Schooled In Lies (22 page)

“Nothing. Be right there,” I replied and quickly started picking up the contents of the basket.

I got down on all fours and picked up a couple of tubes of lipstick, a bottle of foundation in a color called ginger snap, a cheap bangle bracelet with flaking gold vermeille, a black plastic hair clip, tweezers, a nail file, a bottle of magic magenta nail polish, and something that stopped me in my tracks: a sterling silver compact with the initials “I F” engraved on the lid. It was Ms. Flack’s compact. The one I’d seen her using in the car the very last time I talked to her on the day she died. What the hell was Cherisse doing with it?

I took the compact and headed back into the living room, forgetting to bring the box of tissue with me.

“Where did you get this?” I asked as I stood over her. All I got was a loud snore as a response. She was fast asleep.

“Cherisse.” I tried to shake her awake. “Cherisse, wake up. This is important.” But she was down for the count, and not even tossing a handful of water in her face could wake her up.

It was getting late, I put the compact in my purse and planned to ask her about it when I saw her after class later that evening.

Chapter Sixteen

I WENT HOME AND quickly changed into a slim grey skirt and a cream-colored, short-sleeved cotton blouse for my meeting with Clair Easton. I rummaged around in my dresser until I found a pair of sheer black hose that didn’t have a run in them. I hunted under my bed for some decent dress shoes, finally locating a pair of low-heeled black pumps. After surveying my appearance, and deciding I looked a little washed out, I added a touch of plum lipstick. As an afterthought, I put on a pair of glasses that I thought made me look business-like and left for my appointment.

Clair lived on Scotch Pine Drive in a large Tudor-style home that looked liked it had been plucked out of medieval England. The house was white and heavily decorated with half timbers of exposed brown beams. About a dozen tall narrow windows covered the front of the house giving, multiple views of the street. The front lawn was large and a lush green. As I headed up the brick paved driveway, I could see a Hispanic man, wearing the uniform of a landscaping company called Diaz Lawn & Landscape, trimming the large bushes that flanked the front door. Everything in the yard was varying shades of green, and there were no flowers that I could see anywhere on the property. That told me that Clair Easton must not be a fan of anything as frivolous as flowers, or she was too cheap to have them planted. The man trimming the bushes nodded and smiled at me as I rang the doorbell. I could hear the fast click of approaching heels and seconds later the door swung open and I looked up at a tall, masculine-looking woman with short reddish hair and pale green eyes. She looked to be in her late fifties, though her plaid polyester skirt and high-necked ruffled blouse made her look like an old lady.

“Ms. Easton? I’m Wendy Burger.” I held out my hand, willing it not to tremble.

“Do you have some identification, Ms. Burger? One can’t be too careful these days,” she said primly, looking me up and down.

Crap
. I didn’t have any ID that identified me as anyone other than Kendra Clayton. I nodded and smiled dumbly as I reached into my purse praying for either a distraction, or that Clair Easton was blind as a bat and wouldn’t be able to see that my name didn’t match my license. I was toying with the idea of running back to my car and taking off when I got the distraction. While Clair Easton stared at me impatiently as I fumbled through my purse, we heard a loud cry that made us both jump. We turned to see the man who was trimming the bushes clutching his forearm as blood flowed from between his fingers. Ms. Easton shoved me aside as she rushed to his aid.

“The kitchen’s down the hall. Run and get me the first aid kit. It’s in the cabinet under the sink.”

I ran inside the dark foyer, and my eyes had to adjust to the gloom before I saw the narrow hallway that led to the kitchen. Along the way, I couldn’t help but notice how outdated the house was. There may have been no flowers in the yard, but the walls were covered in the ugliest green and blue flowered wallpaper that I’d ever seen. There was thick beige shag carpet on the floor of the hallway that opened into a large kitchen with cracked yellow linoleum on the floor. The appliances looked like props from a seventies sitcom as did a red vinyl dinette set that looked like the chairs were missing some stuffing. I looked under the rust-stained porcelain sink and located a banged-up white metal box, with paint flaking from the red cross painted on top, and ran it outside to Ms. Easton.

“It’s not as bad as it looks, Miss Easton,” claimed the man in heavily accented English. He’d taken off his shirt and had it wrapped around his arm, but blood had seeped through. Clair Easton wasn’t listening, however. She was too busy rummaging through an assortment of old dried-out Band-aids and bandages and a roll of formerly white and no longer sterile-looking gauze, trying to find something to cover the gash.

“Nonsense, Mr. Diaz. I’ll have your arm all bandaged in no time. Now hold still,” she commanded, pulling the bloody shirt from his arm and tossing it at me. I cursed softly as some drops of blood from the shirt spattered my blouse and smeared the waistband of my skirt. Today was just not a good day for my clothes.

Clair Easton was a big woman, not fat, just bigger than poor Mr. Diaz. She grabbed him firmly by the arm with one hand and pulled him close to bind his wound. Mr. Diaz and I looked at each other in horror. No telling what kind of bacteria would be introduced into his wound if she insisted on using gauze that looked like it had last been used to wrap mummies in ancient Egypt. I opened my mouth to protest when she stopped abruptly.

“Oh, good,” she said, leaning down over his arm to get a better look. “It looks like it’s stopped bleeding.” She snapped her fingers at me, which I assumed meant she wanted the shirt back. I tossed it to Mr. Diaz instead. He caught it and took off running to his van.

“Oh, wait,” I called out when I noticed he’d left his hedge clippers behind. I grabbed the clippers and waved them. But Mr. Diaz had already pulled off.

“I hope he’s going to the hospital. Blood loss is a dangerous thing,” she said, heading back in the house. I was hot on her heels.

“How did he cut himself?” I followed her inside the house and propped the clippers by the door.

“Said he laid his hedge trimmers on top of the bush he was working on to wipe sweat from his eyes and they slid off and gashed his arm. Everyone is so careless these days.” She made a disgusted clucking sound with her tongue as she closed the door behind us. Much to my relief, she seemed to have forgotten that I never showed her my ID.

I followed her into a large dimly lit living room, sparsely furnished with cheap, lumpy brown furniture. Thankfully the walls were minus the wallpaper from the hallway, but the same beige shag covered the floor. I’d bet money there were beautiful hardwood floors underneath all that horrible shag carpet. The room’s only saving grace was a large arched brick fireplace that dominated almost half of one wall. It reminded me of the fireplaces I’d seen in pictures of hunting lodges. And just like in a hunting lodge, there was a large moose head hanging over the mantle staring at us with dull and dusty glass eyes. There was also a golden retriever, curled up with its head near its tail, on the floor next to the fireplace. I reached down to pet the dog but snatched my hand away when my fingers encountered stiff, hard fur. The dog was stuffed. My hostess laughed heartily.

“That’s Jeeves. He was such a good dog. Weren’t you, boy,” she said in exaggerated baby talk as she gazed lovingly at the preserved pooch. “He died last weekend. I loved him so much I just couldn’t bear to part with him. I just got him back from the taxidermist this morning. It was a super rush job and worth every penny. He did a wonderful job, wouldn’t you agree?”

All I could do was nod and smile and wonder how badly the taxidermist had ripped this poor woman off since the dog’s fur felt like the bristles on a hair brush.

“When I die I hope we’ll be laid to rest together,” she said matter-of-factly. She reached down and plucked a piece of lint from Jeeves’s forever-glossy coat.

“That’s…so…nice,” I said and decided then and there to make this a quick visit. Poor Jeeves. I’m sure he didn’t plan on spending his afterlife collecting dust and sniffing his own butt for all eternity.

“Please have a seat.” Claire Easton gestured towards the lumpy couch. I sat and she took a seat across from me in a lopsided recliner. “Can I get you anything to drink? A soda perhaps?” I could tell by her eager-to-please demeanor that she must not get much company.

“No, thank you. I’m fine,” I said quickly. Thinking back on the state of that first aid kit, I didn’t want to speculate on how long past the sell-by date any beverages she had would be.

“I guess we can start then,” she said, settling into her chair.

“Do you mind if I tape this conversation,” I asked, pulling a small tape recorder I sometimes used in class from my purse. She eyed it for a moment and blinked rapidly a few times before slowly nodding her head in agreement. I switched on the recorder and sat it on the coffee table between us.

“Okay. Please state your name for the record,” I told her, mimicking what I’d seen during interrogation scenes on
Law & Order
. I had no idea if there even was a Stock Regulatory Commission of Ohio, but I was fairly certain that if there was one, they didn’t interrogate people. But ignorance is bliss, right?

She sat up straight in her chair, like the tape recorder could see her, and said, “Clair Lenore Easton.”

“All right, Ms. Easton. Can you please tell me how long Gerald Tate has been your financial consultant?”

“Two years. He first became my consultant when he worked for Wiley and Richards. When he left to join Wheatley Financial, I followed him,” she replied without hesitation. She apparently didn’t know that Gerald had been forced to resign from his last job for stealing from his clients.

“And when did you notice inaccuracies with your account?”

“About a month ago. I had a one hundred fifty thousand dollar annuity that Gerald sold me last year. I know I have this big fancy house, but the money in that annuity was all the cash I had in the world,” she said her voice quavering for a second.

“Was? Is it all gone?”

“Not all of it. I still have almost one hundred thousand dollars. But over fifty thousand dollars is missing from that annuity, and I didn’t spend it. And to make matters worse, now I’m going to owe taxes and surcharges on that money.” She slapped her thigh indignantly.

“And how does Ger…ah Mr. Tate explain this missing money?”

“He had the nerve to insist that I authorized the use of that money for some high risk investments that didn’t pan out. He’s trying to make it seem like I’m just mad because I lost my money and I’m trying to blame him.”

“Wouldn’t you have had to authorize the use of that money with a form or signature or something? Were you shown documented proof that you authorized him to invest that money?”

She stared at me hard and cocked her head to the side. “You don’t seem to know much about policies and procedures for someone who works for the Stock Regulatory Commission, young lady. Are you new?”

“Yes, I am. Does it show?” I asked, laughing nervously. “This is the first inquiry they’ve let me head up on my own.”

“Well,” she said, shrugging her shoulders, “I guess you have to start somewhere. How did you hear about my case?” She looked slightly confused.

“We got an anonymous tip,” I told her, not quite able to look her in the eye. I was suddenly feeling really guilty for deceiving this woman. But if Clair Easton was telling the truth, and I thought she was, Gerald had stolen a lot of money from her.

This must be what Gerald was being blackmailed about. Did he find out Ms. Flack was the blackmailer and kill her? If Audrey was right about Julian Spicer having used the reunion fund money to help get Gerald out of a jam on his last job, then he must have only had to pay back a few thousand dollars. Chump change compared to the fifty thousand dollars he’d stolen from Clair Easton. Gerald was looking at jail time if Wheatley Financial had him prosecuted. I seriously doubted they’d just fire him.