by Sofie Ryan
“It came from a package.”
“So does my angel food cake,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with using some shortcuts.”
“True,” I said. “But you make the strawberry/rhubarb sauce. You even grow the berries and rhubarb yourself.”
She smoothed the front of her apron. “And at Thanksgiving I chopped a few dried-up leftover cranberries from the bottom of my vegetable crisper, microwaved them with half a bottle of marmalade that was in the gift basket I won at the animal shelter fund-raiser and added what juice I could squeeze out of half a wizened lemon, and you all thought I spent half the afternoon in the kitchen.” She smiled at me. “Things are seldom as perfect as they appear, and that includes cooking.”
I was at the workbench taking the paintings I’d bought from Cleveland out of their frames when Sam called back.
“Linda Fairchild,” he said, reciting a telephone number. “She’s a lawyer in New Hampshire—Manchester, I think—and she’s been involved in a couple of civil lawsuits over all this fake wine business. She’s expecting your call.”
I leaned against the workbench and pushed my hair back out of my face with one hand. I should have called Sam much earlier. I’d had no idea it would be so easy. “Thank you,” I said. “I owe you big-time.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” he said. “You owe Vince, although I don’t think you need to give him a kidney or anything. I think if you buy him a beer next time you see him, he’ll call it square.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Vince? Vince Kennedy?”
“How many other Vinces do you know?” Sam asked.
“Uh, none, but I didn’t know he knew anything about wine.”
I heard the creak of Sam’s old desk chair. “Neither did I, but it turns out he actually knows a little. And more important, he knows a lot about playing guitar.”
“And the two are connected, how?”
“Vince put some learn-to-play-guitar videos up on YouTube. They’ve turned out to be pretty popular. This lawyer found them, thought they were great and got in touch with Vince to say thank you. They struck up an online friendship and maybe a little more. He didn’t say. I didn’t ask. I know they’ve met in person several times.”
“I had no idea Vince was seeing someone,” I said. “Let alone a lawyer.”
Sam laughed. “Yeah, well, I’m not sure how much of her he’s seen and I don’t think I really want to know.”
“You and me both,” I said. “Tell Vince thank you and I’m buying next time I see him.”
“I will, kiddo,” Sam said. “I hope you get what you need.”
I had scribbled down the phone number on the back of an old envelope that Mac had left on the workbench. Sam had said the lawyer was expecting my call. Mr. P. would say “no time like the present.”
I decided this was a call best made from my office. I went back into the shop. “Can you handle things here for a little while?” I asked Charlotte. “I need to make a phone call.”
“Go ahead,” she said. “Rose and Mac are on their way back and I can always get Avery to come in if I need help.”
I called Linda Fairchild’s office and when I gave the receptionist my name I was put directly through to her office.
“Hello, Sarah,” she said. “Vince said you have some questions about Ronan Quinn.” She had a warm, husky voice. I knew Vince well enough to know he would have been intrigued by the woman the first time he heard her speak. He wasn’t the first musician I’d met to have a thing about voices.
“I do,” I said. “I appreciate you talking to me.” I explained how we were clearing out the house for Stella and how all of Edison’s savings had gone into his wine collection. And I told her about Ellie’s need for surgery without going into too many details that would violate her privacy.
“I don’t mean to make it sound like some hokey old movie in which the widow with the six kids is going to lose the farm unless everyone pulls together and puts on a show,” I said. “But I know the family was hoping Mr. Quinn would be able to put together enough of a paper trail for them to go after the people that defrauded Edison Hall.”
“I’m sorry,” Linda Fairchild said. “Ronan told me about Mr. Hall’s wine collection. I’ve heard stories like that before—and worse. But it could take years for a lawsuit to move through the courts and there’s no guarantee the family would end up with anything. These people can be very . . . creative at hiding their money. I’m surprised Ronan didn’t explain that.”
“Maybe he did,” I said. “I didn’t ask a lot of questions.” I hesitated. I wasn’t sure how to ask her if there was any chance Quinn had been involved in any sort of scam. I settled for asking her what kind of person the man had been.
“Ronan was a straight arrow,” the lawyer replied. “He was the kind of person who did what he said he would do when he said he would do it.” She went on to talk about how much work Quinn had put into building the case that she’d taken to court. “In that case we were able to get some money for the woman who had been defrauded. And now the police are looking at bringing criminal charges against the two people involved. They didn’t sell any wine to Mr. Hall, by the way.”
I flashed to the image of Ronan Quinn’s body on the kitchen floor of the Hall house. I had the feeling I would have liked the man. And I also had the feeling that Mr. P. was on the wrong track.
“So he was one of the good guys?” I said.
“He was.” Now it was her turn to hesitate. “Sarah, are you thinking that Ronan might have been involved in something illegal?” she asked, almost as though she’d read my mind.
“That was a possibility,” I admitted. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you, but from what you’ve said, he just doesn’t sound like that kind of person.”
“He wasn’t. I worked with the man for months and I can promise you that all he wanted was to catch the bad guys. He wasn’t one of them. In fact, when I spoke to him last week he seemed to think that he was onto something.”
My office door swung partway open, seemingly by magic. Then in a moment Elvis jumped onto my desk. He walked over and sat down next to the phone. “Something to do with Edison Hall’s wine collection?” I asked.
“I think so,” she said. “In the case I mentioned, the fraud involved just a few faked bottles. Ronan said this seemed to be deception on a larger scale. He was planning to drive down and see me a couple of days after he was killed.” She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be any more help.”
“You’ve actually helped more than you realize,” I said. The first thing I was going to do after I hung up was go tell Mr. P.—gently—that his idea that Ronan Quinn had been involved in conning people was off base. “I have one more question.”
Elvis leaned against my shoulder and looked expectantly over at the half-open office door.
“Do you know a wine broker named Thorne Logan?” I asked.
“Yes, I do. His real name is Thornton Logan.”
Mac slipped around the door, set a steaming cup of coffee on my desk, smiled at me and left again.
“Would you say he’s the same caliber of man as Ronan Quinn?”
She hesitated, cleared her throat again. “I have no personal knowledge of Mr. Logan being involved in any illegal endeavors,” she finally said.
That was about as close to a no as I was going to get. I thank Linda Fairchild for her help and we said good-bye. I leaned back in the chair again, wrapping both hands around my coffee cup. “How did Mac know I needed this?” I asked Elvis. He craned his neck to look at my cup and then almost seemed to smile at me.
I thought about Liam, urging me to make a move on Mac. I shook my head. Mac and I had way too good a relationship for me to do something like that.
I took another sip of my coffee. “I have to go tell Mr. P. and the others that we’re on the wrong track as far as Ro
nan Quinn is concerned. It wasn’t any lack of honor among thieves that led to his death.” On the other hand, it seemed as though it was worth taking a closer look at Thorne, formerly Thornton, Logan.
I pulled a hand back through my hair. “You know what Nick would say?” I said to Elvis, who was looking over the side of my desk at the left drawer where he somehow knew I’d put a box of kitty kibble that morning.
The cat looked up and cocked his head to one side. I’d seen him do that enough times to know he was faking an interest in what I was saying because he thought it would get him a treat.
“Nick would say this is what I get for getting involved in something that is really none of my business.” I opened the drawer, fished out half a dozen tiny bits of the dry cat treats and lined them up in a row on my desk.
Ever polite, Elvis meowed his thanks before starting to eat.
I took another sip of my coffee. Aside from the information about Ronan Quinn, one other thing had stuck in my mind from my conversation with the lawyer: the fact that she’d stressed that there was no big payout in a lawsuit against these con artists. Ethan had told me that he wanted the people who had defrauded his father punished. What had he said, quoting Ronan Quinn? If the law can’t get them, then at least we can hit them in their wallets. Had Quinn really said that or had Ethan misinterpreted his words. Each time I talked to Ethan I couldn’t help noticing that he was a little self-absorbed.
Elvis was crunching away happily on a star-shaped piece of kitty kibble. “You know what?” I said, lowering my voice so the cat would be the only one to hear me. “I like Stella a lot. But there’s something about Ethan . . .” I didn’t finish the sentence.
As if he’d understood my words, the cat turned and glanced at the doorway before bending down for the last treat on my desk. “I know,” I said with a sigh. “That’s probably not something I can share with anyone else.”
Chapter 16
Rose was in the Angels’ office with Mr. P. when I went downstairs.
“Hello, dear,” Rose said. “Did Mac tell you we’re finished in the living room and one bedroom?”
“I haven’t had a chance to talk to him yet,” I said, “but that’s good to know. Thank you.” I looked at Mr. P. “Do you have a minute? I have some information I think you might find useful.”
“Of course,” he said. “Go ahead. Rosie is up-to-date.”
I leaned against the doorframe. “It occurred to me that Sam might know someone who could tell us more about Ronan Quinn, so I called him.”
“Of course,” Rose said. “We should have thought of that sooner. What did he say?”
“He put me in touch with a lawyer who had worked on a couple of lawsuits over the fake wine with Quinn. I just got off the phone with her.”
“I was on the wrong track, wasn’t I?” Mr. P. said, pushing his glasses up his nose with one finger.
I nodded.
“I’ve been looking into Mr. Quinn’s background and he really was what he appeared to be, a decent man trying to stop whoever was taking advantage of people like Edison Hall.”
“I did learn one thing that might be helpful,” I said. “I told you that Sam’s contact was a lawyer, so she was pretty circumspect about what she said, but she didn’t seem to have a very high opinion of Thorne Logan, and by the way, his real first name is Thornton.”
Mr. P. reached for a pencil and wrote the name on the pad of paper next to his laptop. “Thank you, Sarah,” he said. “So far we’ve been hitting a dead end trying to find contact information for the man. I tried the number on the card as well. I got the same message you did. This will help.”
“There’s something fishy about this man,” Rose said. “Who runs a legitimate business and doesn’t have a proper voice mail message?”
“Any luck on tracking down our mystery woman?” I asked.
Mr. P. shook his head. “Whoever she is, she’s very good at covering her trail.”
“Charlotte and I have a few more people to talk to,” Rose said. “We’ll find her.”
I smiled at her. “I have no doubt about that.”
Mr. P. was frowning at his laptop.
“Problem?” I asked.
He shook his head, his eyes never leaving the screen. “Sarah, look at this photo of our unidentified woman.”
He’d found another angle from the security footage. I could see her fully face-on. “What am I looking for?”
Mr. P. touched the screen with his finger. “Look at her cheekbones and the angle of her jaw.”
Rose leaned around me so she could see as well. Alfred picked up the photo of Thorne Logan and handed it to me. “Do you see it?” he asked.
Logan had the same strong jaw and high cheekbones.
“They’re related,” I said.
Rose looked from Mr. P. to me. “What?” she said.
He raised an eyebrow. “Mother and son?”
I nodded slowly. “I think so.”
“I told you there was something fishy about that young man,” Rose crowed.
“If you could just prove Edison had met Purse Lady, I’d say you were onto something,” I said, slipping one arm around her shoulders. “Go ahead and say it.”
Her gray eyes sparkled. “Charlotte found three people who remember him talking to her at the seminar.”
I gave her a hug. Then I put my hand over my heart. “Rose Jackson,” I said. “You are onto something.”
I left them and went out to the old garage. Avery had finished priming the cabinets. As usual she’d done a good job. The teenager was meticulous with a paintbrush and Mac and I were slowly letting her work on more finishing projects.
Mac was looking at the potato baskets. “Hi,” he said. “Did you get these from Cleveland?”
I nodded. “I’m thinking once they’re cleaned up I may dip them.”
He nodded. “Good idea. We’ve had a couple of designers in lately working on show homes, and those baskets are exactly the kind of thing they like.”
“Rose said you’re through two more rooms at the house.”
Mac fished the keys to the Hall house out of his pocket and handed them to me. “The old man actually had a system to those boxes. Rose noticed that they were stacked in concentric squares, more or less. Then we realized that each—can I say ring when I’m talking about a square?”
“Sure.”
He smiled. “Okay, each ring is one kind of item—books, glassware, et cetera.” He smoothed a hand over his cropped hair. “And most of the boxes actually have a list of the contents inside.”
I smiled back at him. “That’s going to save us some time and Stella some money.”
“How’s the detecting going?” Mac asked.
“It turns out that Ethan knows the mystery man in the photo.”
Mac’s eyebrows went up.
“He’s a wine broker with possibly less than stellar business practices.”
“Do you think he had anything to do with Ronan Quinn’s death?”
“I don’t know anymore. I agree with Mr. P. and Rose that it has to be tied to those bottles of wine, but other than that . . .” I shook my head. “They did find out that Edison was at that financial seminar and that he talked to the mystery woman. And it looks like there may be a connection between this broker and the woman with the purse, although I don’t know how they’re going to find either one of them.”
“Maybe the police will come up with something.”
“I hope so,” I said. “I’m starting to think that this is a case where angelic interference isn’t going to help.”
“Don’t count Rose and Alfred out,” Mac said. “They’re like Elvis when he smells a mouse, assuming he also had computer skills.”
I laughed at the mental image that popped into my head. “Yeah, I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing,” I
said. The keys to the Hall house were still in my hand. “Mac, can you handle things here?” I asked. “There’s something I need to do.”
“Sure,” he said. “Is there anything you want me to work on?”
“I bought a couple of paintings from Cleveland,” I said. “I started taking them out of the frames and then I got sidetracked.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Mac said. “Shall I get Avery to start cleaning the baskets?”
“Please,” I said. “And thank you for the coffee earlier. It was just what I needed.”
“I thought so,” he said. “You’re welcome.”
Mac started for the shop and I walked over to my SUV. I wanted to see the wine collection for myself. I didn’t know what I was expecting to find that no one else had noticed.
The cartons of wine bottles were still in the kitchen at the Hall house. I opened the top of the closest box and looked inside. Mac had said that most of Edison’s boxes had a list of the contents inside. Maybe these boxes did as well.
The box held four bottles, stored upright, which didn’t really matter, since the contents were the equivalent of Kool-Aid. Taped inside was half a sheet of loose-leaf. I pulled it free and at the same time lifted out one of the bottles.
Edison Hall had listed the details about each of the bottles in cramped, spidery handwriting on the paper. I spent the next twenty minutes checking boxes, looking for some kind of clue, even though I had no idea what it would look like. In the end, all I discovered was that there were six bottles missing.
I did a quick search of the kitchen. There were no bottles on the shelves or in the cupboards. Ethan had said his father’s entire collection of wine was at the house. “Maybe I misunderstood,” I said. I was talking to myself, I realized. I was so used to talking to Elvis that now I was talking to myself.
I grabbed the flashlight that Mac had left on the counter and went down to the musty basement. The missing bottles weren’t there, either.
Paul and Alyssa were in their front yard kicking around a couple of what looked like beach balls. When I went out to the SUV, Paul raised a hand in hello and I walked across the street to join them.