“Very polished and elegant. Expensive clothes and gorgeous red hair in one of those casual haircuts that probably cost a fortune to get to look that way.”
Jess frowned. “Wait a sec. I think I met her. Buddy Holly black-frame glasses?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “When did you meet her?”
“If it was her, I gave her directions about a week and a half ago. It was the night Lily died, as a matter of fact.”
I stared at her. “The night Lily was killed. Are you sure? Sloane told me she got here on the twenty-third.”
“Of course I’m sure,” she said. “She was looking for the Owl & the Pussycat bookstore.”
The bookstore, which was right next door to Lily’s Bakery.
Jess must have had the same thought. “What? You think your old roommate snuck into town and killed Lily? Seriously?”
I shook my head. “Seriously. I don’t know. Like you said before, I’m not Wonder Woman.”
I was back at the store just after one o’clock. Mac was at the counter, waiting on a customer. Once he was finished, he walked over to me. “I sold those four ladder-back chairs,” he said. “The buyer will be back with his SUV to pick them up.”
“Did you get the full price?” I asked.
He nodded. “The guy didn’t even try to dicker.” He gestured to the portfolio I was carrying. “How did the meeting go?”
“It was interesting.”
“I thought we weren’t going to use that word anymore,” he teased, his dark eyes sparkling.
“It applies in this case,” I said, pulling off my hat. I took Sloane’s business card out of the folder and then held out the papers. “I know you had a look at the simplified prospectus, but would you take a look at these financials for me? You can decipher them a lot faster than I can.”
“I’d be happy to. Am I looking for anything in particular?”
I shook my head. “I just want to know if the project really is a good investment.” I looked around. Avery was dusting the musical instruments on the back wall. “Where’s Rose?” I said.
Mac pointed in the direction of the storeroom. “Finishing those tablecloths.”
I found Rose at the ironing board in the workroom.
“Hello, dear,” she said. “How was your meeting?”
I almost said “interesting” again. “Informative.”
“In what way?”
“I think you can officially eliminate Jon West from your suspect list,” I said. “I talked to one of the administrative assistants, and she mentioned that she and Jon drove up from meetings in Boston the morning after Lily’s death.”
“You and Elvis were right about him,” she said. “He’s a very smart cat.”
“What about me?” I said with mock indignation.
She reached up and patted my cheek. “You’re smart, too, dear.”
I went up to my office. Elvis was sitting in my chair. “I’m a person. I sit in the chair,” I said. “You’re a cat. You sit on the floor. What part of that do you not understand?”
He tipped his head to one side as though he were pondering the question.
I picked him up, sat down and set him on my lap. He studied my face.
“Sloane lied to me,” I said.
His green eyes narrowed.
“Yes, I know you don’t know who she is. The thing is, she lied. Do I call her on it?” He swung his head around to look at the phone on my desk. That was definitely a yes.
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.”