Sleuthing at Sweet Springs (The Sleuth Sisters Mysteries Book 4) (22 page)

Faye and I acted on Cramer’s information immediately. I put in a call to Cold-Clear and, with some fast talking, got an appointment with their resource development director. Since Cold-Clear was headquartered in Bay City, it meant a long drive for me, but I doubted they’d reveal company business over the phone. Face-to-face I could use my lawyer skills to elicit information. Even if they wouldn’t give me a name, I could perhaps read between the lines.

Antoinette Nash was round-faced, stocky, and direct. Her office smelled of roses, and I saw a bouquet of at least two dozen on a table to one side. A gift for Sweetest Day, it appeared. I always wondered who observed that made-up holiday.

I liked Ms. Nash right away, and she seemed to respond to me as well. We spent a few minutes discussing our backgrounds, recognizing without stating outright that we’d fought for our positions in a world dominated by men. I had retired from the field of corporate battle, but she seemed capable of holding her own in hers.

I explained that we’d “stumbled” on the company’s name as we investigated a case. Figuring Cold-Clear wouldn’t want to associate itself with shady dealings, I told her our theory that a person or people was attempting to buy up the Sweet Springs properties in order to gain complete water rights. “One name we’re pretty sure of is Gail Sherman.”

Frowning, she opened a folder on her desk, flipped quickly through several sheets with a moistened finger, and scanned one near the bottom. “I have no record of anyone with that name.”

I breathed an inward sigh of relief when she answered. We weren’t going the “Contact our lawyers” route, at least not yet.

“Ms. Sherman was a real estate agent who might have been working with someone acquainted with the bottling industry—combining their talents, as it were.”

She picked up on the verb tense. “She
was
an agent?”

“Ms. Sherman’s body was found in the springs last week.”

Nash sucked in a breath. “That’s terrible.”

“You can see why we’d like to know with whom she might have been working.”

“We can’t reveal details of an on-going negotiation.”

That was what I’d expected. “I understand.” After a pause I said, “Perhaps you could confirm some of what we know.” When she hesitated, I added, “Ms. Sherman was probably murdered. There was another suspicious death, an arson, and an innocent woman who is confined to a nursing home, all so someone can get control of this property.”

That information dismayed her, so I went on quickly. “You can simply nod your head to let me know we’re on the right path.”

After a moment, she nodded once.

“All right,” I said. “Someone contacted you recently with an offer to sell Sweet Springs to Cold-Clear.”

When she merely looked at me, I revised the statement. “Someone wants to lease Sweet Springs to Cold-Clear.” That time I got a nod.

“Last week you sent one of your engineers to test the water.”

Another nod. Retta had told Faye, who’d told me, that she’d been out to the springs last week and seen two vehicles leaving the area. What Retta had been doing out there I didn’t know. Faye had convinced me it was best not to ask.

If bottling was the issue, which it seemed to be, people with scientific know-how would be poking around the springs, testing and devising methods for water withdrawal.

Now I used my semantic skills. “The offer to provide water rights came by email, from an account listed as WOZ Industries.”

Nash hesitated but finally gave a quick nod.

“Can you provide a name?”

“I can’t.” She sounded genuinely sorry.

“Can you tell me if the person has visited this office?” My thought was I could check recent trips to Bay City made by everyone involved with Gail Sherman.

Twirling her pen between her fingers, Nash thought about the repercussions of answering that question. “No.”

“Have you spoken to the person in charge by telephone?” Maybe Rory could get a warrant to search phone records.

Again she shook her head. “No. I spoke with a secretary to set up the appointment for testing, but that’s all. She met our technician in town and escorted him to the site.”

I doubted any secretary from WOZ had done that.

“Can you share the specific WOZ email address with us?”

She hesitated. I said, “Murder, arson, and fraud, Ms. Nash.”

Her smile was rueful. “I’ll have to check with legal. How about if I message it to you if and when they say it’s okay?”

“That would be great.” Rising, I put out a hand. “Thanks so much for seeing me on short notice.”

She rose too. “It was nice to meet you, but if this really is the mess it seems to be, I’d appreciate it if you kept our name out of it. We’ve done nothing except consider a proposal, so it wouldn’t be fair to associate our name with this scheme.”

I said I’d try, knowing I had about as much control over the news media as I had over Retta.

As I drove northward through a veritable storm of falling leaves, I considered what I knew about Stan Wozniak. Was it possible he had plotted with Gail Sherman to sell water to Cold-Clear and then killed her when they disagreed?

As much as I disliked the man, I doubted it. There were practical reasons, such as he wasn’t living in Allport anymore and therefore didn’t have time to run around burning down houses. Of course he could afford to pay someone to do his dirty work, but that would have meant letting others know he was involved in crime. My take on Stan was that if he were willing to commit murder, he wouldn’t have shared that knowledge with anyone.

More importantly, Stan wasn’t the criminal type. Though I believed he would skin a rival on a business deal if he could, he simply didn’t have the subtlety it would take to sneak around buying up the springs. He’d have gone to the owners, bought out those who were willing to sell, and told the rest to go ahead and sue if they didn’t like what he was doing with the water.

Still, Stan was connected somehow. The emails had come from WOZ. On an impulse, I pulled to the side of the road, took out the business card he’d given me, and called his direct line.

“Wozniak.”

“Stan, it’s Barb Evans. Have you got a minute to talk?”

“If it’s about what we discussed last week, I do.”

“It is.” Briefly I told him about the woman from Cold-Clear’s admission they’d been dealing with someone at WOZ.

“Someone here? Who?”

“She’s checking with her people to see if she can get permission to tell me.”

He paused, and I could almost feel that intelligent brain of his vibrating across the distance between us. “Cold-Clear Water, right? We don’t need them to tell us. I’ll find out who’s been e-mailing them in ten minutes’ time.”

He called back in seven. “The email came from an account with Landon’s name on it,” Stan said. “He claims it isn’t his, and he showed me the one he uses. One is [email protected] and the other is landone@woz. He says he uses the first one and didn’t know there was a second.” His voice dropped as he muttered, “I knew the guy was too good to be true.”

I’d been thinking as I drove, and I asked, “Could Gail Sherman have accessed Landon’s email?”

“Sherman?” There was a long pause before he answered. “Gail, um—she was around for a while last month.”

“You were seeing her.”

“Not seriously.”

I didn’t comment. Stan’s romantic relationships were neither serious nor lengthy. “Might she have used Landon’s email account?”

“I don’t see how.”

“But she was at your building more than once?”

“Yes. It was convenient for us to leave from my office.” His voice changed again. “At least that’s what she said at the time.” He seemed unsure what to say next. “Gail—Gail was an attractive woman. When I came north to break Landon in, she dropped in a few times with papers for him to sign. We got to talking, and one thing led to another.” He cleared his throat. “I soon found her company dull, though. She had no conversation.”

I hadn’t heard that Stan required scintillating small talk from his women, but age catches up with all of us, I guess.

Unaware of my judgmental thoughts, he went on. “The four of us, Landon and his wife and Gail and I, went out to dinner once.” He chuckled. “It was a disaster! Landon has no social skills, and his wife is a looker but as dumb as—Well, she’s no ball of fire, either, I can tell you.”

Just when I started to like the man a little, he disappointed me again. “Perhaps she saves her fire for her husband.”

He didn’t get it. “I hope so, because she’d be boring to come home to every night. No wonder En’s always willing to work late.”

I ended the call, irritated by Stan’s double standard where women were concerned. Telling myself there was no way to change men like him, I tried instead to put together the bits of information we’d gathered. There were many possibilities. Using her access to the building, Gail might have invented a second email address for Landon and used it for her own purposes. Stan could have fooled me into believing he wasn’t the type to plot with Gail. It was possible Landon was using the second email and lying about it. Or Gail’s partner was someone else at WOZ, someone we hadn’t yet looked at.

The only clear thing in this case was the water at Sweet Springs.

During one of my rest stops I called Faye, who listened to what I’d learned, asking intelligent questions. Still, I thought she seemed anxious. “What’s wrong, Faye?”

Haltingly she told me that Rory was safe from further harassment. Harold Gager had abruptly quit his job at the Ugly Bar and left town, claiming he never wanted to see Allport again. At mid-morning the mayor’s office had received a call from a chastened but still anonymous woman who claimed the charges against Chief Neuencamp had been a joke. The state police sergeant assigned to the case had called Rory to report a similar call, saying he was certain things would be cleared up quickly.

Relieved but puzzled I asked, “How did this miracle happen?”

There was a long pause. “I guess it was a group effort: Lars, Gabe, Cramer, and Retta.”

Heat rose in my neck. “With Retta as ringleader.”

“I was left out, too, Barb.” Faye sounded both irritated and defensive. “I was at the farm all afternoon yesterday, and Cramer never said a word about his plans for the evening.”

“She wanted to do it without us.”

“But it got done. That’s a good thing, right?”

I stared out the window, hardly noticing the fallen leaves accumulating on my windshield. It was fair. I had plotted behind Retta’s back to get Lars to Michigan, so she’d plotted behind mine to solve Rory’s problem. Having spent my career as a lawyer, I knew how to accept defeat
and
recognize when balance had been achieved. We both should have let the other manage her own affairs. Neither of us had been able to do it.

Realizing Faye was waiting for a response, I made a decision. “If this is the end of the interference, I won’t give Retta grief about it. When she returns from Wisconsin, we’ll just go on.”

I felt her relaxing across the miles. “I think that’s best.”

“I’ll talk to you later.”

Sliding my phone back into its convenient slot in my purse, I returned to the road. To myself I decided one thing, however. Retta would not win the Battle of the Oxford comma.

I’m a sucker for social media, though it sometimes makes me crazy. Despite the drama and comments that reveal a complete lack of understanding of government, society, and religion, there are good things, too, like sites where people share their lives with friends and acquaintances. My oldest son Jimmy lives in North Dakota, and if it weren’t for the internet, I might conclude he fell into a sinkhole somewhere. No letters, few phone calls, and on my birthday, an electronic card, usually with dancing animals. That’s it—unless he needs money, but that’s a whole other story.

I allowed myself ten minutes each morning (which often stretched to twenty) to catch up on which of my sons’ friends had married (or divorced), had babies, and got new jobs. In each case I either clicked
Like
or made a brief comment. People want to know their posts are noticed.

As I scrolled, munching on a cinnamon roll I’d taken out of the oven minutes earlier, it occurred to me that Gail Sherman might have had a Facebook page. I typed her name into the search bar, and plenty of Gail Shermans showed up. However, none of them lived in Allport. I tried Gail T. Sherman, Gail Malone Sherman, and Gail Malone, but that didn’t help. Another possibility was Instagram, so I went there. Sure enough, there was Gail, who was apparently a big fan of selfies. There were pictures of her in front of an array of houses that would “not be on the market long.” I scrolled through, looking for more personal photos. There was a shot of Gail in a group of grinning women. Gail was doing the duck-face, which I’ve never understood, but there’s a lot I don’t get about what people consider attractive.

The photo was captioned
Bizness Girlz Nite Out
. I recognized some of the women, owners or managers of local hair salons, gift shops, and the like. I was about to move on when I noticed one of the names in the caption: Diane Landon. By eliminating the people I knew for sure and guessing at some of the others, I identified the person I thought was Enright Landon’s wife. As Retta said, she was striking, but where Retta saw glamour, I saw what looked like a spoiled Siamese cat. Diane sat off to one side, above mugging for the camera. The word that came to my mind was
sleek
. I guess that word can be used as a compliment, but you won’t hear me using it that way.

The date on the photo was August 8, 2015.

The two women—not together but present in the same group—got me thinking. Diane Landon would know a little about water bottling plants, having worked in one. Retta thought Diane was sweet and a little dumb. I thought Retta liked almost anyone who could converse on hair color and Gucci bags. Checking the time and deciding just slightly after eight was acceptable, I called one of the other women in the picture, Doris Cizninski.

“We go out once a month,” Doris explained when I asked about the photo. “It’s a chance to socialize and gripe about the economy and men—not necessarily in that order. You girls are welcome to join us.”

“Thanks, Doris. You knew Gail Sherman then?”

“Not well.” Her tone hinted she could have said more. I guessed she didn’t due to the not-speaking-ill-of-the-dead rule.

“How about Diane Landon? I saw her in the picture.”

“She only came the one time. All I know about her is that she and her husband moved here recently and he works at WOZ Industries. The wife doesn’t have a job, but I guess someone invited her so she could meet people.”

“Did she and Gail talk?”

“Yeah. They sat at a table off to one side for a long time.” She paused. “I remember thinking somebody should warn the new girl that Gail was likely to—” She stopped herself. “Anyway, they were talking.”

“I don’t suppose you heard any of it.”

Doris chuckled. “Enough to know Gail was bragging, as usual. All about how she was the only heir to some ‘perfect water’—whatever that means.”

I thought I did. Taking the last delicious bite of my roll, I wadded up the napkin and tossed it into the trash. “Is that the only time you met Mrs. Landon?”

She considered that. “Depends on what you mean by that. I ran into her and her husband at a barbeque on Labor Day, but they didn’t see me.” She chuckled. “That was a good thing.”

“Because?”

“They were fighting.”

“About what?”

“I’m not sure. I came along at the end. She was angry about something he’d done, or maybe something he didn’t do, and he was apologizing all over the place.”

That was intriguing. “You didn’t hear what it was about?”

“No. I backed away, like you do when you don’t want people to know you’ve seen their private moment. It’s just that it gave me a whole different impression of Mrs. Landon. Not all sweetness and light, you know?”