Charlotte shrugged. “I haven’t.”
Looking more uncomfortable with each passing moment, Benny chimed in, “Neither have I. Why? Is there something we should know?”
Dawn shot him a sly but knowing look. “I’m pretty sure that you already know, and after listening to your conversation with Laura, I’m positive that you knew before you came here. And now, after that front-page article, the whole town knows.”
Charlotte’s heart sank, but just to be sure that Dawn was talking about Nick’s murder and Angel’s arrest, she asked, “What, just exactly, is the article about?”
“It’s about Nick being murdered and Marti being arrested for his murder. Y’all knew it all along, didn’t you? That’s why y’all came here to begin with.”
Smart lady. Charlotte nodded. “Yes, it is. But we didn’t set out to purposely deceive anyone,” she hastened to add. “It’s just that everyone we’ve talked to is so proud of Angel—I mean Marti—and once we realized that no one knew about it yet, we didn’t want to be the ones to bring the bad news.”
“Just one thing,” Dawn said. “Are you trying to help Marti or hurt her?”
“Help her,” Charlotte and Benny immediately replied in unison.
“That’s what I thought—had hoped—but I had to make sure. Still, if you think that Nick was blackmailing Marti, and it proves to be true, wouldn’t that hurt her?”
Out of the corner of her eye, Charlotte spotted two nurse’s aides within hearing distance. From the looks of them, they were soaking in everything that was being said. At the other end of the hallway, nurses bustled in and out of patients’ room. Too public, she decided, much too exposed to talk here.
Charlotte shook her head and lowered her voice. “Not necessarily. If you have a few minutes, we’d love to explain, and maybe even ask you a few questions, but not here. Too many curious ears around, if you get my drift.” She tilted her head in the direction of the aides. “Is there somewhere else we could go and talk in private?”
Dawn shifted her eyes to the aides, then back to Charlotte. “I understand, and you’re right. How about I meet you at the Coffee Corner in about fifteen minutes or so? It’s a coffeehouse not far from here,” she explained. “There shouldn’t be a lot of people there this time of the morning, and”—she smiled—“Mr. Harper, the owner, is half deaf.”
“That would be great,” Benny said, “but you’ll need to give us directions.”
“I also need to make sure that one of the other nurses will keep an eye on Laura—Mrs. Pate—for me too.”
After giving Benny directions to the Coffee Corner, Dawn rushed off toward the nurse’s station near the junction of two hallways, and Charlotte and Benny headed for the limo.
“Did you get the feeling that Dawn Sanders wants to tell us something?” Charlotte asked as Benny pulled out of the parking lot onto the main road.
Benny nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Let’s just hope it’s something that will help Angel.”
“Maybe she can enlighten us a bit more about Angel and Nick’s early relationship. And about that party that Laura mentioned. Interesting that even back then, Laura didn’t like Nick hanging around.”
“Good intuition,” Benny replied. “Nick was a piece of trash as far as I’m concerned. And believe me, I know trash when I see it.”
Given all that she’d learned so far about Nick Franklin, Charlotte had to agree with Benny’s assessment. Even so, Benny’s vehemence and brief reference to his own past was a bit unnerving, as well as telling. She only wished there were some way she could help him move past the deep resentment he still harbored against his family.
The Coffee Corner turned out to be half of a quaint, small shotgun double that had, like Charlotte’s home, probably been built in the 1920s, but had been meticulously restored. The other half of the double was obviously an antique shop since the sign above the door read THE ANTIQUE STORE.
“Catchy name, huh.” Charlotte said, tongue-in-cheek, when Benny opened her door.
“Now, now, someone once told me that ‘if you can’t say something nice, then you shouldn’t say anything.’”
Charlotte rolled her eyes. “I swear, do you remember everything that I told you?”
Benny grinned. “Yeah, most of it—at least the good stuff. And by the way, you also said that I shouldn’t swear either.”
By the time they entered the small building, they were both laughing. Charlotte breathed deeply. “Don’t you just love the smells of a coffeehouse?” She glanced around, taking in the quaint café. There were several individual small tables with chairs, but there was also a conversation area that consisted of a small sofa, a couple of easy chairs, and a coffee table, along with a bookcase full of books.
“It does smell good in here,” Benny replied.
As Dawn had predicted, there weren’t but a few customers inside the Coffee Corner. There were two men busy typing away on laptops at separate tables. At another table a woman was talking on a cell phone.
Since the older man behind the counter was wearing a hearing aid, Charlotte figured he must be Mr. Harper, the owner. When they approached the counter, the man greeted them with a big smile. “Morning, folks.” He reached across the counter and gave each of them an enthusiastic handshake. “Name’s Joe Harper. What’ll you have?”
Charlotte smiled back and quickly scanned the menu posted on the wall above the counter. “Café au lait for me,” she told him.
“The house blend will be fine for me,” Benny added.
By the time they paid for their coffee and had chosen a table that would afford the most privacy, Dawn arrived.
“Your usual, honey?” Mr. Harper asked her, his big smile still in place as he hurried around the counter to give Dawn an affectionate hug.
Talk about your friendly proprietor, Charlotte thought. Maybe a little too friendly.
“Yes, sir,” Dawn responded, hugging him back and kissing his cheek.
Charlotte sighed. Maybe she was just being an old fuddy-duddy.
Or an old prude.
I’m not that old, she silently argued with the aggravating voice in her head. And I ’m certainly not a prude.
When Dawn joined Charlotte and Benny, Charlotte commented, “Nice, friendly place here,” putting the emphasis on “friendly.”
Dawn nodded as she seated herself. “Yes, ma’am, and Mr. Harper is a real sweetie pie.” Then, as if Dawn knew exactly what Charlotte had been thinking, she grinned. “And just so you know, he also happens to be my stepfather. My own father died before I was born, and Joe raised me since I was two.”
The heat of embarrassment burned Charlotte’s cheeks. Clearing her throat, she forced a smile. “No wonder you recommended this place.”
Still grinning, Dawn nodded again. Then her expression grew serious. “About Marti—why do the police think that she killed Nick? Not that I’d blame her if she did,” she added.
Charlotte winced. “I hope you’ll pardon me for saying so, but you sound a bit bitter.”
“Not so much bitter as guilty,” Dawn admitted. “I heard you mention something about the possibility of Nick blackmailing Marti. Well, Nick was certainly capable of doing that and more. Suffice it to say, he was not a nice man. I could tell you lots of stuff about him, only I’m afraid that anything I tell you might only hurt Marti more.”
“I understand,” Charlotte replied. “But just keep in mind that we’re the good guys. We want to help her. What we’re trying to find out is if there’s any reason Nick would have a hold over Marti.”
Dawn shrugged. “Maybe, but mind you it’s only hearsay, and I can’t prove anything.”
“It doesn’t matter. Right now, we’re just trying to gather as much information as we can.” Charlotte paused a moment. Ever since they had talked to Laura Pate, what Laura had told them about the wild party given by Alex Scott had stuck in her mind. Though it might not have anything to do with Angel and Nick’s relationship, Charlotte had a feeling that there was somet
hing fishy about the whole thing.
“Ah, Dawn, Laura mentioned something about a wild party that a boy named Alex Scott gave and how she suspected that Marti had been to that party. Do you know anything about that?”
“Maybe. You see, back in high school during our senior year, Nick and Marti were dating, but—” Dawn’s face flushed and she lowered her gaze to stare at her cup of coffee.
“But what?” Charlotte prompted.
“I can’t tell you how embarrassing this is and how ashamed I am, but at the time, Nick was two-timing Marti.” She paused, then lifted her gaze to stare directly at Charlotte. “He was two-timing her with me.” She grimaced. “I was so stupid back then. Not only stupid, but also naive. I thought that Nick was my ticket to becoming one of the popular kids.”
Charlotte frowned. “I don’t understand. According to what Laura told us, she strongly suspected that Nick and his brothers were abused by a drunken father. Usually kids like that aren’t in with the popular crowd.”
“It’s true that his father was a mean drunk, but he was also the president of the only bank in town.”
“So what you’re saying is that Nick’s family had lots of money?”
“If living in one of the biggest houses in town, belonging to the country club, and wearing only the best clothes counts, then I guess they did, or so everyone assumed.”
Charlotte thought about that for a moment, mostly because it didn’t quite fit her preconceived idea of Nick.
“Just goes to show that not everything is as it appears to be, though,” Dawn explained. “It wasn’t long after we graduated that Mr. Franklin was found dead in the parking lot behind the bank. The police think it was a robbery gone bad. According to the gossip around town, the robber tried to force Mr. Franklin to open the bank vault after hours, Mr. Franklin refused, and the robber beat him to death.” She shrugged. “They never did find who killed him. But after that, Nick’s mother lost everything and moved back to Jackson, where she had family. It seems that her husband didn’t have any life insurance and their big house was mortgaged to the hilt. Their whole lifestyle was a sham. They fooled everyone for a while, though, especially me.”
But Nick hadn’t fooled Laura Pate, thought Charlotte. And from what Charlotte had learned so far, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree where Nick Franklin was concerned. But when it came down to it, nothing that Dawn had said so far was going to be any help. “So, about that party,” Charlotte said, trying to steer Dawn back on track. “Were you at that party?”
Dawn shook her head. “No, ma’am. Like I said, back then I wasn’t exactly what you’d call one of the in-crowd—you know, one of the popular kids—so I wasn’t invited. I really didn’t know anything about the party until later, and that’s what I wanted to tell you. Not long after Alex Scott was tried and convicted—and this was before Nick’s father was murdered—Nick wanted to go up to Jackson to a rock concert. Marti’s parents wouldn’t let her go, so he invited me. Afterward, he got drunk and said some things that made me believe that he and Marti, not Alex, were the ones who had taken Alex’s car for a joyride the night that Alex’s sister was killed.”
Dawn shuddered, and after a moment, she took a deep breath and said, “Nick, not Alex, was the one who ran over Alex’s sister. Nick was the one driving the car.”
Chapter 11
Momentarily stunned, Charlotte stared at Dawn. “But wait!” she exclaimed, once she found her voice. “I don’t understand. Wasn’t Alex—the girl’s brother—arrested and convicted?”
When Dawn nodded, Charlotte said, “But how can that be? If Nick was the one who was driving, then surely there had to be evidence in the car, fingerprints and such.”
Dawn shook her head. “Nick bragged about wiping off all of their fingerprints and fooling the cops.”
“But surely there must have been witnesses. Some of the other kids at the party must have seen something.”
Dawn shook her head. “All the kids were in the back around the swimming pool. The car was out front on the driveway.”
Before she thought it through, Charlotte blurted, “So, once you knew what really happened, why didn’t you go to the police? For that matter, if it was an accident, why didn’t Nick or Marti go to the police?”
Dawn shook her head. “Both of them had been drinking that night. Nick had already had a couple of run-ins with the law and had spent time in a juvenile detention facility. A hit-and-run conviction could have landed him in prison for most of the rest of his life. Also, with Angel’s father being a minister and all, a scandal like that would have ruined him. As for me, I thought about going to the police. I wanted to go,” she stressed, “but it would have been my word against both Nick and Marti’s—my word against the bank president’s son and a minister’s daughter. Who do you think the cops would have believed?”
Dawn could be right about the police not believing her, but—“Why didn’t you at least tell your parents?”
Dawn sighed. “Then I would have to have told them about my trip to Jackson with Nick. I knew they didn’t want me dating him and I also knew that if I had asked to go with him to that concert, they would have said no. So I didn’t ask. I lied and told them I was spending the night with a girlfriend. By the time I’d worked up enough courage to tell my parents, Nick had sobered up and realized what he’d told me. He threatened to kill me and my parents if I ever breathed a word of what he’d said to anyone.” Dawn’s lips quivered. “And I believed him,” she whispered.
Dawn blinked several times, but a tear slipped down her cheek anyway. “The whole thing has bothered me for years, especially the thought of Alex serving time for a crime he didn’t commit. I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to tell someone, but I’m ashamed to admit that I’m a coward at heart. Then, today, when I read that article on the front page of the newspaper, I knew that I could finally tell the truth. Not that it really matters anymore or helps Alex. Nick is dead and Alex got out of prison a couple of years ago. Still, it doesn’t seem right that the truth will never be known.”
Charlotte was at a loss for words as she sat there, staring into space, trying to make sense of everything that Dawn had revealed.
“Guess y’all think I’m a pretty rotten person, huh?”
Dawn’s quivery voice drew Charlotte’s attention, and she immediately reached out to pat the young woman’s hand. “No, of course not,” she soothed. “You were just a kid and got caught up in a no-win situation. It took a lot of courage for you to finally share this.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Charlotte spotted Joe Harper headed their way. From his grim, bordering on angry expression, Charlotte figured he’d noticed Dawn was upset and probably thought that she and Benny were the blame.
Glaring at Charlotte and Benny, Joe placed a protective hand on Dawn’s shoulder. “Dawn, honey, what’s going on? Are you okay?”
Dawn turned her head and looked up at him. “I’m okay, Daddy.” She glanced at Charlotte, then at Benny. Finally, giving Joe a shaky smile, she said, “There’s something I need to tell you.” She shoved her chair back and stood. To Charlotte, she said, “If y’all need anything else, you can find me at the nursing home.”
Charlotte smiled encouragingly at the young woman. “Thank you for your help. Also, I don’t think it’s in anyone’s interest, especially Marti’s, right now to go to the police.”
“Police?” Joe sputtered.
Ignoring him for the moment, Charlotte continued. “Like you said earlier, Nick is dead, and Marti certainly isn’t going to risk incriminating herself further at this point. Without proof, it’s just hearsay.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Charlotte reached inside her purse and pulled out her business card. She held out the card to Dawn. “Just in case you think of anything else, please give me a call.”
Dawn took the card and nodded. Then she turned to Joe. “Daddy, it’s almost lunchtime. Why don’t you close the store and let me take you to lunch, fo
r a change? I’ve got a story to tell you.”
“What now?” Benny asked a few minutes later, his hand on the door handle of the passenger side of the limo.
Charlotte frowned in thought. “I’m not really sure. It seems that we’ve certainly opened up a can of worms here. One thing I am sure of is that if what Dawn says is true—and I do believe her—then that’s our proof that Nick was blackmailing Angel. At least now we know why Angel was so tight-lipped about Nick. Proof that he was blackmailing her would only be more motive for her to kill him. Even so, and if for no other reason than clearing that Scott boy’s name, I think we need to find out for sure.”
“No!” Benny shook his head.
“What do you mean, no?”
“That would be like nailing the lid closed on Angel’s coffin. In fact, we need to tell Dawn and her stepfather to keep their mouths shut about this.”
Benny’s dark angry expression sent a shiver up Charlotte’s spine, and she didn’t like it one bit. What she needed was to calm him down before things got out of hand. “Whoa, Benny,” she said evenly, but with force. “Take it easy.” She reached up and gently squeezed his upper arm. “I’m on your side, remember? And I did suggest to Dawn that it wasn’t in Angel’s best interest right now to go to the police. At the moment this all seems like it’s really bad news, but I don’t intend to do anything that’s going to hurt Angel. We came here to help her, and I have to believe that once the whole truth comes out, in the end, Angel will be exonerated.”
At the moment, she wasn’t sure whether she was trying to convince Benny or herself. All she knew was that she had to keep a lid on things, especially Benny’s temper, and hope and pray that everything worked out for the best.
She paused a minute to let what she’d said sink in. For long minutes, Benny silently stared past Charlotte into space. From his agonizing expression he seemed to be fighting some inner demon. Then, out of the blue, it came to her. Why, oh why, hadn’t she seen it before? It was right there in front of her nose the whole time. Benny’s protectiveness of Angel went way beyond mere friendship or even their employer-employee relationship. At some point he’d fallen in love with her.
Dusted to Death Page 14