by Sofie Ryan
She looked up, “Okay.”
I took Chloe back to the workroom. Charlotte had the ironing board set up and was ironing a white lace tablecloth. She smiled and set down the iron when she saw her former student.
“Chloe, what are you doing here?” she asked.
“I’ll let you talk,” I said.
“Sarah, could you stay?” Chloe said. “I’d like you to hear what I came to tell Mrs. Elliot.”
I nodded. “All right.”
Charlotte came around the ironing board. “What did you come to tell me?”
Chloe cleared her throat. “When I was here before you said you were proud of me.”
“I am,” Charlotte said with a smile. “I know how hard you worked to get into college. You won a scholarship. I’m very proud.”
“Mrs. Elliot, I lied to you.”
I folded my arms across my midsection and stayed quiet, wondering what she was about to confess to.
Charlotte frowned. “What about?”
“About a lot of things.” Chloe looked over at me. “You . . . you met Bella, Dr. Durand.”
I nodded.
“We . . . were . . . a couple. I took last term off because I wanted to be with her and I couldn’t do that if I was a student.”
Suddenly a lot of things made sense, like who it was who had been staying with Chloe when her parents were out of town. “You’re not together now?” I asked.
Chloe shook her head. “All the lying and the secret keeping: I couldn’t do that anymore. I broke it off with her last night.” She turned her attention back to Charlotte. “The thing is, the job here at Cahill was just a one-year appointment for Bella. In the fall she’ll be teaching at Tauton University.”
“In Maryland,” Charlotte said.
Chloe nodded. “Bella and I wanted to stay together. I thought we could do that if I transferred to Johns Hopkins. I thought we could stop . . . sneaking around.”
“You needed a reference from Jeff Cameron.” I hadn’t been sure if Rose had brought Charlotte up to date. Obviously she had.
Chloe nodded. “Yes.” She ducked her head for a moment. “Which he figured out pretty quickly.”
“He wouldn’t write it for you,” I said.
She turned to look at me. “Jeff kept giving me menial jobs like typing up address labels for him. He said he wanted to know how hard I was willing to work if I did get in the program.” She let out a breath. “I finally realized he was never going to give me that reference. So last Wednesday I decided to quit. Quit. Not kill him. I was with Bella that night. We ordered pizza. You can check. She paid with her debit card.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone you’d quit your job?” I asked.
“Because I didn’t.”
Charlotte and I exchanged a look. “I don’t understand,” she said slowly. “You said you decided to quit last Wednesday.”
Chloe nodded. “I did. But before I could do that Jeff gave me this. She pulled an envelope out of her bag and handed it to Charlotte. Then she turned to me again. “Sarah, I don’t know if this means anything, but Jeff had some brochures about Costa Rica in his briefcase. I asked him if he was going on vacation, and he laughed and said pretty soon his whole life was going to be a vacation.”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
Charlotte lifted the flap and pulled out several sheets of paper. She glanced at them quickly, then looked at me and nodded.
“I didn’t kill Jeff,” Chloe said. “Or help anyone else do it. I had no reason to.”
Charlotte put the papers back in the envelope and handed it to Chloe. “I believe you,” she said. “Thank you for telling me the truth.”
“I should have done it from the beginning.”
Charlotte put both hands on Chloe’s shoulders and smiled. “You did it now. That’s enough.”
I could tell from the smile that spread across the young woman’s face that Charlotte’s opinion meant a lot to her.
Charlotte walked Chloe out. I leaned against the workbench and thought about Jeff Cameron telling Chloe that his whole life was soon going to be a vacation. Had that been what got him killed?
The rest of the day was busy at the shop. I found the tripod and set it on the workbench with Deb’s name on it. I made sure that both Mac and Charlotte knew why it was there in case I was busy when Bayley and her mother came in.
Late that afternoon I was in the workroom checking out the half dozen chairs Avery had brought in from the garage when Mac poked his head in from the store. “Sarah, Channing Caulfield is on the phone for you,” he said.
He looked as baffled as I felt. “For me? Did he say what he wanted?” I asked.
Mac shook his head. “I could take a message.”
I held up a hand. “No, it’s okay. I’ll talk to him. I’ll take it up in my office.”
As I headed upstairs I wondered why the former manager of the North Harbor Trust Company was calling me. Channing Caulfield had gone to school with Charlotte and had advised Liz on Emmerson Foundation business. He also had a soft spot for Liz. I’d met the man in the spring after the Angels had gotten involved in the murder of a man named Ronan Quinn.
I remembered Avery saying Liz had been having dinner with Channing on Friday night. Did that have anything to do with today’s phone call?
I dropped into my desk chair and reached for the phone. “Hello, Mr. Caulfield,” I said.
“Hello, Sarah,” he replied. “You don’t need to be so formal. Please call me Channing.”
I pictured the man. He was in his early seventies, about average height, but with the presence and confidence of a much larger man. He had silver hair combed back from his face, a ready smile and deep blue eyes.
“I called because Liz said to call you if I wasn’t able to reach her.”
“All right,” I said. I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.
“She was right about the money,” he continued. “It just took me a while to find the name the account was under.”
“Liz usually is right,” I said. It was the only thing I could think of.
“I thought it wasn’t likely he’d use Jeff Cameron, but that was the first name I looked for. I checked California and Massachusetts, but I didn’t come up with anything.”
Okay, now things were starting to make sense, including why Liz had gone to dinner on Friday with the former bank manager.
“I didn’t have any better luck with Jeff Hennessy, either, but I hit pay dirt with Cameron Hennessy.” I caught an edge of pride in his voice. “It turns out the money never left New Hampshire. The account is with an adviser in Manchester.”
“You’re sure it’s the right person?” I asked.
“I’m certain,” Channing said. “I e-mailed the photo Liz gave me to the adviser. It’s the same man.”
“Do you have any idea how much money we’re talking about?” I reached for a pen and a pad of paper.
“I only have a ballpark figure, you understand,” he said. “But I can safely say more than a million.”
“Dollars?” I rasped. Jeff Cameron had a million dollars?
“Yes.”
I tipped my head back and stared at the ceiling for a moment. “I don’t understand. How did he get that kind of money?”
“That’s actually quite an interesting story.”
“I’d love to hear it,” I said.
Channing Caulfield cleared his throat before he began. “In the late eighteen hundreds New Hampshire became a major manufacturer of textiles, and for many years the economy was booming in the state, but by the early 1930s the bottom had fallen out; mills were being built in the south, closer to the cotton fields.”
“I remember some of that from school.”
“That doesn’t surprise me, Sarah,” he said. “It’s an important part of New Hampshire’s
history. Warfield Mills opened in 1871 and had managed to stay open despite the economic downturn. In 1935 they secured a contract from the federal government to produce the fabric for a series of high-altitude weather balloons. In January of 1936 there was a fire at the main mill in New Ipswich. Thirty-seven workers suffered second- and third-degree burns. Nineteen died.”
I swallowed hard. “That’s horrible.”
“Yes, it was,” he said. “One of those thirty-seven workers injured was Catherine Hennessy’s father.”
“Jeff Cameron’s great-grandfather.” I couldn’t think of the man by any other name.
“That’s where the Cameron name comes from. Charles Cameron’s wife, Alice, took her husband and their six children back to her family’s farm in the northern part of the state. They stayed there until Charles died four years later. After that, they ended up in Connecticut, where Alice Cameron worked as a housekeeper to support the children. And eventually remarried. She either chose not to stay in touch with her family or perhaps they chose not to stay in touch with her.”
“That’s so sad,” I said. I couldn’t help thinking how different things had been for Catherine Hennessy when her father died than they had been for me. Gram, along with Rose, Charlotte and Liz, had wrapped their arms around Mom and me, literally as well as figuratively.
“I’m telling you all this so you’ll understand the next part of the story,” Channing said.
“I’m guessing it has something to do with the money?”
He cleared his throat again. “An investigation found negligence on the part of the factory’s manager. A lawsuit was filed which took years, more than a decade, to work its way through the courts. Eventually the mill’s owners settled. Each of the injured workers got twenty-five thousand dollars. I know it doesn’t sound like much money by today’s standards.”
“But it was a lot of money at the time,” I finished.
“Yes, it was,” Channing said. “Charles Cameron wasn’t the only one of the injured workers who had died by the time things were settled. In those cases the money was paid to the wives and children of the injured men.”
I began to see how the details about Alice Cameron mattered to the story. “They couldn’t find Alice Cameron or her children,” I said.
“No, they couldn’t,” Channing said. “As incredible as it sounds, the money sat in a trust earning interest for more than sixty years.”
“Twenty-five thousand dollars turned into more than a million.”
“The magic of compound interest.”
I set down my pen and ran a hand back through my hair. “So what happened?” I asked.
“Well, as far as I could ascertain, there was a new trustee in charge of the money and she decided to see if she could find any of Charles Cameron’s children.”
“She found Catherine Hennessy.”
“Yes, she did,” Channing said. “Catherine was the youngest of Alice and Charles’s children. The other five were dead. All the money went to her.”
“Do you know when this happened?” I exhaled slowly.
“Approximately four years ago.”
“About a year before Catherine Hennessy died.”
“Nine and a half months,” he said.
“And when she died the money disappeared.”
Channing made a sound of disapproval. “The account was transferred to another financial institution. That account was closed. Shortly after, a Cameron Hennessy opened his own investment account.”
I looked at the notes I’d been scribbling on the pad in front of me. “How did he get away with it? What about his sister?”
“As far as I can determine, Catherine hadn’t updated her will. And it’s very likely that she hadn’t told Jeff or his sister about the money.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said.
“You have to remember that Catherine was from a different generation, one that believed it built character not to have things handed to you.”
“Jeff found out, somehow.”
“I think that’s very likely,” Channing said. “Sarah, is any of this information going to be of any help to you? You do understand that most of what I’ve told you can’t be used in a court of law?”
“Yes, I understand that,” I said. I didn’t want to know how he’d gotten his information any more than, most of the time, I wanted to know how Mr. P. got his. “It’s still useful.”
“Well, I’m glad I could be of help.”
“You have been, Channing,” I said. “Thank you. I know Liz will want to thank you personally.” I was going to make her have dinner with the man again.
“My pleasure, Sarah,” he said. “Please give Liz my regards.”
“I will,” I said before ending the call.
I sat at my desk for a couple of minutes, digesting everything I’d just learned. I tried Liz, but both her home phone and cell went right to voice mail. Then I got a cup of coffee and went downstairs to share what I’d learned with Rose and Mr. P.
“If Jeff Cameron were still alive, I’d say it gave him a motive for disappearing and setting up his wife for his murder,” I said when I’d finished telling them the story.
“It certainly gives his wife a motive for his murder,” Mr. P. pointed out.
“And his sister for that matter.”
Rose shook her head. “No. Nicole was home. Remember? She told us she was signed into the hospital computer doing some kind of online training.”
I nodded. I did remember. I looked at Mr. P. “I’m guessing you checked.”
He nodded. “She spent two and a half hours doing an interactive refresher on medication protocols.”
Rose sighed softly.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I know it sounds foolish,” she said, “especially because at first I was so certain Leesa had killed her husband, but I was hoping I was wrong.”
“I know,” I said. “So was I.”
I went out to the garage and gave Mac a quick update on what I’d learned from Channing Caulfield.
“So what happens now?” he asked, wiping his hands on an old rag.
“There’ll be an autopsy on Leesa Cameron, and unless it turns up something, the police will close the case. The only woman in Jeff Cameron’s life aside from his wife and his sister was Chloe Sanders, and she has an alibi.” I put my hands on my head and gave it a shake. “I don’t want to think about this anymore right now,” I said. “Show me what color you decided to use on the chair.”
Mac showed me the deep cranberry red he’d chosen for the rocking chair and then we took another look at the two wicker chairs and agreed they would need a second coat of paint.
When I went back inside I found Avery at the workbench with her stack of postcards and a pile of mat board. “Do you know where your grandmother is?” I asked.
She looked up and gave me a blank look. “No.”
“Is she picking you up?”
She shook her head. “I’m going over to Charlotte’s to help her move some boxes in the garage, and then we’re making pizza.” She took the top mat off the pile, made a face at it and set it to one side. “Did you try her cell?”
“I did,” I said. “I got her voice mail.”
She looked at me again. “Yeah, she says she’s been going to a bunch of meetings and then she doesn’t answer her phone.”
“You don’t think she’s telling the truth?”
Avery shrugged. “If she’s going to a meeting, how come she never has any papers with her?” A sly grin spread across her face. “When she went for dinner with Mr. Caulfield I thought maybe they had a thing, you know?”
I did know, and there was no way there was any “thing” happening between Liz and Channing Caulfield. “I don’t think so,” I said, shaking my head.
“Yeah, Nonna said they’d be ic
e skating in hell before that happened.”
I smiled. “I’ll keep trying her.”
Rose and Mr. P. drove home with me at the end of the day. I was in a crabby, unsettled mood. Something was niggling away in the back of my brain, something I had the feeling I’d missed from the morning. It was like having a line from a song running over and over in my head but being unable to identify the song.
And I still wanted to talk to Liz. Avery had said that her grandmother had been going to a lot of meetings. I thought about seeing Liz and Michelle together outside McNamara’s. Was one of those meetings with Michelle?
When I unlocked the apartment door, Elvis immediately went for his cat tower, sprawling on the top platform as though he’d had an exhausting day. Part of me felt like doing the same thing. Instead I dropped my things, got a glass of orange juice from the fridge and tried Liz one more time. This time she answered.
“Hi,” I said. “I’ve been trying to get you. Channing Caulfield called me this afternoon.”
She made a sound of frustration on the other end of the phone. “I told him to call you if he couldn’t get me and I forgot to tell you that. I’m sorry, kid. I was at a meeting.”
“Do you have a few minutes right now? I’ll come tell you what he said.”
“I have all the time in the world and a half dozen of Glenn McNamara’s lemon tarts.”
“I’m on my way,” I said. I stuffed my phone in my pocket and grabbed my purse. “I’m going to Liz’s house,” I said to Elvis.
He lifted his head, made a “mrr” of acknowledgment and dropped it again.
Liz lived in a beautiful two-story house on a large lot in what she sometimes referred to as the la-di-da part of town. She’d made a pot of tea and set out the lemon tarts. We sat at the kitchen table and I told her what Channing had told me.
She used a knife to cut a tart in half. They were her favorite treat. “You’re not serious?” she said. “The money sat unclaimed for more than sixty years?”
“I know it sounds crazy, but that’s what he said.” I swiped at a dab of lemon cream filling on my plate with one finger. “What I don’t understand is why Catherine Hennessy didn’t tell her grandchildren about the money. And I’m assuming she didn’t just because we haven’t found any evidence that she did.”