use Lambert as a red herring?”
“Maybe they’re not his biggest fan,” Tyler suggested. “The guy has a reputation around town for being harsh and demanding.”
“It could be a simple diversion,” Dina said. “Maybe they know that the threatening calls Natalie received were made from the conference room at the laundry company. Since he’s the head honcho, it’s possible they went to the website, found the org chart and used the first name that popped up.”
“Either way,” Dina said, “we should get a warrant for Lambert’s personal credit cards, telephone records and email account.”
“Do you want me to get started on that?” asked Tyler.
“Thanks, Ty,” she said. “That’d be great.”
“Talk to you later, Katie,” he said, walking toward the hallway. “And Dina, I’ll let you know when it’s good to go.”
After he left, I read the message a few more times, trying to remember if anyone that I’d talked to since I started working on the case had used the phrase bad juju.
“What’re you thinking about?” Dina said.
“Bad juju,” I replied. “It’s not exactly something you hear everyday.”
“Not around here,” she said. “But what about in New Orleans?”
I smiled. “Is New Orleans connected to this case now?”
“Didn’t you see my email earlier?” she asked.
“I guess not. Can you fill me in?”
“I had a call from the detective that handled the Lawton Gleave case,” Dina explained. “Two weeks before he died, Gleave was assaulted outside his hotel room in New Orleans. The attacker fled from the scene before Gleave was injured, but the incident left him pretty freaked out, as you can imagine. I noticed something in the police report that made my skin crawl when you brought this envelope in earlier. Detective Rampell said that someone who worked with Gleave remembered him saying that the attacker kept mumbling about bad juju.”
“Seriously?”
She tapped a stack of papers on her desk. “The report is right here on top,” she said. “If, that is, you want to read it for yourself.”
“I believe you,” I said.
“So now we need to add that little clue to our rather short list,” Dina said. “But if we’re lucky, it will help find the person who killed Walker Oldham and the other three victims.”
“And then maybe we can get answers to the rest of our questions,” I said.
“I’d be satisfied with just one answer to start,” Dina said. “Why did those four people have to die?”
CHAPTER 25
Julia and I were nearly finished cleaning the kitchen the following afternoon when Harper appeared in the pass window and whispered my name.
“Why are we whispering?” I asked after crossing the room and leaning toward her.
“Someone to see you,” she said, tilting her head back toward the empty dining room.
I smiled. “Someone real?” I asked. “Or someone invisible?”
She glared at me. “She’s waiting on the bench just inside the front door,” Harper said. “She seems kind of jumpy.”
“Did she give you a name?” I asked.
Harper grinned. “Have one already,” she said with a wink. “But her name is Wynona Bergen.”
“You little jokester,” I called as she walked away. “Please tell her that I’ll be right there.”
After washing my hands and brushing a bit of flour from my left sleeve, I hurried into the hallway and called out to Wynona.
“Hi,” I said, pointing toward the opposite end of the corridor. “We can sit in my office to talk.”
As she got up and started walking toward me, I thanked her for coming in to talk.
“It’s no problem,” she said. “I didn’t want to risk Mr. Lambert hearing me on the phone.”
The comment definitely caught my attention; something that didn’t go unnoticed as we made our way to the office.
“I saw that,” Wynona said.
“Saw what?”
She smiled. “That little tremble in your lower lip,” she said, “when I mentioned the boss listening to my calls. You must’ve worked for someone similar in the past.”
“Not me,” I said. “But my sister’s first job after she finished college involved someone like that. Except it was a woman who was incredibly jealous about anyone younger. For some reason, she thought every other female was out to usurp her authority. Is it the same with Mr. Lambert?”
Wynona shook her head. “He’s a control freak,” she told me. “I guess that he was a scrawny shrimp until he hit high school. All the other kids used to terrorize him because he was short and skinny.”
“And these days?” I smiled as she sat in one of the guest chairs. “He’s turned the tables by trying to micromanage the world?”
Wynona laughed. “Pretty much. But it’ll come back around to bite him in the butt someday.”
“What do you mean?”
“I just think that when you treat other people poorly,” she answered, “the universe will eventually flip the script. I guess some people call it fate or destiny.” She sighed and shook her head. “Anyway, I heard what you asked Mr. Lambert when you were in his office. Normally, I wouldn’t meddle in someone else’s affairs, but I knew Natalie Packwood when I was a kid.”
I started to offer my sympathy for the loss of her friend, but Wynona stopped me with one finger.
“Have you looked at Danny Cargill yet?” she asked. “He went to school with Natalie and used to run in the same circles. I’ve also heard some things about his past.”
“Such as?”
“Trouble with booze,” she said. “More than a few bar fights when he was younger. Wouldn’t that suggest a violent streak?”
“I don’t know about that. It could suggest that he’s a mean drunk.”
“Well, like I said, these are just things that I’ve picked up around the office. But after I heard you asking about the phone in the conference room, I remembered one day when I was coming back from lunch. I noticed Danny leaving that room with a sort of sheepish look on his face. Like he was up to no good.”
“Did you see him using the phone in the conference room?”
“Not actually using it,” she said. “But I’d never seen him in there before. And the look on his face reminded me of little kids when they’re caught doing something they’re not supposed to.”
“What can you tell me about Danny’s history on the job?”
“Are you asking if he’s caused trouble at work?”
“I’m interested in his work record in general,” I said. “Is he reliable? Does he show up on time? How’s his attitude? Does he get along well with the other employees?”
She smiled. “Oh, that kind of thing.” She wetted her lips and swept the bangs from her forehead. “I guess he’s a good employee. I don’t handle timecards or payroll, so I couldn’t really address those details without doing some research. And I wouldn’t really want to do that on account of Mr. Lambert.”
“How long has Danny been with Crescent Creek Laundr
y?”
“I’d have to look in the files,” she said.
“Do you remember what day you saw Danny coming out of the conference room?”
“Are you talking about the actual date?”
“That’s right. It might be helpful to share that information with Detective Kincaid so she can cross reference the date with the phone records.”
Wynona nodded. “Sure,” she said. “Like they do in the movies.”
“Or in real life,” I replied. “It’s circumstantial evidence, but it might give them something to use during a follow-up interview with Danny or Mr. Lambert.”
“Why would you need to talk to Ed Lambert again?” she asked. “Didn’t he tell you the other day that he doesn’t know anything about Zoey Sutton?”
“He did,” I said. “But the police may want to question him again, especially since there appears to be a connection between Crescent Creek Laundry, Walker Oldham and at least one of the other victims in this case.”
“Because of the phone calls?” she asked.
“The calls,” I said, “as well as an eyewitness who saw someone in a blue uniform driving an old truck near the crime scene.”
She stepped closer. “Danny Cargill drives an old truck. I don’t know what kind, but the tailgate’s pretty rusted.”
“Do you know where Danny lives?”
Wynona nodded. “He’s on Tallgrass Parkway,” she said. “A little house that’s seen better days. I can text you his phone number and address if you’d like.”
“That would be helpful,” I told her.
“I need to finish up one project after I get back to the office,” she said, “but I should be able to get it to you before the end of the day.”
After I thanked Wynona for her time and she promised again to send Danny Cargill’s phone and address, I headed for the car. I tried to reach Dina at the CCPD to relay the new information about Danny Cargill, but she didn’t answer.
CHAPTER 26
The house at the corner of Redbud and Tallgrass Parkway was painted a dreary shade of gray. The two potted shrubs beside the front door were brittle and brown. The mailbox was overflowing with envelopes, flyers and magazines, suggesting that the occupant hadn’t been home in days or weeks. A coffee can sat on the corner of the porch. When I leaned down and looked inside, I saw that it was a filled with unfiltered cigarette butts.