“Do you need anything else, sir?” Dixie said, sounding as if she were propositioning him rather than being a good secretary.
Mr. Wellborn was attractive—dark hair, straight nose, not quite six feet. He looked to be somewhere in his late forties, but from the curve of his smile, he appreciated her pinup girl style. “Nope, I’m all good, Dixie. But thanks.”
He headed toward the door. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”
“Wait, Mr. Wellborn?” I jumped up. “I’m Ivy Cul—”
He’d been reaching for the door handle, but suddenly stopped, his hand midair. The rest of my name froze on my lips. He turned around, his eyes narrowed. “I’m sorry, Ivy—?” His voice had become oddly disquieting.
From Mr. Wellborn’s reaction to just hearing my last name, I realized that I had to change my tactic. Yes, I had to help Billy, but I couldn’t go about my investigation with that angle. People didn’t want to help a guy some thought could be a potential murderer. “Ivy, Cullison,” I said, blending the tail end of my mother’s maiden name, Madison, with mine.
He visibly relaxed. “Pleasure to meet you, Ms. Cullison. Did you have a question Dixie couldn’t help you with?”
Dixie started. “They’re not he—”
“No, not at all,” Mrs. Branford said, cutting her off. She stood and faced him. “She’s been very helpful. It’s just, we’re—”
Mr. Wellborn looked at her. A moment later his jaw dropped. “Mrs. Branford? Is that you?”
She stared; then, leaving her cane behind, she crossed the room to peer up at his face. She snapped her fingers. “Twelfth-grade English,” she said. “About thirty years ago, I’d wager.”
“That sounds about right. I can’t believe it’s you.” He laughed, looking a little sheepish. “No offense, I liked you, but I hated your class.”
“None taken. Not everyone likes Joseph Conrad, Thoreau, and Márquez,” she said.
“All I can say is thank God for CliffsNotes.”
Mrs. Branford stepped back, trying not to look offended. She didn’t quite pull it off. “I accepted that kids relied on those long ago. You certainly weren’t the first, nor the last,” she said. When she’d said that not everyone enjoyed classic literature, she wasn’t being facetious, just matter-of-fact. “But you can make up for it now.”
He grew wary, the lightness he’d had in his step when he’d first entered all but gone. “Oh yeah? How’s that?”
I took my cue. My story wasn’t really a lie, but more of a stretching of the truth. “I’m documenting the Art Car Show and I’m trying to get a little more information about Max Litman.”
Mrs. Branford shot me a quizzical look, but from her nod, I knew she finally understood the direction I was going and that she’d play along. “Such a tragedy,” she said, shaking her head sadly. We hung our heads. After a moment of silence, I cleared my throat.
Mr. Wellborn let out a heavy sigh. “Huge loss for the community. I can’t quite wrap my head around the idea that he’s gone.”
He looked appropriately somber. His voice held a degree of sadness. But something about the way he spoke belied a different sentiment.
“Were you good friends?” I asked, watching him closely.
And there it was. It was brief—maybe no more than a split second—but he hesitated before he answered. “Sure, of course we were friends.”
So far he hadn’t asked why we’d make that assumption or why we were so interested, so I forged ahead while I could. “He didn’t have many, from what I’ve heard.”
Mrs. Branford snorted. “And by that she means that he preferred the female persuasion.”
Mr. Wellborn dipped his head in agreement. “That’s true enough.”
“I didn’t realize his business was right next door. I would have thought you’d be rivals rather than friends.”
Mr. Wellborn shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Friends might not be the right word, exactly,” he admitted after a moment.
“Truth be told,” Mrs. Branford said, “I didn’t like the man.”
Dixie tossed her hair back. “I did not care for him, either.” She glanced my way, meeting my eyes in a way that made me think she was trying to help me get information, even if she didn’t quite know what I was after.
I held up my hand. “Me, three.”
Mr. Wellborn grimaced. “Then I guess it’s unanimous.”
“I thought you said you were sort of friends, Johnny,” Mrs. Branford said, pulling his first name out of thin air.
“Never reveal all your cards,” he said cryptically.
I understood that philosophy completely. Mine were held close to the vest, too. The box of croissants still sat on the granite countertop. I picked it up, offering one to Mr. Wellborn.
His eyes opened wide. “Are these from—” He picked one and took a healthy bite. “They are,” he said, his words muffled. “Mmm. Yeast of Eden.”
“You’re a fan?”
“That place has the best bread I’ve ever had. Ever.” He reached for another before he’d finished the first.
I hoped he’d reveal at least one of his cards after being buttered up with the croissant. “I’ve heard Max was a wheeler and dealer,” I said.
Mr. Wellborn grunted, flicking a croissant flake from his lip. “He was a crook, plain and simple.”
That was more direct than I’d anticipated. “I knew him as a liar, but a crook?”
Mrs. Branford jumped in again. “What did he do?”
That was all the prompting he needed. “What didn’t he do?” was his cryptic answer.
“Come now, Johnny, you can’t tease us and then not deliver,” Mrs. Branford scolded playfully.
Mr. Wellborn smirked. “The guy swindled me out of one hundred twenty thousand dollars.”
All of our jaws dropped, but Mrs. Branford took her next cue and launched into a scolding. “Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, one hundred twenty thousand dollars? How?”
“It was supposed to be an investment. A condo development along Oceanside Drive. There were four of us.”
“You pooled your money?” she asked.
He took another bite of croissant, grimacing before continuing with his mouth full.
“That would have been better. We each contributed one hundred twenty thousand. Max was supposed to invest it with a developer.”
We were all on the edge of our seats. Max Litman, the swindler. That had the makings of a motive. “But he didn’t?”
He swallowed, shaking his head. “Who knows.”
Dixie had disappeared into a back room, returning a minute later with four bottles of water. She passed them around, one for each of us, laid out a stack of napkins, and then reached for her own croissant. She pulled off a piece with her fingers, placing it neatly in her mouth. No flakes on her lips. “There was no investor?” she asked once she’d washed her bite of croissant down with a dainty sip of water.
“I never met him,” he said. “It was some Japanese investor. At least that’s the story Max spewed.”
“You didn’t believe it?” Mrs. Branford asked.
He polished off the last of his second croissant. “What I believe—no, what I know—is that the money’s gone.”
“Wait.” Dixie flipped her hair back as she worked through whatever she was thinking. “If there was no investor, and ten of you invested one hundred twenty thousand each, then you’re saying that Max stole more than a million dollars?”
“We had the law on our side, but we could never prove it,” Mr. Wellborn said. “Max said he was taken to the cleaners, too, but—”
“But you don’t believe it,” Mrs. Branford finished.
“I have an easier time believing that he figured out how to steal our money than that he was duped in an investment scheme by someone else. If there was a scheme, and I think there was, he was behind it.”
“Who were the other investors?” I asked. More potential suspects.
“Unfortunately, I have no idea. We wer
e all silent investors. To protect us, he said.”
“And there’s no way to get it back?” Mrs. Branford asked.
“If there was, it’s dead and buried with him.” He clutched the folder he’d come for. “At least someone else can win that damn car contest,” he said as he headed for the door.
“You’re not a fan?” I said, leaping through the opening he’d just presented.
“Everyone should have a passion,” he said. He glanced at Mrs. Branford. “Even if it’s British literature and poetry.”
We all smiled at that. That he felt comfortable ribbing his former English teacher endeared him to me just a little bit. I sensed there was a “but” coming, though.
“But Max was obsessed with that stupid contest. Art car this and art car that. It’ll sound coldhearted, I’m sure, but I am not going to miss that. He wouldn’t have won this year anyway.”
“Why wouldn’t he have won?” I asked. Billy’s car was amazing, but there was no reason to think anything would be different this year. Plus I was fairly certain he hadn’t seen Billy’s car to be able to make such a pronouncement.
“There’s been a change in the voting committee membership this past year,” he said. “I’ve been on it for years. No plans to leave. But a few others were ready to retire, so to speak.”
And suddenly my head was spinning. “Wait. I thought the planning committee voted on the winner.”
Mrs. Branford looked at me as if I were daft. “That would be a very overt conflict of interest, Ivy. There is a completely separate voting committee. We have a selection process and we’ve done our best to make it fair.”
Mr. Wellborn scoffed. “It hasn’t been fair in years.”
It wasn’t hard to believe what he was alluding to, especially since I’d hypothesized this scenario for years. “So what you are saying,” I said, “is that Max Litman bribed the voting committee every single year?”
“I haven’t seen it firsthand, if that’s what you mean,” Mr. Wellborn said, “but that’s what I’ve heard.”
“From . . . ?”
It was a fill-in-the-blank moment, but Mr. Wellborn didn’t bite, and his forthrightness came to an abrupt halt. “Ladies, what exactly are you looking for?” He looked at me. “How is this helping you to document the show?”
“I’m just trying to get a clearer picture of him,” I said. “I want to get to the core of who he was, not just who he was on the surface.”
He looked skeptical. “For the Art Car Show?”
“He won every single year,” I said, ignoring the fact that those wins had not been honest. “And he even died in his car.”
“He was ruthless, and he would do anything to win. It finally came back to bite him in the ass. Now, if you’ll excuse me, ladies—”
I held my palm out to him. “Mr. Wellborn, wait, please.”
“I’m done, Ms. Cullison. I appreciate what you’re doing, I guess, although I don’t quite understand it, but I’m not going to waste any more time on Max Litman.”
I didn’t want to, either, but I didn’t have the luxury of going to a meeting and putting the murder out of my mind. My head hurt from trying to make sense what any of this meant. I’d known Max Litman was not an honest man, but the depth of his dishonesty was a bit mind-boggling.
Suddenly my thoughts went in an entirely different direction. I looked at the man heading for the door, a chill running over my skin. He clearly had no love lost for Max, ratting him out about the failed condo investment and the art car voting scandal. I drew in a stabilizing breath. The man had thrown out enough bait about potential other suspects with motives, but what about himself? Could Wellborn be the murderer?
I circled back around to the reason I’d come here in the first place. Billy. Wellborn had left Billy in the dust after the murder. Initially, I’d thought that was out of some inexplicable loyalty to Max, but now I knew there was no allegiance to the dead man. There was only justified betrayal. It seemed most likely that he’s nixed any agreement with Billy so his company wouldn’t be associated with someone he thought might be capable of murder. Self-preservation.
Dixie had been silent during our exchange, but now she stood, walking with her boss to the door. She shook her head, looking forlorn. “What in the world has happened to our quiet little town?”
He scoffed. “Don’t be delusional, Dixie. Every city . . . every town . . . hell, every place has an underbelly. You’re experiencing ours for the first time, but it’s been here all along.”
“Oh Lord,” she said. I could imagine her fanning herself and placing the back of her hand to her forehead à la Scarlett O’Hara. “I don’t know about you all, but I’ll feel a whole lot better when they figure out who killed Mr. Litman. When they have a suspect.”
Mr. Wellborn was halfway out the door, but he stopped and turned to face her. “They do, Dixie,” he said.
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end and I closed my eyes to ward off what I knew was coming. And then he spoke the name I had prayed he wouldn’t.
“Billy Culpepper.”
Chapter 12
I left Wellborn Homes feeling dumbfounded. My brother was innocent, so how could everyone think he was capable of murder? Especially when there were potentially four other suspects?
Mrs. Branford and I walked the short distance to the Litman Homes office. Stucco walls, red tile roof, manicured landscape. The entire place looked more like a home development than a business complex. A few cars dotted the parking lot. Given the absence of its owner, I thought the place might be locked, but we were in luck. The handle turned and we walked right in.
And abruptly stopped short.
The lobby of Max Litman’s business was the polar opposite of the office we’d just come from. Conversation with Dixie, and the brief encounter with Mr. Wellborn, was the extent of the activity in the latter. But from the looks of it, I’d have said that nearly every law enforcement officer in Santa Sofia was in the Litman Homes office, and they appeared to be scouring every square inch of the place. There hadn’t been a single police cruiser in the front parking lot. There had to be a back lot, I realized, just as there was at Yeast of Eden.
I didn’t know many of Santa Sofia’s finest, but I recognized a few of the people Emmaline worked with. I’d run into them here and there, both in the bread shop and in connection with some of the crime solving I’d gotten wrapped up in. There was no sign of Emmaline, which came as no surprise, but I spotted Sheriff Lane right off the bat. He fit in at the crime scene about as much as a banana fit in with a head of cauliflower, a bundle of broccoli, and a bushel of Brussels sprouts. He covered his balding head with a Santa Sofia Sheriff’s Department ball cap, and his uniform was ill-fitting. I’d guesstimate that he’d put on about ten pounds since he’d first gotten it and hadn’t replaced it with one in his actual size.
Someone from the depths of the office gave a low whistle. Everybody stopped for a choreographed beat, looked at Mrs. Branford and me in the doorway, and then promptly went back to what they’d been doing. All except the sheriff himself. He sauntered over, his belly taking the lead. “Ladies, this is a crime scene. I need to ask you to leave.”
You’d think that leaning on a cane would make a person shorter, but not so for Mrs. Branford. She clutched the handle, her knuckles turning white from the force of her grip, pushed up, and held her head higher. “You can ask,” she said, “but that does not mean your wish is our command.”
I allowed myself a quick second to gawk at her. My sidekick’s feisty mood was still front and center, and she was taking no prisoners. For his part, the sheriff looked like he was winding up, ready to lambast her for her cheek. I cleared the tickle from my throat to distract him. With any luck, he’d excuse her sassy remark and not kick us out on our behinds.
“I found the . . . er, Max’s body,” I said, in case he’d forgotten. Which, of course, he hadn’t. Santa Sofia was touristy during certain parts of the year, adding significantly to the day-to-da
y population, but it was also a small town where everyone (or close to it) knew your name.
“I know you did, Ms. Culpepper. And while I appreciate your interest, your help is not required. We need to do our job now.”
“I know, it’s just—”
“There is no ‘just,’ Ms. Culpepper,” he said slowly. “You are not involved in this case.”
Technically, he was right. But emotionally, he was as far off the mark as a person could be. “But I am involved. My brother—”
“That’s the problem right there. Your brother is currently our prime suspect, as I’m sure Deputy Sheriff Davis has informed you, therefore you cannot be here.” He looked over his shoulder, notching two fingers. A uniformed officer, one I didn’t recognize, appeared by Sheriff Lane’s side. He held his arms wide, ushering us backward and right out the door. It closed with a quiet whoosh, but it might as well have slammed with a resounding bang. Mrs. Branford and I were left standing on the sidewalk staring at each other.
Chapter 13
I felt as if I were climbing a never-ending mountain. No matter what I did, or which way I turned, I wasn’t able to grab ahold of anything that could propel me to the summit. I wasn’t done trying, though, so I made a split second decision on what Nero Wolfe might have Archie Goodwin do. I dragged Mrs. Branford on another adventure. I drove the same route I’d traveled years ago, when I’d followed the high school art teacher, Mr. Zavila, to his duplicitous meeting with Max Litman to give him the goods on Billy’s car. I took us inland, to Malibu Hills Estates.
Just like I’d done years ago, I waited nearby until an unsuspecting resident pulled up to the gate and inputted their passcode. Once the gate swung open and the car passed, I kicked my car into drive and slipped unnoticed into the upscale neighborhood.
“Very industrious,” Mrs. Branford said.
It was meant as a compliment, but all I could muster was a nod and a grimace.
She patted my leg. “Don’t lose hope, Ivy. You’ll figure this out. We’ll figure it out.”
I liked her spirit, and her faith. Giving up wasn’t an option; therefore, I would succeed. There really was no other choice. “I think I’ve been going about this wrong,” I said as I drove. In the years since I’d been here, the trees and the landscaping had matured. The properties maintained their high-end luster, but at the same time, they looked lived-in and loved. I didn’t spend time goggling them, however. I didn’t remember exactly how to get to the Litman house, so my energy was spent trying to recollect which way to turn and when. I’d find it eventually.
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