Murder Most Owl, page 20
‘Wait,’ I said, my thoughts bouncing around like my heart was doing in my chest. ‘Does Aunt Olivia know about your baseball career?’
‘That’s another thing I asked her to keep under her hat.’
‘You two have been keeping a lot of secrets,’ I said without reproach.
He shifted his weight. ‘I didn’t mean to put Olivia in a difficult position.’
I rested a reassuring hand on his arm until I realized what I’d done and pulled it away. ‘Don’t worry about it. She wouldn’t have lied to me if I’d asked her direct questions. She just dodged the subject of you.’
‘I’m glad everything’s out in the open now.’
I smiled. ‘Me too.’
My thin T-shirt fluttered in the brisk breeze and a lock of my short hair blew into my eyes. I was about to flick it away when Callum beat me to it. His rough, warm fingers whispered across my skin as he gently brushed the curl back where it belonged. I suppressed a shiver as pleasant tingles followed in the wake of his touch.
My thoughts had scattered, so it took effort to refocus when he spoke again.
‘Since I’m not ready to be seen in town, how about we have dinner here on the farm instead?’ he suggested.
‘As friends?’ I asked, reminding myself that he probably wouldn’t be here much longer. My heart wasn’t keen on listening to that warning.
‘As friends.’
I thought he’d left the words ‘for now’ unspoken, but maybe that was nothing but wishful thinking. Clearly, my head wasn’t listening to my warning either.
‘How about a barbecue?’ Callum said. ‘I’ve got some mean grilling skills.’
‘Maybe I do too.’
He sized me up, the warmth of his gaze almost palpable against my skin. ‘We could have a grill-off.’
I laughed at that idea. ‘Actually, I’ve never grilled anything in my entire life.’
‘How is that even possible?’
I shrugged. ‘Never owned a barbecue.’
Growing up, it would have been just another thing to take with us every time we moved. Now, my apartment balcony was so tiny I could barely fit a few small pots of herbs on it.
‘Maybe it’s time you learned the art,’ Callum said.
‘I’m happy to watch the master at work for now.’
A slow grin took shape on his face as he pushed off from the fence. ‘Tonight?’
‘Works for me.’
He tipped his cowboy hat at me. ‘Looking forward to it.’
Callum headed into the barn and I walked back to the farmhouse with a smile on my face. Tessa was right. There was no reason why I couldn’t enjoy Callum’s company while we were both in Twilight Cove. The giddy feeling in my stomach didn’t have to lead to heartache.
Despite telling myself that, a small voice in my head reminded me to be cautious. So many times in my life I’d grown attached to people, only to have to leave them behind, or have them leave me. I’d moved repeatedly growing up, and I’d lost my mom at a young age and all my grandparents by the time I was twenty-two. I’d never managed to get used to the pain that losing friends or loved ones caused, so it was best avoided whenever possible.
I decided to go ahead with the barbecue anyway. If I thought I was growing too attached to Callum, if my feelings for him were getting too strong, then I could back away. That was something I was good at. I’d done it plenty of times in my life when attempting to protect myself.
Yet, something told me that hardening my heart against Callum would be easier said than done.
I spent a couple of hours writing and editing before taking a break for lunch. As I munched on a sandwich, I tugged my laptop closer and opened the Internet browser. I couldn’t resist typing Callum’s name into the search bar. So many results popped up that it would have taken me days to go through them all. I clicked on the first couple of links and it quickly became clear that Callum had downplayed the success of his career. He had impressive stats and multiple Gold Gloves and Silver Slugger awards under his belt. I knew he had impressive stats only because an article told me so. The actual numbers and acronyms didn’t mean much to me.
Maybe I should have ended my search there, but my curiosity got the better of me. It surprised me that a guy as successful and good-looking as Callum would be single. He’d never actually told me he was single, I realized, and since I’d emphasized that we were having dinner as friends, maybe there was no reason to tell me otherwise. He didn’t wear a ring, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t dating someone.
It didn’t take long to dig up information on his relationship history. For a time in his mid-twenties, he’d dated a pop singer whose name was vaguely familiar to me and he’d married an actress named Vanessa Lee Raine at age twenty-seven. I’d never heard of Raine, but the photos I found of her and Callum sent my heart sinking. She was a leggy bombshell of a blonde, with her hair, makeup and clothes utter perfection in every photo, even those taken in more casual settings.
I navigated away from the pictures, not wanting to torture myself, though I continued to read. The marriage, it turned out, had lasted barely three years. In more recent times, online articles referred to Callum attending charity galas, sometimes with a brief mention of his date, but the last such mention was from more than two years ago.
I refocused on much safer territory: Callum’s career. He’d spent the last four years of it playing for the Toronto Blue Jays, and he’d played for three other teams before that. Against my better judgement, I looked up photos of the pop singer he’d dated. Glamorous and gorgeous, just as I’d expected.
Humiliation burned through me. I couldn’t believe I’d basically asked him out.
I dropped my face into my hands, but then raised my head as my thoughts turned.
Callum seemed sincere about wanting to spend time with me and hadn’t once made me feel like I wasn’t good enough in any way. We could still be friends while we were both living on the farm.
Twinges of guilt haunted me while I read about him online, so I closed those tabs on the browser and instead started looking deeper into the cold cases that held Byron’s interest, consulting the photos on my phone. I read brief articles about a couple of the unsolved murders, but nothing stood out to me as particularly significant, and I couldn’t find any obvious ties to Byron, other than his interest in the cases.
I turned my attention to the Tennessee bank robbery and conducted an online search for more information about the case. I sifted through the search results and found an article I hadn’t seen before. A black-and-white photo accompanied it. The picture showed a young man, probably in his early twenties, standing with his arm around a pretty girl who looked to be in her late teens.
I was almost certain they were the same two people depicted in the old photograph I’d seen in Victor Clyde’s safe. According to the article I found online, the two people in the picture were Jeffrey Herring, age twenty-one, and Ellen Dudek, age seventeen – the suspected robber and getaway driver. Like the previous articles I’d read, this one stated that Ellen had perished when her car went off a bridge while she was leaving town, and that Jeffrey might have died in the same accident, though there was no evidence of that. Otherwise, he simply disappeared. The stolen money was never located.
I zoomed in on the photo and studied the faces of the two youngsters. Then I conducted another quick search and came across several photos of Victor Clyde. The oldest one I could find dated back about twenty-five years. I arranged the two photographs so I could study them side-by-side. Jeffrey vaguely resembled Victor, particularly around the eyes, but their noses and mouths were different.
Those were both features that could have been changed by plastic surgery.
And something told me that Jeffrey and Victor were one and the same.
TWENTY-NINE
When I turned my full attention on Ellen Dudek, I knew I was onto something. Even though I’d met Dorothy Shale only a couple of times, I had a clear enough picture of her face in my head to know that seventeen-year-old Ellen Dudek bore a striking resemblance to Dorothy. I did another search, hoping to find a photo of Dorothy so I could make a side-by-side comparison for confirmation, but I couldn’t find anything about her online. That didn’t really surprise me. A woman who lived in a tiny cabin out in the woods without indoor plumbing and electricity probably wasn’t a social media maven.
Still, I wanted confirmation that I wasn’t making up connections in my head where none really existed. I downloaded the old photo of the couple and the picture of Victor Clyde to my phone and jumped up from the table. Flossie and Fancy had been snoozing on the kitchen floor, but they woke up in a flash and scrambled to get to the door before me. They burst out onto the back porch as soon as the door was open and somehow anticipated my next move, racing off toward the carriage house before I’d even made it down the steps.
We found Aunt Olivia on the back patio, lounging on the outdoor loveseat with her boot-encased foot propped up. She had a book open on her lap and her reading glasses on, but she set the book aside and removed her glasses when the dogs and I joined her.
‘A visit from my favorite human and my favorite dogs,’ Aunt Olivia said, patting the spaniels, who’d run right up to her. ‘How did I get so lucky?’
Flossie and Fancy wagged their tails and sat as close to my aunt as they could.
‘How’s the writing going?’ Aunt Olivia asked as I sat on a free chair.
‘I got some done this morning, but I’m too distracted to write at the moment.’
She looked up from fussing over the dogs. ‘I hope nothing’s wrong.’
‘I’d just like to get your opinion on something.’ I woke up my phone so I could find the photos I’d downloaded. ‘And I know about Callum now, so you don’t have to worry about keeping his secrets from me.’
‘You know everything?’
‘I know he’s watching the farm next door – his farm – and I know he was a successful baseball player. Is there more?’
‘That’s all.’ She sounded relieved. ‘I’m sorry for not telling you. I wanted to, but I promised Callum I’d keep quiet.’
‘I get it,’ I assured her. ‘It’s fine. I just didn’t want you to go on thinking you needed to tiptoe around the subject of him anymore.’
She looked pleased. ‘I’m glad the two of you have grown close enough for him to share that with you.’
‘We’re getting to be friends, I think, but that’s all,’ I clarified, ‘so don’t be getting any matchmaking ideas.’
She put on her most innocent smile. ‘Would I try to interfere in that aspect of your life?’
‘I wouldn’t put it past you,’ I said. ‘Especially when spurred on by your Gins and Needles ladies.’
‘They’re a hoot, and utterly incorrigible, but I doubt you need any interference from us.’ She had a twinkle in her eye as she patted my knee. ‘You’ll do just fine on your own.’
‘Really, Auntie O. Don’t go thinking along those lines. I’m not Callum’s type.’
She seemed puzzled by that statement. ‘I don’t think he’s gay, darling. I googled him.’
‘So did I.’ I held up a finger before she could say anything. ‘Simply out of interest in his baseball career.’
‘Mmm-hmm.’ The twinkle was back in her eyes.
‘Anyway,’ I continued, ‘that’s not what I meant by not being his type. You should know from your googling that he’s into glamorous, leggy blondes.’
‘You’re a leggy brunette with gorgeous hazel eyes, a killer smile, a creative and smart head on your shoulders, and a heart of gold,’ my aunt countered. ‘Plus, you do glamorous too, honey. I saw those pictures of you at that film festival last year.’
I got up and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Thank you, Auntie O. But I’m actually here to talk to you about something other than Callum.’ I sat next to her on the loveseat and Flossie rested her head on my knee.
‘We can always come back to the subject of Callum,’ Aunt Olivia teased.
‘It’s not just the other Gins and Needles ladies who can be incorrigible,’ I said with a shake of my head.
My aunt smiled, her eyes still twinkling.
I brought up the photo of Jeffrey and Ellen on my phone and passed the device to Olivia. ‘Do you recognize either of these people?’
She slipped her reading glasses on and studied the picture. She started to say something, but then stopped, her forehead furrowed.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
She shook her head. ‘For a second I thought maybe the young man looked familiar, but … no, perhaps not.’
‘How about the girl?’ I prodded.
My aunt stared hard at the photo. ‘Is that …?’ She zoomed in on the picture so Ellen’s face filled the screen. ‘Is that Dorothy as a young woman?’
I stroked Flossie’s silky head. ‘That’s what I’m thinking.’
‘Where did you get this photo?’ Olivia asked.
I’d figured that question would come up. On my way over to the carriage house, I thought about how much I should tell her. In the end, I decided to go with almost the whole truth.
‘I got that picture from the Internet, but I’ve seen a picture of that couple before.’ I told her that I’d caught a glimpse of an old photo at Victor’s mansion, but I left out the part about Flossie opening the safe. I didn’t like keeping secrets from my aunt, but I wasn’t quite ready to share what I knew about the spaniels. I also didn’t want to distract her from the current thread of the conversation.
I recounted how I’d followed Byron to his house and had seen Roxy breaking in. When I got to the part where the dogs and I went into the house after Roxy, Olivia interrupted.
‘Both of you could have been arrested!’ she exclaimed.
‘That’s exactly what I didn’t want to happen to Roxy,’ I said. ‘I know it was risky, but I really didn’t want her getting in trouble.’
‘But if Byron is the killer, and he’d found you in his house …’
Seeing how pale she’d become at the mere thought, I decided to leave out the part about Byron coming home while we were still in the house. Instead, I made it sound like we’d taken a quick look around his study and then left without incident.
I tapped the screen of my phone, which Auntie O had handed back to me. ‘I found this photo of Jeffrey and Ellen when I looked up the unsolved bank robbery reported on in an article on Byron’s wall. They’re the suspected robber and getaway driver.’
‘And there was a picture of the same couple in Victor Clyde’s home?’ my aunt asked.
I nodded and zoomed in on Jeffrey. ‘If you look carefully, do you think this guy could be a younger Victor Clyde? Possibly before having some plastic surgery?’
Aunt Olivia peered at the photo. ‘There’s a vague resemblance. Maybe that’s why he struck me as familiar.’ She took her glasses off. ‘So, you think that Victor and Dorothy were once a couple and they robbed this bank back in the Seventies?’
‘Doesn’t everything point in that direction?’ I asked with a frisson of excitement running through me. ‘I feel like we’re onto something.’
‘How much money did they steal?’
I consulted one of the articles on my phone. ‘More than a hundred thousand.’
Aunt Olivia stared off into the distance as she thought aloud. ‘Victor Clyde was rich, and the stolen money wasn’t nearly enough to make him that wealthy.’
I tapped away at my phone, conducting another Internet search. ‘Let’s see if we can find out if he was born rich, or how he got his start in business.’
Aunt Olivia leaned closer so she could see the screen of my phone. The dogs grew bored and lay down on the patio for a snooze.
Several minutes later, I looked up from my phone, thinking over what I’d just learned. ‘There’s not much about Victor Clyde in his early years. He got into real estate in his twenties and made some fortuitous deals that sent him on the path to success and riches.’
‘What about Jeffrey Herring?’ Aunt Olivia asked.
I did another quick search. ‘There aren’t many details about him online. One article about the robbery mentions that he and Ellen came from families of very modest means. Ellen’s sister thought they might have committed the robbery so they’d have money to run away together and get married.’
‘So, Victor could have used the stolen money to buy his first piece of real estate, setting himself on a path to wealth,’ Olivia surmised.
‘It fits.’
‘But Ellen perished in a car accident,’ my aunt pointed out.
‘Supposedly,’ I said. ‘There aren’t many details about the accident, but it seems like her body was never found. Everyone assumed she was swept away by the raging river when her car went in the water. They found one of her shoes washed up on the bank.’
Aunt Olivia looked thoughtful. ‘So her death could have been staged.’
I picked up that thread. ‘Allowing her and Jeffrey to start new lives under new names.’
‘And yet they weren’t a couple in recent years.’ She frowned. ‘At least, not as far as we know.’
‘Maybe things didn’t work out,’ I suggested. ‘But Avery said she didn’t know why Victor had chosen to move to Twilight Cove.’
‘It could be because he knew that Dorothy – Ellen – was living here.’
‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘But Dorothy didn’t live like she had any money.’
‘Split between the two of them, the money they stole wouldn’t have gone all that far. Maybe that’s what Dorothy used to buy her plot of land when she eventually moved here to Twilight Cove.’
‘That could be,’ I agreed. I clapped a hand to my forehead. ‘Byron!’
‘What about him?’ Olivia asked.
‘I bet he figured out that Dorothy and Ellen are one and the same. He’s been digging out in the woods.’
Understanding dawned in my aunt’s eyes. ‘You think he’s looking for a stash of stolen money? There’s probably nothing left of it.’
‘Maybe he’s just hoping that Dorothy still had some.’
‘Perhaps,’ Aunt Olivia said.
A memory came back to me. ‘Dorothy told me she thought someone had been in her cabin recently. She assumed it was Ed Grimshaw, but maybe it was Byron, starting his search inside before he moved on to looking in the woods.’
