“Hopes won’t get you anywhere. It’s hard work that does that,” said Gerry, tapping her nose.
“What is it you do, Ms. Winston?” said Greer. My friend stood up and dusted off her jeans. She was trying to deflect attention from Liam, and I was grateful for her quick thinking.
“I knit,” said Gerry, plucking at the hat she wore over the crow’s nest she probably considered to be her hair.
“She’s very good,” said Liam. “She’s been knitting for years.”
“Hats mostly?” I said.
“Yes, but for dogs and cats,” said Gerry. “Wouldn’t want them to get cold.”
“Mom, why don’t I take you to lunch?” said Liam. “When was the last time you ate anything?”
“I don’t remember,” said his mother, frowning as if it was a very surprising question.
Liam waved goodbye to us and led his mother out of the shop. “It was nice to meet you ladies,” said Gerry. “Liam always has such pretty friends.”
Liam mouthed that he was sorry to both of us. The second the door closed behind him Greer tapped her temple and I nodded in agreement.
“Was it strange that he got his mother out of here so quickly?” Greer asked.
“Not that strange. She’s an artist, so he probably thought she was spying for the enemy,” I said.
“The plot thickens,” said Greer.
We finished up what we were working on for Liam and Greer headed home, while I waited for Charlie to pick me up. We had a visit to make.
Charlie and I drove to the offices of the Caedmon Chronicle, which were located in a cute blue house down a winding back road. There were a couple of cars in the freshly paved driveway, and Charlie and I got out of the Beetle slowly, as if we had to collect ourselves before we went inside. Charlie was clearly nervous.
“We’re going into enemy territory,” she whispered. “This is a big deal.”
“Does he know you’re coming?” I asked.
“He knows we’re both coming,” said Charlie. “I sent him an email asking him for a meeting and he replied instantly, even though it was like ten p.m.”
“Let me guess, he was more than happy to meet with us,” I said.
Charlie nodded and opened the front door of the Chronicle’s office. There were doorways lining both sides of the hallway that stretched out in front of us, and a small desk blocking the way, at which a friendly-looking guy was sitting.
“Charlie Silver, as I live and breathe,” he said, standing up excitedly and scrubbing his palm on his pants before extending it to my friend with a grin. “Never thought I’d see the day when you’d come to the Chronicle. Wow.” He braced his hands on his hips, still with a goofy grin.
“Hello, Walter. Well, I’m here now,” said Charlie. “Anything for a story. In fact, we’re here to see Hansen Gregory.”
“His office is upstairs on the right,” he said, thumbing us in the right direction.
He should be selling cotton candy at baseball games, I thought; he had totally missed his calling. Sitting back down, still smiling and shaking his head, he picked up the latest edition of the Chronicle and continued to read.
Charlie and I headed up the stairs. The Caedmon Chronicle offices were in a building that was probably a couple of hundred years old, that had once been a single-family home. The stairs were narrow and creaky, and an old carpet covered them. I loved the place immediately, and I could see why people would want to work there.
The door on the right at the top of the stairs was open. Charlie rapped on the door jamb, then stuck her head inside without waiting for an answer.
“Here goes nothing,” Charlie muttered.
Actually, she was wrong, here went everything. My hope of solving this case rested on Charlie’s ability to make nice with Caedmon’s ace reporter.
I was doomed.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Hansen Gregory was sitting behind his desk. His dark curly hair fell over his forehead as he looked up at us with his eyes twinkling in an “I can’t help but flirt” sort of way.
“Come in, welcome. Thanks for coming.” He stood up and ushered us in. Our hesitancy was matched by his open friendliness; it served him right for taking up with us. He could have said no, but there was no going back for him now.
Poor fellow.
There were two chairs across from his wide desk, and Charlie and I each took one. I felt a little awkward, as if I was in trouble for something and had to defend myself.
Hansen Gregory’s walls were covered in posters of old movies, mostly of Humphrey Bogart. He clearly liked the old film noir genre. The shelves on either side of the desk were stuffed so full of books that I wondered if he’d even be able to get one down if he needed to. I decided I’d like to watch him try. I imagined him flying backwards across the room, the book having won. A little smile skittered across my face.
Stacks of papers took up most of the space on the desk, but unlike the books, these were all neatly organized and placed just so.
“I’m Hansen,” he said, sticking a large hand out to me. I introduced myself in turn. After that was out of the way, he sat back in his chair.
“Can I get you anything? Tea? coffee? A muzzle for me?” He was smiling when he said it, but I had a feeling he thought there might be some truth to his words. Smart fellow, that one. No one ever said those Caedmonites were dummies. Well, no one except Charlie.
“A muzzle won’t silence your pen,” said Charlie. The girl wasn’t even kidding.
“So, rope?” Hansen threw back his head and laughed. “Very true. I hope you don’t think I was just going to roll and over and let you win.”
“Believe me, I’m not worried about that,” said Charlie, grinning.
I glanced at her; she looked delighted. She was sparring with her arch rival, and she couldn’t have been happier. Finally, I thought, a worthy opponent for the wordsmith!
“I actually came about the Kayla Caldwell case,” she said.
“You haven’t had much to go on,” said Hansen. He didn’t sound smug when he said it, it was more like he was just stating a fact. He also didn’t look surprised that that’s what Charlie had come about.
“Mary Caldwell has agreed to give me an exclusive interview when they find out what happened to Kayla,” Charlie said.
“I know,” he said. “I tried to get her to talk to me, but she said I should talk to you about her sister. I’m not sure she understands how reporting works. I told her you’d never let me in on it. She said you and your friend were nice and trying to help her out, and without the two of you none of this would have happened.” Hansen glanced at me. He was pleasant enough, but I could see that he was wondering what I was doing there. He knew I wasn’t on the payroll at the Gazette.
Up close, Hansen was even cuter than he appeared to be at murder scenes. He had dark blue eyes with flecks of gray and a big smile that he flashed often. I couldn’t remember hearing anything about him in high school, and I wondered why. I promised myself to ask Charlie later. Given that the two were sworn enemies, I had a feeling that she had looked into his life and knew everything about him, maybe even more than he knew himself. Could he answer in a rapid fire round whether he tied his shoe laces left over right or right over left? Charlie could.
“I take it you want to work together because I’m from Caedmon, and you want to use my sources?” said Hansen.
“I think we could help each other,” said Charlie noncommittally.
“You mean I can help you, while you’ll help me because you have to?” Hansen translated, and I had to admit, he was pretty darn good at Charlie-speak.
“However it started, it’s going to benefit both of us,” said Charlie. This may have started out as a way to get to Mrs. Luke, but Charlie figured that Hansen would be happy to get in on the interview with Mary. Charlie was a person of honor, except where it came to Gracie Coswell.
“I’m all for working together,” said Hansen, steepling his fingers. “Your articles are the
best in the county. I’ve just been trying to keep up.”
Charlie blushed a little at that and looked down at her hands. “Your articles are very good as well.”
“You read my articles?” Hansen looked genuinely surprised, but then his face cleared. “You have to keep track of the competition, right? That means I’m competition.” He was now looking kind of smug, and Charlie rolled her eyes.
“Do we have a deal or not?” she asked, all business now.
“You want to talk to Mrs. Luke? In return I talk to Mary with you once the case is solved?” he said, leaning forward.
“That’s the deal,” said Charlie. “Oh, and Lemmi gets to be in on all of it.”
“What stake do you have in all of this?” he asked, addressing me directly for the first time as the reporter in him reared its cute head. Darn cute head, actually.
“I’m just a concerned citizen,” I said. Small towns had high concentrations of busybodies. Something told me this was not the last time I’d be talking to Hansen Gregory about a case, and I had to be careful. It wasn’t terribly far-fetched that I just liked asking questions; at least I hoped he wouldn’t think it terribly far-fetched. Otherwise I’d have to go find one of his dead relatives to interview about him and really creep him out.
Yeah, I would do that.
Hansen stared at me for several seconds, then nodded. “We have a deal.”
After another pause he said, “I already talked to Mrs. Luke. I didn’t miss the connection that she was at the town office at the same time as Kayla. She was pleasant enough to me. My neighbor is in a bridge club with her, so I see her often, but during the interview I did feel like she was holding something back, as if there was something she didn’t want to tell me. I tried to get it out of her, but she wouldn’t budge.”
“Kayla had discovered some kind of funny business with the accounts, maybe straight-up embezzlement,” said Charlie. “After she disappeared, Mrs. Luke went to her sister’s and took away all the boxes from work that Kayla had stored in her room. I have a feeling Mrs. Luke knows about the embezzlement and doesn’t want to say so.”
Hansen Gregory whistled. “I like this working together thing. I had no idea.”
Charlie shrugged and smiled. “Like you said, I’m good.” She flipped her perfect blond hair and it soared gracefully over her shoulder. Unlike most men, Hansen didn’t watch open-mouthed, and out of the corner of my eye I saw the slightest sign of disappointment on Charlie’s face.
Hansen stood up, pulling his jacket off the back of his chair. “Looks like we have to go back to the town office. Am I driving or are you two?”
I thought about my sorry excuse for a vehicle and said, “Let’s take separate cars.”
The failed hair flip was forgotten. For now.
“He’s very nice,” I said as we followed his car to the Caedmon town office.
“Don’t let it fool you,” said Charlie.
I raised my eyebrows, “What does that mean? You think some super spy journalist is out to get your stories?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” said Charlie. “Working together on this interview, then again with Mary? He’s taking us to talk to Mrs. Luke like he’s all nice, and then he’s going with me to talk to Mary. Who knows what he’ll get up to.”
I had a feeling that Hansen’s conniving was wishful thinking on Charlie’s part. He was clearly enjoying working with Charlie, and with small town politics the way they were, they’d be bumping into each other a lot.
“Is he from around here?” I asked.
Charlie rolled her eyes. “Not even close. Can’t you tell? He moved here from Vermont, of all places. He went to some fancy college and then had the nerve to come here. Now everyone in Caedmon has accepted him as one of their own. I can’t believe it.”
“We have a lot of friends who aren’t from Mintwood or Caedmon, who came here from somewhere else,” I said. “Even crazy places like Vermont. You can’t tell me you think it’s that bad.”
She missed my sarcasm. “Just in his case,” said Charlie.
I had a feeling that in high school he’d been the editor of the paper and very popular, and that if he had gone to Mintwood High he would have been the kind of guy Charlie was friends with.
I kept that tidbit to myself.
For the rest of the drive I concentrated on not being nervous. The problem was that this was big. Mrs. Luke was my prime suspect in the Kayla Caldwell disappearance and murder. Kayla had been waiting nearly twenty-five years for someone to come along who could help her, and that someone had been me, and now we were going to confront Mrs. Luke about it. Sure, we didn’t have any real evidence, but we did have speculation, which had always worked for Grandmother Evenlyn when she didn’t know who had eaten the freshly baked cookies (I had checked and doubled-checked to make sure she was upstairs), but she suspected it was me.
This was nearly the same thing, wasn’t it?
When we reached the town office, Hansen Gregory stepped out of his car and the three of us walked in together. Mrs. Luke was just crossing the hall with some papers, and an expression of displeasure came over her features when she spotted us. She sighed. “Hansen, what can I do for you?”
She barely looked at Charlie and me. I wasn’t sure if she even remembered me from the other day, but I figured she probably did.
“I just had a couple more questions about Kayla’s disappearance, if that’s all right,” said Hansen. He was open and pleasant, and I could see that in other circumstances Mrs. Luke probably liked him a great deal. In this case she paused to rearrange the papers she was carrying, then said, “I really don’t see what help I can give you, but come along.”
Mrs. Luke’s office was in the back of the building, tiny but very neat and orderly. There was no sign of papers scattered around, but several very large file cabinets lined the walls.
In my wildest imaginings I didn’t know how someone pulled off being so organized.
We sat in the chairs Mrs. Luke indicated, and Hansen introduced Charlie and me. Mrs. Luke had clearly heard of Charlie and told her that she liked her articles very much.
“What is it you wanted to ask me?” she said at last, having seated herself behind her desk as if it was a fortifying wall. She had found a pen to fidget with and she fidgeted for all the writing implement was worth. “I’ve already told you everything I know,” she added with a glance at Hansen.
“I wanted to ask you about embezzlement,” he said, having apparently decided on the direct approach.
Mrs. Luke paled under her chalky foundation. “What makes you ask about that? What does embezzlement have to do with anything?”
She was clearly trying to maintain her composure, shifting the objects on her desk and no longer looking at any of us. She had obviously never expected to hear those words spoken in her presence.
“I have it on good authority that Kayla, the girl who was found in the lake, had discovered an embezzlement scheme here at the town office,” said Hansen.
Mrs. Luke shook her head. “There was never any money taken.”
Hansen frowned and leaned forward, “Look, Mrs. Luke. I know you didn’t do anything wrong and I’ll leave your name out of it. Just tell me what happened.”
I wasn’t remotely convinced that Mrs. Luke hadn’t been involved, but I decided to let Hansen handle her his way.
“I didn’t know it had anything to do with Kayla,” she said, hanging her head. “This is the first time I’ve ever heard anyone mention it, but I’ll tell you what I know. Not long after Kayla’s death I saw some irregularities in the books. Money had been taken out. A couple of weeks later it had been returned, right around the time when she disappeared, in fact. Now that you say embezzlement I suppose it means that maybe for a couple of weeks it looked like money had been stolen, but the money was returned. It shouldn’t have been taken out in the first place, of course, but I didn’t say anything, because in the end no one had stolen anything. I thought I should hide the irre
gularities, so I did. Like I said, no one ever stole anything. The town was not short-changed.”
“Someone stole something for two weeks but then returned the money,” Charlie corrected. “Do you have any idea who it was?”
“Honestly, I thought it was Kayla,” she said. “I thought it was her bookkeeping mistake, actually, not something deliberate, which was why I took the papers from her sister’s house and tried to look into it. This town doesn’t have a large budget. We can’t afford to be losing money. For a while I thought maybe Kayla had wanted to run off with the money, but since it was returned that didn’t make sense. Again, maybe it was just an error. I didn’t want to say anything about it, because she was already gone and there was a chance something had happened to her. I didn’t want to speak ill of the dead, did I? The town got its money back and we were running along just fine.”
I could tell from Charlie’s expression that she didn’t really agree with Mrs. Luke’s logic. Mrs. Luke should’ve notified somebody, and it seemed that at this point she realized that, but it was a long time ago and she had never thought she’d have to discuss it again, especially with two reporters and whoever the dickens I was.
Hansen glanced at us. It sort of sounded like Mrs. Luke was no longer a suspect.
“Did you ever follow Kayla in your car?” Charlie asked. She could tell my shoulders were sinking, and she wasn’t going to give up yet.
“Certainly not,” Mrs. Luke sputtered. “What would I do that for?”
“Well, if you thought she’d taken the money, maybe you were following her to see what she’d done with it,” I said.
“Lemmi sees spies in a small town where most people see bake sales,” said Hansen.
Me in a nutshell. I wondered how he knew.
We didn’t stay much longer. Mrs. Luke said she had to get back to work, and so did Hansen. As we left the town hall, he said, “I suppose she could have been lying, but I don’t think so. She honestly thought the money was missing all those years ago because of a mistake.”
Witch Some Win Some (Witch of Mintwood Book 2) Page 15