He’d moved away from the workbench and was giving me an aw-shucks smile. Mr. Nice Guy.
As if I’d buy it!
It was wasted on me because something else had caught my eye. I edged closer to him, still talking. I kept my voice low and conversational.
“What happened then?”
“She left with the painting. I never saw it again.”
“Was it overcast that day?”
He looked at me like I was crazy. “Overcast? Yes, it was. I remember the sky was gray and it looked like it was going to rain any second. You could feel the humidity in the air. I figured there was a storm coming.” The words spilled out of him like candies from a piñata. When people are lying, they tend to tell you way too much detail, and I wanted to see how he’d handle a silly question.
He handled it the way a liar would. He answered it immediately, and he told me more than I needed to know.
Something on the corkboard top of the work surface caught my attention. Tiny blue sprinkles, like confetti. Just a little cluster of them dotting one corner of the surface. Where had I seen those blue dots before?
The historical society.
A memory kicked in like a freeze-frame in my mind, and it heightened my suspicions. My danger meter went on red alert, and I decided to get out of there as fast as I could.
“I know exactly what you’re talking about,” I said, making tracks for the door. “Thanks for your time.”
Chapter 24
Vera Mae called me on my cell as I was peeling down Main Street, headed to WYME.
“Where’ve you been, girl?” A little edge of worry flared under her warm molasses drawl. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you for the past twenty minutes.”
“Sorry. I must have had the phone turned off. What’s up?”
“How long will it take you to get to the station?” A sharp intake of breath and then, “Stop whatever you’re doin’, because you need to get down here as fast as you can.” I heard an excited buzz of conversation in the background. Something big must be going on at WYME. Or as Vera Mae would say, “hellzapoppin.”
“Ten minutes, maybe fifteen. Why?”
“Turn on the news, hon. Chantel is the big story this morning.”
“Chantel? You mean she made another prediction? That’s hardly news. That’s her stock-in-trade.”
“Not a prediction, sweetie. She’s been taken into custody by the Cypress Grove PD.”
“Whaaat?” I made a fast left onto Prince Street, tires squealing, and the guy in the car behind me blasted me with his horn before flipping me off.
“You heard me. She’s down at headquarters right this minute. I know Rafe’s been tryin’ to get up with you. He called here for you a couple of times, and he told me he was going to try your cell. You’ve got to remember to leave that thing turned on, sugar.”
“I know. I know,” I muttered. I pulled over to the curb and checked my messages. I couldn’t believe my rotten luck. Rafe had called four times while I was wasting time talking with Chris Hendricks.
But what had Rafe come up with? How could everything have hit the fan so fast?
“Don’t keep me in suspense, Vera Mae. Why did they bring her in?”
“They’re questioning her about the murders, hon.” She paused. “Wait a sec. I’ve got to talk to Kevin.” She must have slapped her hand over the phone, because her next words were muffled. Suddenly she was back on the line with me, excited and breathless.
“Okay, Kevin said that’s the last he heard, but it seems to be changing minute by minute. At first they said she was a person of interest. But now it seems more serious than that. Kevin doesn’t know if she’s really been charged with murder or maybe she’s just an accessory.” She sounded like she’d just run up a flight of stairs, but I knew she was just jazzed over the latest developments.
“Rafe told you all this?” I was still scrambling to make sense of it.
“No, Rafe was pretty closemouthed. I’m just going by what I heard from Big Jim Wilcox. And you know what he’s like. He might not have gotten his facts right. Maybe they just brought her in for questioning. Who knows? The point is, she’s down at the police station right now.”
So much for having her own show at WYME
. A snarky thought, but I couldn’t help it. That woman had been a thorn in my side since the first moment she’d come to town. And now she’d been hauled down to the police station. Career suicide, right? It didn’t matter how it all turned out; she’d always be tainted by the charge. Her career in broadcasting was over, and maybe even her book deal.
Unless it was all a mistake? I shook my head in frustration. There were too many “if onlys” in the mix to really analyze the situation.
“Cyrus had planned big things for her at the station. I bet he’s pulling his hair out by the handfuls right now.”
“Damn straight, hon. He is.” Vera Mae chortled. “Or what he has left of it.”
Cyrus has one of the worst comb-overs I’ve ever seen. He keeps a can of industrial-strength hair spray hidden in the bottom drawer of his desk, just to keep the spaghetti-like strands glued in place.
“Big Jim’s leaving in a few minutes to do a remote from down there. It’s gonna be interesting to see how this all plays out. That’s for sure. A break in the murder case is going to trump any news features on the time capsule ceremony. I’d bet money on it.” I just realized I hadn’t asked a very important question.
“But which murder is it?” My thoughts were racing. I still couldn’t get my mind around the fact that the police had arrested Chantel. “What’s that?”
“Which
murder
?” I repeated. I found myself shouting into the phone.
“What, hon? I can’t hear you. You’re breaking up.”
“Who was it—Althea or Mildred? Who do they think Chantel killed?”
“We don’t know that yet.” Vera Mae came through loud and clear.
“How is that possible?” My thoughts were buzzing. I was still struggling to connect Chantel with either—or both—of the victims.
She’d held a séance at the historical society, but that was a dead end. I’d been suspicious of Chantel from the start, but facts were facts, and I never had any concrete evidence. Maybe Rafe was way ahead of me, though, because apparently he did. He never would have brought her in unless he thought he had a strong case. I told myself it was silly to speculate. I had to get down to WYME and see what was going on for myself.
There was another interruption while Vera Mae put the phone down for at least ten seconds. When she came back she said, “Gotta run, Maggie. See you in five.”
Five? I sharked down Prince Street, slid through the next three intersections on yellow, and got to WYME in record time.
Big Jim was standing in the lobby, chatting up Irina. “I need to have an open line,” he said, puffing his chest out with pride. “I’ll be sending in breaking news alerts from the police department as they happen.” You’d think he was Chris Hansen from
Dateline
, not a radio sports announcer from a little backwater town in south Florida.
Irina was busy filing her nails and barely looked up at him. She reached for a bottle of nail polish. Flamingo Pink. “Open line. I get it for you. You will haf it,” she said in a bored tone. “You will haf everything you neet. I make it happen.”
“What’s going on, Jim?” I asked. I tried to breathe through my mouth. Big Jim was drenched in stinky cologne again. The guy was the size of a jukebox, and he looked enormous in his pale blue blazer.
“The first break in the double murder case, that’s what!” He took a step closer to me, peering at my face. “This could be the break I’ve been waiting for.” I must have looked puzzled, because he added, “Career-wise.”
I nodded. “Ah, I see. Yes, this could be the big one.”
He gave me a hard look to see whether I was mocking him, but I kept my expression neutral.
Vera Mae flew into the lobby and grabbed me by the arm. “C’mon back to my office, Maggie. We’ve got to plan today’s show.”
“What’s on the schedule?” I usually check to see who my guest is, but I’d been so rattled by the meeting with Chris Hendricks down at the frame shop that I hadn’t gotten around to it. I wondered whether this news about Chantel knocked out my suspicions about the picture framer.
If Chantel was in as a murder suspect, did that mean Chris Hendricks was out? I didn’t know how to fit Chantel into the puzzle, and I needed more information.
Vera Mae was talking nonstop as she pulled me down the hallway to her office. I tried to duck into the break room for a quick cup of joe, but she plucked at my elbow, propelling me forward. “I got your coffee all ready for you, just the way you like it.” I must have hesitated, because she added, “Hazelnut double roast. And a bear claw. Plus a lemon cream.”
I smiled. “You had me at the bear claw.”
We zipped into her cluttered office and she shut the door. She whisked a pile of legal pads off the visitor’s chair so I’d have a place to sit, and then she threw herself into her swivel desk chair. The coffee and doughnuts were laid out neatly on her desktop. She whipped a pencil out from behind her ear and tapped it on her mouse pad.
“Okay, Maggie, we’ve got to figure out how we’re gonna play this. Cyrus wants a meeting with me thirty minutes before showtime. He wants to know our game plan.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Our game plan?”
“He wants to know how much information we should release about Chantel.”
“Why can’t we just go with the truth? The cops brought her in for questioning, and that’s all we know.”
“Cyrus is worried about the sponsors. The last thing he wants is any hint of a scandal.”
“If that’s the case, I think we should say as little as possible. You could even mention that she’s helping with the investigation.” I couldn’t believe that I was actually sticking up for Chantel. Maggie Walsh, team player.
“Helping with the investigation. That sounds good, hon. What does Rafe have to say?”
“I haven’t gotten back with him yet.” I sipped the coffee; it was very strong, just the way I like it. I felt a little jolt go through my system, and then I suddenly felt more alert. “So Big Jim is covering everything down at the police station.”
“Only because you weren’t available. If you can get some information out of Rafe, something that we can go public with, we can run it as a news item right now.” Vera Mae pushed her desk phone toward me. “Do it, hon.”
I nodded. Time to call Rafe.
He answered on the first ring. “Martino,” he barked. Then he must have looked at the readout, because his voice softened. “Maggie, where have you been?”
“A long story. What’s going on with Chantel?”
“This is off the record, right?”
“If it has to be.”
“She showed up on Clemson’s security tape. She was trying to get in Vera Mae’s back door last night.”
“So those cameras were real?”
Funny, I never thought we’d get a break like this.
“Very real. The wacky neighbor has a pretty expensive system. First I thought it might be hot, and then he told us that he used to work for a security firm. When they upgraded their equipment, they let him buy the old stuff for a few bucks. He’s paranoid, just like Vera Mae said. He let us search the place, and he’s clean. I’m convinced he had nothing to do with the break-in. He’s just a nut job, a loner, someone who thinks the world is out to get him.”
“Wow,” I said softly. “This puts a different light on things.”
“Gina Raeburn showed up on the tape as well.”
“She was dropping off some papers. I suppose her story checked out, right?”
“Absolutely. She entered the house with a cardboard box and exited thirty seconds later, without the box. She’s in the clear.”
I scribbled a few notes, knowing I couldn’t use them. Vera Mae was watching me, and I made a no-go motion with my hands. She nodded. There was info on the case, but no way we could use it. It still made no sense to me. What was Chantel doing over at Vera Mae’s last night? And why was she lurking around the back door?
“What does Chantel have to say? How does she explain herself?”
“She said she thought the front doorbell wasn’t working. So she went around back and tried the back door.”
“Pretty slick. Do you believe her?”
“I think she’s lying through her teeth.” He drew in a breath. “She said she wanted to go over some show ideas with Vera Mae and she figured it would be better to do it away from the station. That it would be more private.”
“Private? That’s a crock. She could have called Vera Mae and invited her out to dinner. Or come in early to the station to see her. It makes no sense that she’d just pop up at her house like that.”
“I know. She talks a good game.”
“But if you have her caught on tape, for breaking and entering—”
“That’s the problem,” Rafe cut in. “We don’t have a case against her for breaking and entering.”
“Why not?”
“Some very bad luck. There’s a glitch on the tape. The tape shows her walking up to the back door, trying the door, and then—nothing. There’s some kind of interference. The tech guys are gonna try and clean up the tape, but that may be all there is.”
“So she’s not being charged with murder? Or as an accomplice or a person of interest?”
Vera Mae was sitting on the edge of her chair, taking in every word. I caught her trying to read my notes upside down.
“Charged with murder? No, of course not. Where did you hear that?”
“Big Jim Wilcox.”
Rafe snorted. “He’s an idiot. He’s called me about twenty times. He’s trying to get an exclusive for himself.”
“You’re right. He’ll be on his way down there any minute. He thinks he’s covering a breaking story.”
“Well, he’s wasting his time. We just released Chantel. She’s probably heading back to WYME right this minute.”
Chapter 25
I was more confused than ever. Chantel had been lurking around Vera Mae’s backyard and had tried to open the back door. Why? Rafe thought she’d been up to something, and I
knew
she’d been up to something. I’d been suspicious of her from the start. I needed to settle a few things quickly, before she turned up here at the station.