Keeping Mum (A Garden Society Mystery) (9 page)

“What is it?”

“I need you to scan this. Fast!” Annie held a paper-clipped printout. It looked like a spreadsheet file.

“Why couldn’t you . . .”

“I couldn’t risk waking Jake. I can’t have this!”

“Got it.”

Cam turned on her laptop and plugged in the cable to her scanner, then scanned the pages. It took about three minutes, and Annie left without saying anything, hustling back up to her own apartment to return the contraband.

Cam, wide awake after the strange encounter, opened the first page of the document. Names and numbers. In dollars. All in the negative.

“Holy crap! Annie, you’re a genius!”

“Why’s she a genius?” Rob yawned, coming out of her room and wiping his face with a washcloth.

He leaned over her shoulder to see the list of people for whom Windermere had lost a lot of money.

“That little minx!” His smile was huge.

“I know, right? Bonus points for Annie!”

“We could stay busy with that all day!”

“I wish,” Cam complained. She had a phone interview with the Richmond paper to discuss the press release she’d sent the day before. They had a political reporter very curious about the senate race, and she wanted a lot more details about the mood and content of the evening. Cam had some research to do, as she hadn’t formerly understood much about the local political players and their histories with each other before their event planning had started a few weeks earlier, and she felt even more confused now.

“I’ll make notes,” Rob grinned. “Can you make a copy of that for me?”

“I can. But keep in mind this is an anonymous source. We don’t want to get Annie in trouble.”

“I know,” he said. “But sheesh! Look at that list! It’s a wonder this guy wasn’t offed years ago.”

It was true. That much money lost for that many people could not make him a popular man. Especially as he’d managed to amass a small fortune for himself in the process.

• • •

• • •

W
ork was painful, even from her kitchen table. There was nothing worse than trying to concentrate on something you really didn’t care about when there was something else so pressing. As a distraction, she spent an hour in her garden splitting bulbs to try to relax her brain. It needed to be done in the fall for all the early spring flowers: tulips, daffodils, hyacinths. And it didn’t take much thought. After that, she managed to come up with a list of people most likely to be Jared Koontz’s political rivals—the kind of folks who would love to see some really bad publicity come to the campaign. So far, Rob’s matter-of-fact article was the only one that had been published, so she doubted this potentially bad publicity was a murder motive. Then again, maybe someone was playing a longer game.

Her head had begun to throb at all the manipulations the politicians and their supporters employed. She wished cooperation were more common and that people could be polite even when disagreeing, like they had been when Holden Hobbes was senator. That thought inspired her. Holden could give her the lesson she needed in local politics. He hadn’t been a player for years, but he was still very involved and knew everybody. She called him to make an appointment.

• • •

• • •

“W
ell you know, Cam, I don’t typically engage in gossip,” Holden said when Cam called.

“I don’t want you to gossip, exactly. I’m just trying to understand the players so I can set the events from the other night in context. A reporter wants to talk to me and I don’t want to be uninformed.”

“All right, then. I’d be happy to meet you for coffee.” She could hear his smile. She enjoyed the man. It was exactly why current politics were so disappointing. Politicians used to be the most polished of gentlemen. Now they were reality TV stars.

She drove her car downtown and parked halfway between City Bliss Café, where she was meeting Holden Hobbes, and the Patrick Henry hotel, where she would check in with work afterward.

Holden kissed her cheek when she entered and gestured toward one of the comfortable sofas. He already had two cups of coffee there waiting for them.

“Before you start in with your questions, Cam, is it true? Has Alden Schulz disappeared?”

“He has. Annie’s worried sick but, supposedly for the senator’s safety, we aren’t supposed to spread the news.”

“And you don’t think he just went to the Dominican Republic or something to file for a quickie divorce?”

“What do you know about his marriage?”

“Just talk from petty women, so I have no idea if there is any truth behind it. But I thought I might throw out the idea, in case it was possible.”

“He wouldn’t have worried Annie like this. He would have called her.”

“I suppose you’re right, there. We try to give our children the best of us.” He smiled and took a sip of his coffee, spooning in a little more sugar afterward.

“Can I ask you who these petty women were—in case they might have more actual information?”

“Ramona Pemberly and Madge Gant. Seemed to me Ramona was talking more and Madge was just gasping a lot.”

Cam sighed. She didn’t want to have to talk to Mrs. Pemberly. The woman was a menace. But despite being a menace, Cam thought she was also as up on her gossip as anybody in town—real gossip, not the sissy kind that needed a basis in fact.

She then asked Holden for his understanding of the current political players and their relationships. They spent a lovely lunch reviewing how he saw things. She was sure he was far too generous, though there were a couple of cases where he couldn’t seem to keep his true opinions to himself. He was not a fan of Jared Koontz, whom he referred to as a “silver-spooned social climber,” and he felt Chad Phillips, another “fast-rising star,” was a liar and a cheat—his old party was turning out to be a sore disappointment to him for the current election cycle. She asked if he’d seen anything at the party, but as the MC, he’d had his own show to put on. He’d stayed on the patio and reviewed his notes when he wasn’t speaking.

She then walked to the Patrick Henry, typed up her notes, and made her call. It felt like an awful lot of energy had gone into this one thing. That was sometimes how it was, but she didn’t have to like it. She wrote a follow-up to her press release of the day before and sent it on to the papers she always communicated with, thinking at least she could enrich what they had, too, since she’d gone to all the effort.

Finally, at four, Annie stumbled into her office.

“So what did you find?” she asked, referring to the people who’d lost money.

“Got the lay of the political landscape, but that was all. I had a swamped day. Rob was working on your list, though. Should we meet him?”

“Definitely.”

Cam called Rob and they decided on margaritas at five.

Annie gave a thumbs-up. “Then I just have time to shower. I’m stinky.”

“You always smell like vanilla to me,” Cam said.

“That was an explosion. It was bad. I dropped one of those bottles of the Mexican stuff onto my marble cooling sheet, glass and vanilla everywhere. And then I had to throw out the batch on top of it, but I’m sick about losing that vanilla. That stuff is expensive.”

“I should go get cleaned up, too. I had a working lunch today, so I’ve earned leaving a little early.”

The two headed out together.

• • •

• • •

E
l Palenque was nearly deserted at five o’clock. Cam knew it would fill up, and that if it had been a Friday, it would have been full by now, but it was a Tuesday, and so the waitress nearly tripped over herself to come serve them.

“I love this place,” Annie said when the pitcher of margaritas arrived two minutes later, a good ten minutes ahead of Rob.

Cam filled their glasses and let Annie sip. She took a small one, then nibbled on chips and salsa before taking another. She knew they needed to pace themselves.

Rob walked in slower and more miserably than Cam expected. His frown caught Annie’s attention and she asked who died.

He raised an eyebrow, because of course somebody had. It just wasn’t somebody they cared all that much about. Cam decided to redirect.

“So what did you learn about the list?”

“You aren’t going to like it,” he said.

“I might,” Annie said.

“No. I doubt that, too.”

“Okay, can you stop being so cryptic? Is it the whole Roanoke Garden Society or something?” Cam asked.

“Not all of it.”

“Drat!” Cam sat back and took a larger sip of margarita, then regretted it as brain freeze set in. “Ouch, ouch, ouch!” She held her forehead and tried to massage the roof of her mouth with her tongue, but it took a minute.

Rob set a printed copy of the list on the table, and Cam could see a couple of highlighted names. Neil Patrick was one. Alden Schulz was another.

“Damn!” Annie said.

“He could hardly murder someone if he was kidnapped!” Cam said.

“No, and I know he wouldn’t anyway. But this
looks like
he might have murdered somebody and disappeared. It makes him look guilty.”

“Do you know how bad this hurt your dad?” Rob asked.

“Says a hundred and fifty thousand.”

“No, I mean . . . was that half his worth? Ten percent? One percent?”

“I don’t know. If I were guessing, I’d say ten percent is closest. But we never talked money.”

“So this hurt, but didn’t ruin him?” Cam followed what Rob was getting at.

“I doubt it.”

“Okay. I think what we want to figure out is who this really devastated. We’re looking for somebody he pretty much wiped out,” Cam said.

“Let’s hope the police are that logical. The record isn’t in their favor, though,” Rob said.

“That’s why you’re on this,” Cam said to Rob, then turned to Annie. “Would Elle think this was devastating?”

Annie raised her eyebrows. “So you think she might have done both crimes?”

“Worth going back to my place to listen after this pitcher. Rob can stop and buy the stuff to make these at home.”

“Why do I have to stop at the store?” Rob asked.

“We’ll wait here for takeout, but will need something to drink when we get home.” Cam gave Rob a pleading look, hoping he’d read that she wanted to give Annie a chance to grieve or vent with just her best friend.

Rob shrugged and agreed, though he stayed seated for a few more questions.

“What about Mr. Patrick?” he asked.

“I think he’s better off than Annie’s dad. I mean, he lost more, but I still think this is only a small amount to him.”

“Worth a trip to see your buddy Evangeline?”

“Yeah—she’ll be at the Patrick Henry tomorrow, so I don’t need to make a special trip.”

“What does she
do
there?” Rob asked.

“For your information, a lot. She’s smart. But largely, she focuses on their nonprofit stuff. The Patricks like to give back.”

Rob looked skeptical, and Cam thought Annie would have, too, except she was engaged in a text conversation with Jake.

“Phooey! I couldn’t think of a reason to make him wait. So he’s meeting us at your place, too.”

“And no listening to illicit bugs when the cop is around?” Rob said.

Annie touched the tip of his nose with her index finger, which caused Rob to shake his head.

“So after we eat, you distract him, and Rob and I will listen,” Cam said.

Annie wasn’t paying attention, though. She had pushed a few buttons on her phone, so Cam and Rob waited to see what it was about as Annie put the telephone to her ear.

“Elle? This is Annie,” she said into the phone. “I just wondered . . . they haven’t called for a ransom or anything, have they?”

Cam could hear a screechy sound in the background, but not words.

“Will you please tell me if they do?”

She hung up.

“Sorry about that,” Rob said.

Cam kicked him under the table. She had hoped not to get into the forty-eight hours thing with Annie, but Annie seemed to know instinctively.

“I just had to check. If it’s not ransom, it’s . . . bad, right?”

Cam reached over and took Annie’s hand. “If they called, they might have told Elle not to tell anyone.” She didn’t want to agree with Annie, but disagreeing too strongly required lying, and she and Annie didn’t do that.

• • •

• • •

J
ake beat Cam and Annie to their place. He was waiting in Annie’s apartment, as that was the one he had the key to, but he heard them trampling in and came down to join them.

“So what have you been up to?” he asked.

“I had a crazy day. Go ahead. Ask me about any Roanoke politician. I can tell you,” Cam said.

“Not murder investigating?” he said cautiously.

Cam shook her head. “Boring old damage control. Holden Hobbes helped me prep for a press interview.”

“Really? That might be useful,” he said.