I looked up into accusing eyes.
Twenty
"You can stop saying sorry," Riley said, climbing into my TBS truck, "and start telling me why you were in Bill's office in the first place."
"When does driver's ed end? Maybe we can look at some used cars." I held out my hand for my keys. Sure enough, Riley had them. He dropped them into my palm.
"Don't try to distract me," he said. "What were you doing in Bill's closet?"
This was surreal. Grilling from a teenager.
"Research," I said. "On mushrooms."
He stared.
He did it well.
I cracked. "I was looking for something."
"What kind of something? Does this have to do with Ebenezer's death?"
Did it?
"I don't know."
I started the engine, turned toward home.
"I bet Dad would want to know what you were doing in that closet."
I shot him a you wouldn't look.
He gave me an oh yes I would.
"Go ahead and tell him."
That took him by surprise. Little did he know I had a greater fear of being blackmailed by him than facing Kevin.
Mom.
I wondered now if he'd said it as a ploy. That he knew I'd been in the closet and it was his way of telling me he knew I was in there.
Because it was just so out of character.
And . . . familial.
As I turned toward home, I decided not to ask. Too des perate.
"Well, did you find it?"
"No."
But I'd found something else. Those letters. I hoped they were worth the pain. My legs were still cramping.
"Why'd it take you so long to come get me?" I asked.
"I figured you'd come out when Bill left."
"I didn't know for certain if Bill had left! One minute he's on the phone making plans for a delivery tonight, and the next thing I know it's quiet. Is he doing paperwork? Napping? I couldn't just come out."
"A delivery tonight?"
"That's what I heard. Why?"
"We only get deliveries in the morning. That's strange."
That was strange.
These last few days had been strange.
"Maybe mushrooms?" I said. "It looked like there was a barrel missing from that closet."
There was an odd look on Riley's face. "Maybe."
"What maybe? Do you know something?"
"Maybe."
"Riley Michael."
"Nina Colette."
I growled.
He glared.
This was getting us nowhere.
"You tell me what you were doing in that closet, and I'll tell you what I think I might know."
I said, "This isn't Let's Make a Deal."
"That was a cool show—I watch it on the Game Show Network. I wish it were still on. I'd go as a banana."
"Now you're trying to distract me."
"Maybe."
I turned onto my street and nearly crashed into a tree, I was so distracted by what was in my driveway.
A Dumpster.
With my bathtub in it.
"Looks like Grandma Cel has been busy."
I parked at the curb, behind Maria's Mercedes.
As I opened my car door I caught sight of Mr. Cabrera and Boom-Boom speeding down the street in her golf cart. She braked to a stop in my driveway behind the Dumpster.
"Having some work done, Miz Quinn?"
"I guess so, Mr. Cabrera."
"Need help?"
Maybe of the psychiatric kind, but I didn't think that's what he had in mind. "Maybe. I'll let you know."
Boom-Boom stood with Riley, inspecting his arm. I walked over to them, and she said, "I really am sorry about this."
"He's no worse for the wear," I said, wondering if that was a cliché. I decided not. I'd had a rough enough day already.
"I'm not sure if I should be insulted by that or not," Riley said.
Mr. Cabrera clapped him on the back. "Or not."
"When are you guys coming to Growl? Remember, dinner's on me."
"I couldn't," Boom-Boom tittered.
I didn't think it was possible to titter, but it was. And she did.
"Come on, you have to. I promised. And I never break my promises."
Unlike his father. Which got me to thinking about Kevin. And Bobby.
I missed him. Bobby, that is. Not Kevin. And I'd just seen him last night. Bobby, not Kevin.
What did this tell me?
"When are you working again?" Mr. Cabrera asked.
"Wednesday night. Five until closing at ten."
"We'll be there. It's a date."
Boom-Boom giggled and clasped onto Mr. Cabrera.
I couldn't help myself. "Did Riley tell you, Mr. Cabrera?"
"Tell him what?" Riley asked.
"That Mrs. Krauss is working for me temporarily? While Tam is out on leave?"
The color drained from Boom-Boom's face.
"How could I have told him that?" Riley asked. "I'm just now— Ow! Why'd you step on my foot?"
"Did I?" I asked. "Sorry."
"Ursula's okay, then?" Mr. Cabrera's blue eyes held a hint of worry.
"Of course she's okay," Boom-Boom trilled. "Old battleaxes like that never die."
My eyebrow arched. Riley's mouth fell open. Mr. Cabrera disengaged Boom-Boom's arm from his.
"I, er, mean that in the nicest possible way."
"Of course," I said.
"Nee-nah! You're home. You've got to see the plans."
Oh Lord. Maria.
I crossed the lawn. "Plans?"
"For your bathroom. What's that in your shirt? Really,
Nina, I could give you the name of a good plastic surgeon. You don't need to stuff. How . . . adolescent."
I growled and pulled the envelopes out of my shirt.
"Do I want to know?" Maria asked.
"No."
"Okay, then. Come see the plans. They're gorgeous. Just gorgeous."
I stopped dead in my living room. The ceiling where the dining room used to be before Aunt Chi-Chi renovated now had a very large, very gray stain in it. One that dripped onto a large tarp covering my hardwood floor.
"Minor," Maria said.
"Really?"
"Not to worry."
Oh, I was worried.
"Come, come. Come look."
"I need a minute." To . . . regroup. Maria wasn't happy with the delay. She pouted.
The phone rang as I passed it, heading for the back door. The caller ID listed a toll-free number. Telemarketer. I didn't answer, but it did remind me that I hadn't checked my cell lately.
I tracked it down, took it and Bill's letters out to Mr. Cabrera's gazebo.
The ivy he'd started up the sides of the gazebo had taken off, nearly reaching eye level. I'd convinced him to plant it, even though he hadn't wanted to. When I pointed out how rude it was to spy on others, he'd reluctantly put it in. But I noticed he kept trimming it back.
My voice mail had three messages. The first one was from Bobby, who told me he would be out of town for a few days, working on a hundred-year-old house near Columbus. Lots of scraping and prep work, so he'd be staying in a hotel up there. It would give me time, he said, to think about what he'd said.
The second message was from Tam. She'd been sprung from the hospital and was at home at Ian's farm in Lebanon if anyone needed her.
The third message, another from Bobby, simply said, "I miss you already."
I sighed and dropped the phone into my pocket.
For a few minutes I sat there staring at Bill's letters, wondering why I'd taken them.
I told myself that it was none of my business, but then my sense returned. It was my business. Absolutely my business. Bill and Lindsey duping me had made it that way. And the lawsuit and possible murder charges had cemented it.
Not that I had to worry about the lawsuit anymore. Unless there were family members eager to pick up where Greta had l
eft off.
There was Noreen—would she pursue the lawsuit?
Both letters had been opened—by Bill, I assumed. I pulled a single piece of paper out of each envelope and stared at them long and hard.
The first thing I noticed was the font. Every little i was raised slightly above the rest of the text.
The first letter read:
I know what you are doing. It will cost to not tell. I will contact you again soon.
The second curled my toes.
You will call Taken by Surprise Garden Design and arrange to have the backyard of Russ and Greta Grabinsky landscaped at your cost.
I stared at the letters for a long time.
Bill was being blackmailed.
By whom?
What kind of oddball blackmailed for landscaping?
And what did the blackmailer know about Bill that he'd so readily do it?
Something with the accounting books? I could easily see them sitting on the table in the Grabinsky house . . .
Right near the typewriter.
I studied the font on the letters and envelopes. That's why it had been so unusual. It had been made by a typewriter. An old-fashioned one.
One just like Greta and Russ's.
And since I knew Russ's penchant for blackmail, I had to wonder if Bill had been blackmailed by Russ himself.
Twenty-One
Tuesday morning I sat at my desk, trying to massage the crick out of my neck. So far, no luck.
True to her word, the night before Ana had come over with some desperately needed ice cream. I'd stayed up too late fielding her morbid questions about Greta Grabinsky, and gotten a lousy night's sleep on my sleeper sofa.
With all the construction in the bathroom, my room was currently unusable.
Tuesday was normally my day off, but the thought of the bathroom demo had driven me from my house and into my office.
The choice between Brickhouse and remodeling was a close one, but I had work to catch up on, namely a hummingbird garden I was designing as a mini for the Alonzos. Rich Alonzo was a novice birdwatcher, and his wife Lena wanted to surprise him.
No matter how hard I tried, or how much I threw myself into my work, I couldn't help but think of Bill Lockhart.
With my theory about Bill and Lindsey purposely plotting Russ's heart attack shot to pieces thanks to those letters, I didn't know what to think.
They hadn't planned for him to have a heart attack. Hadn't wanted him dead.
Maybe my Clue-playing skills weren't as good as I'd thought.
Yet, someone was blackmailing Bill. Which meant he was doing something he wanted to keep secret . . .
Had it been Russ blackmailing Bill?
He'd been blackmailing Dale Hathaway. Why not expand?
I played with different scenarios.
Russ, with a lawsuit looming, needed to have his backyard cleaned up, cleared out.
Maybe he'd heard Riley talk about TBS at work?
Being as cheap as he was, he certainly wouldn't want to pay my lofty fees himself, so he blackmails Bill into paying them for him.
Brilliant, actually.
And Bill, desperate to keep his secret, has Lindsey call me, setting the whole thing into motion.
Grabbing a red-colored pencil from the mason jar on my desk, I shaded blooms on a carnival weigela—a red, white, and pink flowering shrub hummingbirds loved—as one thought continued to nag at me.
Why then had Russ seemed so surprised to find my crew and me at his house if he'd planned the whole thing?
I chewed on the end of the pencil. Had his reaction been orchestrated too? Part of the grand scheme?
The pencil fell from my fingers.
It fit!
Russ finds us there, pitches a fit, and a lawsuit follows.
Not only is his yard done free of charge, but he also possibly gets money from me, in addition to Bill and Lindsey, to settle a lawsuit.
Except he went and died, ruining everything.
Almost everything. Greta still threatened to sue. Almost immediately, as if it had been on her mind all along.
Which left me to believe that Greta had been in on it all.
I finished coloring the weigela and reached for the purple pencil for the perennial salvia.
Russ and Greta had been in it together. And if Greta knew about Russ blackmailing Bill, she must have known about Russ blackmailing Dale.
Had someone else figured this out? And decided to end the scheming for good by killing Greta since Russ had already conveniently died?
Had Dale killed Greta? Had Bill?
Setting the pencil down, I remembered that Bill's blackmail letters hadn't been signed. Did he even know who had sent them?
If not, then there was no link between him and Greta's death except for the accounting books.
But Dale Hathaway was a different story. I'd heard him threaten Greta myself. And it made me wonder how he'd found out Russ was his blackmailer. Had he confronted Russ?
The phone rang. Brickhouse answered.
I went back to coloring.
I loved designing bird gardens of all kinds, but especially hummingbird habitats. There was just something so special about them.
The habitat itself was going to be an island in the middle of the Alonzos' backyard. I listed materials on a separate piece of paper as I created.
The intercom on my desk crackled. "Call on line one."
"Who is it?" There were certain people I was actively avoiding today. My mother, for one. I couldn't take one more construction disaster. My sister, for another. Her plans had included so much froufrou-ness, my bathroom had ended up looking like a high-priced French spa.
I was not a froufrou kind of girl.
Kevin was someone else I didn't particularly want to talk to. I needed some space to decide how I really felt about him. Plus, since I found those letters, I felt like an idiot for suggesting that the Lockharts might have purposely planned Russ's heart attack.
"It's Noreen Pugh."
I only knew one Noreen. "I'll take it." After a second, I picked up the phone, hit the number one on the console. "Nina Quinn."
"Nina, this is Noreen, Greta's sister?"
"I'm so sorry about her death."
I heard a sniffle, followed by a watery "Me too."
"Do the police have any ideas what happened?"
It was wrong to pry, but I couldn't help myself.
"No, not yet."
"I'm sorry," is all I could say.
She blew her nose, then said, "The police had me go through her things, but I couldn't see anything missing. I spent quite a lot of time there so I know the place well."
I didn't mention the accounting books.
"I'm calling because while I was there, going through the house, a neighbor stopped by."
"Oh?"
Had it been Dale?
"Kate Hathaway."
"Oh?" Had Kate known Dale was being blackmailed by Russ?
"She informed me about the lawsuit, how it was still in effect. That's why I'm calling. Did you know Russ and Greta have a daughter?"
Conversation from the day Russ died came back to me. Hasn't seen his kid in ten years.
I caught myself twirling the purple pencil. I was picking up bad habits from Deanna. Back in the jar it went. "I didn't know, no."
"Well, it was always Greta's dream to leave this house to Francie. That's why she took such good care of it. The yard . . . it always embarrassed her, but Russ . . . he was cheap."
Just reinforcement that Russ had been the one to blackmail Bill. And that Greta might have known about it.