by Cassie Page
“What I mean by that, Al, is that we have a very serious problem on our hands that trumps anything else on our calendars. If this is a case of capital murder, the police will want to put someone in jail for it. We need to make sure it isn’t one of us. And that doesn’t even take into consideration our potential financial losses. Would you like to explain to Pierre what you have going on that’s more important, or shall I?”
After a silence, she said, “Thank you, Al. I thought you’d see it my way. See you at seven. ON. THE. DOT.”
She hung up asking herself why underlings were so much more difficult than the principles. She got through the rest of her list fairly quickly, everyone only too eager to meet and solve their nasty problem. Scott seemed particularly eager to get the group together soon. He had some out of town meetings to attend for another project.
After a call to Charles to confirm the meeting, she opened her email folder. Tuesday called down that she was going to be in the spare bedroom unpacking and sorting out her various herbs and cleanses that accompanied her on all of her trips.
Tuesday billed herself as a nutrition counselor in addition to her tea leaf reading services. She talked a good story about healthful eating and supplementing her diet with potions that counteracted the crimes agribusiness committed on the consumer, but Olivia had never seen her use any of them. Tuesday was just as tempted by good champagne, luscious desserts and rich food as Olivia was, hardly cleanse fodder. Olivia loved her friend no matter what, and never blew her cover, though she got a huge chuckle when Charles had at lunch.
While her laptop screen came to life, Olivia checked her watch. She had half an hour before she had to leave for her meeting with Marguerite Fredericks. She absolutely must convince her that the finishing touches on the pool house would be ready by party time on Friday and that she would be more than pleased with the result, regardless of Hamish’s undercutting.
After responding to her important emails and sending the rest to trash, she began searching, in order, for California environmental laws for contractors, liability laws relating to construction sites, and regulations regarding building sites that might impact native tribes.
She skipped over the OSHA references. She’d once given a seminar for designers on workplace safety and had those rules down cold. The other sites kept her busy reading and taking notes until she had to leave for the pool house.
Before she left, she ran upstairs and called out to Tuesday, “Want a bite? That salad didn’t hold me and I’m scrounging in the refrigerator before I head over to see my client.”
No sound came from the guest room, Tuesday apparently making good on her promise to take a nap after she unpacked. Quickly, Olivia cut a banana into some yogurt, gulped it down and tossed the banana skin into her trash, which reminded her again that it was recycling day. She grabbed her purse and iPad, gathered up her various trash bags, both kitchen waste and recycling, and hurried down the stairs and out into the yard to the bins she shared with Mrs. Harmon.
She surprised a neighbor’s cat lurking around the cans. Or, rather, the black cat let out a whine and surprised her. Olivia had seen the cat on her property se. Its belly dragged on the ground so it wasn’t a stray looking for food. She’d have to try to find its owner.
Into the black bin went the kitchen refuse, a few garden scraps into the green bin and then she tossed the paper sack full of shredding, junk mail and cereal and cookie boxes into the blue one. Unlike her usual habit of emptying her trash in without looking carefully into the bins, always too busy to get on with her next chore or appointment, she scanned for a moment the contents she had seen Mrs. Harmon discard.
“Oh, my,” Olivia whispered. “Poor Mrs. Harmon.”
In an instant Olivia understood why her tenant had to run off. No doubt she was in a hurry to get back into her apartment, likely her bathroom. A corner of a somewhat delicate product peeked out of a paper bag. Olivia chided herself for her impatience with the woman. You never know what someone else is going through, she reminded herself. You never know what cross they have to bear.
With a slight shuddering wish that her own life never went down that road as she got older, she closed the lid on a box of adult diapers.
4:4
Set far up into the low hills under the shadow of Mt. Tamalpais, the Fredericks’ mansion loomed over their picturesque street. The front of the house overlooked a million dollar view of San Francisco Bay and the hills to the east. The property, however, had too many trees to suit Olivia, offering more shade than was comfortable in wintery weather when the fog collected in tree tops and dripped onto the house and garden.
The Fredericks’ had purchased the house before Olivia moved to Darling Valley, or she would never have advised buying the house. Now she was rescuing the dank back yard by clearing away trees and opening up the lot to sunlight around the dark tiled, over-sized pool. She had taken down an old shed at the far end of the yard and in its place a Palladian charmer with arched windows and ornamented pillars welcomed the Fredericks’ guests.
Pretty as it was, Olivia had tried to convince her client to choose a style more in keeping with their Tudor house. However, Marguerite kept insisting that, “It’s Richard’s idea.”
Olivia knew better, but gave the client what she wanted. After all, she was writing the checks.
She parked her truck next to Vittorio Zirpoli’s van and instantly felt her spirits lift. She walked around the back to greet the electrical contractor, calling out his name. In a moment out came the cute young guy who had magic in his hands and a reputation for bringing all jobs in ahead of schedule. She made a mental note the first time she met him that if Cody continued to give Carrie the we’re just friends routine, she was going to set her up with Vittorio.
Vittorio fairly beamed when he greeted Olivia. “Miss Granville,” he said, wiping his hands on his workpants and extending his hand. “I didn’t know you were coming today. I thought you’d be tied up with the groundbreaking ceremony. Big stuff, right? The governor and all?”
Born in the hills above Florence and transported to San Francisco by his parents when he was five, Vittorio had no trace of an Italian accent, but his gene pool had gifted him with abundant dark hair and bone structure worthy of Michelangelo. He was determined to make a success of his business and was dedicated to his job.
When Olivia teased him once about being all work and no play, he gave her a look that that told her girls never figured in his happiness equation. For that reason, she worried about him. He was apt to be blindsided by some young thing and, with no experience with women, he wouldn’t know how to handle it. She worried about him the way she worried about Cody, like they were her little brothers.
She said, “Have you had the radio on or checked your email?”
She knew the answer was no. He even ate the lunch his mother made for him every day while he worked. So she filled him in on the tragedy. Instantly, he made the sign of the cross and said a prayer for Jed Fisher when she described his grief-struck widow and baby.
“But I’m not here to check up on you, Vittorio. I’m supposed to meet with Mrs. Fredericks to go over some of the details for Friday. That’s the big reveal day.”
He tapped his head. “I got it on my calendar, Miss Granville. But Mrs. F isn’t here.”
This took Olivia by surprise as Mrs. Fredericks had left a message specifically confirming their meeting.
“Oh, is she coming back soon? We had an appointment.”
Vittorio shrugged. “Probably not soon. She left with Mr. Walsh to look at property. She was showing him the pool house and I heard them talking. I think they were going out for something to eat afterwards.”
“Hamish Walsh?” Olivia said disbelieving, as though Vittorio had described a creature just risen from the dead.
“Yeah, you know, the decorator. I guess he was in some magazine. They talked about it but I didn’t hear which one.”
“Architectural Digest.”
“Oh, wow,�
� Vittorio said in awe. “That’s a deal and a half. I guess that’s what they’re going to celebrate.”
Olivia had to bite her tongue. “Maybe I got the time wrong. I wonder if she meant three o’clock tomorrow. I’ll call her later. Good seeing you, Vittorio.”
“You, too, Miss Granville.”
“Tell your mother I said hi.”
“I will. She’ll be glad to hear that.”
His mother owned an elegant shoe shop on Darling Boulevard, which was how Olivia found out about her talented son. The savvy businesswoman/mother had no hesitancy about singing the praises of her only child when she heard that Olivia, trying on a pair of Jimmy Choos at the time, was in the business of remodeling homes.
Olivia needed to leave before she said something very unprofessional about Hamish in front of her favorite subcontractor. She blurted out, “Gotta run,” and scurried down the path to her truck, cursing Hamish Walsh all the way.
4:5
On the way back to her house, Olivia found herself close to the museum site and decided to stop. Crime scene tape adorned the fence and podium but the police were gone. Good, she thought. She could have a look around on her own. She locked her truck and ducked under the tape to see a mostly deserted site. A few workmen were busy behind the chain link fence, still draped in the logo banner that had hidden her from the men complaining about the deceased. Olivia could not see anyone else around the site.
The tarp still covered the damp ground and folding chairs were scattered around the edges. The chairs. They were not tagged in any way so she assumed she could have Cody return them to Bethany. She pulled out her phone and sent him a text. He immediately texted back, tx fr hdz up. I’ll use my truck.
She thanked him back and began walking.
She didn’t know what she was looking for but traversed the area from the podium to the edge of the clearing for the proposed meditation grove. This morning the site had so much promise and now a dark cloud hung over it, literally, as the sun had not broken through the morning’s cloud cover. That image of a cloud gave her a surge of energy, of determination. She was going to turn that cloud into sunshine. She would do whatever it took to remove this stain from The Bacon-Paatz Museum. She would find out who was responsible for this heinous act, whether it was done by accident or on purpose, and restore the good will to the project that she and Charles had worked so hard to develop.
With a clear purpose now, she entered the wooded area where the last trees were waiting to be cut down. Jed Fisher had been in charge of clearing the trees. Perhaps he had been here last night when he met his killer. Walking carefully, she hadn’t changed into casual shoes in order to look professional for her meeting with Mrs. Fredericks, she searched the ground for clues. Avoiding the mud puddles as much as possible, she found markers by the forensics team next to many sets of footprints. Two of them belonged to a man and woman in heels.
Russ Bowers and his assistant immediately came to mind. She remembered seeing the mud on Russ’s cuffs and shoes when they first spoke this morning. She’d made a snap judgment that they had been up to hanky-panky deep in the woods. These prints seemed to confirm her suspicions. She gave a disgusted toss of her head, as though they had desecrated holy ground.
She saw other markers over footprints left by boots, obviously belonging to the workers. Perhaps they were even Jed’s boots. She saw another set that seemed to go off by itself. Perhaps Russ and his girlfriend had separated for appearances’ sake. After their little tryst in the woods, he might have joined the rest of the crowd alone so no one would put two and two together. She imagined their escapade had cost them. Surely the damp muddy ground ruined their shoes. Serves them right, she thought. He’s a married man, for crying out loud.
What she was really looking for were traces of whatever Jed had found and tried to bring to Scott’s attention. Some sign where artifacts might be buried, or the patch of muddy ground he might have been investigating. But all she saw were wood chips from the logging operations, branches from trees that had come down, and muddy earth gouged by the trucks she had seen hauling the trees away on occasions when she and Charles had come to the site to meet with Scott.
Where might Jed have secreted his finds, she wondered. He had not made his discoveries public, or Olivia would have heard about them from Scott. The workers speculated Jed had told the wrong person about his find. Who would that have been?
Did Scott have them and had not yet taken action? Matt was going to talk to him about that.
Olivia had a strong suspicion they were they still in Jed’s hiding place. Maybe in his truck. Or in his home? Olivia knew so little about the logger, including where he lived. But she knew his name. Surely she could find his address on the Internet. She’d pay a visit to his widow. Victoria Fisher might be sitting on a piece of evidence that could help solve her husband’s death.
Certainly Matt and his team, knowing what Olivia had heard, would ask these questions of Victoria, too. But she might have a lawyer by now who would advise her not to talk to the police. There was no such worry with Olivia, a member of the public and a person truly concerned for her welfare. If she remembered Olivia’s attention when the body was first discovered, Olivia might be the one person she’d feel she could trust. Then again, she might remember that initially, Olivia had brushed her off.
Olivia felt a chill, and hurried back to her truck. Her next order of business was to find Victoria.
On the way back to her house she passed The Salted Caramel on Darling Boulevard. She decided to stock up on Tuesday’s favorite ice cream and fudge sauce. It was late in the afternoon and she’d have a chance to see how Carrie was doing after the shock this morning. But Carrie had not returned to work. Carla, the owner, was behind the counter when she went in, helping a customer who, from the back, looked familiar. When the owner greeted Olivia by name, he turned around and they stared at one another in surprise.
“Hello, Miss Granville,” Alistair said with an obvious sneer.
Olivia wanted to smack him. No young man she knew in Darling Valley would think of treating her so rudely.
“Hello, Al. I’m surprised to see you here. I see you’ve found the best pastry shop on the west coast. Are you heading back to the east coast after our meeting this evening? Nothing else for you to do here.”
Olivia didn’t really care what his plans were, but while they waited for their orders, his coffee and a pastry and her ice cream, she felt she had to make small talk.
“I’m not sure of my plans,” he said without looking at her directly. “I may stay a few days and see how things play out. I know Pierre would want to know what’s going on.”
“That’s not really necessary, you know. I keep him apprised of everything he needs to know.”
She thought she detected a note of anxiety flash across the young man’s face, though she couldn’t figure out why. If the project stalled it would have no impact on his job. As soon as he got on a plane back to New York he would have nothing else to do for the museum. What did it matter to Olivia even if there were consequences for him? Young people flitted from job to job these days. He’d get another one.
Alistair was definitely a dandy. She’d seen him three times now, twice when he came to her office to complain about his lodgings, and then today for the ceremony, each time in a new suit. He probably needed to keep working to support his wardrobe.
He said, “I think I told you that I have a few friends here in Northern California. I might hang out a day or two more with them.”
Carla poured Alistair’s coffee with her signature SC inside a heart swirled into the foam. Next she placed his pastry on one of her pink plates and said, “Nine-twenty, please,” giving him the ingratiating smile she reserved for all her customers.
He reached into his breast pocket for a slim leather wallet and pulled out a credit card. A few receipts sailed into the air. Olivia helped him scoop them up. She noticed that he had visited DV’s pricier shops. She handed him a receipt from V
alley Leather Goods, Vittorio’s mother’s store.
“You have good taste,” she said. “The owner is a friend of mine.”
She glanced down and sure enough he was sporting shiny new shoes. She guessed New York was a different scene from the relatively laid back West Coast. You probably needed to be well dressed on your way up the ladder, even if you couldn’t really afford to be well heeled.
He accepted the receipt without comment, and headed for a table with his tray. “See you later, Miss Granville.”
Olivia noted his arch tone. “Sure thing, Al,” she said, chuckling to herself. She enjoyed pulling his self-important chain. Did he think he was dealing with an underling here? She was running the show for cripes sake.
While Carla packaged her ice cream and jar of fudge sauce, Olivia mentally compared Vittorio and Alistair. She wondered if Al treated his mother as well as Vittorio treated his, or if he treated anyone well. The two young men were about the same age, but as far apart in temperament and personal appeal as two humans could be.
Chapter Five: Cover Your Assets
5:1
Monday Late Afternoon
“Cut to the chase, Olivia. All due respect, but are we going to lose our shirts on this one?”
That from the no-nonsense banker, Sonia Gutierrez, trying to move the meeting along. She pointed to her watch.
“My kids have homework to do.” She looked around the room for sympathy. “You think their father is going to tell them they can’t watch South Park?”
Olivia counted off the roll in her head. All eleven participants accounted for and on time, sitting in Charles’ spacious living room on one of the white down-cushioned sofas or turquoise and orange flowered occasional chairs. She’d started off politely, tapping her water glass, and the team gave their attention over to her. She barely had her first sentence fully formed, “First, I’d like to thank Charles Bacon for making his lovely home . . . “ when Sonia let it be known she was not there to waste time.