The Begonia Bribe (7 page)

She found Annie with a small group of girls who were having a water break. Annie was showing Lizzie how to aim her camera. Cam suspected it was a little painful to let a seven-year-old handle the $1,500 piece of equipment—the brand-new replacement for the camera that had recently met its ugly demise.

Annie seemed to be taking it in stride, though, and Lizzie looked like she was in heaven.

“Hey there,” Cam said.

Lizzie pushed the camera back at Annie and rushed over to Cam, bubbling with excitement.

“Annie let me take two pictures!”

“That was nice of her. Did you tell her thank you?”

“Thank you, Annie!”

Lizzie hugged Annie just as the group was called back to walk through one of the routines.

“You’re a saint,” Cam said.

“I prefer goddess, if you don’t mind.”

Cam smirked. “Fine, oh, anointed one.”

“Anointing! Now there’s an idea. I think Jake needs to anoint me with chocolate.”

“Well, I’m sure there’s nobody more deserving.”

“Oh, stop it or I’ll start crying, then you’ll start crying, then we’ll be a big snotty mess.”

“Fine. I have work to do anyway.”

Annie punched her arm, and Cam went to check with Dylan. He was stashing the flowers they hadn’t managed to get planted in the back of a pickup parked on Williamson.

“You all set?”

“For now. I need to rest up because tomorrow I have both planting and lighting. We should finish the planting part, though, so that’s my only really long day.”

“Lighting? Really? Well, we appreciate it.”

“No problem.”

Cam waved and turned to find Rob right behind her.

“Who’s that again?” Rob’s narrowed eyes followed Dylan.

“Friend of Benny’s.” Cam thought she might die under Rob’s questioning look.

Rob stared. “I know
who
he is. What I meant was why does he seem to know you?”

“I met him with . . . you know . . . last time . . .”

Jake arrived then, at exactly the wrong time, and stuck his hand out for Cam’s list.

“Listen, Jake,” Cam said, “I’ve been thinking about the lack of fingerprints. Telly gets gifts of liquor at his office. I saw one when I was there. Maybe that is how the poison arrived?”

Jake narrowed his eyes and then nodded. “I’ll look into that, too.”

Cam breathed easier, but Rob gave her a piercing look that let her know she just admitted to knowing this was murder.

“I think since the pageant crew is on its own tonight—rehearsal’s over—I’m heading out with Jake now on this search for the mystery woman,” he said.

He was avoiding her. Cam was disappointed but not surprised. She would have to think of a way to make it up to him.

* * *

I
n an effort to make things right, Cam decided a partially home-cooked meal for Rob was in order. She walked north to Awful Arthur’s for an order of fresh crab legs to go. She had wild rice at home and salad vegetables in her garden. She thought she could make a nice meal.

She called Rob as she walked home to convince him to come for dinner once he was done with Jake.

“We are onto something. Can we make it seven?” he asked.

“We can.”

She put a bottle of white wine in the refrigerator to chill and picked lettuce, tomatoes, and a cucumber from her garden and washed them. Then she decided to use the waiting time to answer some emails and draft the first part of her press release on the talent portion. The talent competition wouldn’t be over until Thursday night, but she knew what each of the girls was doing, so there was no reason not to get started on the text.

* * *

T
wo hours later, Rob arrived with his own bottle of wine.

“I’m sorry I was short earlier,” he said.

“You weren’t. And I guess it’s a little flattering for you to get jealous,” Cam said.

“I wasn’t jealous,” he said.

“Mmm-hmm,” she said, knowing it would make him nuts. She took the wine to the kitchen, uncorked it then poured them each a glass, and starting the sauce pan while she was at it. Most of dinner was ready, but she needed to melt lemon butter for the crab.

“So what did you find out?” she called.

Rob was putting on music in her front room.

“Well, the studio keeps a log of gifts. The secretary said it was to send thank-you cards. Unfortunately, there are several anonymous ones each month. On the plus side, he goes through them sort of fast—the liquor gifts, I mean. So whoever sent this, sent it in the last week. But since they were intent on murder, it was probably sent anonymously. Anyway, all the bottles were taken in for prints and testing of the contents.”

“I guess that’s something.”

“It’s a better start than they had. The whole world seemed to hate the guy.”

“Though nobody would admit it,” Cam said.

“Yeah. There’s that,” Rob said.

C
am arose at 7:30 the next morning and showered, but before she’d even put her contacts in, Evangeline called in a state of panic.

“Cam! You’ve got to get here as fast as you can! It’s awful!”

Cam thought it must be related to Telly’s death. She worried the press had leaked something. “I can be ready in fifteen minutes, but walking will take another fifteen.”

“No! I’ll be there! See you in a few.” Evangeline hung up before Cam could respond. Cam was going to tell Evangeline she sounded too upset to drive, but before she knew it, Evangeline was waiting at her door. The short but erratic ride downtown proved Cam’s impulse was right; she was a little queasy by the time they parked.

Evangeline swerved and talked, looking more at Cam than the road. “The dogwoods! Someone took a hose to them! They’re destroyed!”

“A hose destroyed the trees?” That sounded implausible.

“Not the trees. All the flowers those boys put up.”

Cam breathed easier. It was bad, but not something they couldn’t recover from. “Benny and Dylan only spent about two hours on those yesterday. There are lots of flowers left—all but two boxes, I think.”

“And the flowers!” Evangeline looked up. Cam had learned this was an effort she made to keep herself from crying. “A lot of those are lying flat, too.”

“That’s horrible!” This was significantly worse. “The flowers were worth hundreds of dollars!”

“I don’t look forward to requesting more from Nell. And all the work! What kind of monsters would do that to those gorgeous flowers?”

Cam liked that Evangeline cared as much or more about the work and beauty as the money, but they still had a problem. “So what should we do?”

“I hate to bring in the police. Their presence would call such attention to the problems we’ve been having. I was hoping you might investigate. You did such a great job with . . . well . . . you know.”

With the last fiasco.
Cam knew. That had involved two murders. At least she didn’t have
that
investigation on her plate this time. Surely a little vandalism wouldn’t be hard to investigate, but Cam had a full agenda with the things she’d been hired to do. And the murder that
had
happened might be a press fiasco, even if she wasn’t meant to be solving it. She wasn’t sure she had the time or the energy for a vandalism investigation.

“I’ll brainstorm and see if I can figure out a way to flush them out,” she said.

“Oh, good. I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me.”

Cam wasn’t sure she’d agreed to that much, but she’d do her best. When they arrived, she saw the dogwood flowers had indeed been ruined by what Cam thought must have been a high-powered hose; that and at least half the flowers that had been planted had been trampled.

“How do we proceed?” Evangeline asked as they crossed the grass.

“I think we should see what Benny and company can save, first, so we know what we need to do to replace them. Nell isn’t here today, so we can wait until this afternoon to call her. I also think we should maybe post a guard through the end of the pageant.”

“This is Roanoke! We shouldn’t need one,” Evangeline complained.

“No, but apparently
somebody
is very anti-pageant. Until we know who, paranoia can save us a lot of grief.”

“I know. I sure hate looking for the worst in people, though.”

Cam, with her career invested in damage control, always had to look for potential problems, but she admired that Evangeline saw the best. It was a good quality.

“So what do we have up first?” Cam asked.

“Talent. Groups one and two will work with tech, and Celeste, the other volunteer I told you about, is meeting with groups three and four to go over props and organization. That way, we can put them in an order that will be best for the staging people and audience. It’s all in the library. The girls are supposed to be there by ten.”

“When do Benny and company get here?”

“Shortly. I’ll leave you to meet them, if you don’t mind.”

Cam could hardly argue. It
was
what she’d been hired for. She nodded and then headed toward the destroyed flowers to assess the damage from a nearer vantage.

On approaching, her throat caught. So much senseless destruction of such gorgeous flowers made her sad. Many of the lilies were toppled, though on closer inspection, most of their stalks had not been broken.

“Holy mu . . .” Cam turned and Benny stopped himself. “What happened here?”

“A vandal. Probably the same anti-pageant vandal who graffitied the band shell, and we also had some music sabotaged yesterday. Any ideas how you’d catch the person if it were up to you?”

Benny looked confused, then said, “Well . . . might or might not help, but the library has video surveillance. So does the parking garage.”

“That’s two more options than I had a minute ago, so it’s worth a try,” Cam said. “Say, I wonder if the Arts Commission has anything.”

“What do you want us to do?”

“Save what you can. Clean up what can’t. Assess the damage. Look for clues while you’re at it. Do you know anyone who might be willing to . . . act as a guard?”

“We can find someone.”

“Thank you! Listen, I need to check on several other things. Do you mind?”

“Under control. The others should be here soon.”

“Thanks, Benny!”

He saluted as she rushed off.

* * *

A
fter talking to Benny, Cam went to the Arts Commission to see what she could find about building security. It took some effort, but she finally found the building manager, who gave her the number for the security office.

“Arts Commission,” the man answered. It sounded like she’d woken him up.

“This is Cam Harris, part of the Little Miss Begonia pageant staff. We’ve had a couple acts of vandalism. Are you on location?”

“Where at?”

“The Arts Commission leased a room in the basement to us and sometime night before last, somebody broke in and sabotaged the music. I hoped there might be video footage of who came and went.”

“You know we have a bigger problem than a little vandalism?”

She knew he was referring to Telly Stevens’s body.

“I realize that’s much bigger, but what if the two are related?”

“You know what time?”

“No.”

“Can’t help you.”

“Listen, I know you can. You’re saying you
won’t
. I honestly doubt this is related to that man’s unfortunate death, but I suspect the same vandal destroyed hundreds of dollars’ worth of flowers overnight. Would you like
that
bill?” Cam knew she didn’t have legal ground to stand on with the threat, but she hoped he didn’t know.

“Sheesh. No, lady. It’s just hours and hours to watch. If
you
want to, you can.”

“What room are you in?”

He told her and Cam rode the elevator. As expected, she found a man in his early twenties not quite ready to think about anything serious.

She lectured him on the importance of the task, then grilled him on how the system worked, verifying that they could indeed watch in fast motion, with a digital read marking where things were so they could easily find the same spot again if they had questions.

“Great. There will be a rotation of people through here to watch that whole night. They should write down every single entrance and departure from this building. Later, we’ll all go through together to see if there’s a match for what Benny’s crew saw a couple days ago when the spray painting happened.”

The young man didn’t look happy. He sputtered as if he wanted to protest a few times, but he also clearly didn’t feel he could disagree.

Cam left again and found Benny to tell him her plan. She thought they could cover the night’s footage if they each took a turn watching for an hour. It was a nice break from the heat. Benny wasn’t happy at first. They had a lot of work to do. But when she reminded him they might be looking for the same vandal who had destroyed the flowers, he changed his mind. That made him angry enough to put in some effort, so he set up the rotation with his crew.

* * *

A
fter lunch, the girls were assembled in four groups on the grass in front of the stage, staggered in their lines so they all had enough room to move without kicking each other during the dance routines. Parents watched from the periphery. Michelle called for attention and asked the high school girls to help call roll. They each quietly found a group and began calling names to make sure everyone was there. Cam didn’t pay much attention until Chelsea’s tone changed.

“Lizzie?” she said, her voice rising above the others. She looked across all the girls and then called again. “Lizzie Blankenship?”

Mindy rushed to Lauren, and Cam was sure she was asking if she knew where her little sister was. Lauren shook her head.

“Lizzie!” Mindy shouted. She sounded scared. Cam thought about the nerves Mindy had displayed over the last few days; she might crack.

Cam rushed over to the three men who were helping with the gardening and asked if they’d seen anything. None had, so she enlisted them to help look.

Cam then ensured the volunteers present would keep the girls calm and keep them working before hitting speed dial to get Evangeline.

“Stop calling!” Evangeline shrieked.

“Evangeline, it’s Cam!”

“Oh, dear. I’m sorry.” Cam thought she might be crying. “That prank caller just keeps at it. He just called my cell this time, since I haven’t been answering the other. I thought he’d called back.”

“Vange, we have a bigger emergency.”

“Oh, dear! What?”

“Lizzie Blankenship has disappeared.”

Evangeline sputtered a little, so Cam expanded.

“Lizzie Blankenship, the littlest girl? You remember?”

“Well, yes, of course! What can I do?”

“Search your building. Ask security for help. Make sure to check everywhere.”

“Of course!”

Cam hung up and saw Annie walking across the lawn with a frown.

“What happened?” Annie asked.

“Your little buddy, Lizzie, disappeared.”

“For real? What can I do?”

“I think you should take Mindy and check the library.”

“Take Mindy?” she whispered. “Are you sure?”

“It’s a big building and one Lizzie might like. Split up if you need to.”

Cam then went to the Arts Commission building and straight to the security office.

“We lost a little girl! She disappeared after lunch, so within the last hour or hour and a half. Can you see if a little girl came in? She’s tiny, really—only seven.”

“Sure.” Cam was glad the man sounded far more helpful than he had earlier. Either he’d made friends with the crew, or he felt like a little girl was a higher priority than a little vandalism, which it was. Jed, one of the gardeners, waved at her from a monitor to the side, but he kept watching video.

Cam leaned over to write down her cell phone number for the man, whose name was Todd, but then spotted the live monitor.

“Him.” She pointed. “Who is he?”

“Must work in the building. I see him almost every day.”

Cam frowned. It was the creep from the elevator in the Patrick Henry. “Do you have his name?”

“No. We have a building directory you could look at.”

“That’s not necessary, but could you email me that clip?”

“Sure thing, Miz Harris.”

“Thank you. And call me immediately if you see the little girl.”

“Will do.”

Cam went back out to see if anyone had found Lizzie. A crowd had started to build. It was amazing, in the most disturbing of ways, how stress acted as a people magnet.

“Lizzie?” She shouted as she reached the crowd.

Cam looked around desperately for security people, feeling it had reached the time where they needed to call the police. Fortunately, she spotted Annie and Mindy coming from the library, Lizzie plastered to Annie’s front with her head on her shoulder. Mindy tried to take Lizzie a few times, but Lizzie stubbornly clung.

Cam ran over to them. “You found her!”

“Reading. She was cuddled in a corner in the children’s section—went there after her interview with Rob because he asked about her talent, and the idea came from a book.” Lizzie had a
Little Mermaid
book clutched in her hand.

Mindy looked like a wreck. Cam tried to steer them away from the commotion. Rob joined them. He’d heard about Lizzie and wanted to make sure she was okay.

“I’m glad you’re safe, Lizzie,” Cam said. “Please don’t go anywhere without telling your mom or your group leader, though, okay?”

Lizzie nodded, her head drooping.

“Nobody’s mad at you. We were just really worried.”

“Okay,” Lizzie said.

Cam looked closely at Lizzie. “Annie and Rob will stay here and talk to you for a little bit, okay? I have to make a phone call.”

Cam realized time was running out to tell Nell about the flower fiasco before she saw it for herself. It also behooved them to let her know while she could still get something going to solve the problem. She steeled herself for the call.

* * *

V
andalism and murder were not the best press complements to a children’s pageant, but as long as she was in the domain of bad news, this was as good a time as any to alert Nell to the vandalism she would see the next day.

Cam punched Nell’s number into the phone, fighting the catch that her breath kept trying to make. She hated difficult conversations. In writing, she was fine—she could think and edit and make sure the details were presented in the right order. In person, she both had to stay on message and navigate someone else’s agenda. She preferred more control.

“It’s Nell!” The woman was such a forceful presence, even over the phone.

“Nell? It’s Cam. I’m afraid we have some bad news.”

“Well, spit it out.”

“We had some vandals last night—they destroyed a lot of the newly planted flowers. The lilies, with those sturdy stalks took the worst of it—they break instead of just leaning.”

“And I’m just hearing now?”

“I wanted our gardening guys to sort what could be saved first so that we had a bottom line for you. I have to admit I thought it was worse when I first saw, but it’s still pretty bad. They had planted almost everything—we estimate about 30 percent was lost—horrible people.”