Ник Сайнт - Purrfectly Hidden. Purrfect Kill. Purrfect Boy Toy

But somehow, for some reason, this case intrigued him. A nice family guy like Boyd Baker, with a loving wife and two kids, cut down in his prime and suffering the indignation of being buried in his own basement. It just wasn’t right, and he needed to find out how he’d died, and by whose hand.

And he’d been wiping a tickling dust bunny from his nose when suddenly he struck gold. Or at least a report on Boyd Baker.

“Bingo,” he said as he read through the report. It wasn’t what he’d expected, though. All he’d wanted to find was the report on the man’s disappearance and maybe the cop who’d handled the case at the time. If he or she were still alive he could have talked to them, asked if they’d had any leads back then. But instead he found a report filed against Boyd Baker. By the family of a Mrs. Clifford. For the theft of a brooch…

Odelia arrived at the offices of Mr. Clifford and announced herself to the receptionist. The young woman, though irked that Odelia hadn’t had the foresight to make an appointment, still showed the kindness to talk to her boss and ask him if he could award a brief moment of his valuable time to a Miss Poole, journalist.

“About…” she said as she placed her hand on the receiver.

“Boyd Baker and Aurelia Clifford’s brooch. He’ll probably know what this is about,” she added when the woman knitted her brows questioningly.

Five minutes later she was led into the office of Nate Clifford and offered the choice between coffee, tea or water. She picked coffee, and took a seat at the man’s desk.

“I’m a little puzzled, I have to confess, Miss Poole,” said Nate Clifford, who was a well-dressed man in his mid-thirties, wearing a power suit and a stylish haircut that must have set him back a considerable amount of money.

From what she’d been able to glean on the internet, Nate now ran the Clifford family trust, though what exactly this entailed was a little opaque. He seemed rich enough, so he probably either did a very good job, or received a very handsome fee for his services.

“I don’t know if you know this, but Mrs. Aurelia Clifford filed a complaint against a Mr. Boyd Baker fifty-five years ago. For the theft of a brooch. Yesterday Mr. Baker was found immured in my parents’ basement, and this brooch was found on his remains.” She slid her phone across the desk and Nate leaned in to take a gander.

He frowned. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s my great-grandmama’s brooch. See the inscription? AC/34? The AC stands for Aurelia Clifford and the 34 is the code given to this particular brooch. The Clifford family have always codified their items of value, so they could keep track—for insurance purposes. I’ll be damned. And where did you find this, you say?”

Odelia told Nate the story of the missing Mr. Baker, and the police report that had been filed against him for stealing Mrs. Clifford’s brooch. All this over half a century ago.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Nate repeated, mussing up his nicely coiffed and gelled hair. “Do you know how much this brooch is worth, Miss Poole? Do you have any idea?”

“Um, I’m guessing a lot?”

“Try a hundred thousand,” he said. “But actually it’s priceless. This is a family heirloom. My great-grandmother received it as a gift from the Russian czar—they still had czars in Russia back then—and the idea was to bequeath it to her daughter, my grandmother, who loved the brooch and its history. But then one day it went poof.”

“Do you know the story of its disappearance?” asked Odelia.

“Well, my great-grandmother died when I was a baby, but my grandmother talked about the brooch, for sure, and my parents. Apparently they’d hired a local landscaping company to spruce up the grounds, and when the job was done, the brooch was gone, too. Great-grandmama Aurelia always suspected the gardeners, and filed a complaint with the police. But of course nothing was ever found.”

“So there’s no question.”

“None. This is the stolen brooch. Where is it now?”

“At the county medical examiner’s office in Hauppauge,” said Odelia.

“I’ll get on the phone right away. This is a miracle, Miss Poole.”

“It still doesn’t explain how Mr. Baker got bricked up in my parents’ basement, though,” she said, “or how he got his head bashed in right before his immurement.”

Nate smiled. “Well, I guess it’s your job to find out, isn’t it?”

As Odelia walked out of the offices of the Clifford Family Trust, she almost bumped into Chase. They both laughed as he steadied her with a firm hand.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” he said.

“Looks like you’re on the same track I am,” she said.

“I guess so.” He took out his phone. “Look what I found.” He showed her the official complaint Mrs. Clifford had made against Boyd Baker. “See the date?” he asked.

“Three days before he disappeared. Can’t be a coincidence.”

“No, it can’t. What did Nate Clifford say?”

“He recognized the brooch. Positively identified it as belonging to his late great-grandmother and as the one that was stolen from her mansion fifty-five years ago.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.

“That’s what Nate said.”

Chase raked his fingers through his long mane. “Do you think the old lady had something to do with the murder?”

“I doubt it. People like Aurelia Clifford don’t go around bashing people’s heads in. Besides, Boyd Baker was a large man, and she was old and frail. I think we can rule her out.”

“A family member, maybe? Servant?”

“People like the Cliffords don’t go around killing people.”

“People like the Cliffords hire people who go around killing people.”

“I don’t know. I think what may have happened is that Boyd decided he didn’t want to share the loot. I talked to Paddy Crocket, who worked for Courtyard Living, the landscaping company, when Boyd was there. He vividly remembers Boyd, and says he was a bully and a violent man, and part of a gang of workers who targeted the rich owners who hired Courtyard Living to maintain their gardens and grounds. The leader of the gang was a man called Earl Paxton. Now it’s not that hard to imagine that Paxton and Boyd got into a fight over the brooch and Paxton got violent and bashed his associate’s head in. And then, when he realized what he’d done, and knowing Mrs. Baker and the kids could arrive any moment, he buried Boyd in the most convenient place: the basement, and effectively wiped out the traces of his crime.”

“It’s a theory,” Chase admitted. “Though I have to admit a very plausible one.”

“Did my uncle have any luck with his part of the investigation?” she asked.

“What part of the investigation? He dumped the whole thing on my neck. Too busy writing enough traffic tickets to please the new mayor. Did you know we have quotas now? We need to write enough tickets or else we’ll be demoted? Crazy politicians.”

And as Odelia walked back to her car, and Chase entered the building, she saw she’d received a text from her mom.

‘Cats are back from their visit to the parrot. Boyd Baker was not a nice person.’

Great. She’d already surmised as much herself, but it was always nice to get confirmation from an unsuspected source: the neighborhood parrot.

Chapter 28

Marge was at the library, extolling the virtues of the new John Grisham to one of her most loyal customers, when suddenly she remembered the diary she’d found the night before. It was probably nothing, but it could also be something. And hadn’t close association with her daughter taught her to leave no stone unturned when investigating a crime?

So she dug through her purse and took out the mysterious diary. It was locked and she didn’t have the key, but that wasn’t going to stop her. Like a regular sleuth she took a penknife from the library kitchen and dug it into the lock, twisting until the clasp clicked open.