Murder at Harbor Village

by GP Gardner

  “Look,” I said to Travis. “I need to get back to my guests. I’ll see you tomorrow if you’re going to be around.”

  Chapter 14

  Jim was waiting on the porch. He took my umbrella and shook it off before we went inside, where Nita and Dolly waited. I reported what we had discovered.

  Jim was looking at something behind me. I turned to see Travis’ car backing slowly, quietly, up the wide sidewalk, the exhaust making little puffing sounds.

  We went out to the porch and Travis came around the car. The engine was still running, with the lights on and wipers going.

  “That didn’t take long. And they didn’t find anything else. I thought I’d drive your guests down to their car, if they’re ready to go.”

  Jim seemed reluctant to end the evening, but Travis was offering convenience. I happened to be looking at him the moment he must have realized he could invite Travis into his office and continue their conversation without interruptions. I smiled to myself, got my umbrella and walked Dolly around to the seat behind the driver.

  “We could just walk to Jim’s car,” she complained. “Oh, never mind. What kind of car is this? It smells new.”

  Jim was holding a supersized umbrella for Nita, but the SUV was too tall for her. She tried and failed to hoist herself onto the rear seat.

  “Cleo, give me a hand.” He thrust the umbrella at me, and I held it above them while Jim grasped Nita under the arms and lifted her, easily, onto the backseat. “There. See how easy it is to move a body?” He grinned as he retrieved his cane from the crack between the door and car. Then he backed cautiously away from the car.

  Nita seemed more peeved than appreciative of Jim’s assistance. She wriggled into position on the seat and tugged at the seatbelt. “Thank you for having us over, dear. I’ll talk with you tomorrow.”

  “Good night,” I told everyone.

  Travis walked around the car. “Meet me at that breakfast place in the morning, okay? Seven o’clock.” It sounded like an order.

  I agreed without hesitation. I still had a few questions to ask him, and I was sure I could generate more by morning.

  He put the car into gear and eased forward, down the sidewalk. I brushed rain off my hair and shoulders, turned off the heron lamp and went inside, locking the door behind me.

  It took a few minutes to wipe down the dining table, put the chairs back into place and clean up the kitchen. Then I checked the cat’s food and water dishes, turned on the dishwasher, turned off the lights and headed for the shower.

  I hadn’t tried running the dishwasher and taking a shower at the same time, and I decided not to risk running out of hot water and getting chilled on such a cool, dank night. So I undressed, put on my robe and went back to the dark living room to sit at the computer table, waiting for the dishwasher to finish its cycle. There was something hypnotic about staring out at the rain, which formed yellow halos around the sidewalk lights.

  So the black SUV wasn’t Travis’s. That was a huge relief and, coupled with his emotional reaction tonight, left me almost willing to remove him from my list of suspects.

  Jamie was another matter. She and Lee had an unpleasant dinner together Thursday night, Travis had said. One thought led to another and, within a couple of minutes, I was online, looking at the Fairhope pier cam Hunter had told me about.

  I could see the fountain, or a glare of white where it should be. There was a scattering of cars parked around the circular drive. There were four bright spots beneath streetlights, but drivers must prefer the shadowed areas. That was where all the vehicles were. An occasional car moved slowly around the circle, headlights glowing yellow, taillights red. One pair of headlights stood out with the icy blue of halogen.

  At the bottom of the screen were several controls, and I began to experiment. The camera swung right or left, up or down, on command, revealing the entire rose garden and parking lot. There was even an indicator of how many seconds it would remain in my control. And there was a zoom feature, which I used to focus in on the one person visible, a man pulling a wagon toward a pickup truck. I couldn’t make out his features, but if I’d been looking for someone, and if it weren’t raining, I could’ve identified him.

  I wished it was possible to see Lee and Jamie together last Thursday. Did they arrive before or after my group, and how long did they stay? How had they interacted? Were they angry or friendly with each other? Just as importantly, had anybody been with them? Maybe Michelle? Or Cynthia? Maybe Stewart?

  Too bad there was no way to run the camera backward, from tonight to Thursday.

  On a whim, I looked up the phone number and called the motel.

  Hunter answered and I told him who I was. “You told me about the pier cam and I’m looking at it right now. I don’t suppose there’s any way to see who appeared on it at an earlier time, say a few days ago.”

  “The short answer is yes,” he said, “but only if it’s within the last thirty days. After that, it drops off the archive. But it’s a complicated procedure. You sort of trick the equipment and access it on the cloud. Are you here in the motel? If you are, I can show you.”

  “No, I’m at Harbor Village. Any chance we can get together sometime tomorrow?”

  He told me he would be off until six, and I told him where my office was. “I’ve got a breakfast appointment, but I’ll be at the office by nine, for the rest of the day. And I’ll have my laptop with me.”

  “You have to take your own computer to work? I’ve never heard of that.”

  “Maybe you can advise me about what type of computer the company should buy me.”

  “Oh yeah, sure. I like spending other people’s money.”

  He promised to come by before noon. I offered to treat him to lunch in the dining room, and we hung up.

  The dishwasher was doing its final pumping and when it clicked into the drying cycle, I went to take my shower.

  Afterward, I worked on a particularly difficult Sudoku puzzle until Stephanie called, a little later than usual. I told her about seeing her father, and the continuous rain, and she told me she had decided to drive to Houston. “You wouldn’t expect driving to be faster, but with the crazy schedule, and layovers in Atlanta, both directions, it was going to be a three-day trip.”

  I told her to drive safely in the rain and to let me know when she got there. Then I turned the light off and fell asleep immediately.

  Just after midnight, a rumble of thunder woke me. I got up and unplugged the laptop, printer and TV then lay in bed and thought about Lee Ferrell. If Travis was right and she hadn’t played a role in the rent scam, perhaps she had discovered the scheme and talked about it to the wrong person.

  But who was that person? I had marked Travis off the list, but I supposed Stewart was still on it, along with Jamie, Cynthia and Michelle. And Jim was a strong guy, out patrolling the grounds every night; could I skip him? What about the aides, housekeepers, residents and office workers I barely knew? Even Riley. No, I couldn’t go that far.

  What I needed to do was to solve some problems at Harbor Village. Jamie’s promotion left me with one vacant position to fill and the rent fraud was likely to result in another one. There were other things to do, too. The drug tests and deposit refunds had to be acted on right away.

  Finally, I dozed off and dreamed crazy dreams.

  At seven the next morning, I was sitting in the front booth at Julwin’s, having a cup of coffee. Travis arrived twenty minutes late, and I gathered up my paperwork spread across the table and slid it back into my leather case.

  “I stayed up too late, talking with Jim.” He slid into the booth and signaled for coffee. “What’s all that?”

  “I’ve got a few questions for you.”

  But we didn’t take them up immediately. Instead, we ordered, ate and talked about the rain and his travels.

  He told me what he’d p
lanned for the memorial service. “She was Episcopal. And I’m nothing, I guess.”

  “Why are you driving Jamie’s car? And where’s yours? Did you leave it in Charleston? Do you have to go back for it?”

  “Jamie didn’t want to drive to Houston alone, and we’re not compatible enough to go in one car. I turned in my rental and I’m delivering her car. Michelle’s going back to Charleston with her, did she tell you?”

  “No. I suppose she didn’t take the drug test. I should get the results today.”

  “Yeah, she’ll leave. Jamie can’t function without her. They’re the poster couple of co-dependence.”

  “Are they a couple?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Do you think Michelle would do something really, really stupid out of devotion?”

  He frowned.

  “Travis, it isn’t just a matter of Lee being gone. Somebody killed her, and that somebody was connected with Harbor Village. Maybe it wasn’t Jamie, but she was certainly defrauding the company, and you can’t ignore it. She’ll be prosecuted. She won’t be around to run things in Charleston.”

  He knew it, of course, but he seemed to be imagining some system of parallel futures in which Jamie could simultaneously be fired or jailed and continue to manage a Harbor Village facility.

  “Maybe it was Michelle.”

  I shook my head. “Maybe Jamie, maybe Cynthia, maybe both of them. I’m not a hundred percent sure Michelle was even involved.”

  Time was ticking by, and I still wanted Travis to answer some questions. I took out the paperwork I’d brought and we started with the Harbor Village budget.

  He took my pencil and coded sections from two documents, the annual budget Yolanda had sent and Emily’s monthly expenditures. He matched specific charges to broad categories, muttering under his breath as he did it. “This could be cleaned up some. The percentages look good, but the expenditures are curiously low.” Travis was good with budgets, and I actually began to get the idea.

  “If I want to buy a computer, does the budget allow it?”

  “Of course.” He showed me the correct account.

  “And if we want to spruce up the office, get some flowers, say?”

  He tapped his pen beside a different account and then picked up a new document. “What’s this?”

  “My letter of appointment as Executive Director. Yolanda sent it yesterday. The bank wants it to put me on the checking account. I may not have this job long enough to bother, but there doesn’t seem to be anybody else to sign checks right now, except Nelson Fisher.”

  “Nelson? Are you kidding? Maybe I should sign this letter again. My signature looks phony.”

  “I agree. Here’s a pen, if you want to add a real signature.”

  He added a note of explanation, signed and dated it then held it at arm’s length. “Maybe I’ll just stop by the bank before I leave town. And what’s this?”

  “Let me see.”

  It was the message Lee had sent Thursday night, announcing Jamie’s promotion. I read it again and something didn’t look right.

  “Let me see the letter you just signed.”

  I laid the two pages, Jamie’s appointment and my appointment, side by side and compared them.

  “What’s my job title?” I quizzed Travis.

  He frowned. “Executive Director. That’s what Lee was, here and three other places. Spread too thin, I know, but I couldn’t convince her. That’s what we’ve been arguing about for weeks.”

  “And what is Jamie’s new position in Charleston?”

  “Same thing. Executive Director.”

  “So who’s the administrator?”

  He looked annoyed. “There aren’t two separate positions, if that’s what you’re thinking. Administrator is just a generic term.”

  “So why does this letter say Jamie’s to be the Administrator?”

  He scowled. “That’s not…Show me.”

  I handed him both documents.

  He read first one then the other, going back and forth a couple of times. Jamie was appointed Administrator of the Charleston, SC, facility, Lee’s note said, yet my title at Fairhope was Executive Director. And we were filling identical positions.

  “Maybe she was just imprecise.”

  He snorted. “Never.”

  He put the pages down and stared out the window behind me.

  “Her message was sent at ten thirty-four,” I said. “But Chief Boozer thinks she was dead by nine at the latest.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Was the message delayed somehow?”

  He shook his head and brought his focus back to me. “No. I think I understand it now. Lee didn’t write this message.”

  Travis answered a phone call, and I took the opportunity to call Patti, telling her where I was and that I’d be at the office in thirty minutes. “Is Cynthia there?”

  “Oh, yes. In her office with the door closed. Do you want to talk to her?”

  “No. We’ll wait for her to talk to me now. Did we get the results of the drug tests yet?”

  When Travis hung up, I clicked off and looked across the table at him. “Cynthia Quarles is there but hiding out in her office. Michelle didn’t take a drug test but arranged to be off today and tomorrow. Everybody else tested clean.”

  Travis nodded. “She’s probably gone to Houston to meet Jamie. If she resigns right now, there won’t be anything on her record. She can go to Charleston and get another job. Better make arrangements to replace her.”

  “Tell me about Nelson Fisher. What’s his role here?”

  He looked surprised. “I guess he’s my responsibility now. Jamie wouldn’t take him, even if she could. He’s their uncle. And a significant stockholder. He’s had dementia as long as I’ve known him, although it doesn’t seem to get any worse, knock on wood. He was the office manager years ago, and Lee let him keep his office to maintain his daily routine.”

  “No children?”

  “No. Lee’s daughter is his heir, and maybe some people he worked with. He likes to putter in the garden and ride a lawn mower. Is he hurting anything where he is?”

  “No. I just needed to know. No tendencies toward violence, I suppose?”

  He shook his head. “Not that I ever heard of.”

  “So we don’t have to consider him a suspect. He’s still on the payroll, you know.”

  He laughed. “Impossible. No way!”

  I nodded.

  “I don’t believe it. Where does his paycheck go?”

  I shrugged, palms up. “I just learned he’s not actually working. I’ll find out.”

  “Well, let’s get that stopped immediately. I suppose I could guess who arranged it.”

  “You said the same thing about the missing medications. Who do you think took the pills?”

  “Jamie, of course. But I don’t know anything, in either case. Michelle’s the same song, second verse. Let’s hope it was one of them. I’d hate to have a third crook on staff.”

  I gathered up my papers, preparing to leave. “Travis, when did you last talk with Lee? Sometime Thursday?”

  “I was in Mississippi when I finally got her, so seven or a little after.”

  “And where was she then?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think she said. She was mad.”

  “At you?”

  He laughed without humor. “You know the story. We had a great relationship until we got married. But it wasn’t just me. She had problems here, too.”

  “The rent scam, do you think?”

  He shrugged. “If she found out about it, she didn’t tell me. Maybe because it supported my position that she was trying to do too much. Maybe she thought she should’ve discovered it earlier. Look, I’ll be in Houston tonight. I’ll talk with Jamie and get her an attorney. It’s s
crewy, I know, but what else am I going to do.”

  “I have a feeling the Fairhope police will be in Houston, too. Maybe before you are. You might want to review your plans in case Jamie doesn’t make it to the service.”

  “They’d make her miss her sister’s memorial service over seventy thousand dollars?”

  I stared at him.

  Travis seemed to deflate. “She wouldn’t hurt Lee. That’s just not possible.”

  “If I had a list, and I do, she’d be on it. The cops are getting the details nailed down, and there’ll be an arrest soon. Just be prepared. I need to get to the office. Take care of yourself, Travis.”

  “You’ve got my number.” He got up. “I gave it to Jim, too. Call me the minute you learn anything.”

  I said I would. “Jim has better contacts than I do. He’ll know what happens immediately.”

  We paid our checks and walked out to the sidewalk and, before I knew what he was doing, Travis gave me a quick peck on the forehead and walked away.

  Once again, my car was aimed for the pier instead of Harbor Village. I decided to drive a few extra blocks and make a loop around the rose garden, to confirm my impressions from the pier cam. I also wondered how Mobile Bay looked in the rain. So far, every time I’d seen it, it had looked totally different.

  Today was no exception. There was a bank of low, gray clouds over the water, with dark rain beneath them. The western shore was totally obscured and the bay was the color of dark chocolate. A snappy wind created little white crests on the choppy waves and blew gulls around in the sky.

  A city garbage truck, equipped with a robotic arm, blocked the circular drive. An operator in the cab emptied garbage containers as his helper rolled them out from their wooden corral near the end of the pier. When the truck finished, it retracted its mechanical arm, clanked into gear and drove slowly around to the trash can beside the walking path. I followed the other cars past the truck and up the hill, then on through town.

  While I waited for the traffic light at Section Street, I reviewed the critical events from last Thursday. At 4:30, Lee had been at Harbor Village, in the lobby, looking for Stewart. At approximately twenty minutes past eight, we returned from dinner and saw her sitting in the lobby, perhaps already dead. What happened in that four-hour interval? Anxiety gnawed at me.