Threads of Evidence

by Lea Wait

  “We’re not the wilderness of Massachusetts anymore,” I said.

  “Not at all!” He smiled. “I’ve read reviews of restaurants in Portland and along the coast that sound amazing. Before I got here, I expected everyone to live on baked beans and lobster.”

  “Both good basic foods,” I said, not mentioning I’d had both in the past few days—the lobster courtesy of his family. While we chatted, I kept an eye on Skye. She’d waved to let me know she knew I was waiting. “Also blueberry pie and haddock chowder and red hot dogs.”

  “Red hot dogs?”

  “Next time you’re in the supermarket, check them out. They’re hard to find outside Maine. And, yes, they’re red.” Did Patrick go to the grocery store? Or did the Wests hire someone to do their shopping for them? “And fiddleheads. Don’t miss the fiddleheads. It’s the end of their season right now, but some restaurants still feature them.”

  He looked at me quizzically. “‘Fiddleheads’? I assume you’re not referring to a part of a stringed instrument.”

  “Ferns,” I said. “Delicious.”

  “Sounds as though I have a lot to learn about Maine cuisine,” he said, looking into my eyes in a way that made me feel too good. And uncomfortable. “Maybe you could teach me.”

  “Sarah could, too,” I said. “She’s also new to Maine. Perhaps you could go exploring together.”

  “You don’t eat? I was thinking of restaurants,” he said.

  “I eat,” I acknowledged, trying hard not to be friendlier than I should. My mind kept repeating, Sarah saw him first. “But I’m busy now, with the needlepoint business, and the investigating your mom wants me to do. And my grandmother’s getting married in less than two weeks.”

  “That’s right. You told me,” he said. “Sounds like fun.”

  He couldn’t be finagling for an invitation, could he? “Here comes your mom,” I said. “I need to tell her what I found out yesterday.”

  “You do that,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll stay in touch.” He definitely winked that time.

  Would we? Or is he just referring to my work for his mother? I squared my shoulders and walked across the drive. “Skye, I found out a few things yesterday afternoon,” I said. “We need to talk.”

  Chapter 31

  When wealth to virtuous hands is given

  It blesses like the dews of Heaven

  Like Heaven it hears the orphans cry

  And wipes the tears from widows’ eyes.

  —Sampler worked by Elizabeth Rind Nicholls (1810–1904), age nine, Georgetown, Washington, D.C. (She never married.)

  Skye walked to meet me. “I’ve been thinking about that list of people at the September fifth party. People connected in some way to Jasmine.”

  “Good.” I glanced back at the men in the construction crew, several of whom were paying more attention to Skye and me than to their work. “Could we talk somewhere private?”

  “I hope I’m included in that discussion,” added Patrick, who’d followed me from the drive. “I find this whole investigation fascinating.”

  I gave him a dirty look as Skye called back to the work crew, “I’ll be in the carriage house if you have any questions.”

  “Yes, Ms. West,” said the guy I figured was in charge. He sounded a bit patronizing. I wondered how much the Wests were paying him.

  “My copy of the list is in the carriage house, anyway,” Skye added. “So, what happened yesterday, after you left here?”

  “I spoke with several people who were here at Aurora the night Jasmine died,” I said quietly. “They all remembered different parts of that evening. It would help if we began keeping a timeline of everything people say happened that night. Maybe some of the pieces will fit together.”

  “Excellent idea,” Skye agreed as we approached the carriage house.

  “I was surprised to find out how much people did remember,” I admitted. “But Jasmine Gardener’s death, and the fact that it was the last party here at Aurora, helped people pinpoint where they were then.”

  Skye picked a burgundy leather folder up from the coffee table. Then she and Patrick and I sat around an old country pine table stained with blue paint. I remembered Sarah once saying old red or blue paint made country furniture more valuable—the paint should never be removed. I looked at the table again. Something about it was familiar. Had it come from Sarah’s store? I didn’t remember seeing it here yesterday.

  “Who did you talk with?” Skye asked as she looked through her folder.

  “My grandmother, Charlotte Curtis. Ruth Hopkins. And Katie Titicomb. They were all at that last party, and all have slightly different memories of it.”

  “Did any of them have specific memories of what Jasmine was doing or who was with her?” Skye had found her list of the people she wanted questioned.

  “Gram remembered Jasmine serving punch in the afternoon. Gram was newly engaged, and focused on her fiancé. She remembered hearing screams after the fireworks. Katie was only eleven then; she ate too much and got sick before the fireworks. She said Jasmine found her at the edge of the back lawn, throwing up, took her into Aurora and helped her clean up before the fireworks started. Then Katie went back to her father. Jasmine seemed very grown-up, and very kind, to her.”

  Skye made a note. “Did this Katie mention whether Jasmine was with anyone?”

  “I didn’t ask her that specific question. I suspect Jasmine was alone, or Katie would have mentioned that.”

  “The fireworks started a few minutes before nine o’clock that night. Since you said Katie was back with her father before they began, she must have been with Jasmine at about eight forty-five. It would take a few minutes to get from the edge of the field to the house, and then inside. And she said Jasmine cleaned her up.”

  “Washed her face is more like what she said,” I remembered.

  “No bathrooms are on the first floor, so either she took Katie upstairs, which she might have mentioned to you, or she used one of the kitchen sinks,” Skye continued. “The kitchen would have been closer. And all the cooking was finished by then.”

  “I’ll double-check that with Katie,” I said, adding to the notes I was making.

  “So Jasmine was alive and sufficiently sober to help a little girl at eight forty-five. But by the time the fireworks were over, about nine-thirty, she was dead.” Skye looked down at her paper. “Good work, Angie. Now all we have to do is figure out where Jasmine was and who was with her during those forty-five minutes. Or even less, since we don’t know when she fell or was pushed into the fountain.”

  Forty-five minutes to cover. And about two hundred of people on the estate, forty-five years ago. It didn’t sound simple to me.

  “I was impressed that everyone I spoke to remembered Jasmine that night. So if we go down your list, maybe they’ll help us close that time period.”

  Skye looked at me, a slight smile on her lips. “I’m sure all the people on my list will remember Jasmine. They were all people close to her at the time. And most of them could have benefited from her death.”

  Chapter 32

  Wave after wave as rivers flow

  And to the oceans run

  So minutes after minutes go

  And are forever gone.

  —Alphabet and flower basket sampler stitched by Julia Ann Dellaway Georgetown, Washington, D.C., 1832

  “One more minor mystery’s come up,” I put in before Skye started talking about the people on her list. “It may not mean anything, but it’s interesting.”

  “Yes?” asked Patrick, who’d been listening.

  “Last week my grandmother removed the needlework panels that Mrs. Gardener worked on from their frames. She’s managed to eliminate the mildew.”

  “That’s good news,” said Skye.

  “Yesterday I took several of them to people who work at Mainely Needlepoint, for them to replace the broken and rotten threads, and basically restore the actual work.”

  Skye nodded.

&nbs
p; “Last night Sarah began looking at the two I gave her. She found something interesting.”

  Patrick and Skye both looked at me. “Interesting, how?” Patrick asked.

  “She found hair worked into some of the stitching. Deliberately worked.”

  “Hair?” That got Skye’s attention.

  “Dark hair,” I confirmed.

  “Jasmine had dark hair,” she said immediately. “Long, dark hair.”

  “That’s what we thought of first,” I confirmed. “Sarah wondered if Millie Gardener had used some of her daughter’s hair in the needlework as a memorial.”

  “Interesting idea. Strange, but possible,” Patrick said.

  “But this morning,” I continued, “I took a piece of the hair Sarah found to Dave Percy. He’s another of our needlepointers, and he’s also the biology teacher at Haven Harbor High. He doesn’t have equipment to identify DNA. But with the equipment he does have, I hoped he could tell us whether the hair was human.” I paused. “It wasn’t.”

  “But if it wasn’t human?” Skye looked at Patrick questioningly.

  “I wondered if Mrs. Gardener had a dog or a cat—an animal whose hair might have, intentionally or unintentionally, gotten into her stitching. But Dave said the hair was from another mammal, not a dog or a cat.”

  “Stranger and stranger,” Patrick said almost under his breath.

  “That’s for sure,” said Skye. “Because Millie Gardener was allergic to animals. I remember Jasmine complaining she never was allowed to have a pet. She couldn’t even take riding lessons with her friends because her mother was afraid she’d bring some of the allergens from the horses back with her into the house.” Skye shook her head. “I remember thinking her mom must have really bad allergies.” She took a sip of her coffee. “It was a long time ago. I hadn’t thought of that in years.”

  “Dave told me some of his students believed Mrs. Gardener had three black cats,” I shared. “If she was allergic, then I think we can put those stories down to rumors.”

  Skye rolled her eyes. “People are amazing.”

  “If she was allergic, then why would she have used mammalian hair in her work? It doesn’t make sense.” Patrick frowned.

  “No, it doesn’t. Knowing Mrs. Gardener was allergic to animals makes it even stranger,” I agreed. “Dave’s going to figure out what animal the hair is from. He’s at school today, but it’s the last couple of days before summer vacation. He’ll let us know when he has a chance to work on it.”

  “Thank him for us, won’t you?” Skye asked. “It’s not exactly a mystery on the level of Jasmine’s murder, but it’s intriguing.”

  I nodded.

  Skye turned to her papers. “The two people on the top of my list are, of course, the two possible fathers of Jasmine’s child, Sam Gould and Jed Fitch.”

  I’d expected to hear those two names.

  “Jed’s sisters, Beth and Elsa, were also around that summer.” She looked down at the list she’d showed me earlier. “And Carole Simpson. She’s local, and she was dating Jed before Jasmine was.”

  “How many of those people were here Saturday?” I asked, thinking of the poor hummingbird. “I saw Elsa Fitch and her sister going into the house.”

  “Jed and Carole were here, too, for sure,” Skye pointed out. “Jed, of course, was also our real estate agent.”

  “So all the Fitches were here Saturday.” I made a note.

  “They were.”

  “I’m sure he’s not a suspect, but Ob Winslow was here Saturday, and he was at the last party,” I added. “He was only ten then, but maybe he saw something. Or can suggest someone else in town who could help us with those missing forty-five minutes.”

  Skye was silent. “That’s fine. You ask him.”

  I read the list over to myself. Considering the number of people said to have been at Aurora that night, I’d expected more people to contact than the two boyfriends, Jed’s sisters, and a rival for Jed’s attention. Sam Gould might have been involved—if he was, indeed, the father of Jasmine’s child. But Jed had been local. The three women who’d known him well should be able to tell me more about him. “I don’t know Sam Gould, so I wouldn’t have recognized him Saturday.”

  Skye brushed that aside. “If he was here, I didn’t recognize him, either. But it’s been forty-five years. He could have been here and I didn’t recognize him.”

  “Maybe someone else did,” I said.

  “And there’s one more name,” said Skye. “It’s an important one. Although, like Sam, I didn’t notice her at the sale Saturday. Putting her on the list might create problems for me, so I hope you’ll be particularly discreet about finding out about her.”

  “Yes?” I knew how to be discreet. That was one of the first skills an investigator had to have.

  “Linda Zaharee.”

  I’d remembered the name from Skye’s list Monday. “Zaharee the artist?” If she was the one I was thinking of, Linda Zaharee, known professionally by her last name, was one of the best-known artists in Maine. I knew next to nothing about art, and even I’d heard of her. Her paintings of the sea were said to rival Winslow Homer’s. She’d won international awards, and exhibited in galleries in New York and San Francisco and Europe. As I remembered, her home was down the coast.

  “In 1970, Linda Zaharee was a young hippie with a camera waitressing at an inn in Camden to make ends meet. She’d met Jasmine somewhere—most likely through Sam, since he came from Camden. I don’t remember. But she knew Jasmine’s family had money, and Linda was saving to study in Paris. She flattered Jasmine. She said she had fantastic bone structure and could be a model. That it would be an honor to photograph her.”

  “So Jasmine posed for her?”

  “In July.” Skye hesitated. “Jasmine got self-conscious at the last minute. She didn’t want Linda to take the photographs. So Linda asked me to come along, to encourage Jasmine.”

  “Did she photograph you, too?” I asked.

  “She did. That’s what makes this a bit embarrassing.” Skye glanced at Patrick, who was listening intently to the conversation. “She photographed both of us. In the nude.”

  Chapter 33

  No cord nor cable can so forcibly draw, or hold so fast, as love can do with a twisted thread.

  —Robert Burton (1577–1640),

  The Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621

  “And Linda was at the party?”

  “She was. Someone told Mrs. Gardener she was a good photographer. I think she’d done a wedding for one of Millie’s friends. Millie asked her to come and photograph the party. I think only Linda, Jasmine, and I knew she’d taken the earlier photographs. I saw Linda with her camera at the party, but I never saw any photographs she took there. I’d hoped when you and Sarah were collecting all the photographs in the house you might find the ones Linda took that night, and they might give us some clues about what happened. Unfortunately, all the pictures you found were taken earlier.”

  I must have missed something. “So the reason you want to contact Linda Zaharee is that she might have kept negatives or pictures taken at a party forty-five years ago?”

  “That can be our excuse for contacting her,” Skye said, “but I consider her a suspect, too. After Linda took those earlier pictures, the nude ones, Jasmine panicked. What if her parents saw them? Or our friends? Jasmine called Linda and asked for both the prints and the negatives— everything she had. She promised to pay well.”

  “And, of course, she had the money to do that.”

  “Not as easily as you might think. She certainly lived in a style that said ‘money,’ but her parents paid her expenses. Jasmine was on an allowance. A generous allowance, of course, by most people’s standards, but an allowance, just the same. They wanted her to learn to manage money. Jasmine didn’t have access to as much money as she promised Linda.”

  “How was she going to get it?”

  “She talked about that for days. She debated calling her father’s lawyer and seeing if
he would send her money privately. Maybe stealing one of her mother’s checks. She even considered taking a few pieces of the silver at Aurora—pieces they rarely used—and pawning them.” Skye shook her head. “None of her ideas sounded good. Her parents weren’t oblivious. They’d know she needed money for something.”

  “So, what happened?”

  “I don’t think Linda thought much about the photos until Jasmine panicked. Then she realized how valuable they might be, to the society press in New York or to Jasmine’s parents, who might pay to keep the photos private. She refused to give Jasmine the photos or the negatives.”

  “And?”

  “Jasmine threatened her. Remember, she’d just found out she was pregnant. She knew her parents would have to find out about that eventually. She didn’t want them discovering anything else foolish she’d done.”

  “Photographs, even nude photographs, aren’t exactly the same as pregnancy,” I said.

  “Maybe not to you. But despite her pregnancy, Jasmine wasn’t a free spirit, like some young people were then. People think of the late sixties and early seventies as free love. Peace to the people. Drugs. If Jasmine had been more into all that, she might not have been so upset. But she was desperate. And she focused on those pictures rather than on her pregnancy.” Skye bit her lip.

  “So, what did she threaten to do?”

  “She planned to talk to Linda at the party. Threaten her, that if she didn’t give us all the pictures and negatives, then she’d tell her parents, and the police, that Linda was a lesbian. She’d say Linda had forced us to pose for her, and planned to publish the photos as pornography.”

  I frowned. “Were the photos . . . sexual?”

  “We didn’t think so at the time. Most of them were taken when we were skinny-dipping in a small, private cove. No one else was around. But there were a few where she posed us touching each other. We’d had a little wine to loosen us up before the shoot. We didn’t see any harm in it at the time. But the photos might look different to someone else.”