Keeping Mum (A Garden Society Mystery) (22 page)

“She
did
say she despised him.”

“I wonder how she could ruin him, though.”

“It was probably just talk,” Rob said.

Cam didn’t want to argue, though she was a little annoyed that Rob seemed to keep defending Vera. But she went on to her next point. “So the person we’re looking for is a person who had it out for Derrick and Sully, and who also had it out for Vivian.”

“Yeah, if it were only that easy,” Rob said.

“It should be easy, shouldn’t it?” Cam said.

“Probably, but I don’t know if in politics it is. And do we believe Vivian?”

“I do.”

“So then, what we need is the source of those friend comments.”

“Which we could get from Jake,” Cam said.

“If Jake were interested in sharing that kind of thing with us. Annie said the notes didn’t have names.”

It was a fair point. Jake wasn’t always forthcoming, and definitely wouldn’t be about a witness whom they might then harass. Especially one who had been discovered by their sneaking around.

“But let’s think about this logically. How would the police have identified Vivian’s friends?” Cam asked. “I mean . . . they don’t know who she socializes and spends time with, do they?”

“It would be people she’s seen with regularly, like lunch dates, colleagues, or volunteers.”

“
Supposed
friends who just come forward with details,” Cam said.

“Well, that class of people we can probably convince Jake to look at with a grain of salt.”

Cam swallowed wrong and had to cough. Rob using a cliché was fairly unheard of. “True,” she said as she recovered. “People who volunteer information we can discredit as potentially having an agenda. So, Mr. Hotshot-Reporter, how do we figure out who she was seen with last week?”

“She’s a busy lady. Let’s look at her appointment book.”

“Right!”

Cam called Vivian back, and fortunately, Vivian and her dad were having dinner in the very next room. Cam wondered how that had happened. Probably Vivian had called him and when she told him where she was, he’d just told her to stay put. It was his favorite restaurant, after all. Cam and Rob finished their dinner and then made their way into the next room.

Vivian helped Rob access the archived calendar and they went over names, Rob taking note of the few who were social instead of professional. Vivian then sent the week’s worth of appointments to him by email so he and Cam could peruse it more slowly.

They thanked her and left, heading to Cam’s house.

“You really think the killer is one of these appointments?” Cam asked.

“Not really. But I think one of these appointments is either friends with the killer or is gullible enough to be fed news.”

Cam poured them each a glass of wine as Rob pulled the list up on the computer so it was large enough so they both could see.

“There are a couple of familiar names here. That’s for sure,” Rob said as Cam sat back down.

“Who?”

“Vera Windermere-Sullivan, for starters.”

“What? What would she have to do with Vivian Macy? Vivian told us the story about her and referred to her as Derrick’s daughter—it sounded then like she barely knew who she was.”

“I think we’d need to ask Vera, though maybe we should ask Vivian first. It’s possible she just didn’t think
we’d
know who she was. Vera seems unlikely to be considered by the police as a friend, though. She’s the wrong age, and she’s connected to not only both victims, but a political rival, too,” Rob said.

“I don’t know when logic has ever guided the police in this town,” Cam said.

“That’s not fair. Granted, they’ve snuffed up a couple murder investigations. But for the most part, it’s a good, reliable squad. They just aren’t . . . very creative.”

“They want easy answers,” Cam argued.

“Don’t you think that’s understandable? And maybe because murder isn’t so common around here, they’ve been able to solve them more easily before this . . . spree we’ve had.”

Cam had to agree that might be the case. “Anybody with a more logical friend connection?” she asked.

“The other familiar name is Melvin Entwhistle, but he hardly seems the sort to gossip, and certainly not about a romance.”

Cam scanned the list. There were about two dozen people in appointment slots in the week leading up to the fund-raiser, but Cam didn’t know most of the names.

“Wait. This woman . . . Vivian said she’s a constituent, but didn’t you mention her name when you tried to talk to Chad Phillips?”

“Lorraine Patterson? That sounds right. I’d need to check.”

Cam dialed her cell phone and asked Annie to come downstairs. “Bring your laptop.”

“Can Jake come?” Annie asked.

“Sure. Bring him, too.” She wasn’t thrilled to have Jake in on things at this stage, but maybe it was best they start raising doubts about some of these supposed friends of Vivian’s.

“Wait a minute,” Rob said. “Lorraine Patterson . . . Brian Fontana! I knew that name was bugging me!” He typed a search into his computer. “There!”

“What?” Cam said.

“Brian Fontana was working in Chad Phillips’s office when I tried to visit.”

“You said that earlier, but it doesn’t make any sense,” she said.

“And he and Lorraine Patterson had their heads together,” Rob went on.

Annie entered in pajamas and Jake followed behind her looking sheepish. Rob shot a look at Jake and Jake blushed, embarrassed to have been called when they were apparently settled in for the night, but Annie seemed to figure they were all family. She plunked her laptop across the table from Cam’s, then came around to Cam’s side.

“What are we looking for?” she said and half shoved Cam off her chair to get in next to her.

“We have a Lorraine Patterson here—two of them actually. Rob says one of them was the gatekeeper when he tried to talk to Chad Phillips. We need to figure out if it’s the same one who met with Vivian. Vivian said she was a neighbor and constituent—that she had some concerns, but if that neighbor worked for Chad . . .”

“Wait! Where did you get that name?” Jake asked.

“Vivian Macy’s planner,” Cam said.

“And why do you have Vivian Macy’s planner?”

“She gave it to us,” Rob said.

“Nice!” Annie said.

“No! This is not nice. You’re interfering with a murder investigation again!”

Rob got up and fetched Jake a beer.

“We talked to Vivian Macy tonight,” Rob explained. “She told us there was no ugly breakup, just a couple of dates and a decision not to see each other anymore because they weren’t compatible. The bad blood came because of a loophole he was exploiting that she planned to close—something she warned him about, as a friend, so he could clean up his act first. Now, she might be lying, but we thought we should also try to figure out who these supposed friends were who left the potentially faulty information. And since we doubted we’d get the information from you, we figured the most likely people the police would look at were appointments and volunteers. So she gave us the appointments to get us started.”

Jake sputtered for a minute. He didn’t look happy. Then finally he asked, “So what about Lorraine Patterson again?”

“She was a gatekeeper I had trouble getting past when I wanted to talk to Chad Phillips about the election. Along with Brian Fontana, the supposed hit man, I should mention, but we haven’t figured out how that fits yet. Vivian met with Lorraine as a delegate—as a courtesy. But she’s connected to Chad, who loops back into this case from a few directions,” Rob said.

“And how does he do that?”

“We’re pretty sure he’s sleeping with Vera Windermere-Sullivan—daughter of one victim, wife of the other.”

Jake ran his fingers through his hair. “You people will be the death of my career one day, I am sure of it.”

“That’s not our goal. We just don’t think Vivian did it, and Chad looks like a pretty darned good pick. Is he even on your list?” Cam said.

“Yes, but as yet, it’s a pretty long list and he’s not near the top.”

“We’ve noticed there’s been no rash arrest this time,” Cam said. “That’s a nice change of pace.”

Annie elbowed her.

“What? You were one of those rash arrests, if you’ll remember,” Cam said.

Rob pinched her then, and since she was sitting between Annie and him with only two chairs for the three of them, she decided it was probably time to shut her mouth.

Thankfully, Rob picked up one of the strands of interest. “How many of Vivian’s supposed friends volunteered information?”

Jake looked at the three of them sitting there studiously, Annie in her sheep pajamas. “Just one, but she did suggest a few other names.”

“And?” Rob asked.

“And we talked to everybody, but you’re right. Volunteers sometimes have an agenda that should be examined.”

“And?”

“And Lorraine Patterson was one of the names on her list. So even though we hadn’t gone through all Vivian’s appointments, we had talked to Lorraine,” Jake admitted.

Annie got up and went around to her own computer. She typed in a few things, wearing a look of concentration.

“There!” Annie said.

“What?” Cam made her way around and looked at the computer screen. Annie had just pulled up a picture.

“Rob, is this her?” Cam asked.

Rob followed and nodded.

“The bigger mystery, since I found this by searching for Lorraine Patterson and Chad Phillips, is whether this is the Lorraine Jake talked to,” Annie said.

Jake sighed and stepped closer. “Yeah. Same woman.”

Annie entered a few more keystrokes and up popped a map showing that Lorraine Patterson lived near Vivian. They weren’t quite neighbors, but near enough that they might know each other for neighborly reasons . . . certainly near enough that Lorraine might have made an appointment as a constituent.

“Very curious indeed,” Annie said. “Did she claim to be a friend then?”

“She’d already been identified as a friend, so we didn’t ask.”

“Who identified her?” Cam asked.

“Ramona Pemberly.”

Cam covered her face. “Do you know how easy it is to lead that woman down any gossip trail?”

“You know her?” Jake asked.

“She’s part of the Roanoke Garden Society, but more important, an incorrigible gossip. If anyone wanted to lead someone to a specific piece of information, letting it slip to
her
is a great way.”

“I’ll be sure to let the team know,” Jake said. He didn’t look pleased.

“Certainly worth asking Vivian what the meeting was about,” Cam added.

“Now you two just hold on,” Jake said. Annie looked pointedly at Rob, obviously curious why he wasn’t being scolded, but Jake ignored her. “You should not be following up on murder investigation questioning, but I see your point. We’ll look into her further and I’ll double-check where all the names came from. But you . . . three . . . are not the police. Do you remember how these things typically end?”

“We solve the murder?” Cam offered.

Annie kicked Cam under the table, and Cam pulled her legs up, tucking them under her.

“Somebody gets captured or threatened,” Jake said.

“Covered,” Cam said. “Somebody tied me to a chair in my office today.”

“Oh . . . I forgot to tell you that,” Annie said. “How’d that go anyway?”

Cam snorted, but Jake looked mad.

“And you didn’t report it?”

“Yes, we reported it. To building security, who were reviewing footage and said they would call the police. Nobody’s here yet, so I guess it’s going slowly.”

“That’s not protocol. You should have been asked to stay. What did he look like?” Jake pulled out a notepad.

“The security guard or the intruder?”

“We’ll get to the security guard, because he clearly hasn’t been trained well enough, but for now, let’s talk about the intruder.”

“Dark clothes, ski mask. The lights were off, so I couldn’t tell much. I’m pretty sure he was white or nearly, and he wasn’t particularly tall, but broad, very strong. If I saw his eyes again, I might recognize them by shape, but it was dark, so I don’t have a color or anything.”

“Bigger than Rob and me?” Jake asked.

“Rob’s height, maybe, but broader. If he was taller, it wasn’t noticeably.”

“And did he say anything?”

“To stay out of it. Hey . . . maybe it was
you
!”

“Very funny. I guess you’re not too shaken up if you can laugh about it.”

“Rob rescued me. I dialed Annie with my toes, but she was too far away,” Cam said.

“At least you’re resourceful.”

“So we’ll try to stay out of it, if you promise not to drop this piece—that the people feeding info to the police about Vivian have an agenda, and most likely it’s a double one: to hide who really did the crime while smearing her at the same time.”