“Oh, yes. Well, usually she’s having tea when I arrive.”
“What time do you arrive?”
Francine looked away and seemed to be shaking.
“It’s okay. I just need to know what time you tried to wake Samantha.”
The woman glanced around, still avoiding eye contact. Finally, she said,
“You see, miss… it’s just… I didn’t know how important it was, and I told a little white lie. My sitter had some trouble, so I didn’t get here until nine, but I told Samantha eight. I’d even left a message on her machine at six thirty or so, knowing I’d be late, but it hadn’t been checked when I got here, so I thought I’d dodged getting my pay docked. I didn’t know how important it would be. I erased my message.”
Cam nodded. “I won’t say anything unless for some reason the police investigation needs that information.”
The woman nodded gratefully and then led Cam into a small, pretty parlor she hadn’t seen the last time. Samantha looked up from a desk where she was writing in a ledger.
“Camellia! Lovely to see you!” Samantha rose and kissed both her cheeks. Joseph stood from a chair on one side of the room and briefly grasped her hand in both of his.
“Samantha, I should let you go. I’ve got things to attend to.”
“Nonsense, Joseph. Stay and visit.”
“No, really!” He ducked out without another word.
“Sorry to chase him off,” Cam said.
“Oh, honey. He needs to man up a little. He’s just so shy!”
“But I don’t want to scare him away.”
“He needs to be scared away now and again to prove there is nothing to be scared of. The poor man is afraid of his own shadow!”
“If you’re sure.”
“Of course, I’m sure. Honestly, I love him to pieces, but he’s very needy. I’d like to see him expand his network a little.”
“But does my scaring him off help that? Or hurt it?”
“I think it helps. Okay, strike that. I hope it helps—teaches him he can’t solely count on me, and I know it helps me. It’s a burden to have a person so dependent on you.”
Cam smiled, encouraged.
“I hope you won’t change your mind. I have… some curiosities…”
“Oh! Speaking of curiosity, you know I was thinking. That sleeping pill? I bet Johnnie did that.”
“Johnnie?”
“Well, yes. He was obviously up to something, sneaking off in the wee hours of the morning, showing up at the Patricks’ like that. It makes sense he wouldn’t want me to interfere.”
“That does make sense, I guess.”
“Okay, so what were you curious about?”
“I’m concerned for my sister.” The lie, she noticed, was getting easier.
Samantha nodded, her brow slightly wrinkled.
“And I’ve just learned from Evangeline that Nick—Petunia’s husband—was in a band with Evangeline… and Jean-Jacques…”
“Nick’s the one who stole the money,” Samantha said. Her voice had dropped, and she looked away from Cam.
“According to Evangeline—she didn’t know until Nick was in jail, but Jean-Jacques stole it, then saw he was going to be caught and framed Nick.”
Samantha bit her lip. “Oh dear. I was afraid that might be the real story.” She looked truly sorry but then frowned again. “So Nick didn’t kill him to get even, did he?”
“No! Nick didn’t kill him at all! I’m just trying to… understand Jean-Jacques, I guess.”
“Why do you think Nick wouldn’t kill him for that? It seems like a pretty good motive to me.”
“Because I know Nick… He wouldn’t kill anybody for any reason. And there was a second death while Nick was in jail, so if Nick did kill Jean-Jacques, then we have two killers. But it doesn’t matter. Nick is gentle—well, other than normal posturing. Given the chance, he might have punched Jean-Jacques, I suppose—he might think he deserved a crooked nose for the rest of his life. But he’d never quietly kill somebody. If he had to—or thought he did—there would be honor involved. It would be public.”
Samantha’s mouth stood open. She clearly hadn’t considered that angle.
“And what does all that have to do with me?” Samantha asked.
“He was your nephew. You knew him.”
“Oh, I don’t think I knew him. I always wished he wanted more of a relationship. His sister, Margo, and I are quite close, but my sister, his mother, is pretty self-absorbed. An actress—second-rate at best. I think he never got proper attention or discipline, and he and I never bonded like I did with Margo.”
Cam wasn’t interested in Jean-Jacques’s childhood deficits, but a little history might help.
“He came here summers?”
“Both of them did. Six weeks a summer from when Johnnie was thirteen. My sister did a summer Shakespeare festival somewhere—maybe New Hampshire. Anyway, she was divorced and needed a place for her kids.” Samantha’s body language was a little stiff, and Cam wondered why.
Cam went on to ask about the friendship with Evangeline and their activities, not really sure what she was looking for, trying to avoid a shutdown from Samantha.
“Evangeline seemed pretty mad about Jean-Jacques framing Nick.”
“Well, she didn’t mention that to me, but I know she was mad about him trying to borrow money again.”
“Money?” Cam had had a hint of this but wondered what Samantha would volunteer.
“Oh, it never amounted to anything—Evangeline learned how to tell him no years ago, but she grumbled about it recently.” Samantha sat back, finally relaxing a little. “I wish he’d been more like his sister. Margo and I had a great time—days at the country club by the pool—shopping. Johnnie always acted entitled, as if the rest of us should pay for his company, but then he wouldn’t behave so anybody else might have a nice time. Evangeline lived around the corner and she caught his eye.”
Samantha was rambling, but Cam found it fascinating.
“Their family wasn’t quite as privileged, but I found if I also invited Evangeline, then Johnnie would behave to impress her. It worked beautifully for about two summers. Then both of them got it in their heads they’d rather do their own thing, and honestly, I was just glad to have him out of my hair. I pretended it worked for several more summers, until I saw he didn’t seem serious about college or a job. The camera seemed productive. At least he was somewhat dedicated. I wanted to see him succeed—be self-supporting. But that’s not a cheap business to start up.”
“So you loaned him the money, which he didn’t pay back,” Cam said, surmising the remaining details. “And after a while, you figured you’d never get it, so instead you used the debt to pressure him to come here.”
“That’s the short version.” Samantha looked guilty.
“And when did he get here?”
Samantha shrugged.
The gesture reminded her oddly of Joseph, who, Cam now remembered, had been the one who told her Jean-Jacques was staying at Samantha’s house.
She wasn’t sure what this shared gesture meant, but concluded that Samantha and Joseph must spend a lot of time together. It was a commonality like those she and Annie had.
Joseph burst in then, reminding Samantha of some lunch they had to get to, and it looked like Samantha’s concentration and attention evaporated.
“Cam, I’ve enjoyed this. I’d love to chat more later. I know you need a friend.”
Cam grasped Samantha’s hand and asked when would be good, ignoring the fact Samantha might only have said that to be polite.
“Any time after two.”
Joseph smiled, though Cam figured it was only for appearances. She could see he liked to keep Samantha to himself as much as possible. Cam decided what she needed was a little quality time in her garden. Pulling out the weeds that didn’t deserve to make their homes in her beautiful beds required a certain frame of mind, but she had just entered that zone. A little selective herbicide
was exactly what she was in the mood to do.
CHAPTER 15
Talking with Evangeline and Samantha had helped, but she needed a sounding board—Annie would have been ideal, but she was in jail. Pulling out a long strand of nightshade that had crept around the fence from her neighbor’s yard was a little satisfying, but when the dirt under her nails started to bug her, she was ready to talk to someone.
She called Rob, hoping the news of Annie’s arrest would help her convince him that police leads could be misleading.
“Are you talking to me again?” he asked when he heard her voice.
“Will you stop it? We settled this last night. I don’t want to fight. Just don’t tell me Nick did it, because he didn’t.”
“Neither did Annie.”
“Well, I agree with you there. I hoped you had some time to talk through some other ideas I had.”
The pause was too long, but because she got the answer she wanted, she decided to ignore the time lag.
“Where are you? I’ll pick you up.”
“Can you swing by for some takeout and come to my place in an hour? I have a couple things I need to get done first,” she said.
He agreed and she hung up, then went to bring her gardening things inside. Just as she opened her back door, her phone rang again. She glanced at the caller ID display and rolled her eyes. Madeline Leclerc undoubtedly had some imaginary crisis, and Cam wasn’t in the mood for it.
“Cam, I really need to talk to you about some things. Do you have time?”
“A little.”
Madeline sighed but requested Cam come to La Fontaine.
“I’ll be out there in ten minutes.”
Cam would have asked to have their discussion by phone, but La Fontaine had to have some of the elusive answers she was looking for, so maybe she’d just poke around a little with Madeline as an excuse.
She drove to La Fontaine, psyching herself up for whatever Madeline had in mind. Cam found her just inside the front door, pacing as she waited. It looked as though Mr. Patrick and Evangeline had abandoned her for other obligations.
“I just wanted to see how the investigation was going from your perspective, Cam.”
“My perspective? I’m hardly a detective.” She was annoyed that this was the emergency, though careful not to show it, as Madeline was her boss.
“I hear you’ve been asking a lot of questions.”
“A few, I suppose.” She grabbed onto the only detail she felt Madeline would really approve of. “I tried to convince the police that Ian was the murderer, but unfortunately, somebody killed him.”
While Cam had thought Ian was a legitimate suspect, and had willingly, though fruitlessly, pointed the police in his direction, she hated feeling that her boss would prefer she say anything, even lie, to ensure the Garden Society members remained off the investigators’ radar.
“And what are you up to now?” Madeline asked. “Surely the murderer is one of the two they have.”
“I know it’s not,” Cam said sternly. “I’m trying to figure out who would want to hurt the Garden Society so badly, but I really need to check some things in back.” She headed outside, hoping Madeline believed the fib and wasn’t offended with her escape. Cam wasn’t in the mood to lie more than that to her boss, and she didn’t think her boss was really within her rights to suggest Cam investigate a murder. Especially the part where she was supposed to implicate her loved ones.
She walked along the jagged path that wove through the lily leaves of the giant mosaic. The rain had knocked many buds from several flowering bushes onto the ground, and the buds emitted sweet scents in protest. Every few steps Cam breathed deeply. She almost bumped into Hannah, who was doing the same thing.
“Oh! Hi! I thought you were at a hotel,” Cam said.
“We came back for our stuff; they wouldn’t let us take it last night in case there was…”
“Evidence?”
Hannah looked down, half a nod of agreement. “They don’t want us to leave town until the weekend, in case there are more questions, but we’ll go back to the hotel.”
“That’s understandable. Ian was murdered in the servant’s house. I certainly wouldn’t want to stay there.”
“Yeah, a policeman is checking everything before it gets packed. He said it would take a while with Tom, so I could go until it was my turn.”
The whole idea was gruesome to Cam, but still fascinating.
“What do they think they’ll find?”
“I think they hope the memory card from the camera will show up. I guess it wasn’t in the camera when they found it, so they’re scouring in case it just fell out.”
“I’ll bet whoever killed Ian took it. You heard about the break-in last night?”
“Break-in? I didn’t hear about that,” Hannah said. “But it’s also possible they were looking for this.” She held out what looked like a cigar box. She covered her fingers with the tips of her sleeves to open it—it was full of cash.
“Hannah!”
“Ian asked me to hide it in my bag—I had it at the party. He said it was a surprise. I thought maybe it was a present for Tom or something. I didn’t open it until we got to the hotel last night.”
“Holy cow! Did you count it?”
“No. I didn’t want to touch it. I’m going to turn it in when it’s my turn.”
Money was a huge alarm bell, and she was glad to know that both Hannah and Tom were honest enough to turn it over. Cam wondered what the heck it was about. The talk of the memory card, though, reminded her of something else from the night before: the pictures downloaded onto her own laptop. She couldn’t believe she’d forgotten in the chaos of the arrest that she’d been meant to copy them and then share them with the police.
She made her excuses and sprinted around the house to Annie’s car. She sped away fast enough to make Annie proud.
At home she opened her laptop and pulled up the pictures. They looked like normal party shots—some people hamming for the camera, others trying to escape it. She was surprised, in fact, to see adults behaving so much like her friends had in high school.
She decided to go through the pictures one at a time, enlarged enough to fill her screen, as viewing them in the smaller format hadn’t revealed any real detail. There had certainly been no people obviously sneaking in or out. Besides, she thought Madeline was right: everybody had left the party at some point, and pictures couldn’t really give an accurate view of who was gone for an extended time—long enough to get to the servant’s house and back.
The first time through the enlarged photos, she looked at food shots, wondering if some of the brownies had actually been poisoned—or some other food, for that matter. The trouble was, it was impossible to prove poisoning based on a photo, short of catching the actual act, which she doubted she would.
Cam refocused her attention on the faces in the photos. In a number of shots taken well before dessert, Joseph looked a little sickly. In fact, Cam noticed, he was flushed before the arrival of guests. Perspiration was visible on his forehead in a photo of he and Samantha taken just a bit later; Annie had captured them in the midst of an argument. Cam almost wondered if someone had put something in Joseph’s drink, though she was sure Joseph would have claimed it was Annie.
Then Cam spotted something even odder. It was a shot of the Roanoke Garden Society Board, taken about twenty minutes after the argument, according to the time stamp. Samantha was flanked by Neil Patrick on one side and Joseph on the other. It was a close-up, and they filled the foreground, Joseph still sweating slightly but looking a little happier. Cam wished she could remember what time the brownie incident had happened. She was sure this was prior, as Neil Patrick still had on his bib. Behind the trio the photograph was meant to capture, Benny, whom Cam couldn’t remember seeing at the party at all, had his head close to Ian’s, as if they were sharing some secret. She wondered what could have brought Benny to such an event. His father wasn’t even present.
Cam frowned and enlarged that corner. Annie’s camera was good enough that the image’s background details were readily visible once magnified. Ian was handing Benny something that looked an awful lot like money.
She remembered Jean-Jacques and Benny owing money to the same bookie and wondered if maybe the three of them, Ian included, were entangled with the same criminals. Maybe the money Ian had asked Hannah to hang on to was more proof of that. It would sure save a lot of grief if that were the case. But what kind of crime? Pornography came to mind, given the pictures of Evangeline, though for pornography, the shots were pretty mild. Whatever the case, money connected Benny to both of the dead men. It seemed ominous.
She burned all the pictures onto a disc and decided to take them to Jake after she had lunch with Rob.
Cam called Jake to see if he would be around that afternoon for her to bring in the new find. Jake acted singularly uninterested.
“How do I know you haven’t tampered with the photos?” he asked smugly.
“I don’t have the skill to tamper with them, and if I were going to frame somebody, I’d go with Evangeline at the moment, over those pictures of her and… well that’s who I’d go with. She had plenty of reason to kill Jean-Jacques!”
Jake didn’t respond. She wondered if he’d even seen the photos from the camera she’d given to Officer Doug earlier. Probably not, or he would have lectured her for looking.
Jake’s recent evasiveness was wearing on her. She realized, though, he’d paused too long. “What?” she asked.
“It wasn’t Jean-Jacques’s camera.”
“Whose, then?”
“Look, Cam, this is not your investigation, and you have a vested interest in us not convicting either of the top suspects. I need to go.”
“I’m pretty darned sure the prints didn’t belong to Nick or Annie!”
“Good-bye, Cam.”
“Okay, if Annie’s the killer, why do you still have Nick?”
“Because Nick didn’t have the money to meet bail, and they still have evidence implicating him in the first murder.”
“But they couldn’t both do it!” She knew there was a better legal argument than that and cursed herself for not doing a little research so she had it at the tip of her tongue.
The Azalea Assault Page 17