by Joanne Pence
“You heard about Kevin Blithe’s death, I know,” Paavo said. “The more I look at it, the more it makes me wonder about Oliver Cambry’s murder. Both men were poisoned with cyanide, for one thing.”
“How did someone get hold of cyanide?” Joey asked.
“We’ve tried tracking it, but so far, no luck. It’s clear no one could have gotten it legally,” Paavo said. “Whoever was involved had to know some pretty bad people.”
“That leaves out the Cambrys,” Rico said. “I never knew such a bunch. They all have their heads in the clouds, one higher up than the other. They know nothing about life and people and stuff.”
“Why did Oliver believe he needed bodyguards?” Paavo asked.
“He said his family wanted to take his house away. They want to sell it. Ever since his wife died, the second wife, his family started saying he was off his rocker. He never used the word ‘ghost,’ but he swore someone or something was in his house, moving his stuff, walking the halls. The family tried to say he was seeing things, and for that reason he needed a conservator, but when they tried to do something about it, we heard no lawyer would take the case. And his own lawyer said there was nothing wrong with Oliver.”
“Who in the family was he talking about?” Paavo asked. “It’s a fairly small group.”
“I think the fly in the ointment was his son-in-law,” Rico said. “Oliver didn’t want his daughter to marry Blithe—said he was after her money. I only talked to Madrigal a couple times, but she seemed to go along with whatever Blithe wanted. Kevin was a sneaky little bastard, if you ask me.”
“What about his brother?” Paavo asked.
“I’ve heard he’s as rich, or richer, than Oliver. Seems they never saw each other and that was fine with both of them.”
“What do you think, Joey?” Paavo asked. “Would you say Oliver’s problems were Madrigal and Kevin or someone else?”
“I didn’t know Madrigal at all well. She didn’t say nothing much to me, ever. But I didn’t like Kevin. Vera was his stepmother, but he was rotten to her. I saw it. Vera’s a good egg, if you ask me. I don’t know how she put up with that screwy bunch, except she did like Oliver.”
Rico chimed in. “Oliver was a nice guy. I was real sorry when he died.”
“Me, too,” Joey said.
“What about Oliver’s wife?” Paavo asked. “I understand she died not long ago.”
“You mean his second wife. People said she died, but Oliver wasn’t so sure about that.”
That was a surprise. “What do you mean?”
Rico shrugged. “They never found her body—missing, presumed dead out in the Pacific. Oliver swore she took money and jewelry and ran off, but he couldn’t prove it. He believed after he was dead she would show up at his funeral demanding her share. Because of that, he changed his will, leaving everything to his daughter in a trust, and adding something to say if anything happened to Madrigal, her money would not go to Kevin Blithe. I don’t know how Oliver managed that, but he could pay for top-notch lawyers, that’s for sure. He often said he wished there was such things as ghosts, because he’d love to come back as one and laugh at everyone fighting over his money.”
“He was a funny guy, always saying stuff like that,” Joey added.
“Yeah,” Rico nodded, and both men looked a little more morose over Oliver’s demise.
“And so,” Paavo said, “he hired you to protect him from these relatives?”
“That’s right. We was supposed to watch out that no one came into the house and got him. Like we said, he didn’t trust nobody. And now we see he was right. Poor bastard.”
“Are you saying you didn’t believe him at first?” Paavo asked.
“We thought he was exaggerating, like. Maybe just for attention, or to make his life a little more interesting than it really might be. But now we know he wasn’t exaggerating because somebody did kill him.”
“Is it possible Vera let someone into the house? I mean, she and her son would have benefited from his death with Kevin being married to Oliver’s daughter. That might have been a good incentive.”
“We checked the place. Nobody else was inside until Vera showed up that morning. I saw her come in with her key,” Joey said. “And I was close-by when she went into the bedroom to wake up Cambry. She immediately ran out, yelling for me to call nine-one-one. Besides, that old house creaks so much we’d have heard someone walking around in it, especially on the stairs going up to Oliver’s bedroom. We tried to tell the police that when they came up with some cock-and-bull story about a jewel thief, but they just laughed at us.”
“They laughed? Why?” Paavo asked.
“We thought about it a lot, Inspector,” Rico said. “Whoever did it had to know the house and know the combination to the safe where the jewelry was kept.”
“And,” Joey said, “they had to get into the house without me or Rico seeing them and also be able to walk around it without making any noise. Nobody can walk on those stairs without hearing them squeak.”
“And,” Rico added, “Oliver swore no one but him and his wife, Farlee, knew the combination of the safe.”
“Which means,” Joey concluded, “the only one who could have gotten into the house, walked around without being heard, and gotten into the safe, was Farlee herself.”
“The wife who’s dead,” Paavo said.
“Right,” both men replied.
Paavo’s gaze leapt from one man to the other. “On the other hand, she’s got quite an alibi.”
o0o
Angie had just returned to her apartment from the Sea Cliff house when her phone rang.
“Angie, somebody put the most hateful note in my mailbox,” Cat said. “I’m so steamed! Aren’t there postal laws about this? I tell you, these realtors are getting pushier by the day! It said ‘Keep out of this.’ Well, since the only thing I’ve been involved in is going to the Cambry mansion, that’s got to be what they’re talking about.”
“Why would anyone send you such a note?” Angie asked.
“Obviously, the seller’s agent intends to hog the entire commission herself, and doesn’t want to share it. Can you imagine? The nerve!”
“I was there, too, but I don’t think I got such a note,” Angie said. She walked over to where she’d put her handbag plus the mail when she came into the apartment. She hadn’t yet had time to look through it.
“I doubt anyone cares that you were there, Angie. I’m sure it’s all about the commissions.”
“Wait. Here’s an envelope with block-printed lettering for the address. And no stamp or return address.”
“My envelope was block printed as well. It looked like something a third grader would do.”
“Let me open it.” Angie kept the phone tucked between her ear and shoulder as she opened the envelope and pulled out a small sheet of paper. “Oh, my God. Cat, I’ve also got a message. It says ‘Keep out of this.’ It’s written in pencil and printed in block letters.”
“You? But why? You wouldn’t share the commission, and for all the realtor knows, you might be a buyer. Why send you such a note?”
“What if it has nothing to do with the realtor?”
“Of course it does.”
“Why? Do you know her? Have you worked with her before?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean—”
“How would she or anyone else have found out where we live?”
“Well, I did talk to her on the phone, and we signed the visitors’ book, letting her know we viewed the house,” Cat said. “My address would be easy for any realtor to find, of course. And many of us have connections to databases to look up information about perspective clients so we aren’t surprised later on. I suspect your address is in it.”
“Okay—that makes sense. But I still don’t see why any realtor is warning me off,” Angie said. “I doubt someone driving around the Bay Area hand delivering threatening notes to everyone who visits the Cambry house. So maybe they’re worried specific
ally about us. But if so, why?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Angie. I’ll call the listing agent,” Cat said. “Of course, she’ll deny any knowledge, but at least she’ll know I’m wise to her.”
With that, Cat hung up the phone. Cat might have thought this was about commissions, but Angie feared it was about something much worse.
CHAPTER TEN
The next morning, Angie rang the doorbell at the Cambry mansion at 9:45. She wasn’t usually out of her apartment that early, but Madrigal had phoned the night before and asked her to be there at 10:00 a.m. for her interview with Joey and Rico.
Angie had kept the phone conversation short since Paavo was with her. She told him she made an appointment to look at tiles for their remodeled kitchen. She had long wanted something colorful for the tiled area behind her beautiful red range, but she hadn’t yet found anything that felt “right.” It wasn’t that she liked lying to her fiancé, but this was just a little white lie to spare him worry—he did enough of that on his own. Besides, she wasn’t doing any of this for Madrigal, despite the sympathy she felt for the woman, but to help Joey and Rico. They had been good to her and they needed to get their jobs back. Everything was built on good intentions.
Angie wanted to be early to calm Madrigal down and to show her how to interview people for jobs. If Madrigal wanted to be independent, as she claimed she did, she had a lot to learn.
At ten o’clock on the dot, the bodyguards arrived. After greetings were made and condolences extended, Angie shepherded everyone into the parlor. She faced Madrigal. “Why don’t we have Joey and Rico tell us about themselves and the many people they’ve successfully guarded—including me.”
“All right.” Madrigal’s voice was barely above a whisper.
“Miss Angie was one of our most challenging people,” Rico began as they sat on the stiff furniture. “She didn’t like to listen.”
“That’s right,” Joey said, squirming in a chair trying to get comfortable. “Especially once she had her eye on the Inspector, who’s now her fiancé. After that, we hardly counted at all. But we pretty much made sure she was safe … when she was with us, at least.”
Madrigal glanced at Angie, her eyebrows raise. “I see.”
After the two gave Madrigal a quick overview of their years of experience and success, she looked pleased by them. Angie asked if they had questions for Madrigal.
Joey spoke up. “Will you be moving to this house or staying in yours?”
“I’m going to come back here. I plan to convert Dad’s bedroom into an upstairs sitting room as soon as I get a chance to buy some new furniture for it. I’ll move back into my old bedroom. It’s small but cozy, and I used to be happy there.” With that, her eyes grew misty and she dropped her gaze.
Joey and Rico eyed each other uncomfortably, not sure what more to say.
Angie stood. “Should we take a tour of the house?”
They all gawked at her.
She sat back down. “That’s right. You know the place already.”
Madrigal spoke up. “I’m going to let you two have one of the small bedrooms upstairs for your office.”
“Office? We don’t need no office.” Joey looked horrified. “If you mean one of the rooms I think you mean, there’s no TV, no comfortable chair, no nothing in it. And our shifts, we’re talking twelve hours.”
Madrigal blinked. “So?”
Angie jumped in. “I’ve worked with them,” she said to Madrigal. “They should in a central location—a room like the parlor when it’s not otherwise in use. It’s near the front door with easy access to the upstairs and any of the downstairs rooms. There, they can hear if there’s any problem.”
Madrigal’s lips tightened. “But I use the front of the house, so I can hear if there’s any problem. And then I’d call them. Besides, if that was where they stayed while guarding my father, that didn’t turn out so well, did it? The second floor seems much more reasonable.”
It was on the tip of Angie’s tongue to remind the woman that Joey and Rico were willing to put their bodies, perhaps their lives, on the line to protect her and the least she could do was to treat them well. She took a deep breath then said, “We should talk, later, about finding a place for them that’s comfortable, but also won’t infringe on your privacy. How would that be?”
“I hope it’s possible,” Madrigal said.
“Me, too,” Joey muttered.
“When will you be moving in here?” Angie asked.
“I’d like to move in the day after tomorrow. After Kevin’s funeral.”
“Of course,” Angie said. “We’ll work something out before then.”
“All right.” She gave copies of keys to Rico and Joey. “I guess I do have to trust you with these, so I may as well start.”
As Angie, Rico, and Joey stepped out the front door, Rico stopped and faced Madrigal. “Your father was a good man, Miss Madrigal. We were very sorry when he died, and we’re positive nobody came through the doors to poison him while we were here. How he was killed and the jewels stolen is a mystery to us.”
Madrigal stared at him, her face grim, her shoulders square. She evinced no emotion as she said, “Two months ago, when the police told me who had killed him and why, I’d believed them. But now that the same thing happened to my husband, I’m not so sure. I heard that you said the real killer might have been the ghost of Dad’s second wife. Farlee hated this house and my father. If anyone would come back from the grave to do this family harm, it would be her.”
o0o
Paavo and Yosh spent much of the morning going through the evidence Rebecca Mayfield had collected in Oliver Cambry’s murder. The jewel thief who ended up being named as Cambry’s murderer, Ronnie Hines, was a petty criminal with a long list of thefts, many of which were small enough to have been misdemeanors instead of felonies.
It was true that he had been found dead in his fleabag hotel room with a couple of cyanide capsules as well as the diamond and emerald necklace and bracelet from the Cambry mansion. But there was no indication of how he planned to sell such valuable jewels. No indication had been found of how he could have gotten his hands on a cyanide capsule to administer to Cambry. And there was definitely no indication of why, when Hines spent his life as nothing more than a burglar, he suddenly decided to kill the man he was robbing.
In other words, Hines being the murderer made no sense whatsoever. Rebecca’s instincts had been right to question it. Paavo knew Bill Sutter well enough to believe her when Rebecca said he was quite happy to go where the “evidence” led if it meant getting a case off his hands. Sutter called it being “efficient.” Others in the department had other names for it. As for Lt. Eastwood, with his ambition on the line he would do pretty much anything to stay in the good graces of the rich and famous in this town. Dragging a prominent family into a strange murder investigation could lead to places he might not want to go. If both Rebecca and Sutter had pressed him on the case, he might have gone along. But Sutter gave him reason to bury it.
The more Paavo read, the more convinced he grew that Hines was innocent, that Cambry’s killer was still out there, and very likely that person had now murdered Kevin Blithe.
The question struck him: would whoever did it try to kill again?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
After leaving the Cambry house, Angie did some shopping and then drove to Everyone’s Fancy, a gift shop owned by her best friend, Connie Rogers.
Connie was in her mid-thirties and divorced. She was also a bit on the plump side, with short blond hair and blue eyes. For Angie, one of the perks of moving to the Sea Cliff area was that she would be closer to Connie’s shop and apartment. Her store was in the southwest part of the city, the West Portal district. Angie’s current apartment was in the northeast. The city might be only seven square miles, but between traffic, traffic lights, and narrow, hilly streets, it took forever to drive that short distance. Angie hoped to see more of her friend than she did currently.
&nbs
p; At times, however, she wondered about Connie being able to keep the shop. A gift shop selling greeting cards and knickknacks didn’t make a whole lot of money these days when so many people bought gifts online.
Angie suggested Connie open an online version of her store, but so far Connie resisted any change. Angie could be persuasive though, and from the time they first met, she’d been able to convince Connie to go along with all kinds of crazy schemes. Including the first one they worked together.
They had met after Connie’s sister, Tiffany, was murdered. Paavo was the lead investigator on the case, but he was having some difficulties finding out much about Tiffany. When Angie discovered that one of her cousins had met Connie years earlier, she took it upon herself to see what she could learn. Now, as she drove, she thought back on her first visit to Connie’s shop.
“I came to give my condolences,” Angie said as she walked in. “My boyfriend is the homicide inspector working your sister's case, Inspector Paavo Smith.”
Connie's eyes teared, and she went back to rearranging some glass swans. “Do you always visit the families of your boyfriend's cases?” The expression on her face showed how macabre a pastime she considered that to be.
“My goodness, no. But I was talking about Paavo’s case with one of my cousins, and he said he knew you years ago.”
“Is that so?” Connie's expression told Angie she wasn't inclined to believe her. “What's his name?”
“Richie Amalfi.”
For the first time, Angie saw Connie's caution lift and a pretty smile brighten her plain face. “Richie! You're Richie’s cousin? He was so handsome.”
“He still is.”
“I can imagine.” A splash of color appeared on her cheeks. “What's he doing now? Married? Kids?”
“No. He was engaged, but his fiancée died.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Connie put the last swan in place. “Poor guy. I was married, but my wedded bliss turned into twenty-six months of sheer hell.”