Taken In (18 page)

“Napkin? What napkin?”

She swallowed. “From CupKatery.”

They were all having tea when Tori finally emerged the next morning from the room she shared with Margaret Louise.

“My sister kept you up all night with her insufferable snoring again, didn’t she?” Leona drawled from her spot on the window seat overlooking the city.

Margaret Louise’s shoulders slumped next to Debbie, prompting Tori to set the record straight. “Um . . . no. I slept. A little.”

“For what? Twenty minutes?” Leona tapped Paris’s nose with her French-tipped index finger and made a silly face. “Victoria is just determined to resemble a raccoon, isn’t she, my sweet precious baby?”

She considered defending herself and her inability to sleep in light of everything going on, but she let it go. To argue would only get Leona’s back up, and that would be detrimental to the plan she’d concocted as dawn crept across Margaret Louise’s bed and onto Tori’s side of the room.

“Would you like a spot of tea?” Beatrice asked while rising from the couch and heading toward the room service cart and the pot it held. “It’s still hot enough for a cup.”

“No, thank you. I think I’ll grab some juice down in the lobby as we’re heading up to the bookstore.”

Leona groaned. “The bookstore? Again?”

“I realized we never showed the picture of Ms. Steely Eye to any of Charles’s co-workers. Maybe one of them can put a name to the face he recognized.” Tori dropped onto the love seat beside Rose and gently shook the edge of the newspaper the woman held. “Anything good?”

Rose shrugged. “Seems a murder story only holds front page appeal in this city for a limited time, unlike in Sweet Briar, where it still finds its way in six months later.”

“No mention of John?”

“Not today.” Then with a quick fold of the paper in her hand, Rose exchanged it for another at her side. “Even in the paper you brought in with you last night, they never said how he died. They just mention Dixie’s name in relation to John’s and give details of her arraignment.”

“I guess there’s no reason to keep saying he was pushed.” Debbie set her empty teacup on the coffee table and stretched her long slender arms over her head. “Murder is murder, whether it’s a push from a balcony or—”

“Wait a minute,” Tori protested. “It says he was pushed from his balcony on the front page.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Rose turned the paper toward Tori and pointed at the opening paragraph of an article positioned below the fold. “It just says Dixie was arraigned and that she will be assigned a public defender for her murder trial.”

Murder trial . . .

Shaking her head, Tori liberated the paper from Rose’s lap and searched the entire front page for the details Doug had read aloud while standing in the middle of his cupcake shop the previous afternoon.

But there was nothing.

No mention of a push.

No mention of a balcony.

“How on earth?” she rasped even as the answer filled her thoughts with the kind of clarity that left little room for doubt.

Doug had known about John’s murder long before he picked up the paper, yet he’d pretended otherwise. Of that, she was absolutely certain.

The only question that mattered now was
why
 . . .

*   *   *

It was just shy of noon when they walked through the door of McCormick’s Books & Café, Beatrice’s camera clutched tightly in Tori’s hand.

Rose released her death grip on her shoulder-mounted purse and scanned the store. “Is Charles working today?”

“Not today. It’s his day off.”

When she noted the collective shoulder sag around her, she couldn’t help but laugh through the headache that had accompanied her onto the subway and refused to be left behind when they disembarked and made their way along the park-bordered sidewalk. “He’s really managed to wrap everyone around his finger, hasn’t he?”

“A wondrous fellow, he is,” Beatrice said by way of agreement.

Rose nodded. “It’s like he swallowed a ray of sunshine, and every time he opens his mouth, he shares a little bit of his take.”

The compliments continued with Debbie, Margaret Louise, and then Leona chiming in, but Tori didn’t hear their words. No, her own thoughts were off and running on the many ways the stranger-turned-invaluable-friend exemplified an expression she’d heard often throughout her life.

“You never know when the next person you meet may change your very essence for the better.” The words were no sooner past her lips than the misty-eyed smile that always attended thoughts of her late great-grandmother sprang into action, earning her a quick embrace from Rose.

“Your great-grandmother might as well have been talking to me when you first came to Sweet Briar, Victoria,” Rose mused. “Because I know you’ve certainly changed me for the better.”

Leona stopped stroking Paris and drew back, her eyes wide behind her stylish glasses. “From where I’m standing, Rose Winters, you’re as rotten now as you’ve always been.”

“That’s just because I don’t like you, Leona. Never have, never will.”

Beatrice’s gasp was echoed by first Debbie and then Margaret Louise before being waved off by Leona herself. “Jealous women rarely do, Rose.”

“Jealous? Good Lord, what do I have to be jealous about where you’re concerned?”

“To paraphrase Elizabeth Barrett Browning if I may . . . let me count the ways.” Leona stopped, indulged in a noteworthy smirk, and then continued in her most cultured voice. “My unparalleled beauty, my magnetic personality, my keen intuitive business sense, my runway-worthy eye for fashion, my ability to turn heads regardless of age, my—”

“Amazing ego? Unbelievable imagination?” Rose supplied.

Instantly, Leona’s plump lips and diminutive fists tightened in preparation for battle, drawing a hush from the group, as well as a handful of nearby rubbernecking book browsers. “Take that back, you old goat, or I’ll . . . I’ll petition the court to regain custody of Paris’s baby, Patches, on the grounds his adopted mama is evil incarnate! And I’ll win!”

Rose’s eyes narrowed to near slits just as Beatrice stepped forward, waving Bobblehead Kenny in forced surrender. “Now, Leona, Rose. We mustn’t say such things. Dixie needs us to be strong and to work together.”

Tori stepped forward, linked her left arm with Rose’s and her right arm with Leona’s, and clucked softly beneath her breath. “Beatrice is right. Every moment we stand here arguing is another moment Dixie must spend in that jail cell.”

For a second she thought Rose was going to argue, the need to challenge Leona’s custody threat with a biting zinger written across every nuance of her lined face, but in the end, the eighty-something woman merely exhaled the fight from her pint-sized body and pulled the flaps of her cotton sweater more tightly against her body. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

“The same thing that comes over you virtually every minute of every day,” Leona sulked.

“Shut up, Twin!” Margaret Louise extricated her sister from Tori’s grasp and marched her over to the café, glancing back at Tori as she did. “We’ll be over here, enjoyin’ one of them fancy frothy drinks when you’re done askin’ ’bout that picture, Victoria.”

She mouthed a thank-you at her friend, deposited Rose with Debbie in the reading nook on the opposite side of the store from the café, and then made her way up to the counter and the stocky brunette with the tiny gold stud in her left nostril. “Vanny?”

The girl, whom Tori estimated to be in her early twenties, looked up from the pages of an unjacketed hardcover novel propped behind the register and shook off her initial dazed expression. “Oh. Yeah. Sorry about that. I know I’m not supposed to be reading between customers but, well, I like books. Especially ones that are so good I forget where I am while I’m reading them . . . though, my boss probably wouldn’t approve.”

“Nor would the folks at my library who are just trying to get my attention long enough to answer a routine question,” Tori said by way of agreement.

Vanny stopped chewing her gum then transferred it to a resting spot on the right side of her mouth. “You’re a librarian?”

“I am.”

“I thought about going that route, but college wasn’t really my thing.”

“A bookstore works.” She pointed to the book in Vanny’s hand. “So it’s good then, huh?”

“It’s better than I expected, especially considering I’m not exactly the target demographic. But I’m supposed to read it, so I am.”

She felt her left brow arch. “Supposed to read it?”

Vanny worked her gum briefly before answering. “We run a few book clubs outta the store every month. One’s based on mystery titles, the other on women’s stuff—fiction, self-help, that sorta thing. At first I was bummed when my boss gave the mystery one to Charles, but so far the books the women’s group has been reading have been pretty good.”

“So which one is that?” she asked, pointing at the book again.

“
Finding Love After Sixty-Five
by Gavin Rollins.” Vanny turned the book for Tori to see, laughing as she did. “The group wanted to read it to coincide, as close as possible, with his visit here to the store. It was a natural choice considering most of the women in that club are retired except me. So I figured I’d read it and maybe pass on some helpful insights to my grandmother when I visit her this summer, maybe even take a few mental notes for when I hit that age myself. But surprise surprise, I’m actually learning things I can use now, at twenty-five.”

“Oh?”

“Sixty-five-year-old women aren’t the only ones who come across jerks in the dating department.”

“Don’t I know it,” Tori mumbled as an image of her late ex-fiancé emerging from a coat closet with one of her best friends filtered through her thoughts before being pushed to the side by the present. Lifting her left hand into the air, she wiggled her ring finger ever so slightly. “But I’m here to tell you that there are some gems out there, too. Amazing ones, as a matter of fact.”

Vanny worked her gum again, this time with an almost ferocious burst that lasted close to a minute. “I’ll have to trust you on that one. In the meantime, I’ll keep reading . . . and taking copious notes in the hope I can save myself some grief out there.”

She nodded, the young woman’s words bringing her back to the reason she was there in the first place. “I was hoping maybe I could show you a picture on my camera and see if you can tell me anything more about a woman that is in the background of one of my shots. Charles said he’s seen her in here before but can’t place her with any specific details or even be sure he’s seen her recently or back when he first started here.”

“You know Charles?”

Again, she nodded.

“Wait. You’re one of those southern sewing circle ladies he’s been yakking about this past week?”

Her third nod accompanied a smile. “Yup, that would be me and”—she glanced over her shoulder long enough to point out Rose and Debbie in the reading nook, Beatrice perusing the children’s section, and Margaret Louise looking on as Leona flirted with the handsome teenaged barista behind the café counter—“them. In the flesh.”

Vanny nudged her chin in the direction of her enamored and well-built co-worker and laughed. “I’m guessing that one’s Leona, yes?”

She considered asking how Vanny knew, but opted to bypass the rhetorical question in favor of her previous one. “So? Would you mind looking at a picture real quick and telling me if you know the woman in it?”

“Yeah. Sure. I’ll take a look.” Vanny tucked a bookmark into her place, closed her book, and then eyed the camera in Tori’s hand. “But I have to tell you, if Charles can’t place her, I’m not sure I can. He’s the detail person around here.”

“Oh, he can place her. He knows she’s a customer here for sure. He just thought maybe you’d have more details that could be helpful.” She turned on the camera and scrolled through Beatrice’s visual diary of their trip to New York City. When she reached the picture taken near the crime scene, she focused the image on Ms. Steely Eye and handed it to Vanny, the urge to cross her fingers overwhelming. “Do you know anything about her? Who she is? Where she lives—”

“Sure, I know her. That’s Barbara Letts. She’s in the same book club as me.”

Tori felt the relief as it coursed through her body and failed to thwart the squeal before it emerged from her mouth. When she composed herself, she glanced back over her shoulder one more time to find five sets of eyes trained in her direction. “Do you know how I can find her?”

Vanny handed the camera back across the counter then retrieved her book and held it up for Tori to see. “I sure do. She’ll be here tomorrow night. For book club.”

Even without the slumped shoulders and snail’s pace at which they traveled the sidewalks, Tori could tell the quest to free Dixie was taking its toll once again. The normally good-natured banter that was as much a part of the group as their shared love of sewing had taken on an edgy quality. No longer was it just Rose and Leona snapping at each other over every little thing.

Suddenly, Debbie and Margaret Louise weren’t being quite so respectful of each other’s food-related opinions, and Beatrice was showing less tolerance for even the slightest eye roll at the mention of putting Bobblehead Kenny in an impromptu picture.

“I’m thinkin’ we’re ’bout to have some bloodshed ’round here soon, Victoria.” Margaret Louise huffed and puffed her way to the front of the pack. “Now don’t get me wrong, I want Dixie out of that jail as much as anyone, but there ain’t gonna be anyone left to free her if we kill one another first.”

She peeked over her shoulder at her fellow sewing sisters and noted the sorry state of each and every one.

First, there was Debbie, who spent more time looking at her phone than anything else, the longer-than-expected separation from Colby and the kids dampening her usually unstoppable reservoir of energy.

Next came Beatrice, the quiet, even-keeled British nanny who currently seemed to be channeling her charges’ mood when a favorite cookie had been promised and then denied.

Then, and possibly most alarming, came Leona and Rose, side by side, the silence between them enough to add a few exclamation points to Margaret Louise’s words.

“We’re only a block away from our next piece of information and it would be silly to turn back now. But maybe, when we’re done, we could do something touristy for a few hours. Just to regroup.”

“We could go to the Statue of Liberty. Or maybe the Empire State Building,” Margaret Louise said by way of agreement. “I’ve always thought Lady Liberty was mighty purty and real majestic standin’ ’longside the water with her torch.”

“We could take a vote . . .”

Margaret Louise stopped, took a few quick breaths, then continued to keep pace with Tori. “Think maybe we could take that vote when my twin is goin’ to the restroom or maybe winkin’ and blinkin’ at some doorman or somethin’?”

Tori froze mid-step, Margaret Louise taking full advantage of the momentary pause to wipe her brow with the backside of her hand. “Woo-wee, you’re a fast walker, Victoria.”

“Margaret Louise, you’re a genius!”

The grandmother of eight’s round face spread still wider as she gave in to a smile she simply couldn’t hold back. “I am?”

“You most certainly are.” Tori spun around to face Leona as the rest of the group caught up, Margaret Louise’s words still ringing in her ears. “I know how we’re finally going to get some honest-to-goodness information on Caroline Trotter.”

When no one responded, she followed up her gaze with an outstretched finger. “Operation Leona is now in effect.”

All eyes turned.

“You mean we finally get to dispose of her on the side of the road the way I’ve been asking to do since we got here?” Rose groused, earning an unexpected laugh from Beatrice.

Before Leona could mount a verbal defense, Tori reached for the woman’s arm and drew her closer to the front of the makeshift line. “The first time we stopped by Caroline’s apartment, the doorman on duty seemed to be rather smitten with you, Leona, didn’t he?”

“He was male, wasn’t he?”

“And you found him attractive as well, didn’t you?” she asked by way of an answer to a rhetorical question.

Leona hesitated a moment, tapping her French-tipped finger to her chin as she did. “That was the doorman with the blue pin-striping rather than the red worn in our hotel, yes?”

Heads nodded around them, prompting a slow smile from Leona in return. “Well then, I most certainly did. Timothy paid much more attention to me than he did your questions, that’s for sure.”

“Hence the need to employ Operation Leona.”

Margaret Louise bounced up on the toes of her Keds and clapped her hands. “Why, Victoria, you just might be on to somethin’.”

“If I am, it’s only on account of your winking and blinking comment a few minutes ago.” Tori took a moment to arrange the information they needed in some semblance of order, then shared it aloud with her friends. “Obviously, we want to know how we can reach Caroline. Short of that, anything you can find out as far as when, specifically, she disappeared and who might be looking for her would be helpful, too.”

“Maybe some basic tidbits about her would help us, too,” Debbie suggested with a renewed sense of energy. “Maybe the doorman would be able to tell us if he ever saw John and Caroline together. Maybe the first meeting Charles witnessed at the bookstore never went beyond that . . . or maybe it did.”

She considered Debbie’s words and realized they held merit. A lot of merit.

“Think he’ll talk to her if we go in as a group? Or should some of us veer off and let Leona work her mag—her . . . whatever it is.”

Leona’s chin jutted into the air. “I won’t do anything until you finish that sentence, you old goat.”

“Finish what sentence?” Rose echoed via a death-glare-initiated eye roll.

“Let me work my
what
?”

“Your evilness?”

“No.”

“Your phoniness?”

“No.”

“Then I have no answer.”

Leona handed Paris off to her sister, crossed her arms, and waited. “I’m not budging from this spot until you say what you stopped yourself from saying.”

Rose threw up her hands and turned with a slow shuffle. “On the sidewalk, along the side of the road—not much difference in the end. Either way, we’ll still be rid of you once and for all.”

“And then Dixie’s death inside a jail cell will be on
your
neck, you old goat, not mine.”

For a moment, Tori thought Rose was going to keep walking, the determined set to the elderly woman’s shoulders impossible to miss, despite the ill-fitting sweater that hung off her frail frame. But finally, she turned, defeat evident in her bifocal-enhanced eyes. “Okay, okay. You win. Work your
magic
, Leona.”

“What was that, Rose? I couldn’t quite hear you.”

“Oh, put a sock in it, Twin!” Margaret Louise placed a warning hand on her sister’s shoulder and gave her a nudge forward. “If we all heard her, Leona, I’m quite sure you heard her, too.”

Leona let her protest die on her lips as she took in the exasperated faces around her. “Okay. Okay. I heard the old goat.”

Rose used her hand to stop the wagons from circling then shook a warning finger at Leona. “Remember, you’re flirting to help Dixie, not add to whatever lifelong tally sheet you’re keeping.”

*   *   *

There was no denying the doors that opened to Leona with a mere blink of her false eyelashes or the perfectly timed cross of her ankles. It was as much a certainty in her life as breathing was for everyone else. The only thing that didn’t make sense was why Tori hadn’t thought to employ her friend’s considerable prowess sooner.

“So you haven’t seen Caroline since early Tuesday morning?” Leona fairly purred through intentionally puckered lips that only served to make Timothy’s Adam’s apple bob more noticeably with each swallow. “I guess that must mean she’s off somewhere on a fabulous vacation to the beach. Mmmm, I envy her, don’t you, Timothy?”

Tori fought her jaw’s urge to slack open as the doorman came around from behind his station in the marbled lobby in order to stand closer to Leona. “I bet you’re a vision in a swimsuit, Leona.”

“You’re too kind.” Leona touched her fingertips to the base of her throat and fluttered her lashes a few times. “So you think that’s where she’s gone? To the beach?”

Timothy’s gaze traveled slowly down Leona’s front, stopping momentarily on her shapely legs. “Uh, I . . . huh? What?”

“Caroline. Do you think she’s at the beach?” Leona repeated.

Reluctantly, the doorman switched his immediate focus to the front door and the pair of tenants that entered and passed en route to their apartment. When they were safely inside the elevator, he addressed the stunning and seemingly ageless woman standing next to Tori. “No one knows where she is.”

Leona gasped an appropriate gasp. “You mean she disappeared?”

“Pretty much. She didn’t put a hold on her mail. She didn’t ask us to turn the security on in her apartment when she left. And she didn’t tell her annoying offspring, either. Which means we’re dealing with a whole lot of annoying as a result.”

Tori felt her antennae rise and was grateful when Leona’s did the same. “Annoying offspring?”

Timothy nodded once, twice, adding a snort where a third might have been. “That’s putting it nicer than my co-workers would, but I was raised to be a gentleman.”

“I can see that.” Leona let her hand drift to the doorman’s arm, where it lingered for just enough time to earn her another, more deliberate swallow. “What can you tell me about Caroline’s child? Is she worried sick about her mother?”

The snort returned. “Or her mother’s money . . .”

Tori felt Leona’s eyes flit to the side of her face and did her best to refrain from responding either by word or movement for fear Timothy would clam up. Leona’s trance-inducing abilities were in full effect. Tori was darned if she was going to do anything to mess that up.

Still, she was thrilled when Leona’s next question was nearly verbatim to the one on the tip of her own tongue. “Is Caroline wealthy?”

“She lives in a three-bedroom on the top floor. Place is worth close to four mill from what the other guys say.”

“She lives alone?” Leona asked.

Timothy nodded.

“So her daughter is grown then?”

He nodded again. “She’s probably thirty, maybe thirty-five like us.”

This time, she had no control over her jaw.

Us?

As in him and . . . Leona?

Leona, of course, took the statement in stride, as if being viewed as a thirty-five-year-old were something that happened to her every day.

“And you get the sense that this young woman is more interested in her mother’s money than she is in her mother?” Leona posed.

“I mean, who wouldn’t be when you’re that close to having it all yourself?” Timothy looked left then right before lowering his voice to a near whisper. “My boss, and even Nate, the night guy, thinks she’s just real protective of her mother, but the rest of the guys and I think she’s gotta be counting the days until she can sell the apartment, collect the cash, and head back to whatever Asian country she was adopted from as a little kid.”

Tori exchanged looks with Leona and hoped their next question would match.

“Is there a father?”

It wasn’t the direction she was going in her head, but it wasn’t half bad, either, so she cocked her head and waited for the answer.

“Nope. From what I’ve been able to gather over the last two years I’ve been working here, Caroline adopted Susie when she was around two. Seeing as how she was from family money herself, she was able to lavish Susie with the kind of attention few kids get. Sent her to one of the fancy private elementary schools downtown, sent her to another for high school, paid the way for her to go to Harvard, and then set her up with an apartment a couple blocks north when she dropped out. The boss says she’s got some upstart web design company of her own going, but considering how often she stops by here to check on her mother and meddle in her life, I can’t imagine she’s doing all that much.”

“She meddles in her mother’s life? In what way?”

“Every time Ms. Trotter had a date, Susie was here to see them off. Like she was the mother instead of the daughter.”

“Did Caroline go on a lot of dates?”

“Not really. But if you saw the way Susie inspected them, you’d understand why. And for whatever reason, Ms. Trotter seemed to let her get away with it.” He crossed to the door to let in a tenant then resumed his spot beside Leona. “Kinda sad that the one time she finally made up her own mind about a guy, he had to meet his demise the way he did.”

It took everything in her power not to speak, but Leona held the course fine all on her own. “His demise?”

“Poor guy was pushed from a balcony not too far from here.”

“How awful!”

“Wouldn’t have happened in this building, I can tell you that much. No one gets through this lobby without going through me first.” Timothy waved the subject aside with both a hand and an explanation. “What’s done is done. They’ve got someone behind bars, that’s all that matters.”

She recognized the restraint Leona showed where mention of Dixie was concerned and knew it matched her own. Now was not the time to reveal who they were and why they were there asking after Caroline Trotter.

“Susie must be beside herself with worry about her mother,” Leona offered, steering the conversation back a few beats.

Timothy shrugged. “Or she wants it to look that way so no one starts pointing fingers at her when her mother finally turns up at the bottom of the river.”

Leona sucked in her breath. “At the bottom of the river?”

“Yeah. Kurt, the maintenance guy, and I like to sit around and figure out what makes rich folks tick. Anyway, that’s what we came up with when Ms. Trotter didn’t come home—someone, most likely her daughter, killed her for her money.” The words were no sooner out in the open than Timothy’s face began to redden. “Oh. Hey. Let’s pretend I didn’t say that, okay?”