Sunflower Street (Rose Hill Mysteries Book 8)

by Pamela Grandstaff

  “But how do I get her to meet with me?”

  “Tell her you have information she might find useful,” Hannah said. “She won’t be able to resist that.”

  “What information will that be?” Claire asked.

  “Tell her about the strip club,” Maggie said. “Tell her what her husband’s new business is.”

  “She may not agree to meet with me,” Claire said. “She doesn’t even know me.”

  “Oh, she knows you, all right,” Hannah said. “You’re Eugene’s keeper now.”

  “How is he?” Claire asked.

  “He had a seizure this morning, the first one since he got out of the hospital,” Hannah said. “We had to put one of those alert buttons on him and a sensor under his mattress. It’s like an intensive care unit up in there. I don’t think I’ll sleep a wink tonight.”

  “Poor Eugene,” Claire said. “What does the doctor say?”

  “They reduced the dosage of his medicine again. He’s stuttering more but he shouldn’t have another seizure.”

  “It seems like this is heading toward him not taking the medicine at all,” Maggie said. “Then what happens?”

  “Then he’s back in stuttering prison,” Hannah said, “serving a life sentence.”

  Claire obtained Jillian’s phone number from Candace, on the pretext that she was interested in one of Jillian’s charities. She texted Jillian the message Hannah had suggested.

  “I have some information you will be interested in.”

  Jillian texted Claire back within the hour, and they agreed to meet in Maggie’s bookstore coffee shop. Claire alerted Maggie, who promised she wouldn’t let Claire out of her sight.

  Claire was nervous, thinking she might be meeting with Gigi and Cheat’s killer. Maggie had rigged up a voice recorder in the napkin dispenser on the table, and planned to turn it on as soon as Jillian arrived.

  When Jillian came in, the first thing Claire noticed were her pin-dot pupils, a sure sign of some sort of drug use. Jillian was breathless and sniffed three times before she sat down. That explained it.

  “Can I get you anything at the coffee bar?” Claire asked her.

  “I don’t have time, unfortunately,” Jillian said, as she scanned the room. “Your message was so intriguing I couldn’t very well refuse, could I?”

  “I’m sorry we’ve met under such strained circumstances,” Claire said. “I really do have Eugene’s best interests at heart.”

  “But what expertise?” Jillian said. “Why you? Really, I want to know.”

  “My family has been very fond of Eugene since he was a child,” Claire said. “Gigi knew I wouldn’t let any harm come to him.”

  “And I would?”

  “I don’t know, Jillian. So far, someone has killed his mother and his uncle.”

  “You can’t think I had anything to do with that.”

  “Of course not,” Claire said. “It was Candace who was with her before she died.”

  “It’s appalling that you would think my dearest friend could have anything to do with that.”

  “Tell me about the check.”

  “The what?”

  “The check you gave to Candace after Gigi was found dead.”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “Ava saw you give it to her.”

  “It was intended for the committee,” Jillian said. “I just put it where Gigi intended it to go.”

  “Except she told someone that morning that she didn’t intend to give Candy as much as she promised, and then, somehow, the check got made out for twice as much.”

  “She must have had a change of heart,” Jillian said.

  “What I can’t figure out,” Claire said, “is why you would let the check be made out for so much money when it would only reduce Chip’s inheritance.”

  “I don’t know what you’re implying, but I know I don’t like it.”

  “What did Candace promise you in return for turning a blind eye to the forgery?”

  “I was already on the short list for that position, if that’s what you’re implying. I got there on my own merit.”

  “A pretty important position, I guess.”

  “Executive Director of the new children’s hospital,” Jillian said. “I should think so.”

  “Has it been announced yet?”

  “At next week’s board meeting, after the vote.”

  “Which is assured?”

  “I have every good reason to anticipate I will be the candidate chosen.”

  “For a position bought and paid for.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Jillian said. “I don’t have to sit here and take this.”

  “Then go,” Claire said. “And I’ll just keep my helpful information to myself.”

  “What do you want?” Jillian asked in a whisper. “Money? A position at the hospital? I could probably get you a clerical position in administration but with no medical training there’s hardly anything else you could do.”

  “I don’t want any favors,” Claire said. “I want to know if it was you or Candace who forged that check.”

  “Neither of us would do such a thing,” Jillian said.

  “If a forensic specialist takes that check out of the bank, examines it, and compares it with examples of Gigi’s handwriting, are you certain he or she will determine that Gigi wrote everything?”

  Jillian was trembling, whether with anger or fear, Claire didn’t know.

  “If Candace did it, you, having been seen to give her that check, will be arrested as her accomplice,” Claire said. “How much time do you think you’ll both get for that, considering the amount of the check? Maybe they’ll put you both in that prison Martha Stewart was in, Camp Cupcake, was it? What will everyone think of you then?”

  “You don’t know who you’re dealing with,” Jillian said. “My husband is a vice president at the hospital. He will vouch for that check. He will say that his Aunt Gigi told him it was going to be for that amount. Who are you? A hairdresser from nowhere. Who’ll believe you?”

  “Your husband, Chippie? The new owner of Tiger Tails Strip Club?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Ask him,” Claire said. “Or ask his teenage girlfriend, the one they call Mustang Sally.”

  “You’re lying,” Jillian said.

  “Ask him,” Claire said.

  Jillian stood up, almost puffing with indignation.

  “You haven’t heard the last of this,” Jillian said.

  “I’ll hear about you getting arrested, I’m sure,” Claire said. “And your cocaine dust is showing.”

  Jillian rubbed her nose before she caught herself.

  “Go to hell,” she hissed, and stalked off, slamming the door behind her as she left.

  The bell on the door jangled furiously and then fell off the door.

  Maggie came running out of the back office and grabbed the napkin dispenser off the table.

  “Oh my God, if we didn’t get all of that I will kill myself,” she said.

  They went back to her office, where they listened to the entire conversation between Claire and Jillian, which was perfectly audible.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Maggie said. “We’ve got her! Why aren’t you happy?”

  “I think I may have just signed Chip’s death warrant,” Claire said.

  “He’s a big boy, and he knows what Jillian’s capable of,” Maggie said. “Besides, he has that serial killer girlfriend on his side.”

  “I should have asked her about Cheat,” Claire said.

  “I think Amber killed him,” Maggie said. “Jillian killed Gigi and Amber killed Cheat. Boy, Chip can pick ’em.”

  On her way to Walter’s office, Claire stopped by the station in Pendleton to see Shep, to ask him if there was any progress on the tire-slashing investigation.

  “Sorry, gal,” he said. “We canvassed the local business owners, but nobody saw our perpetrator in the hooded sweatshirt. There is something I’d like you
to take a look at, if you have time.”

  Shep took her in his office and loaded a DVD into a player.

  “This is the camera on the corner of Main Street and Lafayette,” he said. “Watch this area over here, near the opposite corner. Tell me if you see anyone you recognize.”

  Claire watched as people came and went, and then saw someone who made her sit up straight in her chair. The video was black and white, but those curly pigtails could only belong to one person.

  “It’s Sophie,” she said.

  “Uh huh,” Shep said. “And look what she’s holding.”

  He rewound it and played it back a few frames at a time.

  “It’s dark, but I can’t tell what it is,” she said.

  “Looks to me like it could be a black jacket of some sort,” he said. “It was mighty hot that day for a sweatshirt.”

  “Let me tell you a new story about our friend Sophie,” Claire said.

  She told Shep about the intern seeing Sophie slash her own tires so she could blame Jillian.

  “Here we have a familiar motive,” Shep said. “Slashing tires and blaming Jillian.”

  “I can’t quit thinking about it,” Claire said. “She was the only person besides my mother who knew I was coming to Walter’s office the next day.”

  “After I saw this video, I went back over all my notes,” Shep said. “She was a young, single mother, barely making ends meet, all because Jillian had run her out of her job. I felt sorry for her. Then Jillian was so uncooperative and ugly about being questioned that it got my blood up, made me want to believe she was the perpetrator. That’s just sloppy police work. I’m ashamed of myself.”

  “But the neighbor said he saw Jillian write on Sophie’s garage …”

  “Her so-called witness is currently serving time for possession with intent to distribute,” Shep said. “As far as I’m concerned that makes him less than a reliable witness. I’m embarrassed I let her pull one over on me. I need to retire.”

  Claire clasped his hand.

  “My dad said no one can be right one hundred percent of the time, even the police,” Claire said. “You’re just a person, not infallible.”

  “I’ve already told the search committee,” he said. “They’ve got thirty days.”

  “This is so twisted,” Claire said.

  “Hell hath no fury, apparently,” Shep said. “And that woman carries a grudge like it’s her reason for living.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Not a thing I can do,” Shep said. “It looks like her, but she has every right to walk downtown whenever she wants to. I’ve got no witnesses that put her in that parking lot, wearing a dark sweatshirt, while you were in Walter’s office. If I ask her about it, and she says, yeah, I ran downtown to do x, y, or z, then what do I have?”

  “There’s nothing we can do.”

  “Watch your back,” Shep said. “I wouldn’t get in between these two if I were you.”

  In her dream, Claire heard voices in the kitchen. Men’s voices. She got out of bed but couldn’t see very well. She felt her way down the hall to the kitchen, where the light was so bright it hurt her eyes.

  ‘Hey, prom queen,’ her cousin, Brian, said.

  Brian, her dead cousin, the one who had been married to Ava when he was alive.

  He was sitting at the kitchen table with Laurie, Tuppy, and a dark-haired young man she didn’t know, playing poker.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked Laurie.

  He smiled, but held a finger up to his lips. He then tilted his head toward the young man she didn’t know and raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Tuppy,’ she said, turning to her friend and former coworker, the one who had been killed earlier in the year. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Oh, Clairol,’ he said, gesturing to the young man. ‘You never were the brightest bulb. Look at him. Don’t you recognize him?’

  She looked at the young man.

  He smiled at Claire, and then she recognized him.

  ‘Liam,’ she breathed. ‘Oh, sweetie.’

  He winked at her and gave her a thumbs up.

  ‘He’s perfectly fine,’ Tuppy said. ‘I don’t know what you were so worried about.’

  Claire woke up, her heart pounding, Tuppy’s words still ringing in her ears.

  The next morning, Claire drove down to the depot and was surprised to find Sophie’s store closed. Sophie’s truck was parked out front, so she knocked on the door of Trashy Treasures until she appeared and unlocked the door.

  Sophie’s face was a tense mask.

  “What do you want?” she asked Claire.

  “I need to talk to you about the other day when I was here,” Claire said. “Has something happened?”

  “Someone tried to burn down my store,” Sophie said.

  She pushed open the door so Claire could come inside. Her shop was a soggy mess of ruined merchandise, and what wasn’t soaked was black from smoke.

  “Oh, my goodness,” Claire said. “When did this happen?”

  “After I left last night, I realized I hadn’t taken the deposit, so I came back and saw the smoke,” she said. “They must have broken into the store next door and crawled over the partition between us. The fire department said it was arson, no question.”

  “This is terrible,” Claire said. “Who would do such a thing?”

  “I’ll give you three guesses,” Sophie said.

  “She’d be the obvious suspect,” Claire said. “Have they questioned her yet?”

  Sophie shrugged.

  “I told the fire chief about her history of harassment and the restraining order, and that they should talk to Chief Shepherd if they had any questions,” Sophie said. “So far I haven’t seen anyone from the police department. They’re probably in her pocket somehow, and couldn’t care less.”

  “I’m so sorry this has happened,” Claire said.

  Sophie shrugged.

  “She’s not going to stop until she’s locked up. I hope this time they can prove she did it.”

  “Aren’t there video cameras all over the place here?”

  “I haven’t heard yet if they saw her on the tapes,” Sophie said. “They think whoever did it must have gone in one of the stores as a shopper and then hid in there until all the shops were closed and everyone was gone. We have this trouble with birds getting in here and flying back and forth over the shops. It sets the security alarms off so most of us quit setting them. She could have hidden in any shop and then climbed over the partitions until she got to mine.

  “Wouldn’t she have needed a ladder?”

  “We all have them,” Sophie said. “She’d have plenty of time to put one back before she left out the emergency exit. We’re all required to have those doors; all she had to do was push to get out. If I hadn’t come back when I did, everyone’s shops would have burned up.”

  “I hope you have good insurance.”

  “Good enough,” Sophie said. “I’m not going to let her burn me out, though. I’ll rebuild.”

  “If there’s anything I can do to help,” Claire said, “please let me know.”

  “I will,” Sophie said. “What was it you wanted to ask me?”

  “When I came to see you the other day, I told you I had an appointment at the attorney’s office the next morning.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Did you happen to mention that to anyone?”

  “That you were going to the lawyer?”

  “Yes.”

  “No,” Sophie said. “I don’t understand why you’re asking.”

  “Someone slashed my tires while I was in his office,” Claire said.

  “Jillian must have been following you,” Sophie said. “It’s what she does.”

  “She’s pretty scary,” Claire said.

  “I’ve been trying to tell everyone that for years,” Sophie said. “Unfortunately, no one ever believes me.”

  Claire again offered to help her if she could, and Sophie w
alked her outside.

  “One more thing,” Claire said, just before Sophie went back inside. “Did you come downtown that day, the morning I had the appointment?”

  “No,” Sophie said. “I was here all day, why?”

  “Just trying to find someone who saw anything out of the ordinary,” Claire said.

  “Sorry, I can’t help you,” Sophie said, and went back inside.

  Claire sat in her car and thought about everything that had happened and everything she knew. Just because the guy was a drug dealer didn’t mean he was lying to Shep about Jillian spray-painting Sophie’s garage door. Just because Sophie once slashed her own tires to frame Jillian didn’t mean she’d done it again. Besides, would she really burn up her own shop, her livelihood?

  But why would she lie about going downtown? Claire could swear that it was her in the video, but it was far away and she guessed it was possible someone else could wear funky cat eye glasses and curly pigtails. If it had been in color instead of black and white she would have been able to recognize the red gold hair. Claire had so many conflicting pieces of information churning around in her head that she was starting to get a headache.

  She called Hannah.

  “The Curious Cousins Detective Agency needs to have a meeting,” she said when Hannah answered.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” Hannah said. “You need to come out to the farm; we have something to show you.”

  Claire couldn’t help herself; she kept glancing in her rearview mirror the whole way to Rose Hill.

  Out at the farm, Hannah and Eugene were setting up his shop in the downstairs of the barn. Everything had been swept and mopped, so there was no longer any smelly evidence of animals having been kept there. Eugene was excited to show Claire how everything was organized. He still stammered, but he didn’t let it stop him trying to speak. Claire was careful not to try to finish his sentences for him.

  “Th, th, this is my n, n, new plathe,” he said. “How d, d, do you like it?”

  “It’s great,” Claire said.

  “Hannah th, th, thaid I could th, th, thtay here ath l, l, long ath I like.”

  “We like having you here,” Hannah said. “We needed to put this barn to good use, and you know me, I’d just fill it up with strays.”