The Readaholics and the Falcon Fiasco (15 page)

I
had butterflies in my tummy as I approached Clay Shumer’s office just before three o’clock on Monday. Kirsten, his new administrative assistant, had said he could squeeze me in. She’d seemed a little miffed that I wanted to go over her head to talk about the offsite, but I mollified her by saying I needed Clay’s “vision” of what he hoped to accomplish. I’d dressed carefully in a nubby cream sweater and dark red wool pants to offset the chilly temps, and my hair swished loose, held back from my face by a tortoiseshell headband. I tried to channel Brigid O’Shaughnessy and her devious noir sisters, readying myself to lie and deceive and peek into places I had no business peeking in pursuit of my ends. The ends, in this case, justified the means, I tried to convince myself, knocking on Clay’s half-open door. A twinge of guilt told me Brigid probably told herself the same thing.

“Come.”

Pinning a smile to my face, I pushed into Clay’s office. As befitted a city government office, it was
utilitarian rather than luxurious. White walls and gray carpet that needed a good vacuuming. A basic desk piled with folders and papers. The desk also held a computer, a phone, and a bowl with a listless Siamese fighting fish. Two small frames had their backs to me. I bet they contained photos of Fee. A window beside the desk looked down on the side of the building to a small park where a pair of mothers watched their preschoolers swing and push a merry-go-round. Behind the desk stood a nightmare, however: a glass-fronted bookcase filled with books. I seated myself on a black, faux leather love seat and stared at them in dismay until Clay’s voice brought me out of it.

“Ms. Johnson?” He sounded impatient, like he’d said my name more than once. He sat behind the desk, having risen when I entered and reseated himself, and the glare from the window beside him ruddied one side of his face. His tawny hair was gelled back from his low forehead, making his somewhat bulbous nose seem even more prominent. He was handsome enough, if you liked your men on the fleshy side, but he didn’t appeal to me. I tried to study him objectively, to see what had attracted Ivy, but it escaped me.

I took a deep breath. “Thank you for making time to see me. I know you must be busy, that things must be unusually hectic without Ivy.”

“She kept things running smoothly, certainly. We all miss her,” he said, his gaze shifting from the photos on his desk to something outside the window. Obviously feeling he should say
something more, he added, “She worked here for a long time.”

“I saw you and your wife at Ivy’s funeral. It was wonderful to see so many people from city hall there.”

He flushed slightly. “Ivy was well liked. Even beloved.”

With an effort, I kept my brows from soaring. I was pleased on Ivy’s behalf that he’d used the L-word, even in such a vague context.

Clay leaned in, fixing his blue eyes on me. “I heard you found her the morning she . . . got sick.”

I nodded.

“Did she . . . did she go peacefully? I wouldn’t want to think of her being in pain.” There was strain in his voice as it dropped to a whisper.

“She was pretty ill,” I told him without mentioning the sordid details. “But she was almost unconscious when I got there and by the time the EMTs arrived, I think she was out of it.” A memory surfaced. “She mentioned you.”

He jolted back as if stuck by a cattle prod. “What did she say?” It came out louder than he intended, and he asked it again in a lowered voice.

I tried to remember it exactly. “Something about it not being your fault.”

“What wasn’t my fault?”

I shook my head, “No, that’s not it. She said something like ‘Clay didn’t mean . . . ,’ something, something. At least, that’s what I think she said. She was really sick and I could barely understand her. I’m sorry.”

Looking shaken, he ran a hand across his forehead. “No, it’s okay.”

Taking advantage of his discombobulation, I asked, “What took you to her house the day after she died?”

“What? How did you—?” A thick tongue swiped his lower lip. “She had papers from the office, important papers, time-sensitive papers. I had to—” Apparently recollecting that he didn’t owe me an explanation for anything, he stiffened, looked at his watch, and said, “I’m running short on time. Kirsten said you needed to talk about the offsite?”

I went into some rigmarole about how the boss’s vision was vital to planning the offsite. “The activities need to reflect the boss’s personality and leadership style,” I babbled, trying desperately to memorize book titles. An impossible task. There must have been forty books. They ranged from dictionaries and other reference books (including a baby-names book) to public administration tomes and finance snoozers. I willed Kerry to call and say she needed to see him immediately.

Clay leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers together over his chest. “My vision? Well, I guess you could say I’m all about inclusiveness and efficiency. I take my job as Heaven’s CFO seriously—very seriously—and I insist that those who work for me remember we really all work for Heaven and its citizens.”

Cue patriotic chorus.
I nodded.

“We work for you, Ms. Johnson.”

He expounded on this theme for another ninety
seconds while I wrote down book titles (real page turners like
Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit Is Transforming the Public Sector
), pretending I was taking notes. He was winding down and I was trying to think of another question when the phone rang.
Yay, Kerry!

He answered it with a brisk “Shumer.” Fifteen seconds of monosyllables and listening later, he hung up. “I’m afraid I have to see the mayor, Ms. Johnson. Perhaps we can reschedule if there’s anything else we need to discuss?”

“I don’t mind waiting,” I said, not getting up, even though he was moving toward the door.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. He was supposed to ask me to wait so I could inventory his books while he talked to Kerry.

“I don’t know how long this will take,” he said. “She said five minutes, but the mayor does like the sound of her own voice.” He smiled to show he didn’t mean to sound snide.

Reluctantly I got to my feet. This whole charade was going to be a bust if I couldn’t get the book titles. WWKMD? My foot nudged my purse and gave me an idea. Surreptitiously pushing it under the love seat with my toe, I beelined for the door, hoping Clay wouldn’t notice my purse. Once we were in the hall, I shook his hand, thanked him for his time, and almost dragged him toward the elevators so he wouldn’t lock the office door. When the elevator arrived with a ding, headed up, I saw him onto it with a cheerful wave and said, “I’ll catch it on the way down.”

When I was sure the doors were shut and the
’vator was rising, I said, “My purse!” for the benefit of anyone who was watching (not that I saw anyone) and hurried back to Clay’s door. Ducking into the office, I was conscious of my heart thudding against my ribs. I closed the door. Funny how being in here alone was sending my blood pressure skyrocketing, when I’d been in this same office only moments before with no effect. I pulled my cell phone from my purse and scurried around the desk to open the glass doors fronting the book cabinets. They squeaked. I threw an involuntary look over my shoulder.
Silly.
No one could have heard it through the closed door.

I immediately began photographing the rows of books on Clay’s shelves. Maud had warned me that we had to know the exact edition for each book, since the page numbering changed from edition to edition sometimes, so I tried to photograph the spines close up, which meant I could get only six or eight books in each picture. After each photo, I glanced at the door. By the time I reached the bottom row, sweat was trickling down my sides and I was practically hyperventilating. I was
so
not cut out to be a spy, or a PI like Kinsey Millhone, or anyone else whose job entailed sneaking around places where getting caught would result in embarrassment, humiliation, and a possible prison sentence.

The phone on Clay’s desk rang. I jumped. I stared at it, hypnotized, until it quit after four rings. The heck with this. I snapped a single photo of the last shelf of books and turned to go. As I did, I knocked against the desk and one of the framed
photos fell. I righted it. It was a casual shot of Fee and Clay, arms around each other’s waists, on the deck of a cruise ship sailing in warmer climes, if Fee’s teeny bikini was anything to go by. She looked darn good. I wished I could afford a cruise.

A footstep sounded in the hall. I lunged away from the desk and was halfway across the room before I realized the steps were passing the office. Letting out a long breath, I grabbed my purse. I was getting out of here. A thought stopped me. What if Shumer didn’t keep the codebook on public display? What if it was in his desk? My watch told me only three and a half minutes had gone by since I’d walked him to the elevator, even though it felt like an eternity. Kerry had promised to keep him for at least five minutes. With a stifled “Aaagh,” I returned to the desk and jerked open the middle drawer. No books. Ditto for the drawers down the left side. I paused to listen but heard no one approaching.

Conscious of time ticking away, I yanked open the top right drawer. It held a paperback edition of
Ender’s Game
and a box of condoms. Eew. They made me want to spray the sofa I’d been sitting on with Lysol. Making mental note of the book, I closed the drawer. The second drawer stuck when I pulled at it, then slid open quickly enough to knock me off-balance when I tugged again. My mouth dropped open slightly when I saw its contents. A gun, black and menacing, nestled against a bottle of aspirin, a toothbrush and mini toothpaste, a packet of gum, and a spare shirt, still in its wrapper. I stared at the gun for a moment,
wondering why the heck Clay kept a weapon in his office, then slammed the door closed as if the gun were a tarantula liable to spring at me. The snap of the drawer against the desk frame was loud enough to be heard in the hall, I was sure. I needed to vamoose. I gave a perfunctory tug on the lowest drawer—locked—before rising.

The doorknob turned.

Oh no. What would I say? How could I explain—?
As unnerving thoughts swirled like disoriented bats, I almost hurdled the desk to get back to the vicinity of the love seat and my purse.

The door opened inward about a foot, then stopped. I heard voices but couldn’t make out the words over the panicked buzzing in my ears.

I grabbed my purse by the strap and it tilted, dumping out a lipstick. It rolled under the love seat. Screw it.

I took a stride toward the door as it opened wider, admitting someone totally unexpected.

“W
hat the hell are you—?” Brooke’s father-in-law, Troy Widefield Sr., got a grip on himself. “I apologize for my language, Ms. Johnson. I wasn’t expecting to see you. Where’s Clay?” His eyes under unruly white brows were watchful. The shoulders under an expensive charcoal-colored suit were squared and tense.

“Uh, I was just leaving,” I said. “Clay got called up to the mayor’s office. We were talking about the office offsite. I forgot my purse.” I held it up as proof that my presence here was ordinary, routine, unsuspicious. My mouth was dry. “I’m sure Clay will be back any minute, if you have an appointment with him.”

Sidling around Mr. Widefield, I reached the door. Escape was in view. I wanted to be gone before Clay returned.

“Just a minute, Ms. Johnson. Amy-Faye, right?”

Reluctantly turning back to face Widefield, I saw his expression was less certain than usual.
“You and my daughter-in-law, Brooke, have been friends for a long time.”

He paused, as if expecting a response, so I said, “Yes.”

He worked his jaw. “She’s probably told you that she and my son want children.”

I cocked my head noncommittally.
Where was he going with this?

“You know that Troy Jr. is headed for a career in politics. His mother and I think it would be advantageous for him to get his feet firmly established on the political ladder before disrupting things with children. I know I can trust you to keep it under your hat until the official announcement, but he’s throwing his hat in the ring for the state senate in the next election.”

“Really?” I wondered if Brooke knew that, or even Troy Jr., and why Widefield was sharing it with me.

“Yes. In fact, you should be in charge of organizing the announcement event. How about I have his campaign manager get in touch with you about that?”

“I’d be happy to,” I said, still not sure I understood his agenda, but always ready to take on more work.

“And if you and Brooke get to chatting about children, you could mention how much easier a campaign will be without an infant to worry about. Can’t have the candidate’s wife photographed changing diapers or breastfeeding the baby!” He forced a chuckle, but I could tell the idea of tending to the baby’s biological needs in public disgusted
him. I suspected he hadn’t changed a single diaper for Troy Jr. or his sister. “You strike me as a sensible young woman—you’re getting your business on a solid footing before settling down—so you should be able to help Brooke see the pluses to waiting a bit, just like you have.”

“I wouldn’t put my two cents’ worth in without being asked,” I said more hotly than was politic, but his cool assumption that he could buy my influence with Brooke for a job or two pissed me off royally. “That’s a decision for her and Troy to make. It’s none of my business.” I didn’t add
or yours
, but he got the point because his nostrils flared in his otherwise frozen face.

I heard the elevator doors ding open down the hall and added hurriedly, “I’ve got an appointment, Mr. Widefield, so if you’ll excuse me . . . Oh, and I’ll look forward to talking to Troy or his campaign manager about the announcement event.” With a bright smile, I took off in the opposite direction from the elevators.

I felt like I had a target painted between my shoulder blades and I didn’t relax until I rounded a corner. No one tried to stop me. I descended the stairs with shaky legs and paused for a moment in the lobby to steady myself as the adrenaline leached out of me. What business did Widefield have with Clay? This was the second time in a week I’d seen them together. Maybe they were buddies. I had a hard time picturing the almost seventy-year-old, moneyed, and powerful Widefield being pals with the fortyish and much less successful Clay Shumer. I exited the building,
grateful for the blast of chilly air that greeted me and blew away some of the tension of the last half hour. It didn’t matter what Widefield wanted with Clay. I wasn’t going to worry about that or his uncharacteristically clumsy—because spur-of-the-moment?—proposition to me. Right now, I needed to get the book photos to Maud so she could get busy on cracking the code.

*   *   *

I sent the photos to Maud from my car and got a return text telling me she’d get right on the code breaking. I texted her again to tell her about
Ender’s Game
and she replied immediately to say she’d try that one first. “Well done, AF!” she added. I texted the other Readaholics to let them know the mission was accomplished and then headed to the office.

A note asking me to call Flavia Dunbarton waited for me on my desk. Returning her call, I got voice mail, left a message, and hung up. The call made me realize I needed to find a way to suss out what Fee Shumer and Doug had been doing at Ivy’s house the day after she died. I’d gotten Clay’s version of why he was there, and it sounded plausible. Despite that, I wasn’t sure I believed him. I was trying to come up with a way to tackle Fee when Al popped his head in.

“That cop is here again,” he said. He disappeared and Detective Lindell Hart’s tall frame filled the doorway.

“Hi,” I said, smiling, surprisingly happy to see him. “What’s up?”

He gave me the kind of smile that told me he
was here on official business, and my smile faded a bit. Had he learned something new about Ivy’s case?

In a tone caught between humor and gravity, he said, “I’m here about a stolen beehive.”

That took me by surprise. “The one at the Boy Scout picnic?”

“Apparently.” Rather than seat himself in one of my client chairs, he crossed to the window and propped himself against the deep sill, folding his arms over his chest. “A farmer named Udo Yasutake called the station this morning to report that one of his beehives was missing. He was quite worried about the bees. Apparently, they don’t like changes in their routine. Mabel Appleman took Mr. Yasutake’s call. Her grandson is a Cub Scout and he was at the picnic Sunday afternoon. See where this is going? She told us about his getting stung. We drove over to the park and found the missing hive. A call to the Boy Scout leader—not one of your biggest fans—got us your name as the one in charge of putting the event together. Any idea how the hive ended up there?” He asked it almost quizzically.

“Of course not,” I said. “I certainly didn’t put it there, as you might well guess. The darn bees disrupted the picnic and probably cost me future business.” I hesitated. “You might as well see this.” I hadn’t planned on showing the police the threatening note, but since he was here . . . I pulled it out of my purse, where I’d stuck it after taking it to show Brooke, and walked it over to Hart.

He took it with a questioning look and read it
quickly. His lips tightened. “Where did you get this?”

I went through the whole story.

“Why didn’t you bring it in?”

I shrugged. “I felt stupid. My friends thought I was making a big deal out of nothing. It felt . . . lame to bother the police with it.”

He took my chin between his thumb and forefinger and tilted my face up. I blinked at him in surprise. “Well, why didn’t you bother me with it?”

I had no answer. After a moment, he released my chin, pulled a plastic Baggie from his pocket, and tucked the note into it. “Probably a lost cause,” he said, “since everyone you know has handled this, right?” At my nod, he continued, “But we’ll see if we can raise some prints anyway. You said it was taped to your door—do you still have the piece of tape the writer used? It would hold prints better.”

I shook my head sheepishly. “Threw it out.”

“Any idea—any at all—about who would have sabotaged your function with the bees and left the note? Who’s mad at you, Amy-Faye?”

Confession time. “The only thing I can think is that it’s tied to Ivy’s death. I’ve been poking around some, asking questions, and I think someone might be worried that I’ll discover the truth.”

Hart blew out a long, exasperated breath. “You sound like your friend Maud. There’s no ‘truth’ to uncover. Ivy poisoned herself. End of story.”

“What about the tea from her office?” I began hotly. “It—”

“Was tea. No oleander. It was a harmless herbal
concoction sold to millions by a retailer called Teavana. I got the report this morning.”

I was quiet for a moment, absorbing the news. If the tea at her office was undoctored, did that mean that Ivy had, in fact, committed suicide? Wait . . . “What about the ledger page?”

A line appeared between Hart’s brows. “What ledger page?”

I stared at him. “The one Ivy mailed to herself. The one written in code that I dropped off at the police station Friday night. I wanted to see you, but Officer Ridgway said you were in Grand Junction.”

His frown deepened. “I didn’t get it. Maybe Ridgway passed it to Chief Uggams. I’ll track it down when I get back to the station. How, exactly, do you think this ‘ledger page’ relates to Donner’s death?”

He listened to my involved story and the Readaholics’ combined thoughts on the page with a neutral expression tending toward disbelieving by the time I was done. Reading his face, I finished on a defensive note, using Maud’s logic. “It doesn’t make sense for something so strange not to be connected to Ivy’s death.”

“Amy-Faye.” He paused as if to temper his words. “Amy-Faye. You intercept a letter at Ivy’s house that you
think
she mailed to herself. There’s been no handwriting analysis, so we don’t even know that much. The letter turns out to contain a page your conspiracy-fiend friend Maud says is coded. You leap to the conclusion that it’s related to Ivy’s death because the two things happened
within a day of each other. Faulty logic. If I walk into the Salty Burro and two minutes later it bursts into flame, it doesn’t mean that I had anything to do with the fire. Just because two events occur within close proximity doesn’t mean there’s a causal relationship.”

I would have interrupted, but he held up an “I’m not done” finger. “Even if Ivy did mail herself the page, it doesn’t mean there’s anything mysterious about it. Maybe it’s something she requested that required her to send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to receive it.”

I’d never thought of that. “But—”

“Maybe she plays chess, or some other game, long-distance with a friend and the ‘code’ is chess notations.”

“It’s not. I’d recognize chess notations; my sister’s a grand master.”

He looked interested at that. “Really?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay, so it’s something else. My point is, you and your friends have built this elaborate ‘murder in small-town America’ plot out of—if not thin air, then something remarkably similar. You have no proof. You’ve watched too many episodes of
Murder, She Wrote
. This is not Cabot Cove.”

He had me questioning everything I’d accepted as fact until I remembered my trump card. I played it triumphantly. “The handwriting on the ledger page is Clay Shumer’s. Kerry recognized it.”

That gave him pause. After a long moment, he said, “Look, I’ll dig up the page when I get back to the station and have a look at it. Then we’ll talk
again. Until then, leave this alone. If you’re right and the threat is linked to Ivy’s death, you don’t want to go poking around anymore. Chances are it’s related to something else entirely—”

“How many people do you think are that mad at me?” I asked with some indignation.

He grinned and I felt a flutter in my abdomen. “No telling. It’s most likely a prank, but I’m taking it seriously. Keep a low profile until you hear back from me, hm?”

It wasn’t until after he was gone that I realized I hadn’t told him about Flavia Dunbarton and her conversation with Ivy about a big, scandalous, criminal story. Simple oversight? Or my reluctance to point him in Flavia’s direction against the reporter’s will? I would wait and see what Hart had to say after he examined the ledger page, and then decide whether or not to mention Flavia.

Right now I had a five thirty appointment with Madison Taylor at the country club where the reception was being held. Resolving to be congenial and professional, I gathered up my files and purse and headed out, telling Al to hold down the fort.

“The fort’s going nowhere while I’m in charge, boss,” he said, grinning.