Ed Lynskey - Isabel and Alma Trumbo 02 - The Cashmere Shroud (23 page)

As M
r. Barclay’s office manager, Karmine turned imperious, asserting her authority in her job’s domain. “How did you get inside here? This is private property, and you’re trespassing.”

“
In your rush, you got sloppy and left the door unlocked,” replied Sammi Jo. “We invited ourselves into the office.”

“
I order you to leave,” said Karmine.

“
Soon but not quite yet,” said Sammi Jo.

“If you don’t, I’ll
fetch the sheriff on you,” said Karmine.

“
That’s also in the works,” said Sammi Jo. “For the time being, we’ll chitchat. Did you feel us closing in on you? Is that why you’re in a hectic dash cleaning out the floor safe like at a fire sale?”

“I have nothing to say to
any of you. Get out. Before I—”

A righteous smile tugged at Sammi Jo’s lips. “Before you what
exactly?” She brandished the handbag. “Your second mistake was not keeping your purse close by. Your heavy-as-lead handgun is in here, and I’m holding it. Be smart. You’ve got no bullets left and have run out of angles to play. The killing has stopped, and you’ve met your Waterloo.”

The tousled
Karmine darted her eyes to each side of her captor. She could be peeling out in her fast car that she’d parked behind the office. She could be making good on her getaway.

“Why are you
acting so hostile?” she said, trying for a more rational tenor and pulling a different ploy on them. “Let’s everybody take a breath and relax. I’m just working late when you sneaked up behind me. Of course I reacted like I did to protect myself.” She stooped down and grabbed up the currency bag she’d dropped.

Sammi Jo was hardly duped.
“Is your working late why you’re carrying the valuables you’ve taken from Mr. Barclay’s floor safe in your currency bag?”

“I routinely handle all
the money,” replied Karmine, her last grasp to keep her cover story intact.

“
Can the bull,” said Sammi Jo. “You killed my father Ray Burl and then you went after my mother. She was Maureen you left shot dead at the Cape Cod.”

Karmine
laughed as unsettling and baleful as it was unconvincing. “You’re crazy because I did neither such heinous thing.”

Sammi Jo
’s tight smile showed off her dimples. “The jig is up, Karmine. I’ve got your murder weapon with your prints all over it. Ballistics will prove you fired it to leave the death slugs in my parents. Whatever big payoff plans you hatched with Mo just went south fast. We’ve stopped you cold in your tracks.”

Karmine’s
face blanched to an unnatural gray as she stared daggers at Sammi Jo. “And here I came so close. Just a few more piddly minutes and I’d’ve been gone from your crummy town.”

Sammi Jo
zeroed in on what she foremost wanted Karmine to clarify. “Why?”

“Mr.
Barclay is loaded, and I saw the ripe opportunity for my plucking.”

“
That’s it, the root of evil: money. It figures. Was Ray Burl in on it? Did you collude with him to rip off your boss? You must’ve concocted the scheme and approached Ray Burl because I know my father was never a crook.”

“
He was a man. He yearned for the same good things I did out of life.” Karmine sounded close to petulant over how her bid for the good things in life had fallen short.

“I hate to break the news
flash to you, Karmine, but nothing is good about scamming somebody or, even worse, murdering them. Why did you kill my mother Mo? Out of greed?”

Karmine said nothing.

Isabel stepped up to stand at Sammi Jo’s side. “Sheriff Fox can sort out all the ins and outs. Alma has called him at his house. We can wait until he gets those answers and passes them along to us.”

“What
’s the hurry, Isabel?” asked Sammi Jo. “There’s time now, and Karmine over there wants to unburden the rest of her soul to us.”

“
I demand to see a lawyer,” said Karmine. “I have nothing further to say to you tonight.”

Sammi Jo gave
Isabel a slight tilt of her head. “Sheriff Fox will take it from here then. We’ve gone as far as we can go. We’ll be here when he and Reynolds finally make the scene.” Sammi Jo pointed her finger at Karmine. “You can put down the currency bag. You won’t be taking it where you’re going next. I’m pretty sure the Commonwealth provides your room and board for free.”

However Karmine went on clutching the currency bag like a life vest
in a sea of troubles. But she was sunk.

“I can hear the faint
siren peals to the sheriff’s cruiser,” said Alma. “Roscoe will have a cow over finding us inside here.”

“We only make him look
bad, something he doesn’t want to hit the newspapers,” said Isabel.

“
Is that the leverage we can hold over him if we need to use it?” asked Alma.

Isabel nodded
once. “How sweet it will be, too.”

“
R
emember the sunset postcard I told you Mo had mailed to me?” said Nita over their cell phone connection.

“The one
you had the dickens to find,” replied Isabel in the laundry room. “Did you dig it out?”

“
As luck would have it, I did. It was stuck inside of my old bible. Maybe I should’ve prayed harder and longer for Mo. She chased after enjoying Saturday night’s sins without getting any of Sunday morning’s redemption. That’s no way to live.”

Isabel
didn’t comment on what might have been but wasn’t. “What did Mo write you on the postcard?” she asked.

“I’ll read you he
r entire scribbles. ‘Hi, Nida’—that’s spelled with a ‘d’ and not a ‘t’—‘I think I’ve found my pot of gold at the rainbow’s end. Pinch me! Cheers, M—. P.S. I’ll call you soon.”

Isabel
didn’t see much to make of the late Mo’s cryptic message. “Why did she take a sudden notion out of the blue to write and mail you the postcard?”

“For old times’ sake is all I can think.”

“She never called you, or vice versa, I take it.”

“The postcard was
all I ever heard from her. I guess by then she was in deep cahoots with that evil-minded lady.”

“Karmine
Meriwether, if that is her actual name or one of her several aliases.”

“
I live right in town, but I never bumped into or set eyes on Karmine.”

“She had other
matters occupying her attention than mingling with us locals.”

“So it would seem. This
episode has been nightmarish, Isabel. I wished I’d seen Mo just once more. I believe I could’ve talked her out of what crimes she was scheming to do. We were that close at one point in our lives.”

“It’s a nice wish
to indulge, Nita, but don’t you believe it for one second. Mo was a train wreck when she returned to Quiet Anchorage. She was committed one hundred-percent with Karmine to pulling off the heist on Mr. Barclay. Nothing shy of the Second Coming, much less your earnest counsel, would’ve disrupted their plans.”

“
They would make off with slim pickings. The scuttlebutt I hear says the Sod King is in debt up to the hilt. I feel sorry for his wife Elsie Denise and the two kids.”

“The
n Mo and Karmine aimed to bag up whatever they could grab and make fast tracks out of town. You know Sheriff Fox might consider Mo’s postcard as evidence.”

Nita
was uncooperative. “I’m calling it a sentimental keepsake, and he’ll never get his grubby paws on it.”

“Your
sentimental keepsake secret is safe with me,” said Isabel. “Thanks for calling, Nita.”

They hung up.

So,
in a way the dead really do speak from beyond the grave
, mused Isabel. She left the laundry room to fill in Alma on the latest development.

“
W
atch this, Alma.”

Isabel, sitting in her armchair
, extended her right hand. Also seated with his purplish tongue panting with glee, Petey Samson lifted his right forepaw, and they shook as if they were sealing a business deal.

“Slick, Isabel,” said
Alma.

Isabel beamed with
immense satisfaction over the new trick she’d taught the clever Petey Samson. She reached into the baggie, fished out a doggie treat, and slipped it to him as he thumped his tail even harder on the floor.

Then
, after licking his chops, he turned, his tail still wagging, and sauntered over to Alma seated in her armchair. He flumped down before her and lifted his right forepaw to shake hands with her.

Isabel clapped
with a delighted whoop. “He also wants to make a deal with you, Alma.”

“He’s just
a big ham mooching for another treat. Why can’t you just teach him how to fetch sticks, or better yet, our newspaper?”

“
Be a sport and humor the furry dear.”

“Give me
a doggie treat first so I can spoil him rotten the right way.”

After Isabel did,
Alma went through the same machinations as Isabel had with Petey Samson before Alma shooed him away. She sought a chance to converse with Isabel without any interruptions like the fun-loving Petey Samson further panhandling them. She’d already turned off her cell phone. After receiving the news from Nita about Mo’s postcard, Isabel and Alma felt ready to do the final wrap up on the case.

“Since Sheriff Fox is
in a big hissy snit to share anything with us, when do you think Karmine Meriwether cooked up her turf farm caper?”

Isabel
settled back in her armchair, took a deliberate sip of her iced tea, and looked at Alma. “I’ll give you my best conjecture of what transpired leading up to the murders of Ray Burl and later on of Mo.”

“Let’s
pick up the main action at Mo’s leaving Quiet Anchorage on the Greyhound,” said Alma. “Where did she drift to next?”

“
Her impulses led her to wherever suited her. She fell in with the riffraff element and learned robbery on a grander scale than shoplifting toys at the town drugstore was a lucrative trade. While in New Jersey, she bumped into the grifter Karmine Meriwether.

“Mo and Karmine
were peas in a pod and hit it off. Mo had never forgotten how Mr. Barclay was reputedly worth more than Fort Knox. She probably obsessed over it. They found out he needed office help through the job ads he posted on Craigslist. They plotted, and Karmine ginned up a bogus résumé. Evidently she has some bookkeeping skills to complement her computer smarts to run the financial software package Mr. Barclay had bought.”

“
Our Sammi Jo would find using it as easy a day spent at the beach,” said Alma.

“
Probably. Karmine dazzled Mr. Barclay, and he pitched her the job offer, and she grabbed it. She moved from New Jersey along with the murderous roscoe she kept tucked away in her Aigner handbag. Did you notice how fidgety she acted in the business suit jacket on our first visit? I did but it didn’t register as a clue.”

“Now that you mention it, Karmine did look uncomfortable,” said
Alma. “What about Mo?”

“She just hung loose out of sight so nobody would recognize her until their big move on Mr. Barclay came.”

“
But not thoroughly enough since Fats spotted her and told Phyllis,” said Alma.

“
Karmine and Mo probably saved up enough money for a stake,” said Isabel. “I asked Phyllis to keep her ears open for any further rumors she might hear.”

“Did
Mo know Ray Burl was the foreman at the turf farm?” asked Alma.

Isabel shrugged. “Anyway,
hardworking Ray Burl fell in love with the younger Karmine, and discounting him as just a harmless rube, she did nothing to discourage it. Since they worked together, they kept their assignation a secret from the rest of us.

“
Mo probably wasn’t thrilled with the tryst, but they were more interested in fleecing Mr. Barclay, so she didn’t make too many waves. Avarice makes it a lot easier to overlook your dislikes. Meantime Karmine gained Mr. Barclay’s confidence enough that he entrusted giving her the floor safe’s dial combination.”

Alma
posed a more cynical but likely shamus thought. “She slept with the boss, and he gave her the combination during their pillow talk. Big mistake. Anyway, Ray Burl perhaps overheard Mo and Karmine talking on their cell phones, but he discovered what theft they’d in mind to do, so he threatened to blow the whistle to Sheriff Fox.”

Alma
beamed. She’d read the same mysteries as Isabel had and knew the ins and outs to executing a heist.

“
Right. They went ahead as they’d planned,” said Isabel. “That’s why Karmine wasn’t at work on our second visit where you and I talked to Mr. Barclay in his office. Mo or Karmine murdered Ray Burl at the turf farm to keep him quiet. She’ll claim it was Mo, of course. Always an opportunist, Karmine then figured why not keep all the money for herself. Or perhaps she planned all along to rub out Mo.

“
Too late, Karmine realized she’d made a cardinal mistake by committing the second murder in our small town. The outraged townies would be up in arms, clamoring for a rigorous investigation, and her fake résumé and cover story couldn’t withstand that level of scrutiny. She panicked and was emptying out the floor safe to skedaddle when we overtook her in the nick of time.”

“Why
did Mo take a cab out to the Cape Cod?” asked Alma.

“
Karmine must’ve set it up that way to ambush Mo. Perhaps Karmine hoped it would throw the suspicion about Mo’s killer on Sammi Jo.”

“What do you make of Ray Burl’s
uncharacteristic purchase of the shotgun?”

“
Varmints, quite possibly. Sammi Jo heard the beavers have built pond dams on the neighboring farm to the Cape Cod. They’ve gnawed down every tree with a leaf in sight. Ray Burl may’ve feared they’d next bring their voracious appetites and level the saplings in his prized honey locust grove.”

“I’m glad
he didn’t turn out to be crooked as Petey Sampson’s hind leg.”

Isabel nodded.
“For Sammi Jo’s sake, me, too.”

“Okay
, that brings us back to Ray Burl’s cashmere dress suit. How does it fall in line with everything else?”

“My
pet theory is he simply put it on earlier Thursday evening because Karmine and he had made plans to go dine at a nice restaurant requiring a jacket. The cashmere was probably the only decent suit he owned. Quiet Anchorage has no fancy eatery—Eddy’s Deli hardly qualifies—but Warrenton touts three steakhouses that are definitely dress up places.”

“Do
any of the steakhouses take reservations?” asked Alma. “Maybe the maître de took theirs phoned in, and kept a written record of it.”

“I
asked Sammi Jo to scout at the restaurants, and none of them accept reservations, so that lead disappeared,” replied Isabel. “Helen Redfern correctly said Ray Burl’s dress suit was his cashmere shroud as he’ll probably be buried in it.”