Caramel Canvas

by Jessica Beck

  “Grace, look at this,” I said as I called out to her. “What do you make of it?”

  She whistled softly under her breath. “It appears that Annabeth was about to go on a shopping spree.”

  “Why do you say that?” I asked her.

  “If I had that kind of money to pull out of my account on a whim, that’s what I’d use it for,” she explained.

  “I wouldn’t,” I said.

  “Are you judging me, Suzanne?” she asked wryly.

  “No, not at all. I’m just saying that she must have had her own reasons. I wonder what she spent it on?”

  “Who says she spent it?” Grace said. “She could have needed it for something else.”

  “Like paying off a blackmailer?” I suggested.

  “Wow, what made your mind go straight to that? It could have been perfectly innocent.”

  “I wish you were right, but I can’t think of any other reason at the moment. We need to ask Alyssa about this,” I said as I tucked it back into the book and set it aside. “Have you found anything interesting?”

  “Just this,” she said as she held up a small datebook/calendar.

  “What’s in it? Is there anything we can use?”

  “I looked at the last few entries,” Grace said. “She was meeting someone a few days before she died, but I don’t know who it was. There aren’t initials or anything, just a note that says, ‘Be careful.’ That sounds a bit ominous, doesn’t it?”

  “It does,” I said. “Where was she meeting them, and at what time?”

  “Ten p.m. in back of the library in Union Square,” she read off.

  “After they were closed for the night. That library isn’t in the greatest part of town. Wasn’t she afraid to meet someone late at night alone?”

  “I don’t know, but I know that I would be,” Grace readily admitted.

  “Me, too. So why go at all?”

  “Maybe she was giving them the money she withdrew from her account,” Grace said softly.

  “Maybe, but if so, why do it in cash? If it was legit, why not just write whoever it was a check?” I asked.

  “They probably didn’t want a paper trail,” Grace said.

  “We need to find out who she was meeting,” I said. “Is there any chance Alyssa might know?”

  “They were close, but I’m not sure they were that close,” Grace said.

  “So, that’s one more question we need to find the answer to,” I answered. “Let’s take it with us, too. I’m already grabbing this book,” I said.

  “Brushing up on your own skills, Suzanne?” she asked me.

  “No, but that’s the excuse I’m going to use when I ask Alyssa if I can borrow it.”

  “We could always just take everything in question and return it all when we’re finished with them,” Grace suggested.

  “No, I can’t do that. Alyssa trusted us to do this, and I won’t betray her. Hey, what was that?”

  “What was what?” Grace asked me.

  “I thought I saw someone spying on us from outside that window,” I said as I hurried for the door.

  By the time I got there, if there had been anyone there in the first place, they were gone now.

  “Curiouser and curiouser,” Grace said.

  “I don’t like this,” I said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m beginning to believe that Annabeth wasn’t being paranoid at all when she suspected that someone was after her. I get a creepy vibe from this place, do you?”

  “Not really, but you’ve always been more sensitive to that kind of thing than I am. It’s not really surprising though, is it? After all, she did die here.”

  I looked at the ladder on the floor that must have been up against the wall when she’d fallen—or been pushed. I leaned over and studied it, but if there was anything there, I couldn’t see it. I had been hoping for some direct evidence of tampering, like saw marks or loose screws, but it looked as though it was perfectly fine, and I was certain that the police had given it just a cursory look before dismissing it as an accident.

  As I stooped over to pick it up and put it back in its place, Grace asked me, “What do you think you are doing?”

  “I’m going to climb up and see what Annabeth was reaching for in the loft,” I explained.

  Grace put a hand on the ladder before I could climb up. “I don’t think so.”

  “It’s perfectly safe,” I said.

  “Tell that to Annabeth,” Grace answered as she looked over the ladder for herself after pulling it back to the floor.

  After she looked at it for a few moments, I said, “It’s fine, just like I said.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Grace said as she pointed to the top rung’s left side and prodded it for a moment. As she pulled slightly on it, the rung gave way under her pressure, sliding out just enough to loosen it, but not enough to pull it out entirely. “This isn’t just where she died, Suzanne. I’ve got a sneaky suspicion this was the murder weapon someone used on Annabeth.”

  “Do you honestly think it’s loose enough to throw her off the ladder?” I asked as I checked a few more rungs. “Look, these spin a little, too. It’s an old ladder. Chances are Annabeth had been climbing this thing for years like this. She probably knew every loose rung on it.” I grabbed the ladder and put it upright again. “Here, I’ll show you.”

  “I think you’re crazy, but if you fall and kill yourself, you should know that I’ll never forgive you.”

  “You do realize that it won’t be an issue for me if it ends up happening that way,” I said with a reassuring smile. The rungs were indeed loose, but since I was expecting as much, it didn’t throw me off. Still, if Annabeth had been distracted by something else, I supposed that it was possible that it could have caused her fall. As I climbed up to the top of the loft, I looked back down.

  She had supposedly hit her head on the edge of the work table, but I couldn’t see any way that could happen, based on the few places the ladder actually fit in the space.

  “What’s wrong?” Grace asked me from below.

  “I’m starting to think she wasn’t on the ladder at all when she died. I believe someone staged it to look like a fall, but what really happened is they must have snuck up behind her and hit her hard enough to kill her. How hard would that have to be?”

  “Not hard at all, if they hit her in the right spot,” Grace said. “I wonder what they used to do it, but the real question is, who was it that killed our friend?”

  “Well, we have a list, so we can start looking for them. Grace, Annabeth wasn’t being paranoid. I believe someone was actually trying to kill her, and what’s worse, they succeeded.”

  Chapter 9

  “I wish Stephen was here,” I said a minute later as I looked around for something that might have been used as a murder weapon.

  “I do, too,” Grace replied. “What has that got to do with anything?”

  “If he was around, we could take this to him. If Jake was in town, we could ask for his opinion as well, but I don’t have a lot of faith in Rick and Darby to find a murderer who is clearly pretty clever.”

  “We could always ask George,” Grace said, “or even Phillip for that matter.”

  “Yes, I suppose we could, but they don’t have any more official standing than we do,” I said. “It’s not like we need them to investigate this for us.”

  “That’s true enough,” Grace said. “Besides, even if Jake and Stephen were out in the Jeep waiting for us, we probably wouldn’t consult with them, at least not until we had something solid to pass on to them. Right now, as good as our leads seem, we have a great deal of speculation and not a lot of facts to back them up.”

  She paused for a few moments until I finally had to ask, “Grace, what’s on your mind?”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but Suzan
ne, are you losing your nerve? If you are, I totally get it, but we’ve never asked for help before.”

  I wanted to argue with her, but she was certainly making a valid point. Maybe I was losing it a bit, but I couldn’t let that happen, not if we were going to find Annabeth’s killer. “The only prudent thing to do is to dig into this ourselves,” I said instead of answering her question more directly. During my recuperation, I’d often debated whether I ever wanted to get involved with another murder investigation for the rest of my life, but this was Annabeth, not some stranger I barely knew. Whoever had killed her had also destroyed a very important part of my childhood, and they’d taken a good friend away from me as well. If ever there was a case that screamed out for my involvement, this was it. I might have been a little gun-shy, but I wasn’t about to let that stop me from doing what I knew I needed to do.

  “Then it’s settled,” Grace said, clearly satisfied with my answer. “From this moment forward, we treat this as a homicide, but we don’t tell anyone, and I mean anyone, about our suspicions. It’s the only way we’re going to be able to snoop around without anyone knowing what we’re really up to. Can you keep this from Jake?”

  “If I have to. How about Stephen? Can you do the same?”

  “Oh, there’s lots of things I keep from him,” she said with a wicked grin.

  “Such as?”

  “Suzanne, I can’t give away all of my secrets, even to you. Now let’s keep looking until we’re satisfied that there’s nothing else here for us to find.”

  “I’m game if you are,” I said. As I started digging, I noticed a pile of brown paper sheets much like what we’d found wrapping my painting. Many of these even had writing on them as well. “It appears that Annabeth didn’t just use this paper for notes for me. It was a way she left herself reminders. Here’s one that says, ‘Dry cleaning! Talking Rabbits. Would Everdine go for that? What’s wrong with purple? They want gray. How boring!’ These go on and on like that,” I added as I kept leafing through the sheets. “Hang on a second,” I said as I took out my phone.

  “Did you find something worth photographing?” Grace asked excitedly.

  “No. Well, maybe. I want to check something against what we found on my wrapping.” I pulled up the image in question and said, “What do you know? We have a winner.”

  “Did you find the killer’s name written somewhere?” she asked.

  “No, but I know what those random numbers we found mean,” I said as I showed her the sheet. “It’s the phone number for Everdine. Unless I miss my guess, she was designing a logo for them, something with rabbits, maybe. The number, if you run it all together, is 1-554-545-9104. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that’s their number.”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Grace said as she took out her cell phone. Once she dialed the number, she held her phone out, so I could hear as well.

  “Everdine Corporation,” the smooth, dulcet-toned woman said with practiced ease. “How may I direct your call?”

  “Where exactly are you located?” Grace asked her.

  “We’re on the corner of Marrimon and Woodridge,” she said. “Twenty thirty-five.”

  “I mean what city are you located in?” Grace pushed.

  The woman paused a moment. “We’re in Burberry Ridge just outside of Seattle, Washington. May I help you?” she asked, a little more insistently this time.

  “You just did,” Grace said, and then she hung up. “That was one confused receptionist,” she said with a smile. “At least we can strike those numbers off our list. That’s some progress.”

  “Here’s a little more, maybe,” I said as I pulled another sheet off the stack and found an old-fashioned cell phone buried in the papers. The phone looked fairly new, but I didn’t even realize they were still making flip phones. Its design looked so antiquated compared to mine that it seemed as though it should have been in a museum. “Was this Annabeth’s?” I asked Grace.

  She took it from me and studied it for a moment before handing it back to me. “I’m not even sure I could make a call on it.”

  “It’s probably more dependable than mine is,” I said, remembering the form and function of my old phone before I got one that was supposedly smart. Supposedly. “Let’s see,” I said as I opened it up and checked out the screen. “Will you look at that? It’s got everything you need. There’s an address book and even a log of calls that have been made and received.” I was interested in Annabeth’s contact information, but what was more pressing was the history of her most recent calls. Perhaps there would be a clue there as to who had killed her. I pulled out my phone to compare some of her numbers with mine and found that she’d dialed Max’s phone sometime in the three days before she died.

  Now it was my turn to make a call. “Hey, Max,” I said when my ex-husband answered on the third ring.

  “Suzanne, I heard you were back in town! I didn’t want to overwhelm you today, but I’d love to see you soon. How are you doing? Emily and I were just talking about you the other day.”

  “I’m okay,” I said. “Listen, I heard you were talking to Annabeth not long before she died. What’s up with that?”

  “Suzanne, I wasn’t cheating on Emily,” he said quickly.

  “I never said that you were,” I replied. “So be a sport and tell me what was going on between you.”

  “It’s nothing, really. I was out for a drive, and I happened to spot her at the side of the road with a flat tire,” Max explained. “It was all perfectly innocent.”

  “Are you trying to tell me that you changed a tire?” I asked. It was impossible to keep my incredulity from my voice.

  “Me? Are you kidding? No way I’d even know how to begin to do that. Annabeth didn’t have her phone on her, so I let her use mine. We sat in my car until the tow truck came and did it for her. That’s it, end of story. Well, she did call afterwards to thank me again, but that was later. I came back and told Emily all about it immediately. She thought it was rather gallant of me.”

  “Being gallant would have included changing the tire yourself,” I said with a smile. My ex-husband was many things, but being handy was not one of them. “If it was all so innocent, why did you feel the need to tell Emily what happened?”

  “You’re kidding, right? You know how some folks in April Springs are. I know at least two busybodies spotted us together, so I wanted to make sure that Emily heard the truth from me before the tongues could start wagging. Why do you care, if I may ask?”

  “You may not,” I said with a chuckle. “Thanks, Max.”

  “You bet,” he said. I knew he wouldn’t be offended by my refusal to answer his question. In fact, he probably enjoyed it.

  “Max is in the clear,” I said. “Do you want to call the next one, or shall I?”

  Grace nodded. “I’ll take care of it. I already looked up the flower shop’s number.”

  Suddenly that entry made perfect sense. “‘Sarah Flowers’ isn’t a name, it’s what she does. Sarah, who happens to own the only flower shop in town,” I said. “I missed that completely. I must be getting senile.”

  “You are, but you still have your uses, so I’m not ready to trade you in for a new best friend and partner yet,” Grace said with a smile. “If it’s any consolation, I just got it a few minutes ago myself.” Grace got Sarah on the line and soon established that Annabeth had sent Max a manly bouquet to thank him for his help with her tire. I had no idea what a manly bouquet might entail, but this wasn’t the time to ask.

  After she hung up, I said, “So, Sarah’s in the clear, and I imagine Alyssa and I were just reminders for her to touch base with us. You know how Annabeth used to get when she was working on a project. She’d need to set an alarm to eat lunch or go to bed at night when she was focused on a new piece of work.”

  “I’ve never had a problem with either one of those things myself,” Grace
said with a wry smile. “That explains everyone but Kerry Minter. I haven’t had a chance to check her out online, so I’ll do that right now.” Grace tapped a few buttons on her cell phone and read the entry off to me. “It appears that Kerry owns Artie’s, some super-duper artist supply place in Union Square. Hey, I’ve seen her sign! I know where that is; it’s on the outskirts of town,” Grace said.

  “It’s understandable why Annabeth would be friends with her, then,” I replied.

  “What if they weren’t friends, though?” Grace asked me.

  “She was a bubble, not a square,” I reminded her.

  “Which is our interpretation of what we found, based on nothing more than our own intuition,” Grace said.

  “Okay, we’ll go speak with her. I know we have to have chats with Martin Lancaster, Christopho Langer, Bonnie Small, and whoever this Galen is as well.”

  “At least we’re narrowing down our list of suspects.”

  “Annabeth’s list, you mean,” I said.

  “At this point, aren’t they one and the same?” she asked.

  “That’s a fair point,” I said as I caught another movement outside the studio window. Without changing my tone of voice, I edged toward the door in the hopes of catching whoever was there red-handed.