Софи Райан - Telling Tails

“It was great,” I told her. “If I come back in a couple of days, will you show me this one when it’s done?”

“Sure,” she said. She glanced in the direction of Bigfoot, whose costume was sliding sideways. “You should probably wait until Monday, though.”

“Deal,” I said. She scampered back over to her cast.

“You’ll probably see us tomorrow,” her mother said.

I nodded. I could see Rose and Mr. P. coming down Nicole Cameron’s driveway. “It was good to meet you,” I said.

Deb smiled. “You, too.”

Mr. P. was quiet on the drive back to the shop, his head bent over his cell phone.

“Michael Vega wasn’t having an affair with Leesa Cameron, was he?” I said.

“He wasn’t,” Mr. P. said from the backseat.

I glanced in the rearview mirror. He held up his phone. “I found photos of Mr. Vega on the gym’s Facebook page teaching classes Wednesday night and leading a workshop all day Thursday and Friday.”

“So who helped Leesa kill her husband?” I asked.

Beside me Rose sighed. “That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, isn’t it?” she said.

Chapter 18

“Maybe this is a case that can’t be solved,” I said.

“Alfred, would you like pork chops for dinner?” Rose said. “And maybe a spinach salad?”

“That sounds . . . very nice,” Mr. P. said. He sounded a little puzzled by the sudden swerve the conversation had taken.

“Rose, are you ignoring me?” I asked. I shot a quick look in her direction.

“I’m sorry, dear,” she said. “I thought that was obvious.”

“It was,” I said. “I’m just not clear why you’re ignoring me.”

“Because we’re not walking away from this case.”

I held my breath for a moment and then slowly let it out. “So what are we doing next?” I asked.

“I’m not sure.”

I didn’t need to take my eyes off the road to know she was sitting upright on the passenger seat, shoulders squared, chin out, a determined look in her eye that any student who had ever been in her class would know meant not to cross her.

“Okay, when you figure it out, keep me in the loop,” I said.

It was about half an hour later, just as I was settling a very nice vintage Ibanez jazz bass into its hard-shell case for a customer, that Chloe Sanders walked into the shop. She was wearing a sundress the same shade of blue as the streak in her hair.

My customer headed for the door and I walked over to Chloe. She looked nervous, her right hand playing with the handle of the messenger bag she had over her shoulder. “Hi, Sarah,” she said. “Is Mrs. Elliot here?”

“She’s out in the workroom.”

“Could I speak to her for a minute?”

“Of course,” I said.

Avery was hanging several jean jackets Jess had up-cycled for us on a tall coatrack. “Avery, I’ll be right back,” I said.

She looked up, “Okay.”

I took Chloe back to the workroom. Charlotte had the ironing board set up and was ironing a white lace tablecloth. She smiled and set down the iron when she saw her former student.

“Chloe, what are you doing here?” she asked.

“I’ll let you talk,” I said.

“Sarah, could you stay?” Chloe said. “I’d like you to hear what I came to tell Mrs. Elliot.”

I nodded. “All right.”

Charlotte came around the ironing board. “What did you come to tell me?”

Chloe cleared her throat. “When I was here before you said you were proud of me.”

“I am,” Charlotte said with a smile. “I know how hard you worked to get into college. You won a scholarship. I’m very proud.”

“Mrs. Elliot, I lied to you.”

I folded my arms across my midsection and stayed quiet, wondering what she was about to confess to.

Charlotte frowned. “What about?”

“About a lot of things.” Chloe looked over at me. “You . . . you met Bella, Dr. Durand.”

I nodded.

“We . . . were . . . a couple. I took last term off because I wanted to be with her and I couldn’t do that if I was a student.”

Suddenly a lot of things made sense, like who it was who had been staying with Chloe when her parents were out of town. “You’re not together now?” I asked.

Chloe shook her head. “All the lying and the secret keeping: I couldn’t do that anymore. I broke it off with her last night.” She turned her attention back to Charlotte. “The thing is, the job here at Cahill was just a one-year appointment for Bella. In the fall she’ll be teaching at Tauton University.”

“In Maryland,” Charlotte said.

Chloe nodded. “Bella and I wanted to stay together. I thought we could do that if I transferred to Johns Hopkins. I thought we could stop . . . sneaking around.”

“You needed a reference from Jeff Cameron.” I hadn’t been sure if Rose had brought Charlotte up to date. Obviously she had.

Chloe nodded. “Yes.” She ducked her head for a moment. “Which he figured out pretty quickly.”

“He wouldn’t write it for you,” I said.

She turned to look at me. “Jeff kept giving me menial jobs like typing up address labels for him. He said he wanted to know how hard I was willing to work if I did get in the program.” She let out a breath. “I finally realized he was never going to give me that reference. So last Wednesday I decided to quit. Quit. Not kill him. I was with Bella that night. We ordered pizza. You can check. She paid with her debit card.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone you’d quit your job?” I asked.

“Because I didn’t.”

Charlotte and I exchanged a look. “I don’t understand,” she said slowly. “You said you decided to quit last Wednesday.”

Chloe nodded. “I did. But before I could do that Jeff gave me this. She pulled an envelope out of her bag and handed it to Charlotte. Then she turned to me again. “Sarah, I don’t know if this means anything, but Jeff had some brochures about Costa Rica in his briefcase. I asked him if he was going on vacation, and he laughed and said pretty soon his whole life was going to be a vacation.”

I nodded. “Thanks.”

Charlotte lifted the flap and pulled out several sheets of paper. She glanced at them quickly, then looked at me and nodded.

“I didn’t kill Jeff,” Chloe said. “Or help anyone else do it. I had no reason to.”

Charlotte put the papers back in the envelope and handed it to Chloe. “I believe you,” she said. “Thank you for telling me the truth.”

“I should have done it from the beginning.”

Charlotte put both hands on Chloe’s shoulders and smiled. “You did it now. That’s enough.”

I could tell from the smile that spread across the young woman’s face that Charlotte’s opinion meant a lot to her.

Charlotte walked Chloe out. I leaned against the workbench and thought about Jeff Cameron telling Chloe that his whole life was soon going to be a vacation. Had that been what got him killed?

The rest of the day was busy at the shop. I found the tripod and set it on the workbench with Deb’s name on it. I made sure that both Mac and Charlotte knew why it was there in case I was busy when Bayley and her mother came in.

Late that afternoon I was in the workroom checking out the half dozen chairs Avery had brought in from the garage when Mac poked his head in from the store. “Sarah, Channing Caulfield is on the phone for you,” he said.

He looked as baffled as I felt. “For me? Did he say what he wanted?” I asked.

Mac shook his head. “I could take a message.”

I held up a hand. “No, it’s okay. I’ll talk to him. I’ll take it up in my office.”

As I headed upstairs I wondered why the former manager of the North Harbor Trust Company was calling me. Channing Caulfield had gone to school with Charlotte and had advised Liz on Emmerson Foundation business. He also had a soft spot for Liz. I’d met the man in the spring after the Angels had gotten involved in the murder of a man named Ronan Quinn.