by Lea Wait
“I’ll call Cindy,” Clem promised. “She left me a message last night, too. She’s visiting her folks in Haven Harbor now. When she does that, she can usually escape from her kids for a few hours because her mom loves to babysit. I’m really looking forward to this!”
Gram approved the plan at breakfast. “You need to reconnect with your old friends. It’ll help you feel more comfortable here.”
How did she know I didn’t feel “at home” here yet? But I was excited about seeing Clem again, and even Cindy again. Her mom had said Cindy had three kids! How did she cope?
“In the meantime,” Gram started to say, when there was a knock on the front door. Ethan Trask and a man and a woman I didn’t recognize were standing on our porch. A large once-white van identified as belonging to the State of Maine Crime Unit was parked in front of our house. It was official enough to be marked with the state seal. It was intimidating, and no doubt meant to be.
A van like that had visited here after Mama’d been gone a couple of weeks. I’d come home from school and found people going through her room. Gram and I had sat in the kitchen, watched by a policeman. They hadn’t found any clues that day to help their investigation. After they’d left, Gram and I had stayed up half the night putting Mama’s clothes and papers and pictures back in their places. I was convinced that if we messed with her room, she’d never come back to it. To us. Gram’d listened to me. Here it was, close to twenty years later, and I’d just started cleaning out Mama’s closet and drawers.
But this morning’s visit couldn’t be about Mama. It had to be about Jacques Lattimore.
“May we come in?” asked Ethan.
“Do we have a choice?” asked Gram. She knew what it was about, too.
“This will be a lot easier if you cooperate,” he said, almost apologetically.
Gram nodded and moved aside.
“Angie, you need to hear this,” he called down the hall to where I was standing in the kitchen. “Don’t touch anything. Put down your coffee and come here.”
“What’s happened?” I asked. I could have guessed. But I knew from my own investigating that it was best to let the other person volunteer information. Even if that other person was a state trooper.
“Autopsy results for Jacques Lattimore determined his cause of death was poisoning.”
Bingo! But not a total surprise. I hadn’t thought they’d come here looking for wild turkeys. “And?”
“Nothing, so far. He didn’t test positive for any of the usual drugs, legal or illegal. The ME’s office has sent blood and tissue samples out to a federal lab to test for other substances.”
“Do they have any clues?”
Jacques shook his head. “I shouldn’t even be telling you about the poison. But because Lattimore’s death is now considered a possible homicide, and he collapsed here, your home has to be considered a crime scene. I’ll need to talk to you while the crime scene technicians work.”
Gram sighed. “Angie and I were planning to finish going through Mainely Needlepoint’s books this morning to divide the money she got from Jacques. I don’t want anyone to think we’re holding on to it. That money belongs to the needlepointers, who earned it.”
“We’ll be as fast as we can. Do we have your permission to search the house for anything that might be relevant?”
“Do you have a search warrant?” I asked.
“Not yet. But we could get one. I hoped you’d let us search without one.”
Gram threw up her hands. “We have nothing to hide. Go ahead. But, please, don’t mess the place up.”
She, too, was thinking of that earlier visit by the police.
“We’ll try,” Ethan answered. He didn’t sound terribly reassuring. “Can we sit on the porch while the team is working?” he asked.
Our wide front porch overlooked Haven Harbor’s Green. In the nineteenth century, sheep had grazed on the green. Now it was crisscrossed by sidewalks and used for occasional church fairs and bridal portraits. Once I’d tried to fly a kite there, but my string had gotten caught in the branches of a large maple tree. My kite was up there for weeks, a spot of red and yellow among the green leaves, until finally a nor’easter tore it down.
We sat on the wicker chairs Gram had gotten out of the barn in anticipation of summer breezes.
“Lattimore was only in the living room, which we also use as an office, and in the hall and bathroom,” Gram said. “The needlepointers and I were meeting in the living room when Angel and Jacques came in. He sat down. We chatted. He apologized. He had a cup of tea or two, as I remember. And a couple of cookies. Then he looked as though he was having bad cramps, or stomach pains. I showed him where the bathroom was.” She paused. “Just as I told you yesterday.”
“He vomited in the bathroom?”
“That’s what it sounded like,” I said. “And smelled like. We asked him if he needed any help. He said, ‘no,’ so we left him alone.”
“When did you call 911?”
“I opened the bathroom door when he stopped answering me,” said Gram “He was having spasms. Fits. Seizures. His head was hitting the floor. I tried to hold him to keep him from hurting himself. I called to Angel and she called 911 for help.”
“Let’s go back a little. Angie, earlier that afternoon you went to find Lattimore and bring him back here.”
I nodded.
“Where was he?”
I explained again about going to the address Gram had for him in Brunswick, and then following his trail up to the Cambridge Casino. We’d gone over this before. I suspected he was testing us to see if we’d give the same answers we had the last time he’d asked.
“Was he eating at the casino?”
“He might have eaten earlier. It was the middle of the afternoon when I got there. He did have a drink with him at the blackjack table.”
“Do you think it was his first?”
“I didn’t give him a Breathalyzer test. But I’m pretty sure he’d had more than one.”
“And where did you go next?”
“To the room he’d rented, where he was living.”
“In his car?”
“In the one I was driving. Gram’s.” I hadn’t wanted Lattimore to head off in another direction. By driving, I was in control. I didn’t say that to Ethan.
“And when you were at his room, did he eat or drink anything?”
“No.”
“And then you drove him here.”
I nodded.
“Did he eat or drink in the car? Did you?”
“Neither of us did.”
“And then you got here and joined the needlepointers in the living room.”
“He did,” I corrected slightly. “After I gave Gram the money I’d gotten from Lattimore, I went into the kitchen and had a cup of tea there. I wasn’t one of the needlepointers.” I hesitated. “Then.”
“The last time I was here, you gave me the names of those who were at the meeting. Have you thought of any other details since then?” He directed that question to Gram.
“There’s no way anyone could have poisoned him here, in our house,” I insisted. “He didn’t leave the room. No one else left the room. Everyone was drinking from the same teapot and the same plates. If he was poisoned, it must have been slow acting. Something he’d eaten or drunk before I saw him at the casino.”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” said Ethan. “But since we don’t know what caused his convulsions and, ultimately, his death, we have to go backward from his time of death. I’m sure you understand that.”
I sighed and nodded.
“I’ll be talking with everyone who was here, of course, to confirm your stories,” Ethan added. “Is there anything else you’d like to mention?”
Both Gram and I shook our heads.
“I assume you’ll both be staying in the area?” He looked straight at me. “Angie?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Angie’s now the director of Maine
ly Needlepoint,” Gram added. “She’s going to get our books in order and contact our customers. Try to put the company back together.”
“Angie’s taking over Lattimore’s job?”
“Partially,” Gram agreed. “But he wasn’t our director. He was our agent. Angie will have broader responsibilities.”
“And when was that decided? That Angie would take on that job?”
“At the end of the meeting that afternoon. Right before Lattimore got sick.”
“So you got the information you needed from him, and some of your money back. And Angie replaced him in your business. You both benefited.”
“From his coming here. Not from his death. And Angel didn’t ask for the job. We all thought she’d be good at it, and she agreed.”
Ethan paused. “I’ve known both of you ladies many years. You’ve had your troubles. Big troubles. But you understand that the circumstances under which Jacques Lattimore died makes both of you persons of interest in his death.”
“We’re suspects?” Gram asked.
“Not yet,” said Ethan. “Not until we know exactly how he died.”
Chapter Twenty-five
My mother considered it indispensable that every girl should be taught the expert use of her needle.
I have to thank her for excelling in an accomplishment which it is oftentimes a pleasure for me to exercise.
—“The Partners,” by Miss E.A. Duffy, Godey’s Magazine and Lady’s Book, 1846
Great. Gram and I were possible suspects in the murder of someone I’d only known for a couple of hours, and who’d cheated Gram and her friends out of over twenty-seven thousand dollars.
And right now I couldn’t think of anything to do about it. Why wasn’t Ethan working on Mama’s case? “What about Mama’s death? Is there any new information in that investigation?” I asked, trying desperately to change the subject. I glanced over at Gram. She was a tough lady, not a violent one. But right now she looked ready to kill.
“We’ve had a preliminary report back from the lab looking at DNA in the storage facility where your mother’s body was found,” said Ethan, turning to me. “Joe Greene’s the only person we can connect to that space. That matches the records the facility has. Joe rented the place, and went there about once a year for a while. For the last ten years of his life, he just sent rent checks in. That’s not surprising. During that period his wife was ill, and then he had cancer. Lauren, of course, went there this spring to empty it.”
“No one else’s name was on the record for the room?”
Ethan shook his head. “Just Joe’s. There’s no way of knowing whether anyone was with him when he first rented the facility. Or any other time.” Ethan paused. “He did visit it the day before your mother was reported missing.”
“So she was killed right away. She probably died before we called the police,” said Gram quietly.
“That’s what we’re thinking,” said Ethan. “Of course, there’s no proof. But it seems too great a coincidence that Jenny disappeared and then, only two days later, Joe Greene visited the place her body was found.”
“Was there a freezer in the unit before then?” I asked.
“No way of knowing. A lot of folks put freezers in those facilities when they don’t have space at their homes. No one would have taken any note of Joe moving a freezer in there.”
“But a freezer big enough to hold . . . a person . . . had to be heavy. Joe Greene couldn’t have moved it there himself. He had to have help,” I thought out loud.
“True. But without surveillance footage, or anyone signing in with Joe, or coming to the police, we don’t know who that might be. And,” Ethan reminded me, “no third-party DNA has been identified. Plus, the freezer could have been there before your mother was. Again, there’s no way of knowing. Joe can’t tell us. His wife’s gone now, too, although I doubt she would have known.”
“Who worked for Joe at the bakery back then?” Gram asked. “If he’d needed help moving a freezer, seems to me he’d go to someone who worked for him.”
“I thought of that,” said Ethan. “I’m asking around, to see if anyone remembers. Lauren has copies of his old tax filings, and we did look at those. But Joe and Nelly worked that bakery themselves most of the time. If they had extra help, Joe paid them off the books. There’s no record he had any employees then.”
“But you are asking around,” I repeated. Someone, somewhere, must know what happened.
“I’m talking to Joe’s friends in the Rotary and the Chamber of Commerce. Everyone I’ve talked to is convinced Joe didn’t do it—that somehow he was framed. They can’t think of any reason Joe would have killed anyone. They’d like to put the focus on someone else, but no one’s come up with any other suspects.”
“Maybe Joe did it,” I admitted. “But, like those people you’re talking to, I can’t understand why. That’s what bothers me. There has to be a motive.”
“We haven’t uncovered one,” Ethan said. “I wish we had. Now, with this Lattimore guy, finding a motive doesn’t seem to be an issue. He’d cheated everyone at Mainely Needlepoint out of money, and they were all in the room with him right before he showed signs of poisoning. And you,” Ethan’s voice lowered as he said, “you ended up with his job. It looks pretty obvious that someone connected to Mainely Needlepoint didn’t want Lattimore going back to Rome that night. The only question is, who?”
Gram and I looked at each other. Besides us, there was elderly Ruth Hopkins. Dave Percy, the navy retiree who now taught biology at Haven Harbor High. Katie Titicomb, the grandmother and quilter. Her husband was a doctor. Money wasn’t as much of an issue with her as with the others. Lauren Decker, Joe’s daughter, whose husband was struggling to make a living from the sea. Ob Winslow, whose back gave him problems and who did wood carvings. Sarah Byrne, the antique dealer.
None of them acted like killers. Although, who knew? Joe Greene hadn’t been perfect, but even years later, no one was saying, “Oh, of course. Joe Greene. He would have shot that young woman in the head.”
Homicide was not logical.
And yet . . .
“When did you call the needlepointers and ask them to come to the house?” I asked Gram.
“Right after you called me. I decided Jacques Lattimore should face all of us. Apologize to all of us. I wanted everyone to hear what he had to say. I wanted him to understand he’d hurt people.”
“You told them he’d be here,” I confirmed.
“I did. I told them I wanted them here to confront him.”
“But none of them knew before your call that he’d be in Haven Harbor that afternoon?” I knew the answer, but I wanted to make sure Ethan understood what I was getting at.
“Of course not. We didn’t even know where he was living. That’s why I asked you to find out. You did that faster than I thought you would.” Gram gave me an admiring glance.
Ethan was listening. “What you’re getting at, Angie, is that no one—not your grandmother, and none of the others—would have had time to figure out how to poison Lattimore on that short notice.”
I nodded. “The food they shared had to have been made ahead of time. People picked up what they had in their kitchens and brought it with them. There was no time to prepare anything special. And if there’d been poison in the doughnuts Lauren brought, we’d certainly have heard on the news.”
“Of course, we all have poisons in our homes. Antifreeze. Medications. But until we know what caused Lattimore’s seizures and death, it’s hard to narrow down the suspect list,” Ethan admitted.
“I’d say it’s almost impossible,” I said. “Unless someone in that room was seen adding something to Lattimore’s tea. Since everyone ate the food, it seems unlikely that the poison was in that.”
Ethan nodded. “I agree it sounds as though the poison was in Lattimore’s tea. And I assume you cleaned up after the meeting? Washed the dishes and such?”
Gram and I exchanged glances. “We did. We didn’t t
hink he’d been poisoned. We just thought he’d gotten very sick all of a sudden.”
“That he did,” Ethan said. “But unless the crime scene team’s able to find a lead to help us in your house, your cleaning up destroyed the only evidence we might have had.” He looked from one of us to the other. “It might even be seen as covering up evidence.”
Chapter Twenty-six
Of female arts in usefulness
The needle far exceeds the rest
In ornament there’s no device
Affords adorning half so nice.
—Verse on 1821 sampler made by fourteen-year-old Louisa Otis, who probably lived in Gorham, Maine
Ethan was through with his questions before the crime scene technicians had finished. Since we weren’t wanted in the house, Gram and I took a walk and stopped for a light lunch on our way back.
During lunch I asked her if she recognized the telephone number I’d found in Mama’s slacks. She’d just shaken her head. When we got back home, we found the police had taken her computer. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t find she’d been searching the Internet for poisons, but in the meantime she was upset that some of her business files were now out of reach. And I wasn’t going to do any computer searches today.
The police had been looking for evidence of poison, not wrongdoing. For now at least, the Mainely Needlepoint files not in the computer hadn’t been touched.
“You’re going to Bath on Monday?” Gram confirmed.
“Meeting Clem and Cindy for lunch.”
“Bath isn’t far from Brunswick. There’s a Goodwill drop-off there, where you can leave the clothes you’ve packed up.”
“I think I’ll buy a laptop, too,” I said. “I’ve been meaning to do that for a while, anyway. I can load the software I’m comfortable using to set up the Mainely Needlepoint accounts.” Both Gram’s accounting records and the information we’d gotten from Lattimore were in old-fashioned paper files. I’d have to start from scratch to put them into the computer.