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I reached for the phone. Sloane must have been at her desk. She answered on the third ring.

“Hi, Sloane. It’s Sarah,” I said.

“Hi,” she said. I could hear the smile in her voice. I felt a pang of guilt, and then I remembered she’d looked me right in the eye and lied to me. “You’re a fast reader.”

“I have a question.”

“Shoot.”

“Why did you lie to me about when you got into town? And don’t say you didn’t. I know you went to talk to Lily Carter.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone. “Please don’t tell me another lie,” I said.

“My job was on the line,” she said after a moment’s silence.

“I know Daniel Swift owns controlling interest in the Wellington Group. Did he send you to see Lily?”

“Don’t ask me that,” she said, her voice low and guarded.

It was as good as a yes.

“Did you hurt her?” I asked.

“Sarah! I can’t believe you’d ask me that.” Her voice rose in indignation.

“Did you?” I repeated.

“No,” she said. “When she realized who I was, she told me to get out. And she told me to tell Mr. Swift that he was wasting his time sending other people to do his dirty work.” Sloane cleared her throat. “I left. I swear she was alive, Sarah.”

Elvis was watching me. “I really hope you’re telling the truth,” I said. I didn’t have anything else to say. I hung up.

Chapter 21

The shop was fairly busy after lunch. That meant I didn’t have a lot of time to think about what I was going to do with what I’d learned from Sloane, not to mention whether I should tell the others what I knew about the Wellington Group and Daniel Swift. Midafternoon I got a call that the building permit was ready for Mac’s apartment.

Liz walked in about twenty minutes to four.

“Why don’t we take the SUV and I’ll bring you back for your car?” I said to her. “I have to come back to get Elvis.”

“That’s fine,” she said.

“I don’t think we’ll be that long,” I said to Mac.

He smiled. “Take your time. Rose and Avery are taking the wallpaper off that screen you bought from the pickers, and I’m waiting for the man who bought those chairs to come back and look at a table.”

Elvis was sitting on the cash desk. “Merow,” he said.

“And Elvis will be working the cash desk,” Mac said with a completely straight face.

“Good to know you have everything under control,” I said.

“Did you make an appointment?” I asked Liz as we pulled out of the lot, headed for Daniel Swift’s office.

“No, I did not,” she said.

“And that would be because?”

“I didn’t want to give him time to come up with a story or say the only time he could see us was three weeks from next Thursday.”

“What if he’s not there?” I asked.

She flipped down the passenger-side visor, opened the lighted mirror and checked her lipstick. “He’s there,” she said. “Monday through Friday, if he’s in town, he’s at the office from eight a.m. to four thirty. He takes a half hour for lunch between twelve thirty and one o’clock.”

I glanced over at her, and she met my gaze with the tiniest of shrugs. “I’m old. I ask questions. People tell me things.”

I laughed. “So do we have a game plan?”

“Yes,” Liz said. “We go in and ask him what the Sam Hill is he up to.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that,” she said, closing the mirror and flipping the visor back up. “Daniel Swift is a no-nonsense, cut-to-the-chase and all those other clichés, direct sort of person. So am I.”

My grandmother had essentially said the same thing when I’d called to ask her about the Swift patriarch. “Okay,” I said.

“You’ll be Gabrielle to my Xena, Warrior Princess,” Liz said.

“The sidekick?”

She shrugged.

“I’m not even going to ask what you and Avery have been watching,” I said.

She fluttered a hand at me. “Avery has been studying Greek history at school. Xena is Greek history.”

I shot her a look, raising one eyebrow.

“More or less,” she added.

“There’s something I need to tell you.”

“I’m listening,” Liz said.

“Daniel Swift is the Wellington Group.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Liz shake her head. “I guess that shouldn’t surprise me,” she said. “Daniel Swift always was a secretive old coot.”

I waited for two cars to go by before I turned left.

“I take it you found this information and not Alfred.”

“I did,” I said. “So far you’re the only one I’ve told.”

“So far I’m the only one you need to tell,” she said.

Swift Holdings was on the top floor of a three-story building, almost at the end of Bayview Street at the far end of the harbor. There was no boardwalk, no businesses catering to tourists, no slips for harbor cruises or kayak rentals.

We took the elevator to the third floor. The business occupied the entire space. The elevator opened to their reception area. The floors looked to be the original hardwood, and there was an accent wall of what I was guessing was reclaimed barn board. It was impressive in an understated way that whispered old money.

Liz walked over to the reception desk, a curved expanse of wood without a single bit of paper to disturb the shiny surface. She smiled at the young woman on the other side. “Mrs. Emmerson and Ms. Grayson to see Mr. Swift.”

The receptionist gave her a bright smile. “Do you have an appointment with Mr. Swift?”

Liz smiled back at her, and I thought her expression looked a lot like a snake about to unhinge its jaw and swallow a small farm animal, whole.

“Mr. Swift and I have known each other longer than you’ve been alive, my dear,” Liz said. “He’ll see us.”

“I’m sorry,” the young receptionist said. “Mr. Swift is extremely busy. I can give you his assistant’s phone number, and I’m sure she’ll be able to help you with whatever you’re collecting for.” She made the mistake of stressing the last two words.

She had spunk. I had to give her that. Unfortunately for her, Liz ate spunk for lunch.

“Oh, dear child,” Liz said. “You clearly don’t know who I am.” She leaned over and actually patted the young woman’s shoulder. It was a condescending gesture, but I couldn’t help thinking about all the times I’d been stymied by a gatekeeper like this at a reception desk. Then she flipped one end of her cashmere scarf over her shoulder and strode down the hallway just to the right of the reception desk. I hurried behind her.

“Hey! Hey! You can’t go back there,” the young woman called after us. She may as well have been calling out the previous night’s hockey scores behind us. Liz didn’t give the slightest indication she’d heard. She went to the last office door on the left, opened it and sailed inside.

A woman in her mid-fifties was standing beside a long black table that was clearly being used as a desk. I wondered where people who used tables for their desks stashed all their junk. Maybe they didn’t have any.

“Hello, Liz,” the woman said. “I didn’t realize you had an appointment today.” She was about my height, plus-sized, with short blond curls, simply but elegantly dressed in a blue-and-black block Mondrian-print dress.

Liz smiled. “Hello, Jane,” she said. “I don’t have an appointment, but I just need five minutes of his time. It’s foundation business.”

The receptionist, who couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, literally slid to a stop at the office door. “Mrs. Evans, I’m sorry,” she began.

Jane Evans held up a hand. “It’s all right,” she said. “I’ll take care of Mrs. Emmerson.”