“Never mind, Flo. I wonder what she ate or got into contact with that set off her allergies.”
“I’m sure Jeff will find out soon enough. Anyway, Nancy told me to meet her here, so we could think about next steps.”
“Next steps?”
“Next steps in Orchard. Who is going to replace Kim as town manager? I wouldn’t be surprised if Beckett hadn’t sent in his résumé for her job already.”
“I don’t think that’s really fair, Flo. I think he was one of her only friends. He’s pretty upset.”
“How can you be so nice all the time, expecting the best of everyone? Isn’t it exhausting?”
I laughed. “It is, as a matter of fact. But hoping for the best is how I roll. Sorry about that.”
Flo laughed too. “Roll on, girl. Now, where’s that nephew of mine?”
“Ben? He isn’t here.”
“He’s supposed to meet up with us too. I wonder what’s holding him up?”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said. “He hasn’t been in touch since late last night. He texted me and let me know he couldn’t get together.”
“A text? He knows better than . . . You have to cut him some slack, Ruth. He’s got some ghosts visiting him this week.”
“Ghosts?”
Flo looked down at her cup and took a deep sip of her tea. “I love Ben, with all my heart. Nothing made me happier than when he decided to move back to Orchard, even though I knew the timing was off.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’d decided to move, sell the business to Matt, wash my hands of it all. Then Ben needed to come home.” Flo twisted her cup in her hand and then looked at me. “I know you think I’m a terrible gossip. I guess I am, but only if I think the gossip serves a purpose. Stirs the pot. Other than that, I’ll take a secret to my grave. Now, though, I think I need to gossip a little about Ben. Did he ever tell you what he did before he came to Orchard?”
“He said he owned a business.”
“Computers, software. I never really understood what exactly. All I know is that he sold one company for a lot of money. Then he invested all of it in another company. In between he fell head over heels with Martha, and married her.”
“I knew he was divorced,” I said. “So am I.”
“Well, you play your cards pretty close to your chest about your ex, Evan?”
“Eric.”
“Eric. But I don’t suppose you’d be happy to see him, would you?” I shook my head. “I can tell—your past is past. But Ben, he and Martha have some unfinished business.”
“Unfinished business?” I could feel all of the suspicions and doubts that I had been trying to desperately to tamp down rising up in the back of my throat.
“When his second business went bust, so did the marriage. Ben never saw either of them coming. It broke him, so he came to Orchard to regroup. She e-mailed him last week. Did he tell you about that?” I shook my head. “Well, she wanted to see him. They had dinner, night before last. That’s all I know.”
“Dinner with exes is allowed,” I said with a dry throat. I took a sip of tea, but it tasted like bile.
“They sure are. But I don’t want her to break him again. I figure you can stand in the way of that happening.”
Before I could respond, the front door opened and Nadia came in. “Is Nancy here yet?” she said as she burst into the shop.
“What’s this about Nancy?” Flo said, turning to Nadia.
“No one’s seen her all day. Moira’s worried sick. So am I.”
• • •
Nancy’s missing? Was this Nancy drama, or was she really gone?
“Where’s Pat?” Flo asked.
“He didn’t mention she was missing. He went out to the cottage to talk to Zane. I’ll text him,” I said.
“Text him? Does he text?” Flo asked. “I barely text.”
“He does now. With Nadia on the team, it’s the only way we can talk to each other easily.” Nadia doesn’t e-mail, and I don’t think she knows you can use your phone to talk. Texting was part of my generation, but I wasn’t great at it. I reached into my pocket and took out my phone. Dead. I’d forgotten to charge it.
I sheepishly looked up and displayed my blank screen. I went over to a workstation and plugged the phone in. “My phone turns itself off when I am down to ten percent. For all I know Nancy’s been calling me for hours. Sorry about that. I’m a little out of it today.”
“It’s been a roller coaster these past twenty-four hours,” Nadia said.
I looked up at one of the clocks, my favorite banjo with a painted panel of old Orchard on the lower half. One o’clock. Twenty-four hours ago we were at the Signing Ceremony, having a wonderful time with friends and supporters. What a difference a day makes.
“It should turn back on . . . Here we go.”
Yeesh. I had six texts. Three of the texts were from Ben. I’d read them later. Two were from Ro Troisi, and one was from Jeff Paisley. Ro and Jeff had both texted in the last hour and asked me to come over to the Town Hall. The voice mail alerts woke up. I had three messages, and I checked recent calls. Ben, Ro, and Jeff.
“Jeff wants me to come over to the Town Hall,” I said. “I don’t have any messages”—I quickly checked all three e-mail accounts—“from Nancy.”
“Wonder what Jeff wants?” Flo said.
“Probably for me to walk through what happened. He’ll want to talk to all of us.”
“He talked to me this morning,” Nadia said. “I brought him a memory card with all of the pictures we took yesterday.”
“Did you make a copy of them first?” I asked.
“Of course I did,” Nadia said, looking at me like I had just asked her if the sky was blue and the grass was green.
“Tell you what. I’m going to go over there. Would you mind the store? We won’t get any customers, but I’d hate to be closed, just in case.”
“Sure. Can you leave me your laptop? I’ll upload the pictures while you’re gone. I’ll also check in with Pat and Caroline, and keep looking for Nancy.”
“Great. I’ll walk back down to the Corner Market and check in,” Flo said. “I’m sure we’ll find her. Are you still okay to host an early dinner here in the shop, Ruth?”
“It’s fine,” I said. Like I had a choice in the matter. “I’m going to leave my phone here to charge, so I’m off the grid for a while.”
“Please. Off the grid? In Orchard? You won’t be able to sneeze without people saying ‘Bless you’ all afternoon,” Nadia said, settling in to work behind her laptop.
“The joys of living in a small town. I’ll take care of dinner, Ruth. Go on over and help Jeff.”
chapter 13
Ro Troisi met me at the corner of the Town Hall, where the paths crossed to take you to either the front door of the hall or the side door. I looked up and saw a half-dozen bicycles on the rack on this side of the Dumpster shack. The gate door was closed. I wondered if I could finagle a way to get back there. Morbid, I know, but I wanted to see for myself.
The next project was dealing with the fence around the back of the Town Hall, so that folks could have access to the back grounds more easily. We were still working out the details. Beckett was against the idea—he was determined to keep boundary lines clear. He also didn’t want folks who were coming to the Town Hall to park in his small lot. As if a fence would stop them. The Beckett fence, as it had come to be known, circled the back area of the Town Hall as well, delineating the property boundaries, which were tight. It butted up against the Corner Market.
“What are you looking at, Ruth?”
“I’m trying to figure out how Kim got out back without us seeing her—”
“She parked out beside the Corner Market, right up against the fence.”
“So someone let her in to the portico, or she came
in through the vestibule,” I said.
“Looks like.”
“Do you know what time?”
“I’ll leave that to the chief to share with you. He’s inside.”
“You’re out here because?”
“Just making sure we don’t have more visitors.”
“More?”
“The chief is waiting to talk to you,” Ro said.
• • •
“Good afternoon, Ruth,” Jeff said. “Thank you for coming over.”
“Hello, Chief,” I said, looking around. “Are you alone?”
“For now. Waiting for the next wave of techs to come in,” he said. “Come on in. We can sit in here.” He motioned me to the front cloakroom that he had set up as a makeshift office for himself, blocking me from seeing inside the Town Hall. There were two six-foot tables set up, a box of coffee on one of them, and a half-dozen folding chairs strewn around the room.
“The next wave of techs?”
“As you know, contrary to what folks see on TV, there aren’t enough techs to do all the work we need them to do. Sometimes you have to schedule them. Especially when they don’t think that your work is a priority.”
“Murder isn’t a priority?”
“Preliminary findings aren’t conclusive. I suspect you heard that already?” I didn’t react, and Jeff shook his head. “You’re good, you know that, Ruth? Trustworthy as a tomb.”
“That’s why you like me,” I said, smiling and taking a seat.
“One of the reasons, anyway,” he said, sighing and shaking his head as he sat across from me. “We can’t walk through the site, but I’ve set up a pretty good approximation. I’ve been meeting other people down at the station, but I thought I’d invite you into the inner sanctum.” I looked around the makeshift office at the pictures on the walls showing every angle of the main room, compiled from dozens of photographs folks had taken that day. I had sent Jeff all the pictures I’d taken, and saw them included. It was disconcerting to see myself so many times. There was an architectural drawing of the room laid out on one of the tables. It showed the room itself, as well as the detail of electrics, plumbing, closets and mechanics that weren’t visible to the naked eye. There were circular stickers with numbers at various locations.
“Will all of this help you figure out what happened to Kim?” I asked.
“It will help me think, and give me a better sense of the building, and where folks were yesterday. Since you’re the owner—”
“Don’t remind me,” I said, thinking about leaky roofs and ancient bathrooms.
“Town lore has it that your family has a rich history with this building, so I figured I’d ask you to talk me through a tour.”
“Since we can’t walk through—”
“Right.”
“All right,” I said. I couldn’t tell what Jeff was up to, but if a tour is what he wanted, a tour is what he’d get.
“Do you notice when you come in, the door feels slightly off-center?” I pointed to the diagram. “Well, it wasn’t originally. On both sides of the room they built cloakrooms, but at some point they took the right-hand cloakroom and expanded it a bit so it could house the furnace. Eventually they built a narrow hallway along that entire side of the building, for storage and for more mechanics. See how the stones are just a bit different, more uniform in size, and up on the top the brickwork has holes in it? That was for venting.” I pointed to the details on the brick wall.
“Can anyone get back there?”
“You need a key.”
“Is it always locked?”
“Yes. The boiler is back there, and other tools. Things that could walk when renters are using the space. This side of the building had the cloakroom, then the vestibule toward the back. Both of these are original.”
“How about that wall there?” Jeff pointed to the wall opposite the front door. “Was that always there?”
“Good eye. No, that wall is fairly recent. See how squared off the stones are on the bottom of the wall? They were built to look like the original foundation. The building itself was barely used until the mid-’70s, when Grover Winter bought it and moved his real estate business in here. He built that wall and the offices behind it.”
“His business? Really? I was looking around earlier. Those offices did look more recent.”
“But they fit the building, don’t you think? Stone, brick, dark woodwork. Lots of built-ins. The kitchen area in the middle of the hall. The Winters outgrew the space within a year or so. Rather than raze the building or add on, Grover made a deal with the town to lease it to them.”
“There’s a basement,” Jeff said.
“Yes, but it’s got short ceilings. Tight space. A little damp. Mostly used for storage.”
“Looks like it used to be some sort of a wine cellar.”
“You have been looking around. I think it was used for special storage during Prohibition. I’ve been reading my great-grandfather’s diaries.”
“Harry?”
“You are good,” I said.
“Not really. I found a plaque with his name on it.”
“Really, where?”
“Come here, I’ll show you.”
Jeff stood, and moved a portable whiteboard he’d set up. Sure enough, a small brass plaque was on one of the stones. FOR HARRY CLAGAN, CHIEF OVERSEER OF OUR TOWN. MAY THE BELLS RING IN HEAVEN.
“That’s lovely. I’d never seen that before,” I said.
“I’m not surprised. I think it was behind that painting.” He pointed to an oil painting in a carved wooden frame that was burnished with gold. It was on the floor, leaning up against the wall. “Someone took it down. I found it in the kitchen, lying on top of a counter.”
“Really?” I’d passed by the painting dozens of times, but never stopped to really look at it and never thought to look behind it. I bent down and examined it more carefully. A painting of Orchard, circa 1950. The details were amazing, but tough to decipher while seeing it resting on the floor.
“This isn’t a good place to leave it,” I said. “Can we move it? I’d love to look at it more closely.”
“Technically, this is still a crime scene,” Jeff said. “I’ll keep an eye on it, and as soon as I can I’ll bring it over to you. Now, can we walk through what you saw yesterday?”
I took out my new notebook and opened it. “I thought you’d never ask,” I said.
• • •
As usual, I gave Jeff much more information than he gave me.
“Is there any reason people didn’t go out to the portico during the party?” he asked, his notebook flipped open.
“The plan was to have a cocktail party out there around five. So we were keeping folks out of the area until then, since the beer and prosecco had been iced in tubs out in the back. Oh dear—”
“It’s still there. It looks like Kim had helped herself to beer and some food.”
“Food?”
“There was a tray of sandwiches, and some tarts.”
“That was the cocktail party food, from the Sleeping Latte.”
“So there was different food for the cocktail party? Anything in particular?” Jeff took some notes.
“Just more substantive. Finger sandwiches, cheese plates. Nicer desserts. The party was for volunteers and donors, and we wanted to make it more special than the open-to-the-public ceremony.”
“Would Kim have been invited to the cocktail party?”
“Yes, though not showing up to the Signing Ceremony, she wouldn’t have been welcome.”
“Given that crowd, she may not have actually been welcome anyway.”
“True enough,” I said, fumbling with my pen. Jeff needed to know everything, so I looked at my notes. “Did you know about the vote?”
“The one they finally had to fire her? They didn’t
have the vote, from what I’ve heard.”
I bit the inside of my lip and looked down at my notebook.
“What is it?” Jeff said. “You know I’ll find out anyway, so you may as well tell me.”
“They did have the vote. It was two to one in favor of letting her keep her job. The deciding vote was Jimmy’s.”
“Murphy? He voted to let her keep her job?” Jeff let out a slow whistle. “You’re sure?”
“Beckett Green told me,” I said. “He came by this morning, around noon.”
“I wish the flow of information worked both ways in Orchard. Thanks to a leak the size of Niagara Falls, most everything about this case became public knowledge as soon as I’d heard it. I hope I’ve plugged the leak, or at least diverted it, by closing ranks.”
“You’re bringing in a team, asking for an autopsy?”
“My gut tells me something is hinky about the entire case.”
“Your gut? Usually that’s my excuse, not yours.” He didn’t even crack a smile, so I went on. “How can I help you?”
“Between photos and statements, I think I have a good sense of the timeline yesterday. We’ve even got the window when Kim died—between two thirty and three yesterday.”
“That’s pretty specific,” I said. “How do you know?”
“She called Beckett Green and left a voice mail at two thirty. He told me that much, even let me listen to the message. She mentioned that she was parking out by the Dumpster, where we found her car.”
“She was supposed to be here at eleven thirty,” I said.
“From what her assistant said, and her calendar indicated, she intended to be here then. So one of the remaining questions is, where was she during those final hours?”
“Does her cell phone help?”
“Not obviously yet. Aside from the call to Beckett, she didn’t text or e-mail from ten o’clock on.”
“So, you know she was outside at two thirty. Pat found her at three. Someone let her back through the gate and offered her something to eat. Is that what happened? Come on, Jeff, I won’t tell a soul.”
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