Engaged in Death (A Wedding Planner Mystery) (16 page)

“Don’t drink the water! Don’t drink the water!” the protestor chanted, along with the twenty or so people with her. I squinted across the field and noticed Bev Mitchell, the jolly seamstress who had welcomed us to town with a zucchini casserole, among the protestors.

Deanna Hartley’s face crumpled. She took a step back and nearly fell off the stage. The mayor grabbed her, set her firmly in a chair, then attempted to gain control of the situation.

“Everyone move along back to the fair.” His voice was high and panicked. He cleared his throat and tried again, louder this time to be heard over the din of the protestors’ chant, puffing up his chest with importance. “Go sample some of those award-winning recipes!”

A few people from the crowd heeded Mayor Tannenbaum’s directive and ambled away from the ball field, but more stayed.

“Nothing to see here, people.” Chief Truman Davies approached the protestors. Faith followed closely behind. They talked quietly with the group of protestors, who stopped their chanting. The people of Port Quincy listened to Truman, not Mayor Tannenbaum, and began to disperse.

“Who is the woman leading the protest?” I asked the man next to me, who was muttering some choice words.

“Naomi Powell and her band of environmental whackos. Should be arrested. Don’t people know Lonestar is good for this town?” He spoke with real venom, his hands gripping his baseball cap.

I pulled away from him.

“Let’s go try some of Rachel’s cake.” Olivia put her arm around me.

We left the field in search of my sister.

* * *

I couldn’t get the demonstration out of my mind. While it appeared that plenty of the denizens of Port Quincy appreciated Lonestar and the jobs and revenue it brought to town, there was a sizable group compelled to demonstrate against them. The very group that might be interested in seeing Shane Hartley meet an ugly demise. So, later that afternoon, I went to the Amarillo Steakhouse. The Amarillo seemed fairly new, a cavernous, lodge-like roadhouse, complete with Tex-Mex-themed dishes, a wooden square floor for impromptu line dancing, a mechanical bull and enough animals mounted on the wall to fill a taxidermy museum. It fit in well in rural western Pennsylvania, land of the horseless cowboy. I’d heard this was where the Lonestar executives liked to eat, a little corner of Texas right here in Port Quincy.

I was at the restaurant treating Naomi Powell, the environmental protestor with the bullhorn. It was pretty sedate on a late Saturday afternoon, especially since most of the town was still at Founder’s Day. Zach had promised to pick Rachel up from the fair after holding an open house, so I’d returned home, found Naomi’s phone number online, and called her on a whim. I’d offered to buy her dinner if she’d talk to me about Shane Hartley and Lonestar Energy. To my surprise, she’d instantly accepted. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Truman and Faith to find out who killed Shane or whether his death was related to my accident or the ketchup threat, but it wouldn’t hurt to do a little investigating myself.
Right?

“You think I killed Shane Hartley.” Naomi folded her long legs under the booth.

“Of course not!”

“The police already cleared me.” She dragged a chip through salsa. “I was on a date.”

I sagged in the booth.

“You’re a lawyer, right?” She cocked her head to the left and tucked a strand of straight, wheat-colored hair behind her ear. She couldn’t have been out of her early twenties. She was passionate and sure of herself and her cause. I liked her frankness.

“How’d you know that?”

“Friends in Low Places” blasted out over the speakers. Two little girls tried to climb onto the mechanical bull. Their mother pulled them away, back to their chicken fingers and chocolate milk.

“I like to do a little reconnaissance before I meet with someone.” Naomi smiled. “It’s not hard—your bio is right there on the Russell Carey law firm website.”

I’d done some of my own Internet reconnaissance before our meeting. Naomi Elizabeth Powell had grown up in Port Quincy, won a scholarship to boarding school at the nearby Dunlap Women’s Academy, and studied environmental science at Oberlin, where she graduated two years ago. She’d been working at Environment First’s Ohio Valley office for the past year and specialized in anti-fracking grassroots campaigns.
Thank you, Google and LexisNexis
. She was zealous about her cause and had been arrested twice for protesting. It was a long way from arrest for a demonstration to murder, but it was possible.

“This isn’t about a lawsuit. I’m not here in my capacity as an attorney. This is personal. This is about the dead man on my lawn.”

Naomi’s gray eyes grew big. “You inherited Sylvia’s house? The newspaper articles just said Hartley was found in her yard, I didn’t know you were living there.”

I said nothing, hoping she’d continue. I’d learned some better interrogation techniques these last two weeks from Truman and Faith. Maybe if I shut my mouth, she’d fill in the silence.

“I didn’t like him.” She took a long pull from the Shiner Bock in front of her. “Everyone here is dazzled by the gas industry.” She opened her eyes wide in disbelief. “They’re not seeing the poisoned farm animals or the water buffaloes people are forced to use just to get clean drinking water.” Naomi was on her soapbox, and I encouraged her soliloquy with little nods.

“What are water buffaloes?”

“Per some of the settlements, Lonestar has to provide families with tanks of fresh water since they’ve poisoned their wells. Sylvia understood what was going on.” She giggled. “She called every single person on Sycamore Street and convinced them not to grant gas leases to Lonestar. I think she helped our cause because of the damage her family’s glass factory did to Port Quincy. She understood the environmental effects of fracking.”

I raised my eyes in surprise.

“Sylvia left our nonprofit a hundred thousand dollars in her will.” Naomi bit into a chip, her eyes triumphant. “It was payback. Shane Hartley was relentless, hounding Sylvia nearly every day at the nursing home, then calling her when she had him blacklisted from visiting her. I got him to stop by threatening to write an op-ed for the
Eagle Herald
about everyone’s favorite gas executive badgering little old ladies in nursing homes.”

“I bet Helene Pierce was thrilled Sylvia left your organization money.”

“Hardly. I hear she’s contesting Sylvia’s will. She’ll argue that Environment First convinced Sylvia to change it, to cut her and her son Keith out of the inheritance.”

“Get in line,” I said joylessly. “Helene has threatened to sue me too.”

“So you’re trying to figure out who killed that—” She paused and started over. “Who killed that fine citizen, Shane Hartley, and left him dead on your front yard.”

I frowned. I had been tempted to trash talk Shane too, after the only encounter I’d had with him while he was alive was so awful. But I recalled his wife, heavily pregnant, now alone in the world, and a wave of sadness washed over me.

“Yes, I want to know who killed Shane, now that I’ve been threatened that the same thing will happen to me if I don’t leave Sylvia’s house and Port Quincy.”

Naomi set her beer down and un-pretzeled her legs. “Seriously? Someone threatened you?”

“With ketchup.” I explained the threat written on the dining room wall and the cut brakes.

“Do you think the same people who killed Shane want you dead too?” Naomi’s pupils grew wide.

“Or they don’t want me to figure out who did it.”

“Let me think. There are a whole bunch of people here in Port Quincy who think Shane Hartley and Lonestar Energy saved them. From the brink of foreclosure, from bankruptcy, from medical bills they couldn’t pay and college educations they couldn’t afford. People’s land is worth more than they ever dreamed if they can get some gas out of it. And Lonestar gives its employees decent health benefits. They’re employing half of this town, not counting all the people who’ve moved here from Oklahoma and Texas. But . . .” She looked around behind us. “In addition to what they’re doing to the town’s water, they’re not the most careful.”

“Go on.” I leaned in, eager for more details.

“First, there’re the Mitchells. They nearly lost their horses and their dogs. They wouldn’t dare allow drilling on account of their animals, but the retention pond holding the fracking waste water from their neighbor’s drilling site leached through the water table and poisoned their well.”

“You mean Bev Mitchell? The seamstress? She was protesting with you today.” I thought of the friendly woman and how she’d expressed her distaste for Hartley the day I’d met her.

Naomi cocked her head. “Bev definitely hates Lonestar Energy, but it’s her son, Preston, who I could see flipping out and going after Shane. They didn’t get the best settlement, which technically they’re not allowed to talk about, and now no one wants to buy their land. So they’re stuck there, reliant on Lonestar to truck in their water. Preston is a good kid, and he isn’t known for being violent, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he snapped. Bev is a widow, and he looks after his mom. Then there’s the Prentiss family.”

“I know about them.” I thought of our gentle handyman.

“How?” Our food arrived, and Naomi paused over her bean burrito.

“Will was Sylvia’s handyman, and he helped us with some locks. Um, I also read the pleadings in his suit. Russell Carey defends a lot of Lonestar cases.”

“Of course!” Naomi playfully smacked her forehead. Her eyes glittered. “You have access to settlement information?”

I dropped my fish taco back onto my plate. “Yes, but it’s confidential.” I suddenly felt very protective of my firm.

“Right.” Naomi deflated a little.

“Will Prentiss though?” I questioned. “He wouldn’t kill. And this is going to sound really cold, but I only spoke to Shane once, the day before he was murdered. From that experience, I can see why someone would want to kill him, and he was only there for five minutes. I actually shoved him, and I’m not a violent person. Now I feel awful about it.”

Naomi laughed. “I couldn’t see you laying a finger on anyone.”

“Try me.” Before Keith cheated on me, I hadn’t thought I had it in me. Now I wasn’t so sure.

“I probably shouldn’t be telling you this.” Naomi dropped her voice and scanned the restaurant. There were a few die-hard drinkers starting early at the bar and a smattering of families having a late lunch. Everyone else in town was still at Founder’s Day. And the restaurant was huge; no one else was sitting by us. Not to mention, no one could hear over the Garth Brooks song echoing through the room. I leaned in close across the lacquered table.

“Helene bought a whole bunch of stock in Lonestar a few months ago. She was waiting for Sylvia to die so she and Keith could drill on the land. No one else in your neighborhood would grant a gas lease, and they’re really hot and bothered to drill there.”

“So that’s the business deal.”

“What business deal?” Naomi took a swig of beer.

“A partner at my law firm threatened me this week. He mentioned Helene had a business relationship with Lonestar Energy. Although Lonestar is a client at the firm, I don’t do any energy work, and I didn’t know what he was talking about.”

“They had an actual contract,” Naomi said miserably.

“What?” I squeaked. “Like a hit on Sylvia?” My blood turned icy as I pictured Helene arranging it.

“No, a drilling contract. Helene and Keith Pierce thought they’d pull a fast one on Sylvia. They treated her like a doddering old lady and were just biding their time until she died. Then her house would be willed over to her loving grandson, Keith, and they’d let Lonestar drill and be even richer than they are now. But Sylvia figured it out and left you the property.”

“How do you know this?”

Naomi grinned wickedly. “We have a mole working at Lonestar, an administrative assistant. She catches all kinds of little anomalies.”

I sat up, eager for her to continue.

“No one else for two square miles would let them drill, and Lonestar was getting antsy. Sylvia was as healthy as a horse. She could have lived to be a hundred and five. And Helene wanted a return on her investment in Lonestar. They were going to raze Sylvia’s mansion, retain some land to drill, and build a housing development. You, or rather Sylvia, foiled their plan.”

The wheels began to churn slowly in my head. I was having trouble putting it together. I stared at the elk head mounted on the wall. He gazed back at me with doleful, big black eyes. Prickles began to dance up and down my spine.

“Do you think they killed Sylvia? If they didn’t know she’d changed her will and deeded me the property?”

Naomi put down her beer. “Helene? It’s not a stretch to imagine her killing Sylvia. And Keith, well, they say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

Our check had been cleared long ago, and a different waitress showed up to clear the table.

“Yinz can sit here as long as you like.” Her thin blond hair escaped the ponytail at the nape of her neck.

“You’re Kayla, right?” She was the woman from the fair this morning, who had been so taken with Rachel’s cake.

“That’s right,” she said, a hint of suspicion in her voice.

“I have a proposition for you.”

* * *

“Keith did not off his grandma.” Rachel snorted as she chopped a tidy pile of walnuts. She was high on her baking contest victory and tore through Thistle Park’s kitchen, testing recipes from old cookbooks. I couldn’t wait to tell her I’d cornered Kayla at the Amarillo Steakhouse and offered her my wedding reception, and she’d accepted. I no longer had to advertise the wedding. Rachel had been out on a date with Zach when I’d returned Saturday night, and it must have been a good one, because she wasn’t home Sunday morning. She’d texted she’d be spending the day with Zach again, on a trip to a nearby casino for some gambling and shopping. I’d finally caught her Monday when I returned to Port Quincy after work.