“Damn!” I’d forgotten all about Karrie. “She’s over at the school. She was helping Mrs. Phelps, which may or may not be dangerous. If Karrie is the killer—”
Jansen slapped the microphone hooked to his shirt. “Timothy, get Linda and head over to the cooking school. Pick up Miss Kompton and hold her.”
“On what charge, Chief?”
Jansen thought a moment. “Book her for prostitution. That’ll cook her bacon and get her all churned up. Tell her if she cooperates, we won’t put the charges on the books, but if she stirs up a stink, we’ll book her and call Cece Dee Falcon.”
“Yes, sir.” There was doubt in the young officer’s voice, but he didn’t question his boss.
“Your men are well trained and loyal,” I said. “Even when asked to step all over the law.”
“The women, too.” For the first time I saw a glint of humor. “Now let’s get to work. Time’s a’wasting.”
“What do you know about Anna Lock?”
“A whole lot more than I did this morning.” He pulled a latex glove from his pocket, picked up the note, and bagged it. “I want this fingerprinted and the room, too. Did you check the cell phone for messages?”
I could have slapped my own forehead. “No.”
He did that and frowned. “You recognize these numbers?”
I took a look. “Her husband or me or Cece at the newspaper.”
“No strange numbers, at least on the cell phone. I’ll check at the front desk for a record of calls to the room. Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“To pay a visit on the Wellingtons of Panther Holler.”
“You’re taking me with you?” I was surprised.
“You’d be more dangerous running around here on the loose.”
__________
I left a message at the reception desk for Coleman and got in the patrol car with Jansen. The chief made the necessary radio calls to the sheriff’s office.
“I don’t have authority outside the city of Greenwood,” he said. “We play this like a social call. We’re there for a chat about Hedy.”
I nodded. I didn’t care if we had to wear cow costumes and dance the polka as long as we got in the gate and I could search for Tink. We’d just cleared the city limits when Jansen’s car radio crackled.
“Chief, Miss Kompton isn’t at the cooking school. Mrs. Phelps said she left half an hour ago.”
“Find her,” Jansen said into the radio.
He was about to put the radio away when it squawked again.
“Chief, this is Eddie.” He sounded like a kicked dog.
“Go ahead,” Jansen said.
“Miss Blackledge got away from me.”
I thought Jansen’s grip would crush the microphone. “She did what?”
“She put something in my coffee. She said it was a vanilla flavoring. I passed out and she’s gone.”
“I’ll deal with you when I return. Find her. Find her and arrest her for assaulting an officer, suspicion of homicide—anything you can think of. Put her in jail and swallow the key if that’s the only way you can keep her there.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jansen flipped on the lights and siren and stepped on the gas. The patrol car jumped forward.
“Hedy wouldn’t run without good cause.”
Jansen only tightened his grip on the steering wheel. His hands were massive. “Hedy left under her own power, according to Eddie. She drugged him somehow. Something fast acting. Mrs. Richmond left a note. She walked out seemingly of her own volition, except for being followed.”
“And Karrie left on her own, too. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t coerced in some fashion.”
“My men will have more facts shortly.”
The cotton fields were a blur as we whizzed down the highway. Tinkie was a fast driver, but Jansen was no holds barred. We hit a bump and only my seat belt kept me from striking the roof of the car.
“Tinkie discovered something.” I wracked my brain trying to think who or what it could be.
“Maybe she’s at Panther Holler right now, one step ahead of us.”
“Let it be true,” I whispered under my breath. “Chief, there weren’t any unusual calls on Tinkie’s cell phone, but could you check and see if Hedy received any calls?”
He radioed a female officer in the hotel lobby. In a moment I heard her report back. “There was one call from Mrs. Richmond’s room to Hedy’s room thirty minutes before Hedy left, and another call to the room shared by Voncil and Amanda Payne.”
“Thanks.” Jansen cast a swift glance at me but never slowed. “You’re really convinced someone forced your partner into persuading Hedy to slip protective custody.”
I nodded, knowing that only something vile could have made Tinkie put Hedy’s future, if not her life, on the line.
“You look a little green around the gills,” Jansen said. “Want me to pull over?”
“No. The sudden stop from light speed might be my undoing.” I pointed to the wrought iron gate of the Wellington home. “Besides, we’re here.”
“And not a moment too soon,” Jansen said. His hand went to his holster to check his gun as we drove slowly down the shell drive to the big house.
__________
The front door stood wide open. The senior Wellingtons were out of town, but Marcus could be home. Or Anna.
Jansen inched forward, finally coasting to a stop at the sweeping steps that led to the shady gallery. “This doesn’t look good.”
I reached for the door handle but he stopped me. “Stay in the car.”
“Give me a gun.” Firearms weren’t my thing, but I was determined to protect myself.
“Do you have training?”
I shook my head. “I can use a gun, though.”
“Not today. Stay in the car.” He got a spare gun out of his glove box and tucked it into his belt.
As soon as Tinkie was safe and I was back at Dahlia House, I was signing up for the weapon classes Tinkie had begged me to take. And she was, too. She always protested, saying the ear protectors would mess up her hair. Too bad.
Jansen glided up the steps to the door like a big cat. He had become adept at concealing so much about himself that I wondered if the people of Greenwood knew anything about their police chief. I’d vastly underestimated him.
When he disappeared inside, I got out of the car and followed him. There was no way I intended to sit patiently while Tinkie might be in danger.
I made it in the door before Jansen grabbed me and snatched me inside. “I told you to stay in the car.”
“I have to find Tinkie.”
He roughly pulled me behind him. “Act like a fool and I’ll put you in the back of the car,” he warned me.
Gun moving slowly from left to right, he stepped into the empty parlor.
“Marcus!” he called. “It’s Franz.” His footsteps were silent as he moved deeper into the house. I followed, stepping into his tracks.
“Marcus!” Only the whir of the air conditioner answered his call.
We checked the downstairs room by room, and Jansen motioned upstairs. He headed up with me right on his heels. There had been no sign of Tinkie—or anyone else—in any of the downstairs rooms.
We found Vivian’s bedroom, a paradise of stuffed animals and bright colors. “The child and the grandparents are in Memphis,” I reminded Jansen.
He nodded. “Marcus?”
I shook my head.
He headed down the carpeted hall, opening doors swiftly and entering fast. When we were certain no one was home, Jansen waved me into the nanny’s room. “See what you can unearth,” he said. “I’ll take Marcus’s room.”
I expected to find a closet full of black dresses with sensible shoes, but that wasn’t the case. Anna-the-nanny dressed expensively, if blandly. The most impressive feature of the room was a wall of books, her personal library. She was a student of American literature and had a fine collection of first editions.
From young boy to teenager to college student, Larry’s life was recorded by a loving hand. The last photo was of the young man standing beside packed bags. The note under it said, “Destination Pearl River swamps.” That was when the Blackledge family lost their young man to a Saulnier woman.
There were also pictures of Hedy. They were infrequent and taken at a distance, but they covered the years of her childhood and adolescence.
Dozens and dozens of photographs showed Hedy pregnant. Anna’s obsession was clear to see. I gathered them up to show Jansen. The snapshots weren’t concrete evidence that Anna was behind the poisonings or anything else, but they clearly showed her compulsion where Hedy was involved.
The rest of the room yielded no secrets. While I’d expected to find resource material on poisons in the bookcase, there was none. Jansen’s luck was no better. If Anna or Anna and Marcus were poisoning the pageant gals, they weren’t keeping the how-to manuals or ingredients in the house.
“I’ll check the grounds,” Jansen said when I joined him in the hallway. “I’ve put out a call for Marcus. No one has seen him lately, which worries me.”
“He might be at Clive’s horse ranch,” I said. If Anna had lost her mind completely, it was possible she’d harmed Marcus. Jansen was right to be concerned.
“I’ll have an officer check. Let’s hope he’s there. We could stand some positive news.”
When we arrived back at the hotel, Coleman was waiting in the Alluvian lobby. He shook hands with Jansen, who wasted no time listing the pertinent facts. Marcus, he’d learned, was not at Clive’s and hadn’t been seen all day.
“So the facts are, Tinkie left the Alluvian and a woman resembling Anna Lock followed her,” Coleman said. “Except for the note, there was no indication where she might be headed?”
“None. But she wasn’t at the Wellingtons’ and there was no sign she’d ever been there. She forgot her phone. And her camera, which has virtually grown to her hand in the last week. She never goes anywhere without it.” The same thought struck Coleman and me.
“The camera,” we said.
“She might have recorded a picture.” Jansen made the leap with us.
We all three hustled to the room.
Holding the camera where we could see it, I played back the images. In the last shot, Voncil Payne stood in the bedroom doorway wearing a wide smile.
“Crap. I was certain Tink had left us a clue,” I said.
“Maybe it is.” Coleman put a warm hand on my shoulder. “We should check it out. Maybe Voncil saw something.”
“You two go ahead,” Jansen said. “I’ll check at the cooking school to see what I can find. It’s almost time for the contestants to begin preparing their dishes. Perhaps Hedy will put in an appearance.”
“She’d be in her room if she could,” I said. “Someone forced her to drug Eddie and leave.”
“Your partner was the last person she spoke to. If they’re together, you’d tell me, right?” Jansen asked.
“Let me just say if the two of them have run off together and didn’t bother to tell me, you won’t have to arrest them. I’ll kick their butts into a cell.”
“She means it,” Coleman said.
A smile lifted one corner of Jansen’s mouth. “Yeah, I think she does.”
While Jansen took an elevator down, Coleman and I walked to Voncil and Amanda’s room. I’d known all along this case was trouble. I’d let Tinkie talk me into it, even when my gut screamed something awful was brewing.
“Tinkie is okay,” Coleman said, as if he could read my mind. We’d always had a connection when it came to danger.
“Graf and Oscar want us to dissolve the agency. They say it’s too dangerous, and maybe they’re right.” I could be honest with Coleman in a way I couldn’t with anyone else. “I didn’t want to take this case. Tinkie pushed it. If we closed the agency, Tinkie could become a photojournalist.”
“And that’s safer?” Coleman asked. “Some people fear exposure in the newspaper far more than jail.”
“Good point.”
“And what would you do, Sarah Booth?” He wasn’t asking as if I had no options.
“I could focus on my acting career.”
We turned the corner and were almost at the door of the Paynes’ room. “Funny how a dream isn’t ever what we think it is,” he said.
I couldn’t look at him. It wasn’t that acting wasn’t satisfying. It was. But in coming home to Zinnia from New York as a failure and reinventing myself as a private investigator, I’d found something of value in myself and my heritage. It wasn’t that I wanted to act less, but I needed to hold on to the me I’d discovered in Zinnia.
Coleman read it all over me. “You’ve never done the expected.”
“Maybe I’m just hardheaded,” I said. “Maybe I fought too hard to make Delaney Detective Agency a success.”
“Maybe you love the work and helping people,” Coleman said.
We stopped in the empty hallway and stared at each other. We’d been high school crushes and antagonists, newfound friends when I returned from New York, and in love and almost lovers for most of a year. Now we were . . . more than friends. Coleman knew me in a way no one else ever would.
“If Tinkie has gotten hurt because of—” I stopped.
“Because of you?” He shook his head. “Give her credit for being smart and capable, Sarah Booth. She makes her own decisions. As do you. While others may hurt for us when we’re injured, no one bears the blame but us.”
I couldn’t speak around the lump in my throat. I nodded and Coleman brought his fist against the wooded door.
“Mrs. Payne, it’s Sheriff Coleman Peters, from Sunflower County. I’d like a word with you.”
25
“Sheriff who?” Amanda Payne opened the door wearing cut-off shorts and a stained T-shirt. She wiped her hands on her shorts. A bowl of carrots and a small grater were on the bed. “Sarah Booth, what’s wrong?”
“Is your mother here?” I asked.
“She went out about an hour ago.” She frowned. “Why is the sheriff of another county here?”
“We’re concerned about some Sunflower County residents,” Coleman said smoothly. “We’re hoping your mother saw something when she went to Tinkie Richmond’s room.”
Amanda waved us into the room. “Please don’t tell anyone what I’m making,” she said. “The girls are so competitive. Surprise is one of the big elements in this last part of the contest.”
“Amanda is highly ranked in the competition,” I told Coleman. “Along with cooking, she writes and performs great songs.”
Amanda blushed. If she wasn’t shy and modest, she was damned good at faking it. “Thank you, Sarah Booth. I don’t know where Mother is. She gets so uptight about these contests. She makes me more nervous than I already am. When I told her that, she got angry. She left without saying where she was headed.”
“She spoke with Tinkie at eleven forty-five this morning.” The photo in the camera was time-stamped.
“I haven’t seen her since about eleven, maybe eleven thirty.” Amanda sank onto the bed. “She was pretty upset with me, said I was ungrateful . . .” She clamped a hand over her mouth. “More than you wanted to know, I’m sure. She’s probably shopping. She likes to hit the stores when she’s emotional.”
“Any idea why she might visit Mrs. Richmond?” Coleman asked.
Amanda bit her bottom lip. When Tinkie did it, she was sexy. Amanda reminded me of a lost child. “Mrs. Richmond called Mom, and Mom was eager to talk to her. I don’t know what Mrs. Richmond wanted, but Mom’s plan was to convince her to include pictures of me in the paper. Mother is obsessed with pu
blicity. She’s always aggravating the media. She doesn’t understand people think she’s half a bubble off plumb when she keeps on and on. In the world of celebrity news, I’m a nobody. She just can’t accept that.”
To think I’d envied Amanda the presence of her mother to help support and encourage her. Voncil was directing her daughter’s life, and down a path that Amanda found stony and hard.
“Do you want this title?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “I need the money. We need it. But I’d just as soon stay home and write my songs. I like that, and I could support myself while I finished my college degree.” Her cheeks flushed as she straightened her shoulders. “This pageant stuff . . . it’s always been Mother’s dream, not mine.”
“Why don’t you tell Voncil?” I asked.
“This is the last contest. I’m twenty-three. If I don’t win this, I’m too old. It’ll be over without a confrontation. My mother doesn’t handle resistance well, especially from me.”
“And if you win?” Coleman asked.
“It’s only a year. I’ll do everything the Viking people want, and I’ll do a good job. After that, I can pay off our debts, settle down to write songs, finish college, and live my life.”
“Voncil will accept that?” My take on Voncil was that as soon as Amanda wasn’t pageant material, Voncil would push her to marry well and have a baby. Amanda was the main course meal ticket, even if the menu changed drastically.
Amanda’s smile was tender. “Mom gets desperate sometimes. We’ve had some rough times, especially when I was younger. But she wants what’s best for me. She pushes too hard, but only because she wants me to have the security she never had.”
“It’s hard for a single mother with a child,” Coleman said. “Are your parents divorced?”
“No. My dad died when I was fourteen. Heart attack. He was only thirty-nine. Mom used to say they were lucky they got an early start and had me because his days were numbered.”
Coleman put a hand on her shoulder. “When your mother comes in, tell her to contact us,” he said. “Amanda, maybe I’ll ask Chief Jansen to put an officer on you, just to keep you safe.”
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