Raspberry Revenge (9 page)

“It’s all ancient history, Suzanne. Let’s focus on the present, shall we?”

“We shall,” I said with a grin.

Chapter 15

“Y
ou’re back,” Wendy said the
moment Momma and I walked into the office.

“We are indeed,” I said. “Is your boss around?”

“He’s at lunch,” Wendy said as she stood. “If you’d like to make an appointment, I’d be glad to see if I can fit you in sometime next month.” Wendy took a great deal of satisfaction in telling us that, but my smile never wavered.

“Actually, we’d love to talk to you instead,” I said. “Right, Momma?”

“Absolutely. After all, you play a vital role here, Wendy, and we need your advice.”

Momma sounded so sincere as she said it that I almost believed it myself. Wow, she was good.

“I’m not really all that important,” Wendy said, suddenly blushing a little.

Score one for my mother! “On the contrary, you know the men you work for better than any of the other women in their lives probably do. After all, you spend more time with them and know just what they need to make them productive, what their strengths are, and more importantly, their weaknesses.”

“I’ll admit that it can be challenging with two of them, since sometimes they wanted two entirely different things, and it was always up to me to figure out what would be best for the both of them.”

I kind of doubted that was even remotely true, but I wasn’t about to spoil my mother’s good work. “Could you tell us a few things about what made Harley tick?” I asked.

“Oh, I couldn’t divulge any company secrets,” Wendy said quickly. “Mr. Daniels wouldn’t like that.”

Momma frowned at me for a moment, and then she said, “What my daughter means is, did he ask you to call him by his first name, or was everything formal around here?”

“Oh, he was friendly with me from the start,” Wendy said. “It was never ‘Mr. Boggess’ with him, but always Harley.”

“And Mr. Daniels? I notice you always use his last name when you speak of him.”

“He likes things a little more formal,” she conceded. “They were both great bosses, but in different ways.”

“You say were. You’re going to continue to work here for Mr. Daniels, aren’t you?”

“He wants me to stay, no matter how he acts sometimes, but without Harley, I can’t see myself hanging around. My sister’s been trying to get me to move to Raleigh to be closer to her kids for years, and I’ve finally decided that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Sooner rather than later, I’m going to take her up on her offer.”

“So, you and Harley were really close then,” I said.

“Sure, but not in a creepy kind of way or anything like that. He used to take time to give me advice, kind of take me under his wing, you know? He always said that the Christmas bonuses I got were from the firm, but I knew that if Mr. Daniels had any say in it, I’d get a card instead of a nice check every year.”

“Was there generally a lot of tension between the two men?” I asked.

“No, Mr. Daniels claimed to be okay with giving me money, too. It was just Harley’s idea, that’s all.”

I hadn’t meant that. “I’m talking more about in general.”

“Well, they were splitting up, but then you already knew that, didn’t you?”

“We did,” I said. “Would you have gone to work for Harley alone if he’d asked you to?”

“Well, I guess we’ll never know that, will we,” she said a little sadly.

“Why is that?”

“Because Harley never got the chance to ask,” she said. Was there an air of wistfulness in her voice as she’d said that? I’d never thought of Harley Boggess as some kind of lady magnet, but apparently I’d been missing something. It was pretty clear that Wendy had been taken with him, too, just like Megan and Amber.

We were suddenly interrupted when the front door opened and Curtis Daniels came striding in. He was clearly surprised to see us there and just as obviously unhappy about our presence. “Seriously? Again? Unless you’re here to do business with me, I’ve got work to do.”

“We were just having a nice chat with Wendy,” I said.

He wasn’t pleased with that at all. “Oh, really.”

“It was nothing confidential, Curtis,” Momma said. “I bet you’re going to miss her when she leaves the firm.”

“So, she told you that, did she?”

“I didn’t realize that it was supposed to be a secret,” Wendy apologized to her remaining boss.

“Isn’t it time for you to take your lunch?” he asked her icily.

“Yes, sir,” she said, leaving the office without looking at either me or my mother on her way out.

“You were a little rough on her, weren’t you?” Momma asked him after she was gone.

“I never wanted her here in the first place. She was Harley’s hire, and I went along with it, but now that he’s gone, I won’t be needing her services any longer.”

“I thought she just turned in her notice,” I said, honestly confused now.

“She did, two minutes before I was about to fire her. She’s working her last two weeks here, but if she keeps talking to strangers, she’s not going to last even that long.”

“We’re hardly strangers,” Momma said.

“It doesn’t really matter at this point. She had a thing for Harley, can you believe that?”

“Why wouldn’t she? He was handsome in his own way, and he could be quite charming when he wanted to be,” Momma said.

“He never used any of that charm on me, I can tell you that. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he brought her into the firm in the first place just to spy on me.”

“Paranoid much?” I asked him.

“You’re not being paranoid when someone really is out to get you,” Curtis said. “I know for a fact that Harley was planning on forcing me to buy him out just so he could come after me once our company was dissolved.”

“Didn’t you have a noncompete clause in place to prevent that from happening?” Momma asked.

“Yes, but it was basically toothless.”

“But that’s not a problem for you anymore, is it?” I asked him, getting in a little jab.

“Believe me, for every problem that man’s demise saved me, it created seven more to take its place,” Curtis said. “I kept telling Harley that he was spending too much time on April Springs business and not enough time on ours, but he would never listen to me. Now that he’s gone, I’m seeing just how right I was. I’ll tell you one thing: I’m petrified about what the audit is going to show once it’s been completed.”

“You aren’t accusing the dead man of stealing from you, are you?” Momma asked him.

“It’s beginning to look as though it’s not a question of if, it’s a matter of how much,” Curtis said. “It’s a good thing I didn’t know what he was up to. I might have done something drastic to the scoundrel myself.”

“Like plunging a letter opener into his chest?” I asked him softly.

“What? Of course not. I would have done what any businessman worth his salt would do. I would have sued him for every penny he owed me, and then I would have seen him prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

“How much are we talking about here?” I asked.

“Over a hundred thousand dollars that I know of, and that’s just so far,” he said in disgust, and then he must have realized that he’d shared too much confidential information with us. “Why am I telling you two any of this? Dorothea, I’ll ask you one last time: do we have any business to discuss, or are you two here on a witch hunt?”

“There’s no business to be done anymore,” she said simply. I might have tried to string him out a little, but so far, there was little to be critical of in my mother’s performance.

“Then I’ll ask you both to leave right now,” Curtis said as he held the door open for us.

Momma and I had no choice but to go.

Once we were back in the car, I said, “You did a fine job in there.”

“I don’t know. I may have gotten more out of him if I’d dangled that deal in front of his nose, but I simply couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

“I totally get that,” I said, “but look how much he told us. He practically gave us another motive for murder.”

“And don’t forget, Wendy isn’t without blame, either. If she was spying on Curtis for Harley as Curtis claimed, it could have gone badly in the end.”

“How so?” I asked.

“What if Harley asked Wendy to do more than she was comfortable doing? Harley had a big personality. Was it just me, or did Wendy seem a little too enthusiastic about her late boss?”

“She made him sound like Saint Harley,” I conceded.

“I have a feeling that she was overcompensating for something. I’d love to know what their real relationship was like, in and out of the office. She has no real alibi for the time of the murder, remember.”

“And no motive that we know of, either,” I said. “That’s crucial for us to make a case against her.”

“Could he have spurned her affection as well?” Momma asked.

“I don’t know. It’s a stretch. I could see Megan falling for him, but Wendy seemed a bit more sensible than that.”

“Then let’s look for another motive. What if she was in on Harley’s thefts, if indeed he even committed them in the first place?”

“I’m listening,” I said. I loved the way my mother’s mind worked, and hearing her think out loud was a real treat for me.

“She claimed that she knew a great deal of what was going on in this office. Let’s take her at her word. Let’s say she was snooping around, not only on Curtis but on Harley as well. She discovers Harley has been stealing from the company, and she demands a share for her silence. Harley decides she has to go, so he asks her to meet him in George’s office so he can dispatch her without anyone being the wiser. The only thing was that Wendy’s reactions were better than he thought they’d be, and she ended up striking out at him before he could do away with her. It’s kind of like what happened with Phillip’s old case. If you look at it that way, Wendy has no reason to stay now, since her hope of getting a cut of the proceeds is just as dead as Harley is.”

“There are a great many ‘what ifs’ in that scenario,” I said after mulling it over.

Momma looked crestfallen. “Sorry. I let my imagination run away with me.”

“I’m not saying that it’s not possible,” I said. “The question is how do we prove it one way or the other?”

“We must continue as we’ve been doing and keep plugging away at it,” Momma said. “Do we have time to interview one more suspect together, or do you need to speak to Amber with Grace?”

“Well, I’ve already spoken with Megan and Nathaniel this morning on my own, and we just talked to Curtis and Wendy. Would you mind terribly?”

“Not at all. I’ve got work to do myself,” she said. “Could you drop me off at home?”

“I thought you drove to Donut Hearts this morning,” I said.

“I was going to, but it was such a beautiful morning that I decided to walk. You know me. I like it when there’s a bite in the air.”

“I know you do.” As I drove toward her home, I said, “Momma, it’s really fun doing this with you.”

Momma smiled in return. “Despite the grimness of the task, I think so, too. Perhaps next time, though, we do something more conventional, like see a play together or go shopping.”

“You don’t have to twist my arm,” I said with a grin.

“It really is puzzling, isn’t it?” she asked.

“I’ve seen worse cases, but not by much,” I answered. “Harley had his fingers in quite a few pies, didn’t he?”

“I dislike that expression, but in this case, I’ll grant that it’s apropos.”

“I appreciate that.”

We arrived at Momma’s place, and as she was getting out of my Jeep, she said, “Happy hunting, Suzanne.”

“Thanks.”

I drove a few blocks and then pulled over before I called Grace. When she answered, I asked, “Hey, where are you?”

“I’m sitting in front of Amber North’s house,” she said.

“What? You weren’t supposed to go there without me.”

“I didn’t. I was just driving by when I saw a strange car parked in front of her place. I pulled over and I was about to call you when my phone rang, and it was you.”

“Don’t move. I’ll be there in two minutes.” I could do it, too, if I didn’t care about the speed limit or any of the other basic traffic laws.

I somehow made it in twenty seconds less than I’d predicted, but I couldn’t find Grace when I got there.

Had something happened to her in the short time it had taken me to get there?

Chapter 16

“G
race, where are you?” I
asked frantically the second she picked up when I called her back.

“I’m across the street,” she said, “and a little down the block. Can’t you see me waving at you? Keep driving past Amber’s house and I’ll get into your Jeep.”

I did as she suggested, and after I parked out of sight, Grace came to the car on foot, grinning like a fool. “This is just like in the movies,” she said as she got in.

“I can think of a dozen ways why it’s nothing like it at all,” I said.

“You don’t consider skulking around in the shadows theatrical?”

“Well, for one thing, it’s broad daylight, so I don’t see any shadows. As to skulking, I wouldn’t even know how to begin to do that.”

“You know, like this,” she said as she pretended to sneak around, holding her hands up like a squirrel’s paws in front of her as she darted her head from side to side.

It was my turn to laugh. I couldn’t help myself. She was hilarious. Getting myself under control, I asked her, “Did I miss anything on my way over here?”

“No, nobody’s come out since I got here,” she said. “Who do you think it might be, a secret boyfriend that Harley didn’t know about and who maybe lashed out in a rage of jealousy at Harley for stealing Amber’s attentions?”

What was it with the wild theories my investigative partners were spinning today? Was I becoming too staid in my approach to our crime-solving, or had they both suddenly decided to be overly dramatic at once? “I suppose it’s possible,” I conceded.

“But not probable; is that what you’re saying?” Grace asked me as both of our gazes were riveted to Amber’s front door.

“I’m not saying anything yet,” I answered. While we waited on Amber’s mysterious guest to come out, I brought Grace up to date on what Momma and I had uncovered.

“Wow, it sounds as though Wendy might have a motive after all,” Grace said.

“Do you believe Momma’s crazy theory?” I asked her.

“I know it sounds a little far-fetched, but in a certain light, it makes perfect sense. At least the theory matches the facts we have.”

“In a twisted kind of way, I suppose,” I said.

“Hey, at least it addresses our main concerns.”

“It’s too soon to say that yet,” I said. “Is the door opening?” I glanced over and saw that Amber’s front door was indeed beginning to open. Who was it? Could it indeed be a handsome, mysterious stranger coming to pay a call on her, or had I listened a little too intently to Grace’s theory? The moment I saw that it was a woman, I knew that scenario had become even less likely, and when I finally saw who it was, I knew that there was something quite unusual about who was visiting Amber North.

What was Megan Gray, Amber’s sworn enemy, doing visiting her in her home?