by Carol Cox
Kate could have sworn Renee was enjoying herself immensely. “This isn’t a television drama, you know. It’s real life.” My life, she added to herself.
Renee’s nose twitched like a terrier on the scent. She glanced at her watch and nodded. “Yes, there’s still time. I must run. May I take this book with me?”
“I guess,” Kate said, slightly taken aback. “Remember that it’s a library book. I’ll need it back in time to return it.”
“No problem.” Renee gathered up Kisses and the book and headed toward the door. “I’ll just skim through the parts I need and have it back before you know it. But I’ll tell you one thing...” She paused in the doorway and wagged her finger at Kate. “Until we find out who’s been doctoring the food at the diner, I am boycotting that establishment.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Kate stared after her. Keeping up with Renee’s quicksilver personality was like trying to catch the wind. She shook her head and looked back at the papers on her lap. Where was she?
Oh yes. She held the two lists up again and looked them over. Her heart sank. How did this help her? Nearly every name connected with the chamber appeared on the list of diners as well. Kate sighed. Maybe spending time on the lists had been nothing more than an exercise in futility. It didn’t seem to move her one bit closer to a solution.
She turned to the section in the notebook that held the articles Livvy had printed out for her. Kate read each one again from start to finish but couldn’t spot anything she hadn’t noted before until a line where Lawton was quoted in one of the early stories jumped out at her:
When the swindlers claimed they were raising money for a clinic in Chacotepec, they made it personal. Someone has taken a project dear to my heart and twisted it into something ugly, using it for this deplorable scheme.
Kate frowned. What project was he talking about? She searched the articles again but didn’t find the answer she sought, so she carried the notebook to the bedroom, got on her laptop, and typed Chacotepec into her search engine. The search yielded little information, and Kate found nothing that seemed to connect the small village to Lawton.
After hitting that dead end, Kate decided to turn her attention back to the happenings in Copper Mill. She needed more information, insider knowledge from someone who was privy to what was going on in the police investigation.
Kate reached for the cordless phone. She knew Deputy Skip Spencer’s phone number without having to look it up. In the middle of dialing, she paused. She’d asked Renee to gather information from Skip last week, and Renee told her that he refused to discuss the matter.
Refused to discuss the matter at all, or to discuss it with Renee? Kate knew how often the personalities of the young deputy and the stubborn seventy-one-year-old woman clashed. Or maybe Sheriff Roberts had told Skip to be extra cautious about fueling rumors.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. It wouldn’t hurt to try. Kate finished dialing, holding her breath until Skip picked up the phone.
She decided not to skirt the issue. “This is Kate Hanlon. I was wondering how things are going in the chamber of commerce investigation.”
Skip’s chuckle echoed over the phone. “Afternoon, Miz Hanlon. I was wonderin’ when we’d hear from you.”
Am I that predictable? Kate laughed. “Sorry to disappoint you. I’ve been a little indisposed lately.”
Skip’s deep voice took on a more professional tone. “You of all people know I can’t share sensitive information about a case.”
“I know, and I wouldn’t expect you to. It’s just that I’ve been laid up for over a week, and I haven’t been able to talk to many people directly. I was wondering if you could give me a few details that might come under the heading of public knowledge.”
Skip cleared his throat. “Maybe. No promises, though. Why don’t you ask the questions, and I’ll see if I can give you the answers.”
“Fair enough.” Kate took a moment to collect her thoughts. “The Chronicle gave some information on how the story broke. It said a donor contacted the chamber to get information on the progress of a project that turned out to be nonexistent.”
“That’s right.”
“They never mentioned the donor by name. Could you tell me who the first one was to raise a question about the fraud?”
There was a pause, then Skip said, “I guess it won’t hurt to tell you that. It’s a man named Arthur Wilkerson up in Nashville. He’s some kind of philanthropist, pretty well heeled from what I hear. We sure appreciated him notifying us. I don’t know if anyone would have clued in to what was goin’ on in time to put a stop to it if he hadn’t blown the whistle.”
Kate reached for her notebook and jotted down the name. “So how did you find out where the money was?”
“Wilkerson kept the solicitation letter and gave it to us. It listed the name of the bank and the account number, everything he needed to send the money directly to that account. We looked at his canceled check and found it had the same account number stamped on the back.”
Skip paused, then went on, his voice heavy. “We went over the account information with the bank manager, and sure enough, there was Mayor Briddle’s name, as plain as day.”
“The account was in his name?”
“Actually, the account was set up in the name of the chamber of commerce. Mayor Briddle’s was the only authorized signature.”
Kate could hear Skip shuffling papers as he spoke. “The bank manager in Pine Ridge is new at the job. He just got promoted to manager and transferred in from another town. He’s still a little shaky on knowin’ how to jump through all the right hoops, and I think this really rattled him. He’s probably gonna be a real stickler for following the rules from here on.”
“I’m sure he will,” Kate said dryly. She doodled on the paper. “What hoops did he fail to jump through?”
Skip grunted. “According to him, the mayor came in with a letter on chamber of commerce letterhead that authorized him to open this account. So far, so good. Briddle signed the signature card, but he didn’t have his wallet with him to provide the ID they required. The manager remembered that he was really embarrassed about leavin’ his wallet at home.
“Knowing that he was the mayor of Copper Mill, the manager decided to cut him some slack and allowed him to open the account. But he told Briddle he could only make deposits. He wouldn’t be able to make withdrawals until they completed all the necessary paperwork.”
Kate’s grip tightened on the phone. “So you’re absolutely sure that Lawton Briddle is the one who set up the account?”
Skip’s voice softened. “I know how he’s been quoted in the Chronicle and what he’s been sayin’ all over town. But everything is falling into place, Miz Hanlon. I’m dead certain we’ve got our man. And that’s about all I can tell you. Sorry if it wasn’t what you wanted to hear.”
Kate sighed. “That’s all right. I wanted you to be honest, and you were.”
“And I hope you feel better. It’s a shame to hear that you’ve been sick.”
Kate drew a slow breath. “It may be more than that, Skip. I think I may have been given something that made me sick.” She closed her eyes and waited for his reaction.
“You mean on purpose?” he asked. Kate could imagine a puzzled frown crinkling the deputy’s freckled face. “Why would anybody want to do that?”
“Maybe it was to keep me from looking into the story behind this fraud. I think someone other than Lawton Briddle may have been responsible.”
Skip let out a hiss of air. “But I just told you—”
“I know, and I can understand your point of view. I don’t have any hard evidence for you, not yet anyway, but I was working on it before I got sick. I think someone didn’t want me to continue.”
Quickly she outlined what had happened since she ate at the diner. From Skip’s muttered responses, she could tell he was taking notes.
“I’m not sure what to think about this, Miz Hanlon,” he said when she
finished. “But be sure to let me know if you get any solid information. At least I’ll have this on hand if you do get enough for me to file a report.”
Kate thanked him, then hung up and called Information in Nashville. A couple of minutes later, she had Arthur Wilkerson on the line.
“Are you a reporter?” he asked as soon as Kate identified herself.
“No, I’ve been asked to look into the matter for a private party.” She had no idea what kind of opinion he held in regard to Lawton, so she refrained from mentioning his name. “I just wondered if you could answer a few questions for me.”
“As long as you don’t plan to put my answers in print. I’ve had enough of the media hounding me.”
“Agreed,” Kate said crisply. “Can you tell me if you ever had any other communication from the Copper Mill Chamber of Commerce before you received the solicitation letter?”
“No, can’t say that I did. To tell you the truth, I didn’t even know where Copper Mill was until I looked on a map. I checked the town out on the Internet and made a few phone calls. Everything seemed like it was on the up and up.”
Kate tapped her pen against her notebook. “What can you tell me about the letter?”
“Whoever wrote it did a fine job of pulling the wool over my eyes. It talked about an impoverished town down in Mexico—Chacotepec, I think it was. Said they wanted to start a clinic there and were looking for people to offer financial assistance. I’ve helped start several clinics in Central America and the Caribbean over the past ten years or so. I assumed they’d heard about my interest in such things, and that was why they contacted me in the first place.”
Kate pursed her lips. If the man had the means to help start a number of clinics over the course of a decade, Skip was right. He did sound as if he was well off. “What made you suspect that everything wasn’t as it appeared to be?”
“I didn’t get suspicious until after I’d already pulled several of my friends in. That’s the part that really bothers me about this. If it was just a case of me getting flimflammed, that’s one thing, but word of mouth really took off on this project, and I’m the one who started it. I blame myself.”
“You certainly meant well, though,” Kate commiserated. “So you shared the story with friends?”
“As much as I regret it now, yes. The day I wrote the check, I went to a dinner with some of the people I do business with. The subject of worthwhile charities came up, and I told them about this great opportunity to help out a whole region. They got excited and asked for the contact information. Then they told their friends, and you can see where it went from there.”
Kate thought over what he had said, then asked, “What made you contact the chamber later on?”
“It’s something I do anytime I make a sizable donation. I like to track the progress of a project and find out how the money’s being used. Not so much that I distrust anybody, but if it looks like a really valuable cause, I may want to give them even more. I’m just trying to be a good steward of the money the Lord has entrusted to me and use it to help others along the way.”
“That’s wonderful,” Kate said. “I wish more people had your heart for helping others.” She brought her thoughts back to the case. “When you got in touch with the chamber, did you use the contact information on the letter you received?”
“That was the craziest thing. They didn’t have a phone number listed. I can’t believe I didn’t notice that right off. I had my secretary get the number from Information and made the call myself. You can imagine my shock when the person I asked didn’t have any idea what project I was talking about. Lawton Briddle’s name was on the letter, so the next call I made was to him.”
Wilkerson’s voice hardened. “I’ll tell you what, the man put on a good show, blustering on about wanting to get to the bottom of the matter. And here it turns out he was the one behind the swindle all along.”
Kate swallowed. It probably wouldn’t do any good to argue with him until she had solid evidence in hand. “Do you still have the letter?”
“Not the original. I turned that over to the police. I made a copy, though. I have it here in my files.”
Kate’s heart beat faster. “Would you be willing to fax that to me?”
Wilkerson hesitated. “I suppose I could, but I don’t see what good it would do you.”
“I’m not sure either,” Kate admitted. “But I’d like to look at it all the same.” There was no way of telling ahead of time whether a piece of evidence would provide a clue that might be the key to unlocking the mystery.
She gave Mr. Wilkerson the church’s fax number, then thanked him. “I appreciate your time and your candor.”
“The really sad thing is that the money is tied up until this is all taken care of. It can’t do any good for anybody just sitting there in that bank.”
Kate winced. “Well, let’s hope things get straightened out soon so you and the rest of the donors can recover your funds.”
She ended the call, then jotted down a few notes to remind her of the conversation and filed them in her notebook. She closed the binder and ran her fingers across the cover. Had she made any progress?
She had thought that getting some more information in addition to what she’d read in the articles might shed some light on the puzzle, but she didn’t feel any further ahead than before she made her phone calls.
A loose sheet of paper fluttered to the floor, and Kate reached down to pick it up. It was one of the lists Renee had been looking at, the one naming people connected to the chamber of commerce. Kate turned the pages in the notebook so she could put the list in its proper place. As she slipped the holes in the paper over the rings, she remembered the thought that had struck her toward the end of Renee’s visit: what about the time it took to recover from the effects of different poisons? If she could learn that, it might help her pinpoint the specific substance that had been used on her.
Returning to the couch, she picked up her assortment of plant books and started to read.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Kate frowned and looked at the chart she’d created to sort out the information she had gleaned from the books. Nearly all of them listed recovery times of a few hours to several days, but nothing over a week. She’d found no mention of the likelihood of recurrence days later, nothing to explain her second round of illness following the impromptu get-together in their living room.
Kate tapped the end of her pen against her chin. Had she been barking up the wrong tree all this time? Maybe she had contracted some strange malady they hadn’t even thought of yet. And yet the research she had done on her symptoms kept bringing her back to the likelihood of poison.
She went back over what she’d experienced both times she became sick. Wait a minute. The second time, she’d experienced no feeling of disorientation, no memory loss. That almost sounded as if there had been two distinct episodes of illness.
But how could that be? Kate closed her eyes, the better to concentrate. Except for the brief time she’d tended her flower bed, she hadn’t gone out of the house since get-ting sick. The diner had offered a perfect opportunity for someone to doctor her food the first time. But what about the second?
Kate’s eyes flew open wide. Last Sunday, the second time she had taken ill, the house had been filled with people. She struggled to get her breath, feeling as though all the air had suddenly been sucked out of the room.
Had someone—a person they knew and loved—come into their home and administered another dose?
Feeling utterly drained, Kate gathered her notebook and pen and carried them to the bedroom, where she crawled onto the bed and pulled the covers up under her chin. Was she not even safe in her own home? A convulsive shudder shook her from head to toe.
Kate waited for the trembling to subside, then reached for the phone. A quick glance at the clock told her Livvy would be getting off work shortly. She tried the library’s number but got a busy signal. She hung up and punched in Renee’s number,
breathing a prayer of thanksgiving when her friend answered on the second ring.
“Could you come over to the house right away? I want to make a more complete time line of events, but I’ll need help to think it through and make sure I don’t miss anything.”
Renee didn’t waste a moment asking questions. “I’ll pop something in the oven for Mother’s dinner and be on my way.”
While she waited, Kate sat up and got out a fresh sheet of paper. At the top of this one, she wrote “People at Our House Last Sunday.”
Was that enough? Others who hadn’t stopped by that day had sent over gifts of food. They wouldn’t necessarily have had to be on the premises to get the poison into her home. But how could they be sure Kate would be the only one to consume it? Maybe it didn’t matter to them. Anyone desperate enough to resort to such an extreme measure might not care how many other people were harmed in the process.
Kate returned to the title at the top of the page and added “Or Sent Gifts of Food.” Her work on the new list was interrupted when a knock sounded on the front door and the doorbell rang simultaneously. Kate tossed her pen aside and went to open the door.
Livvy and Renee stood before her. Livvy held a large whiteboard that almost hid her from view. Renee’s hand was raised, apparently poised for another onslaught of knocking.
As soon as the door swung open, Renee marched into the living room with Kisses in one arm and a white plastic bag slung over the other. She pivoted around and studied Kate.
“You look a little peaked. I assume you’ve been lying down?” When Kate nodded, Renee sailed off toward the bedroom.
Kate looked at Livvy. “What’s with the whiteboard?”
Livvy stepped inside. “I’m not sure,” she murmured. “Renee stopped by the library just as I was getting ready to leave and told me I’d better come over here with her right away.”
Renee hurried back from the bedroom, minus the plastic bag, and clapped her hands at Livvy as if shooing along a small child. “Let’s get a move on. The game’s afoot. From the urgency in Kate’s voice when she called me, I feel we don’t have a moment to lose.”