“What the . . . ?” Olivia muttered. “My lawyer? Heir to fortune?”
Del said nothing. He pulled a kitchen chair near her and sat down, his legs crossed in a casual way, one ankle resting on the opposite knee. Olivia’s peripheral vision registered the rapid wiggling of his left foot.
According to the byline, Binnie Sloan wrote the piece and Nedra Sloan was credited with the photos. Dread lay like a waterlogged tennis ball in Olivia’s stomach as she forced herself to begin reading the article. Binnie’s take on her surprise inheritance appeared to depend on comments from several “confidential sources,” who offered quotes such as:
Ms. Chamberlain was a healthy, successful woman with a ton of money and a couple grown sons under her thumb.
It’s the same old story, an elderly woman gets taken in by a young con artist and leaves her a bundle, but the con artist gets impatient because the old lady won’t die fast enough.
That Greyson woman, she runs this little store with cookie cutters, and all of a sudden she’s inherited five million dollars and another million in antique cookie cutters? All I can say is, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
Olivia heard a high-pitched whimpering sound and realized it had erupted from her own throat. The newspaper dropped on her lap. She glanced over at Del, who watched her with a thoughtful expression, as if he wasn’t sure what her reaction meant.
“Del, I check my phone messages and emails all the time, and Binnie never even tried to interview me.” “There’s more,” he said. “Go to page five.”
With a deep groan, Olivia did so. She found two more photos. The first showed her with Spunky in the store’s side yard. That explained the disturbing clicks they’d heard. The caption read,” Heiress Olivia Greyson enjoys a break.”
In the second photo, Bertha stared at the camera, her eyes so wide the whites encircled her pupils. The article continued with a quote from Bertha: “I can’t believe Ms. Olivia would hurt her. Why, Ms. Clarisse treated her like a daughter.” Olivia groaned again. She could hear Bertha saying those words in all innocence, but written down they could be read as conveying shock.
It came as no surprise that the attorney Mr. Willard, along with Hugh and Edward Chamberlain, had refused to comment. Tammy Deacons was not mentioned. Either she wasn’t there at the time of the so-called interviews, or she was one of the “confidential sources.”
Olivia sprang out of her chair and slapped the newspaper down in front of Del. It made a satisfying thwap, but Del barely blinked.
“When you first barged in here, you demanded to know if I knew about ‘this.’ If you think I’d have anything to gain from this kind of exposure, you’re nuts.” Olivia hauled herself up onto the table so she could look down at him.
Del uncrossed his legs and sat up straighter. “By ‘this,’ I meant the bequest Clarisse made to you. And by the way, I’m aware it wasn’t five million dollars plus a million in antique cookie cutters.”
“How do you know?”
“I called the Chamberlain house and asked. Apparently, I have more influence than the editor of The Weekly Chatter, because Edward answered the phone and assured me you’d received only one hundred fifty thousand dollars and a collection estimated to be worth about thirty thousand.”
“It won’t make much of a dent in his inheritance, or Hugh’s,” Olivia said. “Although it sounds huge to me, and it might look like a good motive for murder.”
“It probably would.”
“At any rate, the answer to your question is a definite no. I had no hint that Clarisse planned to leave me anything at all. When Mr. Willard called to tell me she had made a bequest to me, I assumed it would amount to a few of her favorite cookie cutters, the ones with sentimental value. I was stunned when Mr. Willard read the codicil. That’s why we were talking outside afterwards, when that photo was taken. He assured me that Clarisse had wanted the bequest kept secret. You can ask him, if you don’t believe me.”
“I already have,” Del said with a faint but definite smile. “However, he couldn’t know if you’d found out from another source. I needed to hear it from you.”
He didn’t add that he now believed her, and she didn’t ask.
According to the clock over the sink, it was five. Maddie would be straightening up the chaos left behind by a crowd of excited customers. On the one hand, Olivia wanted Del to leave so she and Maddie could get back to their own investigation. On the other hand, maybe this wretched newspaper article had opened Del’s mind a bit.
“Del, remember that conversation we had at the café right after Clarisse’s death?”
Del nodded.
“You seemed so certain it was an accident. In fact, you wouldn’t even talk about the possibility of suicide. I couldn’t believe it had been either one, but the possibility of murder didn’t occur to me then. Now it has. I’ve thought for some time that Clarisse was murdered, and now I’m convinced she was. Only I don’t know by whom.”
Del leaned forward, elbows on knees, and stared at the kitchen floor for what felt to Olivia like an hour. Anyway, it was long enough for her to move through a string of emotions from intense anxiety to curiosity to embarrassment that the floor hadn’t been swept in a week.
Finally, he looked up at her and asked, “What makes you so sure?”
She should have known he’d ask her that question. How could she be convincing without involving anyone else?
“And before you tell me,” Del said, “let me add that I already know Cody shared his so-called crime scene photos with you. We had a serious discussion about that.”
“Oh dear,” Olivia said, cringing. “I hoped I wouldn’t get him into trouble, but you were so insistent it wasn’t a crime, you can’t really blame him. Blame me, if you want, but not Cody. He’s serious about his job, and I, for one, think he’s on to something.”
“So do I,” Del said.
“You do? Really? When did . . . I mean, how . . . ?”
“Give me some credit, Livie. I realize television mystery series present small-town sheriffs as buffoons or bullies, but most of us speak in complete sentences and take pride in our jobs.”
“Um, I—”
“Furthermore, I am not required to tell you, at any time, what I might know or suspect in a certain case. It makes my job a lot harder when private citizens start asking dangerous questions and putting themselves in harm’s way because they think they are smarter than I am.”
“Wait a minute, I never, ever thought I was smarter—”
“I’m not finished, Livie. I’m saying this because I care about you.”
“Well, you have a strange way of—”
Del sprang from his chair and grabbed Olivia by the shoulders. He looked into her eyes with an intensity that sent a distracting shiver through her.
Del released her as the kitchen door opened.
“I’ll finish closing up,” Maddie said quietly, her eyes darting from Del to Olivia. “Then I’ll be heading on home.” The door clicked shut.
Del slid back onto his chair. “Now having said all that, let me add that I think you are intelligent, insightful, and I want to hear everything you, and I presume Maddie, have discovered.”
An hour later, Olivia had shown Del the financial information Maddie had gathered, the websites they’d searched, and Tammy’s notorious Facebook page. She told him that Sam Parnell delivered to Clarisse a letter he thought was from a private detective, and she urged him to connect the attack on Sam with that letter.
However, as she prepared to tell Del about the letters from Faith and Clarisse, his cell rang. He turned his back on her and answered. All she heard was, “I’ll be right there.” He turned around and said, “I’ve got to take care of something.”