by Cassie Page
Cody laughed. “Apparently, when Payne heard the whole story he thought it was hilarious. Called the guy out every which way from Sunday for being such a sucker.”
The light finally went on for Olivia. “Cody, can you get this guy’s name from your friend? Cause I agree, there’s your motive. Basic crime-solving 101. What guy likes to look like a fool? There’s your murderer. He takes out Jocelyn as revenge for her soaking him like that, and breaks Payne’s heart big time. A twofer. Who’s laughing now?”
Olivia decided to check her email one more time before she turned off her light. Her phone opened to the search page she had started in Matt’s office. She was staring at a list of accomplishments attributed to the younger Payne.
He’d graduated summa cum laude from his university and received a Ph.D. at the almost unheard of age of twenty-one. He went on to medical school and another Ph.D. before joining the faculty of a prestigious university. He left academia to start his own lab.
Then she came to his research on a drug, whose name was an alphabet soup that meant nothing to her. But to the thousands of people in rural areas around the world afflicted with snakebites each year, it promised to be nothing short of lifesaving.
The page began a boring explanation of how the treatment worked on the body as Olivia drifted off with the phone in her hand.
Part Two: Day Two
Chapter Thirteen: Damage Control
Olivia woke to a deafening thunk-thunk-thunk. “Oh no, Tuesday,” she shouted, racing out of her room, “did you fall?”
She arrived in the kitchen in a panic, expecting to see Tuesday flattened on the floor. She followed the thunking to the staircase and stopped in her tracks.
“Tuesday! What are you doing?”
Her friend was huffing and puffing in bicycle shorts and a yellow jersey, a la Tour de France winners. Her cleated bike shoes were making the racket. “What does it look like? I’m like, duh, training for my century.”
In her haste, Olivia had not grabbed her robe and she hugged herself against the morning chill seeping through her PJ’s. “On the stairs? At this hour? It’s not even seven a.m.”
Gasping for breath, Tuesday wheezed, “I don’t have a bike here. I can’t get behind in my weekly mileage or I’ll lose all my training. I figure fifty laps should do it.”
Now Cody appeared around the corner from the showroom and looked groggily up the stairs. “What’s up? Did somebody fall?”
Olivia rubbed one cold foot against the other to warm it. “What century? What are you talking about?”
“I told you. I’m training for a bike race to raise money for charity. A century. It’s a hundred miles.”
Olivia reacted impatiently. “I know what a bike century is. I didn’t know you were doing one.”
Tuesday had reached the top step, turned and hurried down to the bottom again. “But I told you. That’s why I colored my hair green. To motivate people to give me money for the cause. Subliminal advertising. Green? Greenbacks? Get it?”
Cody rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “I’ll give you all my salary if you’ll just go back to bed. What time is it?”
Tuesday huffed sarcastically on the uphill climb, “Thank you for your support, Cody.”
At the kitchen level once again, she checked her stopwatch, turned and thumped back down.
“Your. Salary. Wouldn’t. Buy. Me. Bum. Butter,” she said, breathless now, thunking a word on each step.
“Beg pardon?” said Olivia.
Tuesday slapped her rear end. “You know, to keep me from getting a rash in my delicate parts. Comes from sitting on that hard seat after a jillion miles or so.”
Cody’s face registered disgust. “Did I need to know that?”
Tuesday was slowing down, but still klomping loudly. Cody waved his arms trying to get her to stop. “Shhhhh. You’ll wake Queenie.” His nickname for Mrs. Harmon.
Olivia shook her finger at him. “Cody, a little respect for my tenant. Your co-tenant. And she won’t hear. Her place has bomb-shelter soundproofing. However, you’ll wake up the rest of the neighborhood, Tues. Can’t you do this later? Like in the daytime?”
Cody scratched his head and ruffled his sun-streaked hair trying to come to life. “Aren’t you getting dizzy?”
Tuesday sat down on a step. “Okay, you win. But if I don’t finish the race and have to pay back all of the donations I’ve raised, I’m coming after you.”
Olivia said, “I give up. Do your thing. I’m awake now anyway. Cody, come on. Help me with breakfast.”
But Cody had to take care of another chore first.
By the time Tuesday finished her workout and the coffee was ready, Cody had tracked down the man’s name. Jocelyn’s first husband. Tobey Carverman. Cody poured himself a glass of orange juice, reporting to his partners in crimefighting that Carverman was a wunderkind in the technology world, where wunderkinds were a dime a dozen. He had invented a device that in itself was not that unusual. An emergency warning system for the elderly. But it had struck a chord with graying boomers as they pitched headlong into their last decades, fearful of pitching headlong onto a floor and breaking a hip. The boomers also falsely thought they could give it to their mothers and fathers to take all the worry out of caring for an aging parent. No warning system was that good.
Cody finished off the juice, then continued the wunderkind’s story. The beeper Carverman designed was worn as jewelry. It was skillfully marketed on social media until it all but beat out yellow wristbands before Lance Armstrong fell from grace. Everyone had to have one. At age twenty-eight, Carverman had entered the rarefied club of twenty-something billionaires.
Olivia listened to Cody read the rest of the man’s Wikipedia bio. “I don’t get it,” she said. “This guy could have supported both of the Paynes and their extravagant lifestyle without it making a dent in his fortune. Why would he kill her?”
Spooning sugar into his coffee mug, Cody said in all seriousness, “Obviously, you don’t know anything about the male ego.”
Olivia just stared at him. “Oh, really? Do you think I’ve been living in a convent?”
Cody downed the coffee in two gulps, then wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his faded flannel shirt. Tuesday scowled, handing him a napkin. He gave her a look, as if he didn’t understand why he needed one.
Nevertheless he swiped it across his mouth, saying, “I mean this isn’t about the money. It’s pride. It’s not even about her. Carverman may have as much money as Payne, maybe even more. But the old guy made him look bad, laughing at him. You don’t need a college degree to get that one.”
Olivia knew his remark came from a sensitive spot. Cody had college plans, but hadn’t been able to figure out how to put them into action. Olivia often told him that with his attention to detail, one of the reasons she valued him, he would make a great contractor with a business degree under his belt.
Tuesday had been quiet, mulling over Carverman’s history and absently unpacking her collection of herbal remedies from a makeup kit and arranging them on the counter by the blender. Then she came to life. “Okay, Cody, you busy today?”
He crossed his eyes and waggled his head in Olivia’s direction. “Uh, yeah! Don’t you know who I work for? When am I not busy?”
She turned to Olivia. “How about you, Ollie Mollie.”
Olivia was at the stove stirring scrambled eggs into crisply fried cubes of pancetta before serving them on a platter with melon slices. “I have to do damage control with Charles and Marguerite Fredericks to convince them I’m not Homicide Hattie. Who knows what they think after last night’s art show.” She stirred faster, trying to get the image of the photos on cable news out of her head.
Tuesday set a plate of toast she’d just made in the center of the table before sitting down. “Then I’ll have to take care of this myself.”
Cody shoveled a forkful of eggs into his mouth. “Take care of what?”
She announced importantly, “I’m going to check out Mr.
Carverman,” then she carefully picked out the pancetta bits from her eggs and spooned them onto Cody’s plate.
To Olivia she said, “I’m going vegan.” Then to Cody, “To see where he’s been the last few days.”
Olivia pointed to the addition to Cody’s breakfast. “I don’t know how to break this to you, but I don’t think eggs are on a vegan diet, much less the pepperoni pizza from last night.”
Tuesday waived her fork until she had finished chewing. “It’s called non-purist vegan. I count animal protein points. It’s the best of both worlds and ironizes your liver and colon.”
Cody said, “Arghhh. I’m eating, dude!”
Tuesday ignored him. “Where do you think I’d find him?”
Cody shrugged. “Ask your tea leaves,” and grinned when she slapped him on his shoulder.
“That’s okay, boys and girls,” Tuesday answered, sneaking a cube of pancetta hidden in her eggs. “I have my car with me. I’ll tootle around town and find him.”
Cody thought of something. “Speaking of tootling, Tues, I have a bike at my folks’ house. I can bring it over if you want.”
Tuesday fist pumped and gave him a high-five. “Whew,” he said. “We won’t have to get up with the birds tomorrow.”
After breakfast Tuesday insisted on cleaning up. Olivia was tempted to turn on the TV to see the latest news but decided she couldn’t take another shock if someone had dropped another bombshell overnight. She went downstairs to her office in her pajamas and robe and checked her email.
A new missive from Awful Arlo greeted her. Attached was a copy of his latest blog post. She hit reply immediately, insisting he stop spamming her. Though she tried to resist reading it, after having a laugh on aslongasIcanstillbuyshoes.blogspot.com, her favorite shoe site, and checking out a sale by one of her favorite shoe designers--a look but don’t touch game she played to help her stick to her budget--she snuck back to Awful Arlo’s post.
“To my Darling Valley dears,” it started.
What trendy designer caught her main squeeze in the arms of a recently deceased socialite? Oh My Goodness. Who could that be? Let’s ask OMG. Just turn to your favorite cable outlet and see the face of jealousy gone wild. Could this woman have murdered a young, beautiful socialite in our own Darling Valley because her boyfriend preferred a younger woman? We don’t know what the grieving husband thinks about his wife’s seeming dalliance with a certain Detective McDreamy, but surely he wouldn’t call it a capital crime.
Olivia closed her computer, too drained to even respond to Arlo. First of all, how did he know Tuesday referred to Matt as Detective McDreamy? And the story about Matt and Jocelyn? That was McNonsense. Had to be. She had asked him to believe her about the mysterious texts on her phone, so she decided that what was good for the goose was good for the gander. Or, vice versa. She would just try to put the matter out of her head and tend to business. Her real business. She checked the time. Both Charles and Marguerite would be up by now. She spoke into her phone, Call Charles Bacon.
In a moment he came on the line. “How ya doin’ doll?”
“Pretty darn good. I’ve just done a smack down on my phone,” she said, staring at it in triumph. She’d only recently figured out how to make the voice activation feature obey her commands. “But truly? I’ve been better Charles, if you want to know the truth.”
“I can imagine.”
He was calling her doll again and sounding cheery. Had he forgotten he thought she was a murderer?
“Did you read Awful Arlo this morning?”
“Oh, yeah.”
She doubted Charles had ever read the society columns in his past life as a transit worker in New Jersey, pre-lottery winnings. How life in Darling Valley had changed him.
Olivia couldn’t hear any noises in the background. He must be alone. “I don’t know what to say except that I did not do this. I couldn’t have. And Matt is not guilty of playing around with that woman.”
“Olivia, if you give me your word that this is a frame-up, that’s good enough for me. I was just following orders from Marguerite yesterday.”
Olivia breathed a sigh of relief. “You have my word, Charles. Now if you don’t want me to work on your party because you think it will look bad, I understand. We can get Angela to fill in. You know she’d do a gorgeous job for you. But if you allow the plans to go forward, I will do everything possible to give you and Franny a party you will remember for the rest of your lives.”
Charles’s grin came through the fiber optic line. “Franny said she wouldn’t marry me if I ditched you.”
“Bless Francesca, but there’s still Marguerite. I have to respect her wishes. She’s throwing the party. If she doesn’t want to be associated with me, I’ll understand. I’m going to call her now.”
“I’ll talk to Marguerite, Olivia.”
“No, Charles. I need to handle this. I have to know she trusts me and is not just letting you twist her arm. I’ll let you know what she says.”
“Okay, whatever you say, Olivia. But remember, if things go south for you, Marie here is a great little cook. I’ll have her bake a cake and stick a file in it.”
Olivia laughed out loud and hung up, then wondered if he was serious.
In a few minutes, Cody came bounding down the stairs, yelling, “OTA!” with Tuesday on his heels.
Olivia closed her robe more tightly. Tuesday’s hair was wet and Cody, as usual, had dressed before he came up for breakfast, two signals that the bathroom was free.
“What are you talking about,” Olivia asked. “What’s OTA?”
Cody came around her desk and held up his phone for her. “Over The Air technology. See here? My buddy sent me a link. You know me, I have a strong back and a weak mind, so I can’t tell you how they do it. But he said it’s the way cell phone companies get into your phone and perform service and stuff. Or something. I don’t know, but this dude told me he’s pretty sure somebody can get into your phone and send messages. Probably have to do some kind of hack, but a computer geek could figure it out.”
Olivia read the link on his phone. It was mostly incomprehensible to her. Though she was completely wired with multiple computers, tablets, smart phones, Bluetooth and had built her own website, she didn’t understand deep technology like coding.
She looked up, not really understanding what she was reading but with appreciation all over her face. “I have to tell Matt about this. He’ll know what to do with the information. Go public with it. Let Detective Johnson handle it. Whatever. Thanks so much, Cody. You’re a doll.”
Cody kicked his foot like a hayseed. “Aw shucks, ma’am.”
Then she shooed Cody and Tuesday away. “Now scat. Let me get to work. I need to call Matt and Marguerite Fredericks. Then we have to figure out what’s up with those pictures.”
Tuesday grabbed Cody by the ear and led him away.
Cody said, “Race you upstairs, Tuesday? First one to the top gets the left over pizza.”
Tuesday got a head start and Olivia called up behind them. ”How old are you two? Twelve?”
Olivia didn’t realize how stressful the past twenty-four hours had been until she felt tension flow out of her like a river. Oh, the relief of being able to prove how someone could hack her phone. The end to this nightmare was in sight. Somehow, Matt would figure out a way to track the cyber prints of the person responsible for this monstrous act.
She spoke into her phone again. Call Matt. It nailed his number correctly on the first try. Olivia took it as an omen that her troubles were over, a sign that she did indeed have control over her life. The phone rang several times, then went into voice mail.
“Hi, sweetheart,” she said, her voice bright with excitement. “I have important news. I know how my phone got hacked. Call me. I love you. Call me right away. Don’t forget.” She was about to hang up, then said, “Love you,” again and disconnected the call.
She was almost giddy with relief, concocting a makeup scenario where they would tre
at themselves to an outrageous dinner at Hugo’s and laugh about all of this.
Dear, dear Matt. This was a test of their relationship, that’s all. The universe somehow meddling in their lives to get them to prove their loyalty to each other. Well, she determined. They would pass this test. She heard a ping. It was an email from Matt. He must have sent it while she was leaving him the message. Happily, she opened it.
There was no greeting, just a short paragraph.
“On the advice of legal counsel I wish us to refrain from any contact with you until further notice. That includes face-to-face meetings, phone conversations, e-mails and texts. Thank you for your cooperation in this matter. If you need to contact me, please do so through my attorney, Hugh McQuillan, Esq.”
A phone number and email for McQuillan followed, which Olivia could not decipher through her outrage.
Chapter Fourteen: Thanks But No Thanks
Olivia had a few minutes to spare to give the rose garden next to the driveway a quick watering before she headed over to Darling Boulevard on an important errand. She didn’t have time for the deadheading right now that Mrs. Harmon had pointedly reminded her they needed. Maybe she could spend a few minutes with them before dinner, but this morning she just wanted to make sure her beauties didn’t get too parched.
She had dressed to thumb her nose at the world today in new pink suede ballet flats she’d gotten on sale, a pink silk and cashmere blend twin set and her favorite tweed slacks. A good look in case she found herself in a photo op, she’d thought grimly, expecting the bloodsucking paparazzi to show up any minute. So stepping carefully to protect her threads, she picked up the hose. As she turned on the spigot, she heard Mrs. Harmon’s front door open behind her.