Murder in the Rose Garden: A Scent with Love Cozy Mystery (Scent with Love Cozy Mysteries) (5 page)

The sight
of Chase
Crawford and his German Shepherd Lola sitting on the top step of the entrance to
her cottage gave Beth reason to pause.  He looked casual in a pair of faded
denim jeans, a blue-and-red plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow
and a pair of tan leather cowboy boots. Beth pulled up to the cottage, checked
her makeup in the mirror and fluffed her hair before getting out of the car. Beth
was still dressed in the same jeans and shirt she had been wearing when she saw
him earlier that morning.

Chase stood
up at the sight of her driving up to the cottage. He was chewing absentmindedly
on a piece of sweet grass plucked from the large pot next to the stairs. His
dark blue pickup truck was parked in the driveway.  The sight of him made her
heart pound in her chest and her palms became sweaty.
Stop it,
she told
herself sternly,
you are acting like a lovesick school girl. You don’t have
time for distractions!

“Afternoon,
pretty lady, I hope you don’t mind me stopping by.”

“What can I
do for you,” replied Beth and hurried up the stairs, fumbling with the key to
the front door of the guest cottage.

“I have been
thinking about you all day. I have been worried about you, scared you might get
yourself into trouble. Lola and I thought we could come around and go over the
case with you, help you piece together all the information you have at hand,”
replied Chase.

Beth wasn’t
sure of his intentions. The thought that he was there to try and determine how
much she knew did cross her mind. And she was tempted to decline his offer, but
something inside her told her to trust him. His husky voice was filled with
natural warmth which made her feel safe. She wasn’t sure if it was her head or
her heart talking but she decided to listen.
I was planning on talking to
him about the sheriff anyway,
she reasoned to herself.

“Okay, I’ll
let you in on one condition.”

Chase smiled.
“What’s that?”

“You tell me
how you knew where I was staying.”

Chased
laughed and the dimples on his cheeks sprang to life. “You forget that I do
this for a living. I’m not known as the best private investigator around these
parts for nothing.” Beth raised her brow at him questioningly, which made him
burst out laughing.

“Okay. Okay.
You got me, I had lunch at the diner. Allison told me all about you, from your
shoe size to your favorite food—seafood linguine apparently. Allison spoke to
Millie yesterday and she mentioned that you were staying out here in her guest
cottage.”

 Chase held
the door for her and stepped into the cottage after Lola.  They went into the
kitchen and Beth offered him a cup of coffee. Once they were seated with two
steaming mugs in front of them, Beth got straight down to business.

“So before I
tell you what I know, you better tell me everything you know. You didn’t tell
me everything this morning, I could see it in your eyes. You can tell a lot
from a man’s eyes, you know.”

Chase sipped
his coffee and smiled at her from across the table. “You could say the same
thing about a woman’s eyes… I can tell that you are dying to share news about
your mother’s case.”

Beth was not
going to let him charm her into telling him everything she knew without first
finding out what he knew. “No you don’t, Mr. Crawford, I’m not telling you
anything until you tell me what you know.”

“You drive a
hard bargain, Elizabeth Andrews,” replied Chase.

“Why don’t
you fill me in on what you know while I make us some dinner,” replied Beth.
Chase nodded excitedly. “How does roast chicken with potato salad and grilled
vegetables sound?”

“I’m a
bachelor, so anything that is not a TV dinner or takeout sounds great to me.”

Beth got
started on dinner and Chase got started on telling her everything he knew. “I
didn’t tell you the whole story this morning, Beth. Sheriff Hunter is involved
in a really big case at the moment. He is trying to catch a gang of drug
smugglers operating in the Bay area. He has been conducting an undercover sting
operation for the last few months; my connections at the police department have
told me that he is pretty close to making an arrest. His investigation is at a
very sensitive stage and he can’t risk having anything go wrong.”

Beth looked
up from peeling onions. “What did this have to do with Mom? I know that she was
working with your mother and that the two of them were supplying medical
marijuana to the elderly residents in the Bay area. Surely Sheriff Hunter
wasn’t going to arrest them though?”

Chase
laughed. “No, old Walt found out about their little operation a few months
back, gave them both a stern warning and turned a blind eye. He knew they were
still running their operation but seeing as they weren’t really selling it,
just giving it away he left it at that.”

Beth was
surprised.
Giving it away? Where on earth was Mom getting all the money?
This could possibly explain why she was broke!

Chase
continued, “Well that was until your mother started getting letters in the mail;
someone was threatening her. They wanted her to sell the flower shop and
threatened to report her to the police. What they didn’t realize was that she
wasn’t afraid of the police finding out about her little side business because
they already knew!”

Beth placed
the spiced chicken and roasting vegetables in the oven and started on the
potato salad. “Do you know who the blackmailer was?”

“I have my
suspicions but no concrete evidence. Jack Reynolds was my prime suspect.
Slippery character, can’t get much intel on him.”

Beth gasped.
“He was managing my mother’s financial affairs, why would he try and blackmail
her if he knew she didn’t have any money?”

“That was
the part that didn’t make much sense to me either. All my investigations
indicated that the flower shop was in trouble and your mother had no money left
but she didn’t act like a woman who was under financial stress. According to Mom
she was planning on opening another shop and she certainly wasn’t counting her
pennies.”

“Yes I heard
about her plans for a second flower shop from Bernard too but I wasn’t sure if
he was telling the truth. If she told your mother then perhaps she really was
planning to expand the business. Where is all her money then?”

Chase was
deep in thought. “Perhaps Bernard knew more than he was letting on. Maybe there
is something we are missing here. What if he was interested in the property
itself? A shop on the main road is worth a fair sum of money, even more if a
big developer is planning a new development. I think you should look into
Bernard in a little more detail. You will also need to try and find out if
there are any new developments planned on the main road.”

Beth placed
the salad in the fridge and turned to Chase. “Shall we take a walk on the
beach? We have another forty minutes before dinner will be ready.”

“Sounds
great. Nothing like a walk on the beach to clear the cobwebs,” replied Chase
and got up from the table.

The sky was
a misty shade of pink, orange and blue. The sun, a glowing orange ball, sank
into the distant horizon, gently swallowed by the calmness of the ocean. It was
a cool summer evening and the sound of waves rolling onto the sand was the only
sound that could be heard.

“I love the
beach,” Beth said as she walked, admiring the beauty around them. Lola ran out
front, chasing the gulls and sniffing at bits of driftwood and seaweed that had
washed up on the shore.

          “Yeah, I like
it too. Can’t imagine going back to the big city,” replied Chase.

          They walked
in silence for a few minutes, happy to be in each other’s company, each one
going over the discussion in the kitchen, trying to make sense of it all.

          Chase turned
to Beth. “Well…I told you what I know, now you have to return the favor.”

          “Well I have
only just started looking into things and I don’t know nearly as much as you
but I did find out a few things today.”

Beth proceeded to tell Chase
everything she had learnt starting with the meeting with Jack Reynolds and the
financial records of Scent with Love which appeared to support Jack’s statement
about the business being in financial trouble. Beth also told him about
Bernard’s affair and his revelation that he had seen her mother arguing with
Sheriff Hunter the day before she died.

Chase didn’t
seem surprised to hear about Bernard’s affair but he was interested in Jack
Reynolds and the black financial ledger.

“I wonder if
Jack has been stealing from the flower shop. How do we know that the
information in the black ledger is real? What if he gave you fake records to
make you think that the shop was in financial trouble?”

Beth hadn’t
thought of that, but suddenly that seemed like a real possibility. “You know
what, I wouldn’t put it past him. He did mention that I should look at selling
the shop. He even gave me the number of a realtor,” replied Beth.

          Chase sucked
in air between his lips and whistled as he breathed out. “Now that is
interesting; you will need to find out who was doing the books. Do you know who
your mother’s accountant was?”

          “No,” replied
Beth, “I hadn’t even though of going into that up until now. I was so intent on
selling the shop that I never even considered looking into things like that. I
am sure Hannah would know.”

          “You will
need to get hold of them first thing tomorrow; we need to take a long hard look
at Jack. I am not sure how he is involved but my instinct tells me that he has
something to do with all of this.”

They reached
the pier and turned to walk back towards the cottage, following the footsteps
they had left in the sand.

Beth was
glad that Chase had come; he really seemed to know what he was doing. It helped
to have someone who had connections in the police department on her side. Who
knows how long it would have taken her to figure out that Sheriff Hunter was
investigating a gang of drug smugglers and that he already knew about her
mother’s illegal pot business? Something was still bothering her about the sheriff
though. She turned to Chase.

“Do you know
anything about a woman called Piper Pots?”

          A look of annoyance
crossed his handsome face and his lips became pursed, pulled into a tight thin
line. He thought for a moment, carefully considering his response. “I shouldn’t
really be telling you this but seeing as you know so much already, I’ll have to
fill you in. But you can’t tell anyone…” Beth nodded.

“Walt has a
large sting operation planned for tomorrow night. There is a large shipment of
drugs coming into the harbor and he plans to strike while the gang is busy
offloading. He has good information that the gang leader will be there. Piper
is an undercover police officer. She has managed to form a relationship with
the leader of the gang, who goes by the name Big Al. Piper is posing as a
university biochemistry graduate who specializes in genetically modified
marijuana plants. She has been supplying them with genetically modified
seedlings that grow under almost any conditions, producing high quality
marijuana ready for market within weeks. Big Al adores her; she has managed to
infiltrate the gang and has been collecting intelligence for Sheriff Hunter.”

Beth could
barely believe what she was hearing—a highly sophisticated drug cartel
operating out of Bartholomew Bay sounded bizarre. Considering the location and
all the fishing boats coming in and out of the harbor it did seem like the
perfect place to run an operation like that. Now that she knew that Piper Pots
was an undercover police officer, she wondered why her mother had been paying
her large sums of money via the flower shop.
Was she a dirty cop? Perhaps she
was the mystery blackmailer.

Beth decided that she would need to try and
find out more about Piper and look into why the sheriff was arguing with her
mother the day before her death.

When Beth
got to the
shop, she found Hannah working on a large floral arrangement. White lilies
nestled among light pink and white roses.

“Morning,
you’re in early,” she said as she hurried in and went straight to the kitchen.
She was glad to find that the kettle had just boiled because she was dying for
her morning caffeine fix. Chase had stayed long after dinner and they had
finished an entire bottle of red wine as they chatted into the early hours of
the morning. He had told her how he had moved to Bartholomew Bay to take over
his father’s business after he had suffered a stroke.  Beth had talked to him about
her life in Boston and her plans to get back there as soon as her mother’s
affairs had been finalized. She had told him a lot about herself but she had
not mentioned her failed relationship with her boss Andrew.

“Who ordered
that?” asked Beth.

“Mrs.
Blackwood,” replied Hannah as she placed the final lily in the vase.

Beth looked
at the vase and became annoyed. “We need to stop using those vases. I can’t see
the point of continuing to use the second-hand vases Mom collected. I know it
was her hobby but I feel that it is just too expensive to manage. We can’t
afford it; it is just impractical to deliver flowers and collect the vases
afterwards. I know Mom thought it was a good way to get repeat orders but I
feel that there are better marketing options which I will look into.”

Hannah
looked like she was about to argue but thought better of it and nodded her head
in agreement. “I’ll put these in a standard white vase before I deliver it this
afternoon.”

Beth swept
the floor, put out a new window display, placed buckets of fresh flowers at the
entrance and recorded the previous day’s sales.

“That
reminds me, Hannah…do you know the name of the accounting firm Mom used to
manage the books?”

Hannah
thought for a minute and hurried to the back of the shop. She came back a few
minutes later with a black business card. The words ‘Jean Fisher, Accounting Services’
were written in gold lettering on the front, next to a logo depicting the
letters J and F in black at the center of a gold circle.  

“Here you
go, Jean was a close friend to Mary-Ellen and she lives a few houses from your
mother’s cottage, number nine Pondicherry Road.”

“Thanks,
Hannah.”

Hannah
looked down at a message scribbled on a Post-it note next to the phone. “I
almost forgot…a Mr. Dunne called yesterday, he was looking for Mary-Ellen. He
seemed very concerned when I told him about her death, asked if he could speak
to a family member or the executor of her estate. I told him you would give him
a call today.”

“What was he
calling about?” asked Beth.

“He didn’t
say, but it sounded quite important.”

Beth didn’t
have time to talk to Mr. Dunne. “I will get back to him later in the week.”

~

Beth knocked
on the door of number nine Pondicherry Road a little after one in the
afternoon. The cottage looked very much like her mother’s, except it was
painted white and the garden was not as well kept. The old fisherman’s cottages
were quite sought after in the area and there was a long list of buyers waiting
to make an offer whenever one came on the market. Beth cringed at the thought
of Bernard inheriting her mother’s cottage.

Jean Fisher
was a slim woman in her mid-fifties with dark auburn hair cut short, black
square-framed glasses and a sharp beaked nose. Beth recalled seeing her sitting
two rows behind her at the memorial service. She was dressed smartly in black
dress pants and a black fitted pinstriped shirt with a white collar and cuffs.
She looked like an accountant from a large corporate accounting firm in the
city.

Beth held
out a hand. “Afternoon, I am Elizabeth Andrews, Mary-Ellen’s daughter. I do
recall seeing you at the memorial but we were never introduced.”

Jean Fisher
squeezed her hand softly and welcomed her in. They sat down in the small formal
lounge area at the front of the cottage.

‘What can I
do for you, Elizabeth?” asked Jean.

“Well I am
currently busy looking into my mother’s affairs…” Beth didn’t want to alarm the
woman with talk of murder. “I understand that you were taking care of the books
for the flower shop.”

Jean shook
her head. “I did her books for three years and then suddenly, a couple of years
back, she asked me to hand everything over to her. I didn’t mind, I just
figured that she had decided to take on that responsibility for herself. I
assumed that she was using an auditor to check everything with Jack’s
assistance.”

Beth was
disappointed. She had hoped to learn more from Jean but it was obvious that she
knew nothing about the current financial affairs of Scent with Love.

“Thank you
for your time, Jean. I must get going.” Beth got into her car and drove back
into town. Beth decided to spend the rest of the afternoon looking into Jack
Reynolds. She needed to find out if he was blackmailing her mother. She also
needed to find out if he knew more about her mother’s financial affairs than he
was letting on.

~

Beth parked
in a diagonal parking spot right outside Jack’s offices, a modern white five-story
office block, the tallest building in town. She walked up the stairs, taking
them two at a time. Jack’s offices were on the fifth floor with a panoramic
ocean view. Olivia was not at her desk.
Probably sneaking around with
Bernard
.

Beth took a
seat on the black leather sofa in the corner. The reception area was enclosed
in thick laminated glass, giving a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the ocean.
Beth could see the harbor; there were a number of boats on the water and Beth
wondered if any of them were filled with drugs. She had almost forgotten that
Sheriff Hunter was going to be conducting a sting operation at the harbor that
evening. She wondered if Piper Pots was a dirty cop. She sure hoped not
otherwise Sheriff Hunter would be in grave danger. If Piper was the one
blackmailing her mother, then who knows what else she was capable of—perhaps
she had fallen for the gang leader.  Beth chided herself.
Stop letting your
imagination run wild!

The sound of
raised voices coming from the conference room startled Beth. She got up and
peered down the hall. She couldn’t see Olivia and she wondered if Jack was in
his office. She tiptoed down the hall to knock on his door but was distracted
by the conversation in the conference room.

“….Pots, I’m
telling you, Jack…the woman has no idea…we need to act fast.” Beth was
listening so intently that she almost had a heart attack when the door was suddenly
flung open and a woman stormed out into the hall, almost knocking her off her
feet. Beth gasped.

“Sorry…I…um…”
The woman stormed out of the office and slammed the door without even looking
back to see if she was alright.

Pots! That
name just keeps popping up all over the place. What did she mean by ‘the woman
has no idea’? What if it means that something is going to happen tonight when
Sheriff Hunter conducts his sting operation? What if Piper Pots and the sheriff
are in danger?

Jack hurried
out of the conference room. His eyes bulged from their sockets when he saw her
standing at the door of his office.

“Beth…I
wasn’t expecting you today.” Jack walked in though a large modern glass door,
obviously upset, and called for Olivia, who came running in from the copy room.

“Yes, Mr.
Reynolds.”

“Why is
there no one at the front desk? We can’t have clients walking around all over
the place. Please get Ms. Andrews some tea.”

Olivia
hurried off to the kitchen and Beth sat down on Jack’s chesterfield sofa. “I
didn’t mean to get Olivia into trouble. I just wanted to knock on your door and
see if you were in,” said Beth.

“I am just
having a rough day, that’s all. You are my second unannounced visitor and I
have a lot of work to get through. Mrs. Blackwood barged in here a little
earlier and now I am running late for some important meetings. Olivia will need
to get her act together or I may have to look for someone else,” huffed Jack,
clearly feeling a little hot under the collar.

Beth was
startled by the mention of the name Blackwood; it seemed familiar but she
couldn’t place it.

“Mrs.
Blackwood?” she replied, raising her eyebrow questioningly.

“Yes, she
stays out on Lavender Hill, one of my biggest clients…old money,” he replied
and scowled at Olivia who had just entered the room with a tray of tea.

“Aah, that’s
why the name sounds so familiar—Hannah, my assistant, has done two large flower
deliveries there in the last few days.”

Jack looked
at her impatiently, obviously not in the mood for small talk. “How can I help
you, Beth?”

“Oh, yes,
the reason I came by was I have been wondering about my mother’s will. You
mentioned that she updated it a month before her death, is that correct?”

Jack tapped
his fingers impatiently on the table. “Yes, that is correct.”

“Did you
draft the updated document or did she have an updated document delivered to
your office?”

“What is
this about, Ms. Andrews?” asked Jack. His face was starting to turn a violent
shade of purple.

“I just find
it odd, that’s all—she updates her will and not even a month later she turns up
dead. That just seems a little strange to me. I also do not understand why she
would have left the cottage to Bernard, who had been cheating on her. There are
also a number of conflicting bits of information regarding the financial affairs
at Scent with Love. I know that these are all tough questions but do you know
anything about this?”

Jack nearly gagged
on his tea. “Ms. Andrews, I am not quite sure what you are trying to imply but
I will have you know that I conduct my business with the utmost
professionalism. Your mother came in here a month ago and dictated a new will.
I followed the same procedure I use for all my clients. I recorded the session
and got Olivia to draft the updated document afterwards and sent it to
Mary-Ellen for approval. I filed the signed copy with your mother’s signature
in her file. With regard to the finances at Scent with Love, your mother is
probably the only one who knew anything about that. The business started going
south after she took over the bookkeeping.”

Beth looked
at Jack excitedly. “Do you have a copy of the recording you made when Mom
dictated her new will?”

“Unfortunately
not,” replied Jack. “It was stolen in a robbery two weeks ago.”

Well this is
most interesting,
thought Beth
. It appears as if Olivia had
ample opportunity to forge Mom’s will. She could easily have changed it so that
Bernard, her lover, got the cottage after Mom’s death. She must have convinced
Bernard to coerce Mom into signing without properly checking it or knowing what
it was she was signing. I’ll bet that’s exactly what happened and then she
stole the original recording to cover her tracks. The cottage is worth a fair
sum of money…I am sure people have murdered for a lot less.

          Beth sipped
her tea and smiled at Jack politely. “With regard to that financial ledger you
gave me, where did you get it? I have heard from a number of reliable sources
that my mother was planning to expand the business. Why would she be planning
to open a second store if the business was in such a dire financial position?”

Jack’s dark
eyes flashed with anger. “Look here, I do not appreciate what you are trying to
insinuate,” he stammered and Beth noticed him looking at the top drawer of his
desk nervously.

“Are there
any more ledgers or financial records that I should know about?”

Jack was in
a corner. “There is a document that your mother filed with me a couple of
months ago. She said she had made some large investments and that they had
grown significantly in value over the last two years. She gave me the following
document as a record of the investments. Now you must understand that I was not
trying to mislead you. I took out the document the day before our first meeting
to go over it so that I could explain it all to you. The problem is that when I
looked at the papers in the envelope she had given me they were all blank. I
just assumed that she had given me the wrong documents by mistake.” Jack handed
her a large brown envelope with two blank pages. Beth had no idea what to make
of it.

Beth was certain
that she had outstayed her welcome but she decided to push her luck just a
little further. “One last thing…are you aware of any new property developments
that are planned for the main road in town?”

“No, I am
not. Why would you ask that?” Jack didn’t even blink. If he was aware of
anything he was pretty good at hiding it.

Beth decided
to play open cards with him. “Someone was trying to blackmail Mom—they were
trying to force her to sell the shop. I thought that perhaps it was someone who
was interested in developing the property.” Jack definitely flinched at the
word blackmail but he did not appear to know anything about a property
development.