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Authors: Christy Evans

Lead-Pipe Cinch (19 page)

BOOK: Lead-Pipe Cinch
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“Even if it’s me?”
“If you’d done it, of course! I don’t think he really believes you’d do such a thing. But it wouldn’t matter who it was—even Gregory Whitlock with all his money and influence.”
I shook my head. It didn’t make me happy, but I knew it was the truth. “I’m sorry. That was a dumb question.”
“Sure was.”
“I don’t think I’d much like a sheriff that didn’t think that way. I just don’t like being on his list of potential bad guys.”
The problem was, Sue had a point. I’d had a public confrontation with Blake in Tiny’s. I’d had a nasty argument with him out at the job site. And a few hours later the man turned up dead.
I
did
make a good suspect.
chapter 21
I left Sue’s shop in a funk. What she said made a lot of sense, unfortunately. If the sheriff thought I was a suspect, I had bigger problems than Stan Fischer’s job offer.
Walking back up Main Street to retrieve the Beetle, I considered the options. Certainly I could talk to the sheriff, maybe even convince him I wasn’t the one that killed Blake Weston. I didn’t consider that a likely scenario.
Sure, he hadn’t picked me up, or had me brought in for more questions or anything. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t. And if what I’d told him so far wasn’t changing his mind, how could I expect anything else would?
Not unless I could give him a good reason to believe me. Like the name of the person who had really done it.
I was suspicious of Gregory, although I didn’t want to accuse anyone. And Sue was right about one thing. I didn’t like the man, and I would be glad of most anything that came between him and my mother.
Gregory was too much like Blake. And look how that one had turned out for me.
I started the Bug and pulled away from the curb. Curiosity made me turn at the next corner and cruise past the sheriff’s office. Stan’s Lincoln was parked in the front lot. It made sense that the sheriff would need more time with Stan, since he was the one who knew what Blake was doing in Pine Ridge.
Besides, Stan had told me he talked to Blake the night before he died. Stan might have been the last person to talk to him.
Except the murderer, of course.
I shook off the thought and turned the corner toward home. The dogs would be expecting a walk, and I wanted to get out and stretch my legs.
A walk would be good.
Thinking on my feet was usually a good way to work out whatever problems were running through my head. Not this time. I walked and thought and muttered.
I tried to figure out who would have something to gain from Blake Weston’s death, but I had been away too long. I no longer knew the same people Blake did. I didn’t know what he did or where he went.
I was the only one in Pine Ridge who knew Blake Weston, and I didn’t know him at all.
And I was the one who needed to find his killer. It might be the sheriff’s job, but I was the one with the most to lose.
Now all I needed was a plan.
That was a problem. Worse, my suspect list had only one name on it: Gregory Whitlock.
I would have to start with what I had, which wasn’t much. Gregory had asked a lot of questions about Blake. It was time he started answering some of mine.
I didn’t expect Gregory to answer anything directly, of course. I would have to get around him somehow, find the information I wanted without letting him know I suspected him.
There was only one place where I could easily get information about Gregory Whitlock. I had to go to my mother’s house, and I couldn’t let her know what I was up to.
It wouldn’t be easy. I seldom went to Mom’s house, and usually only when I was badgered into it.
Once the dogs were settled, I put my plan into action.
Getting to Mom’s house was the easy part. But if I wanted to get the real dirt on Gregory, I would have to be able to search the house without her knowing, which meant being there while she was gone.
That part wasn’t so easy.
I had no idea what kind of information there might be at Mom’s house, but I hoped there would be papers or records of some kind. After all, they were in business together, and they were, well, doing some other things together.
That was another problem. I might find things I didn’t want to know about. In fact, the thought was so creepy I almost chickened out. But if I didn’t find out who killed Blake, I was in danger of being the top candidate.
Besides, even if Gregory wasn’t the culprit, he was asking a lot of questions. He had to know
something
, and I had to start my search somewhere.
I still had a key to my mother’s house, and there were boxes of my things in the attic. But I didn’t want to risk running into her—or Gregory. I would have to call her first, and make sure neither one of them was there.
I dialed Mom’s cell phone and held my breath.
“Georgiana! Hello, dear.” I could hear traffic noise in the background, and the throaty purr of the Escalade at cruising speed. “What can I do for you?”
It galled me that she acted as though the only time I called her was when I needed something. What stung more, though, was that she was right. We didn’t have the kind of relationship where we called each other just to chat, or palled around together.
We never went to the latest chick flick together, or lunched just for the fun of it, and we never,
ever
went shopping together. She was strictly Pearl District and I was outlet mall. The two did not mix well.
“Hi, Mom. Where are you?”
She sighed, audible through the hands-free connection. “Back to the Commons, I’m afraid. We had to have the landscapers come back, even though it’s Saturday and they charge a ridiculous amount of money for weekends. There’s still an issue, and I have to stand over them as if they’re a bunch of five-year-olds to get the job done right.”
She muttered something very unladylike at a passing motorist, then turned her attention back to me. “So, what can I do for you, dear?”
“This is going to sound crazy, but do you still have that box of kitchen stuff you gave me when I first moved back to Pine Ridge? I know I left it at your house while I was getting settled, and I don’t think I ever picked it up.”
“Hello? Who is this? You’re using my daughter’s cell phone, but it can’t be my daughter. She said she had no use for ‘all that kitchen junk’ when I offered it to her.”
I forced myself to laugh at her jibe. “No, Mother, it really is me. It’s hard to believe, I know, but you can blame Wade. He made dinner at my house last night, and he made it clear my kitchen was not properly equipped.”
“Is that all it takes?” I could picture her lifting one eyebrow and pursing her perfectly lipsticked mouth. “Remind me to enlist Wade’s assistance the next time I try to help you.”
“It’s not like that, Mom.” I was not going to have this argument. I just wanted her to say I could go get the box from the house, so I would have an excuse to look around.
“We’ll have to talk about this later, dear. I’m here and I need to go straighten out the landscapers before the situation gets any worse.”
“Mom, wait. If the box is at the house—if you still have it—I can just swing by and pick it up.” I played my trump card. “I’m trying to do better in the kitchen, and I thought maybe the stuff you had would help.”
Her tone softened. “You do need to eat better, dear. The box is in the attic. Go ahead and help yourself.”
She hung up, but not before I heard her rattle off a lightning-fast string of Spanish orders. I felt sorry for the landscapers, but I told myself it was better them than me.
Phase One of Operation Gregory was complete.
I promised the dogs I’d be back soon, and headed out. It was early afternoon, prime time for real estate agents. I suspected that had something to do with Mom’s annoyance at having to babysit the landscape crew at the Commons. It meant someone else would be in the office fielding calls and making the all-important first customer contact.
Someone like Gregory Whitlock.
At least that was what I hoped, because it would mean Gregory wasn’t at my mother’s house.
The driveway was empty and the garage door was closed when I got there. I parked in front, rang the doorbell and listened to the chimes echo through the empty house before I used my key and let myself in the front door.
The house was silent. I walked through into the kitchen and checked the garage door. Locked. I opened it and glanced at the empty garage, reassuring myself that I was alone. I relocked the door. If anyone came home while I was searching it might give me a few extra seconds to cover my tracks.
I tried not to think too much about what I was planning to do. This was my mother, and here I was sneaking into her house—yeah, I had a key, but since I was there under false pretenses I didn’t think it really counted—and getting ready to go through her personal belongings.
There was a stalker quality to my actions that I didn’t want to examine too closely.
I knew Mom had a home office, which is where I expected to find what I wanted, but it was in the back of the house, where I would have the most warning if someone came home.
I started with the kitchen. I’d seen a lot of that room over the last few months. Mom was determined that Gregory and I become friends, and she had made a regular practice of inviting me for dinner with them. She also made a practice of including Wade, fostering her not-so-secret agenda of encouraging our relationship.
I didn’t need to check most of the cupboards and drawers, since I ended up helping in the kitchen each time we had dinner. My mother expected the women to do the cooking while the men relaxed. It was one of the reasons she despaired of my kitchen. For once, that had worked to my advantage.
Mom still had a tiny household office in an alcove of the kitchen. One beat-up two-drawer filing cabinet—a hand-me-down from my dad’s first office—a simple counter, and a wicker chair painted a blazing white.
Standing in front of the file cabinet, I was directly in the line of sight of anyone who opened the garage door. If someone came in, I would only have a few seconds to put everything away.
I started with the bottom drawer. Several years of routine household expenses, utility bills, receipts for repairs and upkeep. Each year was in a separate section with its own individually labeled folders. The second drawer was more of the same, and everything was several years old. It was as though she had abandoned the office when she had been forced to abandon her ideal job of being the perfect wife.
No help.
The sideboard in the dining room held only china, silver, and linens, not that I expected anything else. Ditto the bookshelves and entertainment center in the living room.
I went down the hall toward the back of the house. I didn’t bother with the guest bathroom in the hallway, but I did stop long enough to pull down the folding staircase that led to the attic. I wanted to be able to retreat up those stairs as quickly as possible if I needed to.
I glanced in the old guest bedroom. We’d never had very many actual guests, but that’s what we always called it. The house didn’t have a den or family room, so the guest room had been my de facto playroom when I was small, and my TV retreat as a teenager.
Now my mother had transformed it into a tiny home gym, complete with a top-of-the-line elliptical machine, a rack of hand weights, mirrors, and a flat-screen TV. She had removed the closet doors and filled the space with polished chrome racks piled with fluffy white towels, and a gleaming stainless-steel clothes hamper.
There wasn’t anywhere to hide anything in that room.
I moved on.
My old bedroom was across the hall, the door slightly ajar. I pushed the door and stepped into Mom’s new office. There was a massive rolltop desk I recognized as having been my father’s. The satin-finished cherrywood glowed warmly, the way it had in Dad’s office when I was a kid. A sleek notebook computer rested alone on the desktop. Of course Mom would have everything neatly filed away.
Many of our older clients at Samurai had been fearful of new technology. Despite the obvious advantages, they had to be coaxed into the world of high tech.
My mother was the exact opposite. From what I had seen, she had enthusiastically embraced the twenty-first century, and turned each new piece of technology to her advantage. Her laptop, PDA, cell phone, and GPS were all part of the technological arsenal that kept her in the top rank at Whitlock Estates.
It also meant there might be useful information on her laptop. I should be able to hack into her files without much trouble, but there might be an easier way. Maybe I should just offer to give her the benefit of that expensive education she was always talking about.
This might be my only chance at the office, however.
I glanced at my watch. I’d already been in the house fifteen minutes, and I hadn’t found anything. If any of the neighbors noticed, Mom might wonder what had taken me so long.
BOOK: Lead-Pipe Cinch
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