Going Organic Can Kill You (10 page)
Read Going Organic Can Kill You Online
Authors: Staci McLaughlin
I washed down my fried flower with a sip of water. “What committee are you talking about?”
“The Blossom Valley Rejuvenation Committee,” Esther said, patting her gray curls in obvious pride. “We organize local events to draw in tourists or raise money for worthy causes.”
Gordon snorted. “The whole thing’s a crock.”
“Stop that,” Esther said. I’d never seen her so worked up before. I expected beads of sweat to literally pop out on her forehead. “Our little group does a lot of good for the town. Mostly, anyway. The earthworm races didn’t really pan out.”
I raised my eyebrows at her.
“We held the race early in the morning this past March and didn’t provide any cover for the worms,” she said. “The robins and blue jays ate most of the contestants.”
“Well, you know what they say about the early bird and the worm,” I cracked.
Gordon kept his usual glower, but Zennia chuckled. Esther frowned. Too soon for jokes, apparently.
“People drove for miles to watch the worm races,” Esther said. “Imagine how horrified the children were when the birds swooped in.”
“It must have been traumatic,” I said quickly. Where was my trophy for keeping a straight face?
Esther clutched one hand with the other. “But now our monthly meeting is this afternoon, and I’m not sure I can face all the questions about Maxwell. The committee was so supportive of my decision to open the spa, I couldn’t bear to see their looks of pity. I should skip this one meeting.”
“For once, you and I agree,” Gordon said. “Attending the meeting is a terrible idea.”
“But it’s the last meeting before the cricket-chirping festival. They may need my help.”
I choked back a laugh. “Cricket chirping?”
Gordon rolled his eyes. “The most asinine idea ever.”
“Nonsense,” Esther said. “George from the committee thought of it one evening a few years back while listening to the chirping in his backyard. He reckoned he wasn’t the only one who enjoyed crickets. Why not have people bring their pet crickets together and hand out a prize for the loudest chirper?”
Pet crickets? Did people take them for walks on itty-bitty leashes? Teach them to fetch a grain of rice? “And enough people have pet crickets to organize an entire contest?” I asked.
“We have twenty entries lined up.”
Esther eyed me a moment, and I held back a groan, well aware of what she was about to propose.
“Say, Dana, could you attend the meeting for me?”
Another random job for this Girl Friday? But Esther looked so darn hopeful. Plus, she was the boss. “Where and when is it?”
Esther clapped her hands together. “Four o’clock at the town hall.”
“Doesn’t Dana have marketing work to do?” Gordon asked.
“I’m almost done, but Esther has asked me to stay on as more of a general helper, serving meals for Zennia, covering you at the desk, running errands ...” My voice trailed off and died away.
Gordon glared at Esther. “Do you have the extra money for that? If Zennia used her time more efficiently, she could cook as well as serve.”
“I’m a hard worker,” Zennia said, gripping the kitchen sponge. “These meals take time.”
Gordon continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “And we’re not exactly the Holiday Inn Express. We don’t need someone covering the desk at all times.”
This guy sure had a habit of forgetting who was boss around here.
“I like knowing we have backup if needed,” Esther said. “And there’s always a hodgepodge of chores that I don’t have time for. Besides, you know we’re booked for the next six weeks, so money isn’t a problem.”
Gordon grunted in reply, then turned on his heel and strode out. Poor sport. Remind me not to play Monopoly with him. But I felt like hugging Esther. When she decided on something, she didn’t back down, even with Gordon questioning her every decision.
I glanced at the kitchen clock. With a couple of hours to kill before the meeting, now was my chance to find Heather. Under the pretext of helping her clean rooms, I wanted to ask her about where she’d been yesterday. And her strange comment about two sides to every story.
If she’d known Maxwell was dead and was using me as her alibi, I was going to find out. I was no one’s patsy.
10
I swept open the door to the laundry room, looking for Heather. The maid’s cart was tucked in the corner, the top empty of towels. But the washing machine vibrated and clanked through its spin cycle. Heather had to be on the grounds somewhere.
I checked the front lobby and earned a glare from Gordon as he filled out paperwork at the counter. Must be smarting over Esther’s refusal to quit the committee or her insistence on keeping me on as a staff member. I stepped out the front door to see if Heather’s car was parked, forgetting my encounter with the press when I’d arrived this morning. Within seconds, four reporters with microphones descended on me.
“Who are you? Are you staying here? Did you know Maxwell Mendelsohn?” The questions hit me like paint balls at a corporate team-building event.
I held my hands before my face as flashbulbs blinded me. “I didn’t know him. I only work here.” I darted back inside, the front door whacking me on the behind.
“What a zoo,” I said to Gordon.
He kept writing as if I hadn’t spoken.
Stick my tongue out at him or try for maturity? If I was going to work with the guy, I might as well extend the proverbial olive branch.
“Having the media camped out front will sure help draw attention to the spa,” I said.
He looked up, pen poised over paper. “Great publicity. We probably don’t even need your brochures at this point.”
Should have extended a rose bush branch instead, nailed him with a few thorns.
“Still,” I said, “once the rubberneckers check out, those brochures will be crucial for attracting new customers.”
“We’ll see,” Gordon said. “The townspeople are already using the extra media attention to their benefit. Mitchell at the Get the Scoop ice cream parlor has bumped up prices by a good fifty cents per cone. And Clyde, over at the kitchen store, has all knife sets at half off.”
“That’s horrible! Maxwell only died yesterday.”
“Savvy business people jump at any opportunity.”
“When did murder become an opportunity?” I said.
Gordon shook his head, as if he pitied my lack of cutthroat instincts.
“Have you seen Heather?” I asked. “I was going to help her with the rooms this afternoon.”
“Not for a while.” He scribbled on the top-most paper. “I never did understand why you were taking care of towels yesterday instead of her.”
Was it any of his business? “She’d cleaned the rooms but the towels weren’t dry, so she asked me to finish up.”
“Why didn’t she do it herself?”
The very question I planned to ask Heather when I found her. To Gordon, I said, “She mentioned other obligations.”
Gordon put down his pen. “What obligations? I saw her smoking out back right before the police arrived.”
“You sure?” Why on earth was I doing her job while she took a cigarette break?
“I’ve told her a million times not to smoke on the grounds. This is supposed to be a health spa, for Christ’s sake. I was about to speak to her when I heard the sirens.”
“Odd,” was my only comment. Why couldn’t she finish the towels and then step out back? Or if her craving was so strong, she could have smoked a quick cigarette, then done the towels. Why pawn the job off on me? Unless, of course, she’d wanted me to find Maxwell’s body. Right where she’d left it when she’d killed him. Heather had only started work on Friday. I knew almost nothing about her.
Gordon picked up his pen and flipped through the pages. I hurried outside, careful to use the dining room exit and avoid the drooling, snarling pack of paparazzi.
Heather was nowhere near the pool area, and I quickened my pace, even more intent on asking what she’d been up to yesterday afternoon.
I rounded the corner of the closest cabin and ran smack dab into Tiffany. She was wearing a piece of shiny silver material that appeared to be a dress, though it was cut too low on the top and much too high on the bottom.
“Sorry, Tiffany. Guess I need to watch where I’m going.”
Behind her, I could see a woman in shorts and a tank top taking pictures of Maxwell’s closed door, the crime scene tape still plastered on the outside. A man in a tie-dyed T-shirt and cargo pants sat on the ground nearby, unlacing his shoes.
“No worries,” she said, bringing my focus back to her micro dress. “I’m taking a little walk.”
I glanced at her four-inch red stiletto heels. “Get a lot of walking done in those shoes?”
She blushed. “I needed some fresh air. The cabin smells funny, like old people.”
“You could open a window.”
She tugged at the bottom of her dress without replying.
“I figured you’d be packing up and heading back to L.A. like the rest of the film crew,” I said.
“Why would I do that?”
I glanced again at Maxwell’s cabin. The man who’d been unlacing his shoes now lay prone on the ground in front of the door, arms crossed over his chest. The woman snapped several pictures. Talk about tasteless.
“Aren’t you with the group that was scouting locations for the new movie?” I asked Tiffany after I could force my gaze away from the ridiculous scene behind her.
Tiffany put a hand over her heart. “Don’t I wish. I came up on my own to celebrate that movie role I landed. Remember? I’m in
Octogiant Meets King Crab
.”
Octogiant Meets King Crab
.”
“Guess I assumed you were with the production group.” Tiffany was an actress, Maxwell was a producer. Seemed like a logical leap. “So, if you weren’t working for Maxwell, then you probably don’t know why anyone would want to kill him.”
“Must have been some wacko.” She glanced around like a crazy man might be lurking in the bushes as we spoke. “Maxwell was such an awesome producer, you know?”
I nodded noncommittally, distracted by the man now pretending to fight off an unseen assailant while the woman took more pictures. Maybe we should create a screening process for potential guests.
“Did you see him after yoga yesterday?” I asked Tiffany. “I saw you two were in the same class.”
Tiffany took a step back, wobbling on her heels. “What? Me? No. Why would I see him?”
“No reason. I was just curious if you’d noticed anything strange yesterday. What did you do after yoga?”
“I went straight to my room. Where else would I be?” She pointed toward the main house and parking area. “Now I need to go. As an actress, I have a duty to tell those news people everything I know about the murder.” She wobbled off down the path, one cheek peeking out the bottom of her hemline, a rash plainly visible. As I watched, she reached down and scratched it.
I didn’t know what she was hiding, but it wasn’t under that skirt. Obviously she’d gone somewhere else after yoga, and I needed to find out where.
Turning back, I spotted Heather at the other end of the row. She was stepping out of the last cabin, a basket of cleaning products dangling from one hand.
I raised an arm. “Heather!”
She looked in my direction, then darted back inside. I broke into a trot, running right between the woman taking pictures and the man who now posed beside the crime scene tape.
“Hey,” the woman said, but I ignored her.
I stopped in the doorway I’d seen Heather enter. She was straightening a couple of magazines on the coffee table, the basket now at her feet.
“Heather, why did you run like that?”
She focused on lining up the magazine bindings, her long brown hair hanging in tangles, partially covering her face. “I wasn’t running. I remembered that I hadn’t finished cleaning this room, that’s all.”
I stepped farther inside and glanced around. The bed was made, the cover smooth, the pillows fluffed. Random bottles and jars sat in a tidy clump on the bathroom counter. The television remote control was perfectly lined up with the nightstand edge.
“Looks finished to me,” I said.
Heather’s hand settled on top of the magazines. “I like to double-check my work. I take a lot of pride in my job.”
“I’ve noticed. That’s why I wanted to ask why you needed me to change the towels yesterday.”
I’d swear Heather’s skin turned a bit paler under her thin layer of makeup. She continued lining up the magazines. Who knew fixing two magazines could take so long?
“I told you, I had other things to do.”
Okay, enough beating around the bush. “That’s what you said, but Gordon saw you smoking out back. Seems if you had time to suck on a nicotine stick, then you had time to change a few towels.”
Heather knocked the magazines to the floor, providing a flash of anger that belied her usually quiet demeanor. “Why are you checking up on me? You’re not my boss.”
Good question. Why was I suddenly the work police? Oh, right, a man was murdered. And I’d found him.
“Heather, you make it sound like I was spying on you. But the police are going to ask me the same question about why I was doing your job, and I’d like to know the reason.”
At the mention of the police, Heather’s face went from merely pale to ashen and she sank onto the edge of the bed.
“Oh, God, don’t tell the police. Please.”
She huddled on the bed, her shoulder blades protruding under her thin cotton T-shirt.
I sat down next to her. “Why didn’t you want to finish the rooms yesterday?”
Heather eyed the magazines on the floor.
She’d better not straighten them again, or there would be two murders at the farm.
Instead, she pulled on a thread hanging from her frayed denim shorts. “Because of Maxwell.”
My pulse quickened, and I tried to keep from rushing my words, as I wondered if Heather was about to offer up a clue to Maxwell’s death. “What about him?”
“He came back from breakfast as I was finishing his room. He caught me looking at some jewelry.”
“No biggie,” I said.
She tugged a little harder on the loose thread. “All right, I wasn’t just looking. I was holding the necklace up to my throat and admiring myself in the mirror.”
Uh-oh. “And Maxwell caught you?”
Heather yanked the thread off. “I’ve never owned anything as pretty as that necklace in my life. I’m sure those diamonds and rubies were real. But I would never steal it.”
“I didn’t say you would.”
“But Maxwell did. Called me a thief and threatened to report me to Esther.”
Typical jerk response.
Heather sniffed. “I didn’t know what to do, so I ran out. When I remembered that I hadn’t finished with the towels, I asked for your help. I couldn’t go back in his room and risk seeing him again.”
Her story sounded plausible. But now I had something else to consider. What were the odds two diamond and ruby necklaces were floating around the spa? If Heather found the necklace in Maxwell’s room, how did I see it in Sheila’s room only a couple of hours later?
“Oh, Dana, you wouldn’t believe how freaked out I was yesterday when you came back from replacing the towels and said you had to report something to Esther. I figured Maxwell had complained to you and you were going to rat me out.”
She really thought I was the ratting-out type? “So that’s what you meant when you said there were two sides to a story.”
Heather nodded.
I patted her knee and rose from the bed.
“You’re not going to tell the police about the necklace, are you?” Heather asked.
I paced a moment and pulled at my lip. “I don’t know yet.”
“Dana, please. I can’t afford to lose this job. It’s my first real one.” She stood up. “I’ve got two kids to take care of.”
She couldn’t be more than twenty-two. And she’d never mentioned a husband. This job was most likely her only means of support. But the necklace might be a factor in Maxwell’s murder. The police needed to know.
“Heather, you’re the one who should tell the police what happened.”
Without looking at me, she bent down, picked up the magazines, and set them on the table. Not exactly the confirmation I was hoping for. Could I count on her to be honest? Her fear of the police seemed a little irrational. Was she hiding something else?
But more importantly, what exactly was Sheila hiding? Sheila could have killed Maxwell as payback for when he walked out of their marriage, and then stolen the necklace as a souvenir.
If I didn’t tell the cops about seeing the necklace in Sheila’s cabin, they might not discover the information on their own. And Sheila might get away with murder.
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