Smoked (The Alex Harris Mystery Series) Page 15

  Chapter Forty-Three

  The following morning the sky was overcast. Winter was over a month away but overnight a cold front must have blown into New England from Quebec. Those darned Canadians. Truth was I loved the cold weather and the ankle boots and bulky sweaters that went along with it.

  I didn’t have any meetings this morning so I decided to go for a long walk. I drove over to the water and walked the boardwalk connecting the city’s two main beaches. I do my best thinking while briskly walking but today my mind was a jumble of thoughts. After I managed to build up a sweat despite the chill in the air, I headed home, showered, grabbed the box Ellery had brought by and went to my office after a pit stop at a local bakery where I got enough bear claws for the office and a cup of Earl Grey tea. Despite being a very small town, Indian Cove has an abundance of bakeries and all of them were excellent. I wondered if the town council had built the boardwalk to help counter the effects of all those pastries.

  I put the bear claws in the kitchen, and after taking one for myself I retreated to my office. Sam and Marla were busy working on billing statements and Millie was updating our Web site newsletter. After answering a few emails I grabbed the box and put it on top of my desk. On the top was a note from Ellery. Alex, I haven’t had a chance to look at any of this, but if you have any questions call my cell. I took a stack of files from the box and flipped through them. Maria had obviously done her research before starting her business. She had clippings from other sites, sketches of Web site designs and tons of stuff about veganism she had printed off the Internet. It was all very interesting but it had nothing to do with her murder as far as I could tell.

  I continued to take stuff out until I came to one of those tiny flash drives. I use one at home to back up the stuff I keep on my computer, which mostly consists of pictures I’ve taken and downloaded. I hadn’t updated it in a while and if anyone broke into my house and took my computer, I’d be in big trouble considering all our pictures from Europe were stored there.

  I took the flash drive and inserted it into the USB port on my computer. I opened the folder and started to scan through the files. A lot seemed to be electronic copies of the stuff I had just taken out of the box. I continued to scroll down looking at the various sub folders until I came to one titled Backup of Emails. I opened it up and found backups for Maria’s business email. The first few I opened were copies of emails I had already found when I logged into her account. There were tons of them and I didn’t relish going through all of them again until a few caught my eye. I opened up the first one and discovered it was an email exchange between Maria and Nadine. I had never found any of these in Maria’s account and thought it odd, but here they were. As I continued to scroll I also found a number of exchanges with Ryan. I went and got another cup of tea and returned to my office.

  The first few I read were just normal business stuff but then the tone changed and Maria seemed to be putting Ryan on the spot about why the products they had ordered hadn’t arrived. I moved on a few days and opened up another. From the exchange it seemed Maria and Ryan must have had a verbal confrontation. In the email she told him she wasn’t paying for cheap crap from China and he had better return everything and get their money back and have the quality stuff she had selected ordered and in the office in two weeks.

  I sat back in my chair and held the tea in my hands while I thought. Did this mean anything? Ryan had clearly followed her instructions because I saw the boxes the other day. The emails between Maria and Ryan seemed to stop but I opened up a couple from Nadine. In the last one I looked at Nadine told Maria she didn’t know what Ryan was up to, but whatever it was she was sure Maria wouldn’t like any hint of improprieties getting out and if people thought their vegan items were coming from China, a place notorious for cutting corners and using inferior products, that wouldn’t bode well for the business. Nadine further hinted that in exchange for staying on she wouldn’t feel the need to let any of this unsavory business get out, especially with Ryan’s show in the works and the marketing potential from that association so great.

  So this was why Maria took Nadine back, or I thought, maybe Nadine was now using this information to make Ryan keep her on. But this didn’t make any sense. The bad products from China had been returned and new stuff had recently arrived. How could Nadine use this to blackmail Ryan? He could just say they had received an incorrect shipment but all had been straightened out. And why would Nadine go to such great lengths to keep her job at the Vegan View if she had hinted to me the other day that she really didn’t care if the venture panned out or not. Of course, she could have recently changed her mind on that once she found out how much work was involved.

  The only sure thing I knew was that I had to talk with Ryan and Nadine again and that meant another trip out to the university.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  As long as I was headed to the university, I might as well take the files back to Deanna. I made a copy of what I needed and headed out. The sky was still overcast but so far no rain had fallen.

  I parked in the same lot I had parked two days ago and walked into the building where Nadine had her office. The receptionist buzzed her and then told me to head on back.

  “I thought I saw the last of you the other day.” Nadine was typing something on her computer as she spoke and a quick glance showed she was on Facebook.

  “Me, too. But then I found out you lied to me. Again.”

  Nadine stopped typing and turned to me. “Let’s have it. What did I lie about now?”

  “I found the emails. Emails in which you told Maria as long as she kept you on, you wouldn’t spread the word about the stuff from China.”

  “That’s impossible. I deleted—”

  “From her computer? Yes, I guess you did because I couldn’t find any emails between the two of you, which I found odd. No, Maria saved them to a disc. Truth is, I think she was just being diligent in backing up her files, but it turned out to be a good thing considering she ended up dead.”

  Nadine took off the glasses with the red frames, which, surprisingly, looked really nice with the eggplant-colored hair. “I wouldn’t have told anyone. I just wanted Maria to keep her promise about making me a partner.”

  “So when did you delete the emails?” I asked.

  “After she died. Not right away, but then the papers said her death was under investigation. What the hell did that mean? I thought she died of shock or something and now they were investigating it. So I got to thinking that what I had written might be, well, might be looked at as some kind of threat. So I went into the office and deleted them.”

  “And Ryan’s too.”

  “I didn’t have time to read through all the exchanges between the two of them so I just deleted a bunch. I knew Maria and Ryan had argued about the stuff from China. I didn’t want any of that stuff coming back on me.”

  Of course. Nadine had set up the Web site and the email program. She probably also set up the logins and passwords. She would have access to all the emails, not just her own.

  “Look, I didn’t kill her.” Nadine laughed at something she just read and paused for a moment while she typed something, most likely a reply to someone’s post. “If that’s what you think,” she said turning back to me, “you’re wrong. I just wanted what she promised.”

  “Two days ago you told me it didn’t matter whether or not the business kept going.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s a lot of work, you know? With Maria gone, someone’s got to keep the blog going and do all the research and radio spots and stuff. I don’t have that kind of time.”

  Of course, she didn’t. Facebook was calling.

  I left her and returned to my car to get the files I had left there. I walked to the other building where Deanna worked, thinking it might help to burn off the bear claw.

  “Deanna’s still at lunch. You were here the other day, right?” the young woman at the reception area asked.

  “Yes, that’s right. I just need t
o return these files.”

  The phone rang and she answered it and then looked back at me. “You know where her office is? Just put it on her chair and she’ll see it as soon as she returns.”

  I walked down the corridor and turned right and found Deanna’s office. I walked around her desk and put the files down on the chair as instructed. Deanna had a couple of pictures on her desk of her and a man I assumed was her husband or boyfriend. They were both in jogging gear and it looked like they just finished a race. I felt guilty. Everyone had pictures on their desks of their beloved ones. Sam had pictures of her and Michael and of course, the kids. Millie had pictures of Reuben and even Marla, our newest addition, had adorned her little space with a picture of her husband Greg. And did I have a picture of my new husband on my desk? No, I did not. I would have to remedy that before people started asking questions.

  The rumblings in my stomach brought me out of my musings and with a silent promise to find a good picture of John and me and place it in a prominent position in my office I left the building in search of some lunch.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  After a bowl of soup and half a sandwich at a small coffee shop not far from the campus I sat in my car trying to decide where I should head next. I could drive back to Indian Cove and take a chance Ryan Reynolds was at the Vegan View office or I could go into New Haven and stop by PayAcc to see if he was there. Then I could drive over to George Shruder’s house. But why? I already knew George wanted the house and hoped to sell it quickly to the investor for a tidy profit. I knew he and his sister had exchanged some angry emails, and I knew he had poison ivy in his back yard. But none of this was proof of anything. I couldn’t think of anything else to ask him that would elicit a confession and it wasn’t like I could arrest him.

  There was still the question of the auto injectors. Who emptied them and when? The more I thought about it the more I realized the pens did not have to be emptied at the same time as the ivy had been placed under the leaves. As a matter of fact, they needed to be emptied or replaced well before Maria burned the poison ivy to guarantee help would not be immediately available. Someone must have stopped by for a visit with Maria, emptied the pens or exchanged the ones she had for emptied ones, which made more sense because it wouldn’t take as much time, and then they could come back another day to add the ivy to the pile. How was I going to find out who had visited recently and how would that help anyway? The killer could have entered the house at a time when no one was home. And how did the killer know she would be burning leaves? Ellery told me her mother loved to burn leaves and maybe this was just one of those things other people knew as well—especially her brother George.

  Then I had another thought. I wondered if the police could find out the lot number on the pens in the kitchen and the lot number on the pens she actually bought and see if there was a difference. If the pens could be traced by a lot number and the ones in the kitchen had been brought in by the killer, the police should be able to find that out. As a matter of fact they should have found that out by now. If I thought of it, the police most certainly had as well. I was getting very angry just thinking about this. Was John keeping valuable information from me? Of course, he was. Why would he tell me any of this unless I specifically asked, which I intended to do tonight.

  Which brought me back to my original thought. Should I head to New Haven or Indian Cove? I pulled the car out onto the main road and turned in the direction of Indian Cove. At least this way if Ryan wasn’t around I could go back to my office and do some work. Or stop by Meme’s or go over to my parents’ house to play with the dog. I hadn’t had a lot of time to get to know Riley but from my mother’s daily posts, he was quite the dog.

  It turned out Ryan was around. He was locking the door of the office just as I drove up.

  “More questions?” he asked as he came over to my car.

  “A few. How did the TV station feel about Maria’s blogs? I mean, they weren’t exactly warm and fuzzy. Did they have a problem with this?” Of course, I already knew how the station felt but wanted to hear what Ryan had to say.

  He looked at me for a minute and I sensed he knew I already had the answer. “As a matter of fact, you’re right. They thought her blogs were a bit nasty and asked me to talk to her about it. I did and she decided to tone things down.”

  “That was nice of her.”

  Ryan showed that Kevin Bacon smirk of his. “She knew the TV spot meant a lot to me and it would really help our business. Well, look, it was nice seeing you again but I’ve got a meeting.” He started to walk away.

  I took a few steps toward him and said, “So was Nadine threatening you too about the crap from China? Is that why you’re letting her stick around?”

  Ryan stopped walking but didn’t turn around immediately.

  “You told me the first time we met she was lazy. Always on her cell. You said Maria just used her to get things up and running. So I got to wondering,” I said to Ryan’s back, “with Maria dead, why would Ryan keep her on?”

  Ryan turned around, smirk still in place. “I sorted everything out about the wrong shipment with Maria. We were good. I guess I’m more like Maria than I thought. I need Nadine’s help to get everything up on the site like all the pictures of the products, pricing. She’s also going to set up the credit card and PayPal payments. Once everything is working smoothly, I’ll evaluate the situation and see whether I’ll keep her on or not.”

  “One more thing. Did you ever visit Maria at her home?”

  “And put some poison ivy in her pile of leaves? No. Anything else?”

  I watched Ryan walk away. So that got me nowhere. It would be so much easier to just ask everyone where they were at the time of Maria’s death. I leaned against my car and tried to think of something, anything that would help. Okay, so George most probably knew about his sister’s love of burning leaves. Who else? Nena Connick might know. She was having an affair with Sergei and he had mentioned her allergies so why not the leaves? And Nena probably knew Sergei would be out of town—or maybe not considering their relationship had cooled and she said it had been a long time since they had been together. But if she showed up last week at the house, she could have shown up another time and perhaps talked directly to Maria. Maybe she did just that, found out he was out of town and saw it as a perfect time to get rid of the wife.

  I looked at my watch. I had no idea what shift Nena worked but what the heck, I didn’t feel like going back to work. I could drive over to the truck stop and if she wasn’t there I could go to her apartment.

  Twenty minutes later I stood at the counter of the restaurant asking to speak with Nena.

  “She worked the early shift today. She’s already gone,” a young man told me.

  I thanked him and got back in my car. There was a small accident on the road so it took me longer to get to Nena’s apartment than I thought. Once there, I saw lights on in her unit and then I saw her come into the kitchen. At least the drive hadn’t been a total waste. I knocked on the door and a few seconds later she answered.

  “You again? What now?” She asked with a towel wrapped around her head.

  “May I come in?” I asked.

  “Sure. Might as well. Don’t matter if I talk to you or the police. I have nothing to tell you.”

  I entered a small but neat living room. Country music was softly playing in the background. “So you talked with the police?”

  “Yeah. Some good-looking guy. But like I told him, I don’t know anything.”

  “Did you ever go over to Sergei’s house when he wasn’t home? I mean before last week when we saw you?”

  Nena took the towel from her head and picked up a comb off the coffee table. She actually had nice hair. It looked shiny and thick and I could tell she was a very pretty woman behind all the makeup and big hair. Maybe she got all made up for work because she felt she got better tips that way.

  “A few times. I didn’t stop or anything. I just drove by a couple of times l
ike when he told me we couldn’t get together or something. I just wanted to check up on him. Especially the last couple months.”

  “But you never stopped and rang the bell and talked with his wife?”

  Nena looked at me like I was crazy. “Are you nuts? Why would I do something like that?”

  “Maybe you thought you might be able to talk her into giving Sergei a divorce,” I suggested.

  Nena ran the comb through her hair. “I didn’t think of that. Maybe I should have tried it.”

  “So why do you think Sergei stopped coming around?”

  “Guilt. I don’t know. Maybe I was pressuring him too much about leaving Maria. Look, we were having an affair, okay. But he’s a good guy, really. A bad husband, I guess, but he’s a wonderful man. That’s why I fell in love with him. I stopped by his shop yesterday. I know once he gets over the shock of Maria’s death, he’ll come around.”

  “I heard you made quite the scene. Do you really think that’s the best way to win him back?”

  “Is that why you’re here? Did that snooty kid tell you to come by? Look, this is grown-up stuff, between me and Sergei. We had it good before and we can get it back, you know.”

  What I knew was that like the song playing in the background, Nena Connick had a whole lot of heartache coming her way. Sergei had lost his one true love and despite all the affairs, I felt certain Maria was the only woman he would ever truly love. Nena Connick, no matter how hard she tried, was never going to be the next Mrs. Kravec.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  I left Nena wondering if I could believe her. She had no problem causing a scene at the butcher shop in front of Ellery and Sergei’s employees and customers. And she had no problem coming to his home last Friday night and telling Ellery she was Sergei’s fiancé. Knocking on the door when Sergei wasn’t home and confronting Maria didn’t seem beyond the realm of possibilities for Nena Connick. But would she kill the woman and was she devious enough to plan such an ingenious murder?