A Shattering Crime (17 page)

“That's our theory,” Diana said.

“And that reinforces the idea that she didn't go anywhere of her own volition?”

“Not entirely. Still going to take time for all this flour and sugar to arrive. She could have planned to take a little vacation in the meantime. Take advantage of the fact the
bakery is closed, have a getaway without worrying about who's minding the store or having to close it for the duration.”

“Plus she could have used cash for any expenses, even an airline ticket.”

Diana chuckled. “You really think she had that kind of cash lying around?”

I thought of Grandy, of the various folds of cash he had stashed in unexpected places around the house. When asked, he told me he'd learned about money from his parents, who had weathered the crash of '29 and never again trusted a bank. He likened his own behavior to their wisdom and the basic common sense of not putting all one's eggs in the same basket. “It's a senior citizen thing,” I said. “She would have had cash.”

“I don't know, Georgia. We cleaned out my grandmother's house after she passed away and all we found were old clothes and a buttload of lace doilies.”

I pulled my new cup of coffee from the tray and carried it from Drew's kitchen to the back room. “All right. So we're back to not knowing whether Rozelle left town by choice or if some sort of mishap has befallen her.”

“For the record, I'm working on the mishap approach.”

I sat down in the chair Terry had finally vacated when Carrie left. Propping one elbow on the table, I rested my head against my hand. “How about David Rayburn? What have you guys learned about him?”

“Well, he's not my case,” Diana said. An exhale and a clatter made me picture her rolling back her chair and getting to her feet. “And I . . . don't see Webb around so I can't ask him.”

“Don't you talk to one another at all? Over coffee or—”

“You say donuts and I'm hanging up.”

“I was going to say or during a meeting. Give me a little credit.”

“Webb and I don't spend a lot of time
chatting
,” she said. “But, um . . .”

“What?”

“This sort of sucks.”

I knew, then, what she was going to say, but she said it anyway.

“You want to know what Webb knows about Rayburn's death your best bet is to talk to Nolan.”

T
he tail end of the lunch hour meant the tables and counter at the luncheonette were crowded with patrons whose meals were finished and whose checks were waiting to be paid. Tom was in his usual spot, nursing a cup of coffee and grappling with the crossword. I spent a few moments talking with him, confirming he and Terry had no plans for the later afternoon. When at last a table opened, I snapped it up without waiting for the dishes to be bused.

Sipping an ice water with lemon and waiting for my lunchtime appointment to arrive, I pulled out my phone and dialed the number for the vet.

I listened to the phone ring on the other end and reviewed the calculations in my head. Friday had been in their care for over five hours. If the surgery took less than
half an hour, as I'd been told it would, then my cat must be recovering, right?

The woman who finally picked up the call sounded like answering the phone was the ultimate inconvenience. When I told her I was checking up on my cat and gave my name, she told me to wait while she checked and put me on hold.

While I listened to the local soft rock station playing on the vet's phone hold, in walked the man I was meeting for lunch.

He dropped his notebook on the table before he slid into the booth. “Georgia,” he said.

I tapped the “End Call” icon on my phone and set the device facedown on the table. “Thanks for meeting me, Detective.”

“I could hardly resist the curiosity,” he said. “And I've asked you to call me by my name.”

“I know.” I lifted a shoulder. “But this is sort of an official kind of meeting. I thought I'd keep it professional.”

“Are you going to try and sell me a stained glass night-light?”

“Not my business,” I said. “Yours.”

He blew a noisy breath through his nose. “That much I guessed when you called.”

A pair of menus landed on the end of the table. Grace pulled an order pad from her apron pocket. “Something to drink while you decide, Detective?”

“Coffee,” he said, and he lifted one of the menus to hand back. “That will be all.”

“Georgia?” Grace said. “Coffee?”

“I'll stick with the water,” I said. I peered at Detective Nolan as I eased the remaining menu closer to me.

“I'll get the coffee.”

When Grace moved on to the next table, I opened the menu as though I intended to search for something to order, but I looked at Nolan. “Did Diana happen to mention why I wanted to talk to you?”

“Davis is in the house today,” he said. “She's on paperwork. I haven't seen her.”

“Let me see if I have this. I'm supposed to call you Chris instead of Detective Nolan but you're going to continue to refer to Diana as Davis?”

One side of his mouth rose in a quick grin. “It's a professional thing.”

“Fine,” I said. “You said you guessed it was business when I called.” In the library of suppressed memories, the recollection of him inviting me to dinner stirred. Sitting opposite him, just the two of us alone—in essence—since that night, I began to wonder . . .

“So why don't you tell me what you've discovered about your missing friend, and I'll tell you what we've discovered, if I can.”

I gave a half laugh. “What makes you think I've discovered anything?” Or that Diana hadn't already shared what the police know, for that matter?

“Really?” he asked. “You're going to try pretending you haven't been conducting your own personal investigation?”

I sighed. “You're right. Okay. You're right about that, but that's not what I want to talk to you about.”

Grace strode to the table, plunked down a porcelain
cup—empty. She held a carafe of coffee above the cup and glared at Nolan. “You want coffee?”

The detective glanced at her. “Please.”

“How bad do you want this coffee?”

“Excuse me?”

“I'm not pouring this coffee until you tell me what you're doing to find my friend,” she said.

He looked to her with what I knew to be his most sincere expression. “We're doing everything we can.”

Grace huffed. “That's what my niece keeps saying.”

“I don't think I could tell you anything that Da—Diana hasn't already,” he said around a grimace.

“That's what I was afraid of.” She poured his coffee then, displeasure turning down the corners of her mouth. “What are you having, Georgia?”

“Oh.” I shook my head, rattling the marbles in my brain, and lifted the menu. “I haven't looked, I—”

Nolan laid his fingers against the top of the menu and gently pushed down. “Would you mind? Could you not order until after I leave?”

“Are you serious? I asked you to meet me for lunch. I haven't eaten.”

“Please. I'd appreciate it.”

“I'm hungry,” I said.

“Georgia.”

Grace huffed, turned away. “I'll be back.”

“Okay, seriously,” I said. “What is the problem with me eating? I assure you I have top-notch table manners. I never even slurp my soup.”

“It's a personal issue.” He lifted the coffee cup straight
from the end of the table to his lips and took a gulp that had to be painfully hot.

“Of course it is, but what is it?”

He shook his head. “Personal.”

That little memory in the back of my head popped up to ask what the man intended when he invited me to dinner. Would there have even been a meal involved?

But a surprising realization rolled through my mind. It didn't matter what might have been. And it didn't matter what Nolan's reasons were behind his food avoidance. They were his personal issues. I didn't need to know them.

Of course, I was still hungry.

“All right, since I need information and I'm starving, let's make this quick. What's going on with the investigation into David Rayburn's murder?”

“Death.” He shook his head. “Not my case.”

“According to Di— Davis, it's Webb's case and you and Webb are good friends.” For all I knew, they hung around not eating together. “You're going to tell me you two cops have never discussed the case?”

Sighing, he sat back. “What do you need to know?”

“What's your theory? I mean, what is the police department's theory on why Rayburn was, um, possibly murdered?” I took several gulps of ice water. Maybe it would keep my stomach from collapsing in on itself from hunger. “Is there anything in his life, his history? Any enemies, debts?”

“Rayburn was an insurance rep for an outfit out of Connecticut. Traveled a lot, but his family have been in
the county for, I don't know, four or five generations. Folks we've spoken to say he'd never admit it but it looked like he was angling for a future in local politics.”

I nodded, showing I was following along. “And you think that would explain why he was involved with the group opposed to the promenade?”

“He was at the head of the group. He was in charge,” Nolan said. “So I'd say, yeah, that's a fair bet.”

“Wait. So you think it was just posturing? Some staged crusade to raise his popularity with the residents?”

“Raise his popularity, I doubt it. Raise his profile? That's where my money is.”

“Why would you doubt the popularity angle?”

He lifted a shoulder. “Not a whole lot of folks opposed to the promenade.”

This was news to me. The surprise clearly showed on my face, prompting Nolan to explain.

“You have a stretch of empty land, along the river no less, that no one's making any use of. There's no view because it's all flat, and the houses that were there predate standard insulation and central heating. Development there is a step in the right direction. You'd almost have to be crazy to oppose it.”

“Or looking for personal visibility.”

He nodded and pointed at me, a wordless way of showing I was catching on.

“Okay, but if that's all true, why would anyone kill—I mean—allegedly kill Rayburn? What's to gain? For that matter, what was to gain by Rayburn's protests anyway? The promenade was a done deal. The developers would be the most likely to want to silence Rayburn, but the ink
was already dry on the building agreement. They had no need to keep Rayburn quiet.”

“Sums it right up,” Nolan said. “You can't have murder without motive and Webb can't find one.”

“Then why is it still an open case? It is open, isn't it?”

He gave a sad sort of smile. “An otherwise healthy man dies suddenly after eating a specially made pastry. The coroner might have ruled the death as unexpected but most likely natural causes. Then the baker disappeared. That changed everything.”

“If Rozelle hadn't vanished, Rayburn's death would have been—”

“Tragic and unexpected but in the end not suspicious.” He took another deep drink of his coffee. “By the way, what did you think of him?”

“Who? Rayburn? I never met him.”

“I meant our coroner.”

There was no sense pretending, not with Nolan. “How did you know I met the coroner?”

He smiled, big, broad, and more than a little wolfish. “Not a lot gets by me.”

*   *   *

“W
hy do I have to be the dumb one?” Terry asked. I'd lost count of the number of times he had asked this question in different variations, making me wonder if perhaps he was pulling my leg. Wouldn't it be just like a kidder to keep forgetting the answer to a question like that? But as we crossed the parking lot from my car to the glassed-in entrance of The Regency Assisted Living Complex, I got the sense there was something more
going on than a poor attempt at humor or a case of rampant forgetfulness.

“Why are you so against this?” I asked. “You said this was a good plan. Why the change?”

Terry shuffled along next to me, his pace slowing with each step. “It is a good plan. It was better when you were going to get Pete to come with you.”

I, too, would have liked to have Grandy along but he apparently took my advice to heart and decided to get out of the house. There was no answer when I had phoned. I turned to Terry as a backup. Still . . . “Why is it better with Pete? You're the one with experience pretending to be someone you're not, Hank.”

“I have to go in there and pretend I'm looking for an old friend but can't remember her last name,” he said. “They're going to mistake me for a resident. They're going to think I'm an Alzheimer's patient who wandered off.”

“They're not.” I slipped my arm through his, matched his reluctant pace. “They're going to believe you're my great-uncle Hank and I brought you to visit your old friend Dolores. Do you think you're the first person who's no good with names? I assure you, you are not. And I'm not talking about residents either.”

I kept a constant stream of chatter going, gently tugging him along through the sliding doors, through the glass-enclosed lobby, past the ring of wheelchairs gathered in front of a big-screen television, and to the horseshoe-shaped reception desk.

“Hi there.” I rested one elbow on the reception desk and held tight to Terry's arm. “Do you think you can help us?”

The short-haired brunette behind the counter peered up at me over the rims of her half glasses. “What do you need, hon?”

“My great-uncle Hank here,” I said. Hey, if Terry could go around making up aliases without warning, so could I. “He's just on his way back down to Florida for the winter and wanted to stop in and say hello to an old friend.”

The woman nodded and tugged a keyboard closer to her. “Uh-huh. Name?”

“Well, that's the problem,” I said. “His friend's name is Dolores—they were neighbors back in the day—but he, uh”—I leaned into the counter, moving that much closer to the receptionist, and whispered loudly—“he can't remember her last name.” I gave her my best innocent smile, threw in a half shrug for good measure. “Of course, I told him that shouldn't be a problem. I mean, how many women named Dolores could be living here, right?'

She tap-tapped away on the keyboard then tipped her head back so she was viewing the monitor through the bottom half of her glasses. “Uh, we have three.”

I felt my jaw lower as my brows rose. “Oh. Oh. Okay. Three.”

She grabbed a notepad from some hidden shelf. “I'll write them down.”

“Thanks,” I said. I grinned at Terry, hoping the grin looked more confident than I felt. Three women named Dolores. What were the odds?

“This is where Dolores is?” he nearly shouted.

It took me a moment to pick up his cue. “Yes, Uncle Hank. We'll see Dolores.”

“Well, what are we standing around for?” he demanded.

“Hold your horses there, Pop,” the receptionist said. She passed over the piece of paper on which she had written three names with a different number beside each. Sliding a log book from its spot beyond the computer monitor to directly in front of me, she said, “Just sign in for me. The elevators are past the television and to the right.”

Terry picked up the list of names while I used the worst handwriting ever to write our fake names in the visitors' log.

Placing the pen back in the book's gutter, I thanked the receptionist again then made a show of turning Terry toward the elevators.

When I reasoned we were both out of eyeshot and earshot of the receptionist, I let go of Terry's arm and shrugged out of my jacket. “Okay, what is with the heat in here? Dang.” It wasn't the kind of heat that made you sweat, not right away. It was the sort of heat that slowly suffocated you, dried the life out of you. The kind where any sweat that might gather on the surface of your skin instantly evaporated.

“Just wait. You'll be old one day, too.” Terry punched the elevator “Up” button. “And you'll be looking for a house in Florida.”