Smoked (The Alex Harris Mystery Series) (18 page)

“Deanna, if you have a few minutes I’d like to ask you a few more questions.”

“About Maria? Of course. What do you need to know?”

“No, not Maria. Do you think Nadine could be violent?”

“Nadine?” Deanna looked bewildered and then her eyes grew wide like a thought had just hit her. “Do you think Nadine may have killed Maria over the job? Gosh, I never thought about that and the truth is Nadine never struck me as violent. Pushy, yes. Ambitious. Maybe. But I believe I told you Nadine is lazy. Ambition can only carry you so far. After that you have to put in the work.”

“What did you think of the two of them working together on Maria’s business?”

“Quite frankly, I couldn’t believe Maria would give up her position at the university to start a Web site business, but she saw an opportunity there and went for it. Sunk a ton of money into it. As far as working with Nadine went, there again, that was just Maria using her. I didn’t see it as a long-term partnership. But I see where you’re going with this. If Nadine looked at it that way and felt slighted by Maria once again, well, I have no idea what she would do. Since Nadine moved over to the main building I haven’t spoken to her other than a wave now and then. I’m afraid I can’t speak to her current state of mind.”

A commotion out front caught my attention and a second later Ellery Kravec burst into my office.

“Sorry, Alex, but you have to do something. That Nena Connick just won’t leave my dad alone!”

Millie rushed in and took Ellery into the kitchen while I finished up with Deanna.

“I’m so sorry about that.”

“Was that Ellery? Maria’s daughter?” Deanna asked as she gathered up her things.

“You know her?”

“We met a couple of times when she would stop by to visit her mom. That poor girl.”

I showed Deanna out promising to get the files back to her and then went into the kitchen.

“Ellery, what on earth happened?”

“That stupid woman won’t leave my dad alone. She went over to his shop. Can you believe that? I went over on my lunch today to get a sandwich and talk to my dad and in she came. Caused a big scene until my dad could get her into the back room. Can you do something?”

“Me? Like what?”

“Tell her my dad isn’t interested. Tell her she was nothing but a piece of—. Just tell her to stay away. She’ll listen to you. Because if she shows up again, it’ll be the last thing she does!”

Ellery left and Millie and Sam came into my office.

“Alex, I’m so sorry. She just rushed right by before I even had a chance to get out of my chair.”

“It’s okay, Millie. She’s distraught. Her mother dies, her father’s girlfriend shows up, her dad might be on his way to prison.” I shook my head.

“Well, you need to find the killer before the cops cart him off. What would we do without his turkeys for Thanksgiving and his prime rib at Christmas?”

I wasn’t sure my sister was kidding. She took her food very seriously, but she did have a point. I really needed to get a handle on this entire situation because if I didn’t Ellery and her dad just might be sharing a cell.

A lamp was shining through the living room window of the Corliss home when I drove up. I didn’t see any movement in the living room but maybe they were in the kitchen having dinner. I probably should have considered the hour when I left my office, but I didn’t and now I was here.

As soon as Millie and Sam had left my office I started thinking. I had a lot of really good suspects. They all had good motives—at least to their way of thinking—and I didn’t need to worry about alibis. I couldn’t seem to find any actual proof of anything so I figured maybe I should start by eliminating suspects. Frank Corliss seemed like a good candidate to be moved to the other column on my mental list.

“Ms. Harris. Come on in. I’m sorry but my wife isn’t home right now. She’s working late. Taking as much overtime as she can get.”

“As a matter of fact, it’s you I came to see.”

“I don’t know what else I can tell you. You caught me on that lie, but I promise that’s all I was lying about. I just didn’t want Carol to know I talked to the woman. It would have upset her more and then she might have started to think I actually killed Mrs. Kravec.”

“And did you?”

Frank Corliss looked at me with his pale eyes. “You’re a brave one. You either don’t think I killed her or you’ve got a gun in your purse or a bunch of cops outside waiting.” He walked over to the window and looked out onto the dark street. “I don’t see any cops and you don’t look like a person with a gun.” He sat down on a foot stool and leaned forward, elbows on his knees and fingers laced together.

“I’m not a killer. I don’t think I could ever kill anyone unless they were hurting my kids. So, no, I didn’t kill Maria Kravec. She was just some lady writing a blog trying to round up some controversy to get attention for that
Farmaceuticals
site of hers. It didn’t matter if it was my restaurant or some other schmuck’s.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“I think we’ve gotten to the point in our friendship where you can feel free to ask me anything,” he said with a smile, showing that despite everything, Frank had a sense of humor and the Corliss family would survive.

“Do you think the failure of your restaurant was due solely to Maria’s blog?”

Mr. Corliss ran a hand over the stubble on his chin. “It was Carol’s idea. I’m not blaming her. It sounded like a good plan at the time, having our own business. Building something for our family. I don’t know if it takes a lot of college education or a lot of luck or what, but for whatever reason the stars were not aligned for us. We’re hard working people but what do we know about running a restaurant except my wife is a great cook. It was easy to blame the blog; a good way to save face with our friends, but things never went the way we hoped from the very beginning. Restaurants are a tricky business. Truth is, I’m kind of glad we’re done with it. I was just so darned tired all the time.”

“But your wife told me things were going well, that you got a good review in the paper.”

“We did and for a time people did start coming, but this was after over a year of being in business. And when I say people started coming I’m not talking about a stampede. Sure, business picked up, then it kind of leveled off and then the blogs started going round. I guess we’ll never know for sure if we could have made a go or not, but like I said, it was all so much work. We never had any time for anything not even our kids and I didn’t like that. It’s better now with two regular jobs and Carol is thinking of taking on some catering jobs on the weekend. She really does love to cook and the catering will make her feel like she has her own little business again.”

I thanked Frank Corliss confident I could cross him off my list of suspects for good. I headed home and was surprised and happy to see John’s car in the driveway. I hadn’t given a second thought to dinner but we had the bread and meats and cheese from Sergei’s shop and I had some leftover soup in the freezer I could heat up.

John wrapped his arms around me the minute I walked in the door and then I went upstairs and changed into sweats. I returned to the kitchen where John had set the table with the stuff from Sergei’s shop and two steaming bowls of tortilla soup.

“This is good. I didn’t realize how hungry I was,” I said reaching for a piece of gouda cheese and another chunk of bread.

“Why were you late? Busy at work?” John asked.

I leaned back in my chair and brought my right leg up onto the seat. “I stopped by the Corliss home. Do you want to hear this? I know we agreed to not talk about the case.”

“I’m at a point where a new perspective on things might help,” John sighed.

“You, too, huh? Well, I think you can take Frank and Carol Corliss off the list of suspects. Frank pretty much admitted their restaurant was doomed even before Maria’s blog. They needed someone to blame but they’re both back to work and rebuilding their savings. I just can’t see them killing her.”

“What are your thoughts on Nadine Davis and Ryan Reynolds?”

“Ryan, I haven’t quite figured out yet but Nadine was at the top of my list, though now I’m not so sure.”

John got up and refilled his soup bowl. “Want a little more?” I passed him my bowl. John came back to the table and asked, “What’s giving you hesitation on Nadine?”

“I talked with her yesterday and with Maria dead, she’s re-thinking the whole Web site business. I figured she killed Maria because Maria fired her and refused to give her any part of the business, but now she acts like she really doesn’t care.”

“She may have killed her for that exact reason and then changed her mind. Tell me the truth, does this blog and vegan products thing sound like a sound business opportunity to you?” John asked.

I took a bite of the roast beef sandwich I had put together and thought this over a bit. “No, I guess not and from what Ellery told me Maria used up all her savings on developing new products and buying others and as far as I can tell neither Ryan nor Nadine have any money.”

“So where are they? The products, I mean. There’s nothing on the site except Maria’s blogs and a page saying that the
Farmaceuticals
line is coming soon.

“The stuff arrived. I saw the boxes the other day. Speaking of boxes, what’s that one over on the counter?’

“Ellery dropped it off. Said there were some things from Maria’s home office that you might want to look at.”

“Hmmm. I’ll get to it later.” I turned and looked directly at John and pulled up the leg of my sweats. “Right now there’s something I’d like to show you.”

The following morning the sky was overcast. Winter was over a month away but overnight a cold front must have blown into New England from Quebec. Those darned Canadians. Truth was I loved the cold weather and the ankle boots and bulky sweaters that went along with it.

I didn’t have any meetings this morning so I decided to go for a long walk. I drove over to the water and walked the boardwalk connecting the city’s two main beaches. I do my best thinking while briskly walking but today my mind was a jumble of thoughts. After I managed to build up a sweat despite the chill in the air, I headed home, showered, grabbed the box Ellery had brought by and went to my office after a pit stop at a local bakery where I got enough bear claws for the office and a cup of Earl Grey tea. Despite being a very small town, Indian Cove has an abundance of bakeries and all of them were excellent. I wondered if the town council had built the boardwalk to help counter the effects of all those pastries.

I put the bear claws in the kitchen, and after taking one for myself I retreated to my office. Sam and Marla were busy working on billing statements and Millie was updating our Web site newsletter. After answering a few emails I grabbed the box and put it on top of my desk. On the top was a note from Ellery.
Alex, I haven’t had a chance to look at any of this, but if you have any questions call my cell
. I took a stack of files from the box and flipped through them. Maria had obviously done her research before starting her business. She had clippings from other sites, sketches of Web site designs and tons of stuff about veganism she had printed off the Internet. It was all very interesting but it had nothing to do with her murder as far as I could tell.

I continued to take stuff out until I came to one of those tiny flash drives. I use one at home to back up the stuff I keep on my computer, which mostly consists of pictures I’ve taken and downloaded. I hadn’t updated it in a while and if anyone broke into my house and took my computer, I’d be in big trouble considering all our pictures from Europe were stored there.

I took the flash drive and inserted it into the USB port on my computer. I opened the folder and started to scan through the files. A lot seemed to be electronic copies of the stuff I had just taken out of the box. I continued to scroll down looking at the various sub folders until I came to one titled
Backup of Emails
. I opened it up and found backups for Maria’s business email. The first few I opened were copies of emails I had already found when I logged into her account. There were tons of them and I didn’t relish going through all of them again until a few caught my eye. I opened up the first one and discovered it was an email exchange between Maria and Nadine. I had never found any of these in Maria’s account and thought it odd, but here they were. As I continued to scroll I also found a number of exchanges with Ryan. I went and got another cup of tea and returned to my office.

The first few I read were just normal business stuff but then the tone changed and Maria seemed to be putting Ryan on the spot about why the products they had ordered hadn’t arrived. I moved on a few days and opened up another. From the exchange it seemed Maria and Ryan must have had a verbal confrontation. In the email she told him she wasn’t paying for cheap crap from China and he had better return everything and get their money back and have the quality stuff she had selected ordered and in the office in two weeks.

I sat back in my chair and held the tea in my hands while I thought. Did this mean anything? Ryan had clearly followed her instructions because I saw the boxes the other day. The emails between Maria and Ryan seemed to stop but I opened up a couple from Nadine. In the last one I looked at Nadine told Maria she didn’t know what Ryan was up to, but whatever it was she was sure Maria wouldn’t like any hint of improprieties getting out and if people thought their vegan items were coming from China, a place notorious for cutting corners and using inferior products, that wouldn’t bode well for the business. Nadine further hinted that in exchange for staying on she wouldn’t feel the need to let any of this unsavory business get out, especially with Ryan’s show in the works and the marketing potential from that association so great.

So this was why Maria took Nadine back, or I thought, maybe Nadine was now using this information to make Ryan keep her on. But this didn’t make any sense. The bad products from China had been returned and new stuff had recently arrived. How could Nadine use this to blackmail Ryan? He could just say they had received an incorrect shipment but all had been straightened out. And why would Nadine go to such great lengths to keep her job at the Vegan View if she had hinted to me the other day that she really didn’t care if the venture panned out or not. Of course, she could have recently changed her mind on that once she found out how much work was involved.