A Deadly Inside Scoop

by Abby Collette

  Maybe even somewhere close to Chagrin Falls.

  I clicked on the search box and typed in Stolen succinylcholine. I got a lot of articles about the drug, and the more I scrolled down the page, the more I lost hope.

  Until I got to the last link on the page.

  Who’s Responsible for the Nation’s Biggest-Ever Drug Heist?

  My hand started shaking as I hovered over the link. Was this going to be it? What I needed to help me get my father off the hook?

  Couldn’t be this easy, I thought.

  And it wasn’t. The article was dated three years ago. I rested my elbow on the desk and used it to hold up my heavy head. This wasn’t what I needed, but I read on.

  The article said that a pharmaceutical warehouse in Columbus, Ohio, was robbed of over fifty million dollars’ worth of drugs and that the theft was believed to have been orchestrated by someone working on the inside.

  Someone named David Niven.

  David Niven. Why did that name sound familiar?

  I typed it in and found out he was the actor who had played the thief in the Pink Panther movie.

  Wow. He named himself after the thief.

  chapter

  THIRTY-SIX

  There was a rap, rap, rap on the side door and I had to stop reading to answer it. It was hard to tear myself from that article.

  I glanced up at the clock. It was 6:37 a.m.

  Who could that be?

  “Hello,” I said from the other side of the metal door. “Who is it?”

  “Findlay Glass,” a gruff voice answered back. “We have the plexiglass sheet for your wall.”

  “For my wall,” I muttered, unlocking and pulling open the door. “Hi.” I stepped back to let the two men in. “I thought that was coming on Monday.”

  “We’re early,” one of the guys said. “We can come back if you want.”

  “No. No,” I said. “I don’t want you to go. How did you know I’d even be here this early?”

  “It’s on our work order.”

  I was happy my plexiglass wall had arrived. I was tired of my line of sight ending with that particleboard. But they couldn’t have picked a more inopportune time.

  I glanced over at my laptop. That article was sitting on my monitor, ready to divulge information about Stephen Bayard and the drug that killed him.

  Or so I hoped.

  “Hold on,” I said. “I have to put my food away and cover everything up.”

  I got the kitchen squared away and thought I’d get back to my reading. But I kept getting interrupted. First, they had questions—What do you want us to do with the particleboard? Is it okay if we plug this up here? And invoices for me to initial and sign—here, and here, and here.

  Then my mother, who never comes in early, arrived. Early. I couldn’t let her see me reading the article. And once the plexiglass—the beautiful, transparent, sparkling plexiglass—was installed, I had to get back to making ice cream.

  I did learn, in bits and pieces, that the drugs stolen, from a place called LaGrosse Warehouse, were never recovered. That David Niven had worked at the warehouse only a few months, but the evidence pointed to him as the ringleader. It also said that Niven’s wife was questioned and released. They were satisfied, it noted, that she had no connection to the robbery.

  Wow . . .

  “Win.”

  “PopPop,” I said, fumbling to shut the laptop and turning to face him. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

  “Busy looking up stuff, huh?” He pointed to my laptop.

  “Nothing important.”

  “Well,” he said, “it’s a lot more civilized, and probably more efficient than chasing people down in parking lots.”

  “Huh?” I said.

  “I know what you’ve been doing,” he said.

  “What have I been doing?” I asked. I looked at him out of the side of my eye.

  “Conducting an investigation. Not a very good one, but one nevertheless.”

  “Oh my goodness, PopPop.” I slapped a hand across my forehead. “How did you know?”

  “I’ve been following you,” he said. “I started out wanting to protect you from Stephen Bayard.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Is that why you told me I didn’t have to worry about him anymore?”

  “I didn’t know he was the one they found by the falls. I only knew he had approached you. I was going to stop him from doing that again.”

  “So all this time, you’ve been following me around?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Why didn’t you stop after you found out he wasn’t around anymore?”

  “Because then my son was being accused of his murder, and you and Maisie—” His eyes flickered and he looked up to the ceiling. “God help that child, but you two seemed like you might be onto something.”

  “You mean that we were figuring out who it was that really did it?”

  “No, you never seemed close to that,” he said. “Especially after you took Riya along with you. I meant trying to look for the answer for yourselves.”

  “Yeah, that was bad with Riya,” I said. “Why didn’t you help stop her?”

  “I started to,” he said, “but I didn’t want to blow my cover.”

  His cover? Oh wow, I have another Maisie on my hands.

  “Then I saw that you and Maisie had gotten her calmed down. But I couldn’t stop thinking how badly that could’ve gone wrong. Riya is a lethal weapon.”

  I chuckled. “I know. I really thought she wasn’t so hot-tempered anymore.”

  “That’s why I’m telling you now.” He smiled at me. “Other than that one incident, you and Maisie were doing okay, I thought. Talking to people, going to Molta’s, following Danny Clawson. Just seemed to me like all the right steps to take.”

  “I don’t know if they were,” I said. “We haven’t solved it yet. Found out one thing of value yet.”

  “What were you looking at on there?” He pointed to my laptop.

  I turned and looked at the computer, then back to PopPop. “I was trying to figure out where else someone might have gotten the drug that killed Stephen Bayard.”

  “What did you find?”

  “I think I found that he was involved with a robbery. He may have stolen drugs from a pharmaceutical warehouse.”

  “The drug that killed him?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It didn’t say which drugs. But Riya told me that they could be at a warehouse.”

  “So she was some help, huh?” He grinned at me.

  “The only thing I got from it,” I said, “was that it happened in Ohio, and I believe Stephen Bayard was involved, under another name. Maybe even the ringleader. Maybe. And that he had a wife.”

  “That would mean the drug he stole was the one that killed him,” PopPop said.

  “Maybe he accidentally injected it himself,” I said, doubt clouding my words even as I spoke them.

  “Might be a possibility, but I’m sure they scoured those grounds around where he was found. Haven’t heard any mention of evidence of him doing that being found.”

  PopPop chewed on his bottom lip, tilted his head and let his eyes drift upward. “Seems to me,” he started, “you’ve missed the two most important people to talk to about all of this.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Dan Clawson and Debbie Devereaux.”

  chapter

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  PopPop,” I said, awe, I knew, spreading across my face. “You’ve been thinking about this.”

  “Yeah, I have.”

  “You wanna help?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” he said. “Graham is my son. I don’t want anything to happen to him just like you don’t. It would tear me up inside.” He shook off the thought. “Especially if I could have done something
that could’ve helped.”

  “So,” I said, scooting up on my stool and licking my lips, happy to have my grandfather joining our little sleuthing group, “I had given some thought to Dan Clawson being involved and questioning him, but I thought he was too old to have done it. That’s why I started following his son, Danny.”

  “Danny’s too kindhearted to have done something like that. And I’m not suggesting you talk to Dan because he had a hand in it. But because he knew the guy. Better than anybody around here.”

  “He did?”

  “Yeah, he did. Stephen Bayard used to hang over there with Dan all the time.”

  “I did think about talking to him for that,” I said. “Not that I knew.” I had figured my family was the way to get information on Stephen Bayard. “I did think that I needed to get to know Stephen Bayard better to help me figure out who killed him.”

  “Then you were thinking right. We should talk to Dan.”

  “Okay. And why should I talk to Ms. Devereaux?” I asked. “Do you think she might have done it? I had thought about that,” I said, my voice low. I was talking fast. “But then Maisie and I thought that because of the way that drug acts when it’s injected, it had to be a man who did it.”

  “That’s some male superiority hogwash,” he said. “You of all people should know about female determination.”

  I felt a blush coming on.

  “Don’t limit yourself when you’re looking for a suspect,” he said. “You might miss something.”

  Geesh, he really is another Maisie. I wonder which shows he watches.

  “And that’s the reason I said you should talk to Debbie,” he was saying, “not because she could be a suspect, but because she doesn’t miss anything.”

  “What do you two have your heads together about?” my mother said, interrupting us. She stood to the side of us, hands on her hips, her head cocked to the side.

  I hadn’t realized, but I had my face tilted up to PopPop’s and his was bent forward toward mine. Both of us were leaning into the other, our conversation low, our bodies tense.

  “Nothing,” I said, and scooted back on the stool. I slumped my shoulders and let my feet slide off the bottom rail. “Just talking shop.”

  “Well, you must have been talking about how to burn it down and collect the insurance money without getting caught,” she said. “Because that conversation was serious.” She waggled a finger between us. “And I don’t know how you could have even heard each other’s words, you were speaking so low.”

  “We were trying to figure out a way to break the news to you, Ailbhe.” PopPop walked over and placed a hand on my mother’s shoulder before heading out to the front of the store. “We decided not to serve that strawberry nonsense you conjured up. Just doesn’t fit the new sophisticated style we’re going for.”

  My mother’s mouth dropped open and she started hyperventilating. “The what?”

  “He’s kidding, Mom.” I got up and put my arm around her shoulders. “Just joking. I’ve already ordered the strawberries.”

  My mother and I made ice cream while PopPop took care of the front. We had appeared in the local morning paper as catering the dessert for the President’s Dinner and the sorority’s ice cream social, and I think it brought people in. But in between customers, when my mother couldn’t hear, we plotted and planned what we were going to do.

  With all the business we were getting, we couldn’t leave my mother to run the store by herself. I had my fingers crossed that Maisie would show up soon. I wanted to get back to looking into Bayard’s murder. Especially with my PopPop.

  But I could never let Maisie know that.

  “Afternoon,” Maisie said, bounding into our kitchen. “I just made it official.”

  “Made what official?” My mother looked up from changing the paddle on the mixer.

  “I’m coming here to work.”

  “What?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “I quit Molta’s”—she held her hand to the side of her mouth—“for reasons I can’t announce publicly. Yet.” She spread her arms out like an eagle. “And I’m working here. Although, I will still have to split my time between this and the community garden.”

  “Did anyone offer you a permanent job here, Maisie?” my mother asked. She didn’t look up from what she was doing.

  Maisie’s smiled drooped. I went and stood next to her. “I did,” I said, although I hadn’t. “And I’m glad she’s here. She’s officially on the payroll as a regular employee.”

  “I’m happy she’s here, too,” my mother said. “I just wondered whether this was just another Maisie move. She changes jobs more often than OPEC changes the price of gas.”

  “She’s stuck with the community garden,” I said in her defense. I knew my mother wasn’t being mean. She was just being a mother. Worrying about Maisie’s welfare.

  “That she has.” My mother looked up. “So if we’re paying you, you need to get busy. Don’t just stand there.”

  “I need Win to go with me,” PopPop came in the back and announced. I knew what he was up to, but it still surprised me.

  My mother looked up.

  “You okay, PopPop?” my mother asked. She laid down the orange half she’d been juicing and wiped her hands on her apron. “You need me to help you?”

  “No. I just need to go over some . . .” He looked at me, rubbing his fingertips together.

  “Things,” I said. I knew if I told her the truth she’d tell my father, and that wouldn’t be good.

  “Okay, we’ve got this. Me and Maisie,” she said. “But you know tomorrow I won’t be in.”

  “I know,” I said.

  That was the day my father and his lawyer were going to speak with Detective Beverly at the police station. I wanted to go, but PopPop was going with them and there was no one else to run the store.

  “Maisie and I will be fine.”

  “Okay,” she said. “And I’m almost finished with this Orange Burst ice cream you wanted, then I’ll go up front with Maisie.”

  “Where to first?” I asked PopPop as we stood by the door buttoning up our coats and putting on hats.

  “Debbie Devereaux. We need to find out what she knows.”

  * * *

  - - - - -

  Exquisite Designs boutique was small, quaint, haute and stuffed to the brim with clothes, trinkets and scarfs—most of them shiny and sparkly.

  We walked in, the small bell on the wood-and-glass door announcing our arrival.

  “Okay,” Ms. Devereaux called from the back. “I’ll be right out.”

  She appeared out of the back and smiled when she saw us. She had on blue jeans and a winter-white-colored knitted top that had a three-tiered ruffle on each sleeve. She’d covered that with a brocaded black vest that opened at the front.

  I started to tell her that she looked nice, but she always did.

  “Well, hello,” she said, walking up to the front. “What can I do for the two of you?”

  “Hi, Debbie,” my grandfather said. “You’re looking good.”

  I smiled. Her usual appearance didn’t stop him from complimenting her.

  “Thank you, Aloysius,” she said. “I feel good.”

  “Hi, Ms. Devereaux,” I said.

  I looked at PopPop, not sure how to start the conversation. I hadn’t told him what she’d said to me the night she brought me the cup of tea. Saying “he got what he deserved.” It had made her, in my mind, a possible suspect.

  “Win’s been looking into you-know-who’s death after they thought Graham may have something to do with it.”

  “You come up with anything?” she asked me.

  “Um. Not really?” I said it like it was a question.

  “Walk with me,” she said, her arm doing a gentle wave motion, her curling fingers gesturing her words.
<
br />   I walked over to her, and when I got to her side, she nodded at my grandfather. “We’ll be back, Aloysius. You watch my store.”

  “Alright,” he said.

  We walked to the back of the store, from where she’d just emerged. She went to a wall rack and pulled down her coat.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “I have something I want to show you.”

  She slipped into the furry coat she’d worn the last two times I’d seen her. This time, though, she put on a cap that had “Diva” across the front in rhinestone cursive.

  We went out her back door and across the alley to Bell Street and walked up it.

  “You’ve been doing a little snooping around here, huh?”

  “Yes,” I chuckled. “For all the good it’s done.”

  “Tell me what you found out so far,” she said.

  So as we walked, I did. I told her about Maisie and Ari and Lew and Mrs. Keller and Noah Bean. And she listened to everything, interjecting a question or two, but mostly signaling me to continue by saying, “Uh-huh.” When I told her about Glynis and how she went into Dan Clawson’s room, and how she came out the door from work with Noah, she told me she remembered Glynis from the falls that night.

  “Did you see the killer?” I asked her. I knew she’d seen something that night.

  “I saw Stephen Bayard.”

  “That night?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you knew it was him at the bottom of the falls when you gave me the tea.”

  “I didn’t know. But I had a feeling.”

  “And you told the police?”

  “I did. I told them he had been lurking around out there. Loitering at the corner for ten or fifteen minutes. I knew exactly who he was and what he’d done to your family.”

  “You told the police what he’d done to us?”

  “I did,” she said. “Now, about what you say.” She looped her arm in mine. “What is Glynis Vale’s story?”