Floral Depravity (21 page)

I pointed out her location to Brad and Nick. “Enjoy your lunch,” I said. “I'm going in.”

Nick put his knife away. “I'm going with you.”

“Me, too,” Brad said, licking his fingers.

I shook my head. “I appreciate the offer, but I'll learn more if I go alone, woman to woman. You can keep an eye on me from here.”

But when I approached the box, several of Arthur's men, now armed with crude but pointy-looking medieval weapons—I really should have paid more attention to that chapter in high school history— barred the entryway.

I found a seat in the bleachers nearby and watched as Kayla fanned herself in that heavy dress and guzzled quite a bit of wine from the goblet in front of her. Then I knew that it was only a matter of time. Probably about fifteen minutes elapsed before she excused herself to head to the woods.

I stopped her before she got there. “Aren't you Kayla Leonard?”

“Sorry. Do I know you?”

“Audrey Bloom,” I said. “Deputy Audrey Bloom, actually.”

“Oh, right. I already talked to that fellow Bixby, so if you could excuse me . . . ” She was eyeing me with the same anxious expression women eye long restroom lines at public events, just before they band together and take over the men's room.

“It will only take a minute,” I said.

“Fine, but come with me.”

“Come
with
you?”

But she was already darting between the trees, so I followed her and turned my head as she spread her skirt and did her business.

“This is something the medieval women got right,” she said. “Long dresses. No underwear. What could be more private?”

That was too much information, but not the kind I was looking for. “I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about Barry Brooks and what it was like to work for him.”

“Okay, shoot.”

“I hope you don't mind, but I have to ask this. Did you have a personal relationship with Barry Brooks?”

She came from behind the tree rubbing her hands on her skirt. I offered her my hand sanitizer.

“Ooh, contraband,” she said. “But I'll take it.” She squeezed the sanitizer onto her hands and rubbed them together. “Now, about me and Barry. I guess you could say what he and I had was strictly business.”

“Are you saying you didn't have a personal relationship?”

“If you mean did we have sex, the answer is yes, but it wasn't personal.”

I could feel my jaw dropping, and with the number of flies in the woods, probably collecting around the human droppings, that probably wasn't a good idea. I closed it.

She laughed. “So old-fashioned. I can see it in your face. Look, Barry wanted sex. I wanted to get ahead. We had an arrangement. But if you think I was personally involved, like passionately in love or jealous or any such thing, you're mistaken.”

“You do realize you're not the only one.”

Kayla looked at me like I'd transported in from Mars. “Well, yeah. I can name several off the top of my head. Including that Raylene Quinn. And if you're looking for someone who might have had a personal motive, I'd check her out.”

“Believe me, I have been. But do you think she killed Barry?”

“She had reason to. Look, she didn't play it smart. She fell for the boss. And he used her. She could have gone on to any number of companies and advanced much farther than she did. But in that way”—Kayla tapped her forehead—“she was dumb as a rock. And Barry wasn't about to reward her faithfulness, either.” She rolled her eyes. “She was getting a bit . . .”

“Long in the tooth?” I asked. I must have still had horses on my brain.

“She wasn't a vampire, for Pete's sake. Just old. There were younger fish in the sea.”

“And you were one of those younger fish.”

“Yeah, like those little fish that swim with the sharks, and the sharks protect them.”

“Pilot fish,” I said.

“That's the name, but she didn't remember that the shark doesn't give a fig about the pilot fish. He just lets them stay around because they help him.”

“That's rather Machiavellian, isn't it?”

“I don't know who that is,” she said. “But in case it's an insult, let me just say that it's gotten me where I want to be, so I really don't care. Look, nobody's getting hurt. And marriages were probably saved in the process.”

“Marriages saved?”

“Yes, from what I heard, before there were more women in the workplace to choose from, Barry used to go for his employees' wives.”

I didn't want to go there, considering my father was once one of those employees.

We walked back to the tournament grounds, and just before she climbed back up into the box, I said, “But about nobody getting hurt . . . remember Barry Brooks is dead.”

When I returned to the place in the stands where Nick and Brad had been eating lunch, I noticed they were talking to a woman. A woman wearing my long skirt and shirt.

“Liv! Please tell me Eric knows you're here.”

Her nonchalant shrug and failure to meet my eyes told me all I needed to know.

“You're going back right now. Nick, could you walk her back to Larry's?”

“I'm
not
going back. I just got here. I wanted to see the tournament, learn how the investigation was going, and make sure your father wasn't giving you trouble. Besides, I got some of that computer research done and you haven't been answering your phone.”

“I turned the ringer off. Mom's been calling me.”

“Audrey, you can't just turn off life because you're not ready to deal with it.”

“I'm not . . .” I gave a quick shake to my head, as if I were trying to shake her words out of my ears. “Just . . . what did you find on the computer?” I slid into the seat next to her.

“Right. I searched for your Brooks employees.”

“And?”

“First off, I followed the money. And Dean White is way richer than he should be.”

“He is an executive.”

“But not this kind of rich. I mean, the car he drives and his house, at least on the outside, are in line with what he should make. But I think they're just for show, so nobody gets suspicious. When I dug deeper, I found pictures of exotic vacation homes, sports cars, boats. And yes, those are all plural.”

“You think he'd be too smart to post that on the Internet,” I said.

“He is.” Liv smiled. “But his teenage daughter isn't averse to showing off, and she's on Instagram.”

“Any chance he could have inherited money? Or married into it? Or won the lottery?” I bit a broken fingernail. That didn't make sense. “He wouldn't have needed to hide any of those.”

Liv shook her head.

“So chances are good that he was involved up to his ears in whatever illegal activity Brooks was.”

“Does that help?” Liv asked.

“It suggests he's dirty, but why would he then kill Brooks, especially if Brooks was sustaining his lifestyle? It would be like taking the goose that laid the golden egg and making pâté de foie gras out of it.”

Liv shivered. “Can we leave the goose livers out of this discussion? Oh, and I have proof that Brooks and Kayla were involved, you know, sexually. Well, pretty near proof.”

“Old news,” I said. “She admitted as much.”

“She did?”

“Pretty uninhibited, our Miss Leonard. Said she was sleeping with him, but didn't really care about him. She was using him to get what she wanted, which was advancement in the company.”

“And you believe her?”

“Yes, actually I do.”

“And Kenneth Grant,” she said. “Do you know about him?”

“I'm more curious about what you learned,” I said.

“It seems Kenneth Grant has a bit of a record. I found some old newspaper articles. He and a buddy looted a bunch of empty homes after they dropped out of high school. Only once a home they broke into wasn't empty, and they roughed up an old man who lived there.”

“That I didn't know. Did he do time?”

“Apparently Grant testified against his friend and was released for time already served. Said his friend did most of the beating.”

“So he was a snitch back then, too,” I said.

“Snitch?” Liv said.

I waved her on.

“But he's been a model citizen since. He completed his GED, went to and graduated community college, and has a clean record with Brooks Pharmaceuticals.”

“Okay, that helps. But you're still going back.” I started to get up.

“But wait. I saved the best for last.”

I sat back down. “And what else did your magic fingers come up with this time?”

“More on Brooks,” she teased. “But if you really want me to go back . . .”

“Spill it. What did you find?”

“More of what I didn't find. I was trying to figure out when Brooks might have done his supposed military service. Your father told me that Brooks had come back to the business suddenly in 1990.”

“When did you talk to my father?”

“This morning, when he came by to ask where you were. I wouldn't tell him until he answered my questions.”

“You're ruthless.” I couldn't help the smile.

“But here's where it gets interesting. If we assume that Brooks's secret missions happened in the late eighties . . .”

“You'd have to. If you went back any farther, he'd be too young.”

“Right,” she said, whipping out a printed page detailing military operations in the 1980s under Reagan and the senior Bush. I scanned the page.

“Most were part of the drug war in South and Central America,” Liv said, “but a few were in the Middle East, precursors of Desert Shield to follow.”

I nodded. I had only vague memories of much of this, too recent to be included in the outdated history books when I was in school—and it if was, I hadn't been paying attention that day—but I'd been too young to recall much of it from the news.

“Where did you get this?” I asked. “Please tell me you didn't hack the Pentagon.” All we needed were government agents surveiling our little flower shop.

“It's all on Wikipedia now. But get this: most of these operations have blogs or websites so people can keep track of those they served with. You know, ‘What ever happened to Charlie who fell off the boat in Panama and got bit by a poisonous snake?' So while there are no official records available to people like me, you can track some of these veterans unofficially.”

“Which is where you found Brooks.”

“Which is where I didn't find Brooks,” she said. “Not really.”

I rubbed my eyes, trying to ward off a headache that I knew was about to come.

“What do you know about IP addresses?” she asked.

“Nothing. Just summarize.” I had to speak louder, because the tournament field was filling up with men in armor, archers, and the knights on their horses. They weren't actually doing anything yet. Probably planning who was going to kill whom.

“Okay, I found a site someone set up about an operation in the Philippines. Involved fewer than a hundred guys. Hardly anyone ever responded. I think the poor guy who ran the site was talking to himself. But there was one post that got more traffic than the others. Someone wrote in, asking if anyone knew what had happened to a young officer named Barry Brooks. Said Brooks was rendered unconscious in a skirmish while saving three other men and the poster wondered if he ever had gotten the medal he deserved.”

“So Brooks
was
military. Some kind of war hero.”

“No, that's where the IP address becomes important.”

“Summarize, remember.”

“I'm pretty sure Brooks wrote it himself,” she said. “Or someone who has access to his computer. There was one other comment on that post, also from the same IP address. It basically said, ‘Yeah, I remember him. Great man.'”

“Why would he . . .” Although before Liv could answer, I said, “Maybe because he was never in the military in the first place and was trying to manufacture proof.”

“Possibly,” Liv said. “But then I thought, if he wasn't in the military, where was he for those missing years?”

I squinted at her. “You know, don't you.”

She squirmed in her seat, completely unable to conceal her excitement. “I think so. I was able to find court records”—she pulled out a mug shot from her bag—“from the same time period. Can't be two places at once.”

“Barry
Brocks
?”

“Could have been a clerical error, but the picture doesn't lie. That's definitely him. And that little slipup in names was enough to keep Bixby from finding it. I e-mailed him a copy, by the way. I hope you don't mind.”

I shook my head and read the court report Liv had attached to the mug shot. “Fraud, racketeering, embezzlement. Sounds like he was learning his trade. So we can probably wipe foreign enemies completely off our suspect list.”

“Unless Brooks ripped them off. He seemed to have been carrying on some international swindles.”

I rubbed my temple. Trying to think above the growing crowd noise was giving me a headache. Or maybe it was that knock on the head. “So Brooks ripped people off, probably by implying some secretive government involvement, no doubt. Why, carrying on an illegal drug trade using Daddy's pharmaceutical business must have been cake for him. He was practically slacking off.”

“So I did good?” Liv asked. I suspected she already knew the answer.

“You did great,” I said. “But I still wish you hadn't come out here.”

“But since I'm here now . . .” She turned to the tournament grounds, where the opposing armies had taken their starting positions on opposite ends of the field.

Liv found and pointed to Shelby and Darnell, who somehow managed to swear their allegiances to opposing sides. They were glaring at each other across the narrow no-man's land that separated the two armies. Flags flapped in a growing breeze. Armor glistened and clinked. And the spectators in the stands sat on the edges of their seats.

“Hark, who goes there?” a deep baritone called out. And soon the melee began.

Arrows flew, hopefully away from the spectators. Horses galloped safely apart from the fray. I guess they didn't want PETA coming down on them. Most of the action was from two armies, one in bright blue and gray, the other in yellow and red, advancing on each other. The men wore an eclectic collection of whatever armor they had amassed and carried an assortment of medieval-style weapons. Men with large drums marched in the rear, beating a lively cadence. But the only other sounds were the grunts of what appeared to be mostly middle-aged men whose wooden shields barely covered their beer guts.

They slashed at each other with swords and took exaggerated dives to the ground as they “died.” Minutes later the battlefield was full of the injured and dying. Several limped off the field with looks of genuine pain on their faces. And the victors danced on the field, waving their flags and shouting, “To God, the king, and Saint George!”

“That was it?” Liv said.

“'Fraid so,” Nick answered.

Carol ran up the bleachers. “Audrey, come help. We need to get the horses back.”

I walked with her back to the corral, where all the horses were waiting in their brightly colored costumes. “What about the jousts?”

“Too dangerous,” she said. “There's a storm coming in, and you really don't want to be high up on a horse, wearing metal armor, and carrying what amounts to a lightning rod in an electrical storm.”

I looked up. The dark clouds were gathering, only this time it wasn't just the smoke from the nearby fires. Carol and I took two trips to get the horses back safely in the stable while Melanie rushed to get all their metal armor off and neatly stowed away.

“I don't know how these horses do in lightning,” Melanie said. Just as she finished speaking, a low rumble sounded in the distance. A stiff breeze had picked up, rustling the tent. The horses already appeared to be getting a little antsy. She talked softly to the horse, stroked his nose, and then stripped him of his fancy dress. She turned to me. “Make sure all the horse stalls have food and water. And let's try to confine those chickens.” She looked around, hands on her hips. “That's all we really can do for them.”

When I left the barn, a few droplets of rain were beginning to fall and residents were scurrying to their tents. Even more were snaking down the path toward Larry's. I couldn't blame them. I was debating doing that or trying to wait it out in one of the more permanent structures, like the little cottage Carol and Melanie shared. Only there was no guarantee that the storm would let up before nightfall, meaning I could be stuck overnight in a century without running water, working toilets, or microwave popcorn.

I scanned the crowd and spotted Nick's tall head above many of the others. I called to him, and he came over, squinting in the growing raindrops. When he got closer, I could see that Liv was with him.

“Audrey,” he said. “We have a problem.”

“We sure do. What are you still doing here?” I asked, ready to give my cousin a piece of my mind. “Now we have to walk back in the rain. What's Eric going to say when he sees you?”

“Audrey, that's not exactly the most pressing problem.” Nick pointed at Liv's belly.

Liv looked up at me, wide-eyed and contrite. “Sorry, Audrey, but I think my water just broke.”