Софи Райан: The Fast Аnd Тhe Furriest

“You started doing business with Natalie Welland what, close to two years ago?” I asked.

Charlie nodded. “That’s right.” She suddenly stopped walking. Hands in her pockets, feet apart she faced me, squinting in the sun. “Look, you know this is only part of my business. I also bring product in from Canada for nonfood, commercial applications.”

There were a lot of euphemisms in that last sentence.

“You bring salt in from a mine in Quebec, which you sell to several snow-removal companies here and in New Hampshire for use on parking lots and driveways,” Liz said. There was a challenge in her gaze. “For the most part,” she added.

Charlie nodded. “Since we’re being so plainspoken, yes. I sell to a number of small companies both here and in New Hampshire and I don’t check up on any of them. I had no idea what Natalie Welland was doing. And if I had, I would have been the first person to turn her in.”

I believed her. There was nothing evasive in her voice or her body language. She looked us right in the eye. She didn’t mumble or shuffle and she wasn’t making excuses.

“All we want to do is talk to Natalie,” Rose said. “We don’t want to jam you up.”

I bit the inside of my cheek so I wouldn’t laugh at her use of an expression I was certain had come from some crime drama on TV.

“Why don’t we wait inside?” Charlie said. She checked her watch. “She should be here soon.”

“Jam you up?” I said to Rose as we followed Charlie to the gray-shingled office building.

“You’re not the only one who watches Law & Order ,” she said with a sly grin.

Natalie Welland arrived about ten minutes later. Charlie went out to the parking lot to meet her.

My first thought was that I would have known that Leila and Natalie were sisters. They had the same gorgeous cheekbones, the same smooth brown skin and long neck. Based on the photo I’d seen, Natalie was taller. Like her sister, she wore her black hair in corkscrew curls, in Natalie’s case just past her shoulders. She wore a casual white and silver short-sleeved cotton dress and flat sandals.

She looked confused when she stepped inside the office. “Am I interrupting something?” she asked.

I was leaning against Charlie’s desk. Rose and Liz had the two chairs in front of it.

Rose smiled and got to her feet. “You’re not interrupting anything,” she said, her tone warm and reassuring. The fact that she looked like—and was—the sweet, grandmotherly type didn’t just cause people to underestimate her, it also tended to put people at ease at least a little. She handed Natalie a business card.

The younger woman studied it for a moment and then looked up at Rose. “You’re private investigators?” She pulled at the corner of her bottom lip with her teeth.

Technically only Mr. P. was licensed at the moment, but Rose was about to be. I wasn’t really sure what Liz and I were, but it didn’t seem like a good time to quibble about semantics.

“Yes,” Rose said. “We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

Natalie immediately held up her hands. “I’m not talking to you. I’m taking the deal and there isn’t anything left to say. I can’t give people money I don’t have.”

Liz and I exchanged a look. I had a feeling the wheels were turning in her head the same way they were in mine. Natalie and the Federal Trade Commission had come to some kind of settlement agreement. She thought we were working on behalf of some of du Mer’s customers.

“This has nothing to do with your company,” Liz said. “We’re investigating the murder of Erin Fellowes.”

“Wait a minute, you’re investigating a murder?” Charlie said from the doorway. “You didn’t say anything about that.”

“No, we didn’t,” Liz said. “We didn’t say anything about a lot of things.”

Charlie didn’t speak again. She’d clearly gotten the message.

“We just want to ask you a few questions,” Rose said. “Please. It’ll only take a few minutes.”

Natalie shook her head. “No. I can’t help you.” Her body had tensed when Erin’s name had been mentioned.

She was about to leave, I realized. “We’re investigating Erin’s death because Mac is our friend,” I said. I pulled out my phone, swiped a finger across the screen and found a photo. I turned the phone sideways and held it out to her. It was all of us, jammed around the table in Rose’s apartment eating pulled pork sandwiches.

Natalie studied the screen for a moment. She didn’t say anything but I saw the muscles in her jaw tighten as she clenched her teeth.

“We’re here because we all care a lot about Mac and I think at one time you did, too.”

“I still do,” she said, in a voice so soft I almost missed the words.

“Erin came from Boston to see him,” I said. “Do you know why?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I didn’t even know she was coming to Maine. All I know is she changed her mind, about him, I mean. Everyone . . .” She cleared her throat. “Everyone in the family thought that my sister’s accident was Mac’s fault. I didn’t . . . I didn’t know what to believe. Erin was always so positive about it and then, all of a sudden she wasn’t. Something changed, I could tell, but I don’t know what.” Her expression hardened then. “There isn’t anything more I can tell you.”

Or maybe there wasn’t anything more she wanted to tell us.

“You mentioned you’d taken a deal,” I said. “Did you mean with respect to the investigation into du Mer?”

The nod was so slight I wasn’t actually sure she’d acknowledged my question. She turned to look at Charlie. “That’s why I’m here. I made a deal with the FTC. You’re not in any trouble. I told them you had no idea what I was doing.”

She turned to face us again. “Leila didn’t know that I was . . . changing some of our ingredients to get our costs down.” She tipped her head in Charlie’s direction. “She didn’t know, either. So the company is going out of business, but no one will go to jail, customers will get some money and staff will get severance.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “I’ll get probation and community service and Leila’s name will be cleared.”

“That must have been a very difficult decision,” Rose said kindly.

Natalie pressed a hand to her mouth for a moment. “I never meant for things to turn out the way they did,” she said. “Jackson said sometimes things just go in a direction you didn’t mean for them to go and you just do the best you can to fix things and go forward.”

“Jackson Montgomery?” I asked.

She nodded. “He’s helped a lot with du Mer. Erin, too.”

Interesting that Jackson hadn’t mentioned any of this when I’d asked about Natalie. I suspected he still felt a degree of loyalty to the family. Then I remembered the tiny carved wooden bird that had been in Erin Fellowes’s pocket. Mac had said he thought it was Leila’s.

“Natalie, did you give Erin anything from your sister’s office? Some kind of remembrance maybe?” I asked.

“I let her take a couple of things, a photograph of the two of them, a needlepoint pillow and a couple of weeks ago she asked if she could have a little bird that Leila had in her desk drawer.” She kept tapping her leg with two fingers.

I felt my heart begin to pound. That tiny bird did mean something. “Did anyone else take anything from Leila’s office?” I asked. “Anyone else in the family?”

“No,” she said. “Just Erin.” Her gaze went from me to Rose to Liz. “You haven’t asked where I was when Erin was killed.”

“No, we haven’t,” Liz said. “Where were you?”

“At a meeting with the FTC and my lawyer.”