“So far. What a strange thing for him to do, don’t you think? Go into real estate?”
“Eh, I don’t know. He’s been at that school for ages, but I don’t think anyone ever liked him.”
“You’re not supposed to like the principal, are you?” Chase recalled, though, that she had adored her principal in grade school.
“Why not? If you’re not a troublemaker, there’s no reason you shouldn’t get along with him.”
“You and I certainly weren’t troublemakers, were we?”
“Wellll,” Julie drawled. “There was that time . . .”
“Oh yes, but we never got caught.”
“What’s that horrible noise?”
Chase had reached the bottom of her drink and had slurped. Quincy, annoyed at the racket, too, jumped down. “My drink.”
“I also wanted to tell you that I was called into the police station at noon.”
“How did that go, Jules?”
She took a deep breath, sounding shaky. “Not the funnest lunch hour I ever took. That Detective Olson is a grim guy.”
“He can be. What did he ask you about?”
“Lots, including the fact that my scarf was used to strangle Ron North. I remember Ron took it with him, but I get the idea he doesn’t believe me. I made the mistake of telling the detective it’s one of my favorites, so he wanted to know why I didn’t get it back. I couldn’t stand dealing with Ron, is why, but Olson is not buying it. He knows about the thing in high school, too. Someone must have told him.”
Chase cringed, glad Julie couldn’t see her face.
“But I’ve been going over those pages you copied for me. I saw something I hadn’t noticed before.”
Shaking her new shoes out of the box, Chase left it with the lid off so Quincy could jump in and out of it. He would probably do that for at least half an hour. “Wait, let me get my copy.” Chase spread the pages out on her kitchen table.
“Look at the page with those weird names.”
Chase pulled the sheet toward her.
“See it? The extra letter?”
“No.” She held the paper up closer to her face. “Oh, yes, I do.” A faint J was written lightly below the word BIRD. “He was thinking of adding to this list? Someone named J? Has it been penciled in? I think so.”
“BIRD, Chase, think of it. Isn’t that Dickie Byrd?”
“Then who is PRINCE?”
“I’ve been thinking about that, too. I still remember how to spell principal the way our second grade teacher taught us. He’s a prince of a pal, she said.”
“Yes, I remember that. So you think this is the principal, Mr. Snelson?”
“Maybe. I have no idea who PHOTO is, but I’ll bet these are blackmail victims. And I think I was about to be added to the list.”
NINE
Chase thought, on the surface, that Julie’s theory was far-fetched. She had asked her what on earth Ron North would be blackmailing her about. But when Julie pointed out that he was working on the real estate swindle story, Chase began to change her mind. Maybe he was trying to blackmail everyone involved in that. Eventually, he would have realized that Julie wasn’t part of any swindle. So much for the real estate case distracting Julie from being a murder suspect.
Ron probably had a chance at shaking down whoever had offered the money to Hilda Bjorn. And that might be Mr. Snelson, since he was getting into the real estate business and there were what looked like dollar amounts next to his code name. If PRINCE was his code name. That would mean that Hilda Bjorn’s Vance Nelson actually was Van Snelson. There were amounts written in for the person called PHOTO, too. Maybe Mr. Snelson had a partner in crime who was already certified to handle real estate.
If BIRD was Dickie Byrd, Ron North hadn’t been successful at getting any money out of him. Chase leafed through Ron’s story notes to find anything that might pertain to wrongdoing on the part of Dickie. It looked like Ron had started to interview the principal for an article on the school board. He seemed to suspect there were some shady activities going on there. The notes went on to mention the real estate scams. There were also notes about historical swindles, maybe to fill out his intended article.
Dickie Byrd didn’t figure in those pages. However, Dickie was an easy target even if he hadn’t taken part in the scams. If he was always this careless about kissing women other than his wife in public, Ron could easily try to blackmail him about his indiscretions.
Chase devoutly hoped the police could figure out Ron’s code. His notes flitted from one thing to another so that she didn’t know how he had planned to write anything coherent from them. She also wished, even more devoutly, that J would end up standing for someone other than Julie.
Before they had hung up, Chase had described to Julie the person she and Eddie had seen at lunch, drunk. Julie remembered him from the reunion, but had no idea who he was. Was he PHOTO?
She couldn’t sleep with all of this rattling around inside her head, so she padded down to the office, leaving Quincy snoring softly on her bed.
Ron’s notebook mentioned the school board, and Dickie was on it. Maybe the scandal that got him killed wasn’t real estate, but something to do with the school board. She looked up the local school board and there was Dickie Byrd’s picture, the same one he was using on his campaign posters. Another member stood out to her. It was the man with the vest, the short, dumpy drunk she’d seen at lunch.
His name was Langton Hail and, upon further investigation, she found he was a real estate developer. He had built hotel complexes in several major cities.
It took her a long time to fall asleep with the associations and cross-associations whirling in her poor, tired brain.
• • •
Chase was glad she would be working in the shop today to take her mind off Ron North’s murder and everything else related to it.
Since the shop was fairly busy, she worked the counter beside Mallory, the new hire. About midmorning, it dawned on Chase what bothered her about Mallory. The woman, little more than a girl, rarely smiled. She knew this was her first job out of high school, but her résumé had listed an impressive number of retail places she had worked during the summers. Shortly before lunchtime there was a lull, one of those rare times without a single person in the shop.
“Mallory,” Chase began, then wondered how to continue. She paused, then forged ahead. “I need to tell you something very important about selling things to people.”
Mallory drew in her breath, her eyes wide with worry. “What am I doing wrong? Did I miscount the change?”
Chase gave her what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “No, nothing like that.” It suddenly occurred to her that the reason Mallory’s list of jobs was so long could be that she got fired from all of them. “You’re doing fine, really. But, well, I’m sure you’ve heard that first impressions are important. Right?”
Mallory nodded, but the worry remained etched on her face. She sucked on her bottom lip and hunched her thin shoulders.
“Relax, dear. I’m going to tell you a secret. There’s only one thing you need to do to improve what you’re already doing. It’s a tiny thing, but it makes a huge first impression. When you first interact with a customer, you smile. That’s it. The customer is at ease, so you’re more at ease. Things will go smoothly if they feel comfortable with you from the start.”
Mallory nodded, her posture and her face losing some of the tension.
Just then, the tension in the shop kicked up one hundred percent. Grace Pilsen, Anna’s old baking rival, strode into the Bar None, throwing the door open so violently that the usually soft bell jangled loudly. She looked fierce, but that was her normal expression, Chase thought. She’d never seen the woman without an angry scowl on her face.