Now Mr. P.’s expression grew serious.
“Is there something else?” I asked.
He nodded. “I did a little more digging and it’s possible that Stephanie Carleton wasn’t at the hydroponic workshop that’s her alibi for the time the heating system at Mac’s house could potentially have been tampered with.”
I sighed softly. I’d liked Leila’s cousin and I hated the idea that Stevie may have had something to do with Leila’s death. “So you think she wasn’t at the workshop at all, or that she just wasn’t there the night of Leila’s accident?”
“The latter, I’m afraid,” Mr. P. said, nudging his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I talked to several people who confirmed that she was there, but very quickly I realized how fuzzy they were on time and how big the seminar was.”
“And how much most of them had to drink at the hotel bar afterward,” Rose added with a roll of her eyes.
“They used swipe cards at the conference center,” Mr. P. continued.
“And?”
“The system keeps track of who has each card and every time it’s swiped.”
“I take it they store that information somewhere,” I said.
Rose smiled. “Isn’t it wonderful how much computers can keep these days? Just think how many trees have been saved.”
The conversation was about to veer off into the ditch. I eyed Mr. P. “I take it you’ve seen that information.”
“Only with respect to Stephanie’s movements,” he said, adjusting his glasses again.
“Freddie would never violate someone’s privacy,” Rose added.
“Freddie?” I asked. Despite my best efforts it seemed the conversation had gone off course.
“Don’t tell me you don’t remember Freddie Calhoun?” Rose looked at me as though the name should have made sense to me.
Freddie Calhoun.
“Josh’s friend?” I said. I remembered a skinny, gangly kid, his blond hair buzzed close to his scalp, helping Josh Evans launch a rocket in the Evanses’ backyard. Josh’s mother, Jane, had had to draw eyebrows on Josh for the rest of the summer.
Rose beamed at me. I’d clearly given the correct answer. “He has his own cybersecurity firm now. Such a helpful young man.” Freddie had been one of Rose’s students. Pretty much everyone within ten years in either direction of my age had been one of Rose’s students. “Oh, and he goes by Ric now—no ‘k’—not Freddie,” she added helpfully.
“We know that Stephanie left early, in plenty of time to have tampered with that water heater,” Mr. P. said.
“You still think what happened wasn’t an accident?” I’d shared what my dad had confirmed—that the police couldn’t prove that the leaking water heater had been tampered with.
Mr. P. and Rose exchanged a look. He cleared his throat. “I managed to get a look at those reports as well. The police couldn’t prove the heater had been tampered with but they couldn’t say it hadn’t been, either.”
I nodded. “Okay.” I didn’t ask how he’d managed to see those reports. I looked at some of Alfred’s fact-finding the way I did Rose’s favorite breakfast sausage. I liked the end product but I was happier not knowing exactly what went into it.
I looked at my watch. “We can leave in about ten minutes,” I said. “I just need to call Clayton and tell him I won’t be there this afternoon.”
“We appreciate the offer, dear,” Rose said. “But Alf has something else he wants to try first. He’s set up a Skype session with Stevie in about fifteen minutes. He told her he wants to know more about Leila and Stevie’s great-aunt.” She looked at Mr. P., giving him a warm smile.
“You mean the one who set up the trust for them?”
Mr. P. nodded. “Leila and Stephanie are the only girls in the family on that side of the family and from that generation, aside from Leila’s half sister, Natalie. I really would like to know more about Marguerite Thompson-Davis. And of course I want to see Stephanie’s face when I tell her what I found out.” He hiked up his pants, which were already almost up in his armpits. “Not that I told her that, of course. You’re welcome to join us, Sarah, if you’re free.”
Could Stevie really have put her cousin in a coma over money? I knew it was possible; I just didn’t want to believe it had actually happened. Mr. P. wasn’t the only one who wanted to see Stevie’s face when he told her what he’d unearthed. “Thank you,” I said. “I think I just might do that.”
He glanced at his watch. “I’ll be at my desk. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
Both Rose and I were in the Angels’ office when Mr. P. opened his Skype session with Stevie.
“What would you like to know about Aunt Margie?” she asked.
“She had no children of her own?”
Stevie shook her head. “My mother seemed to think that she’d lost a baby but it wasn’t something that was ever talked about.” She smiled. “She spoiled us—Leila and me. She paid for music lessons, she took us for long weekends in New York City and she encouraged us to go after our dreams.”
“She sounds like a very special person,” Rose said, leaning sideways so Stevie could see her.
“Hi, Rose,” Stevie said with a smile. She waved at her computer screen. “And yes, you’re right. Aunt Margie was special.” She turned her attention to Mr. P. again. “You knew she was pretty much a self-made woman.”
Mr. P. tipped his head to one side like a curious seagull. “I know that Marguerite and her husband ran their own business.”
Stevie nodded. “I’m not trying to imply that she grew up poor, but Aunt Margie’s father thought her only purpose was to be a good wife. The only reason he agreed to let her go to university was that he felt she’d meet a better class of potential husbands.”
“Goodness,” Rose said softly, shaking her head in dismay.
“Her grandmother had what they called at the time ‘her own money.’ She left several thousand dollars to Aunt Margie and that’s what she and her husband used to start their business.” Stevie turned her attention back to Rose. “I don’t know if Alfred told you, but they took a small business teaching language and customs to businesspeople traveling overseas, and turned it into a multimillion-dollar corporation they later sold. Leila always said we got our business chops from Aunt Margie.” She looked away from the screen for a moment and closed her eyes briefly before turning back to the camera and pasting on a smile. “So, anyway, Aunt Margie became very much a philanthropist after the business was sold. She said it was more fun giving money away than it had ever been making it.”
Stevie leaned back and put both hands on the desktop next to her computer. “I heard from a couple of friends, Alfred. They said you’d been in touch to check out my alibi.” She made air quotes around the word “alibi.” “So now you know I had nothing to do with what happened to Leila.”
“On the contrary, now I’m a little suspicious because I know you lied about where you were. I know you swiped out of the conference center much earlier than you said you did.” His voice was as even and nonconfrontational as it would have been if he were at McNamara’s putting in a sandwich order.
Stevie pressed a palm to her forehead. “Big Brother is always watching,” she muttered, exhaling loudly. “I didn’t do anything to Leila,” she said, her expression pained. “I would never hurt her.”
“Telling the truth would go a long way toward making that seem credible,” Mr. P. said.
Stevie gave an almost imperceptible nod. “Fine,” she said. She reached for her smartphone. “I thought this might happen. I’m e-mailing you some photos. They’re time-stamped. There’s probably some way to show they haven’t been faked because they haven’t been. I don’t know how to do that kind of stuff.”
It was only seconds before we heard the ping of an arriving message. Mr. P. opened his e-mail. There were four photos attached. They were all of Stevie in a ’50s-style diner. She seemed to be eating some kind of sundae.