The Azalea Assault (19 page)

“Camera. Film. Very well. And you’re here all day?”

“In and out, yes.”

“You know you must avoid the servant’s house?”

“Of course. It’s where the murder was.”

“And the break-in. Somebody broke in this morning and turned it over looking for something.”

“The police weren’t guarding it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe just one in front. It looked like whoever broke in went in a window. Coffee?”

“Please!” She gave Giselle a thankful smile, and Giselle winked and crooked her finger for Cam to follow. Cam was rewarded with an extralarge mug.

“Thank you. I need this.”

“I heard you were all here very late. The Patricks asked not to be woken until nine.” Cam noted the French accent was back.

“Then I’ll be extra quiet. Say, Giselle…” A question had just formed in Cam’s mind, sparked by Giselle’s comment on the Patricks’ plan to sleep in. “The morning Jean-Jacques died, Annie picked up a pan. Do you remember?”

“Yes.” She frowned slightly.

“She thought you looked happy it was her. Is that true?”

“I suppose. I was relieved it wasn’t Jean-Jacques back again, upsetting everyone. At the time I didn’t know he actually
did
come back again—just not to the door.”

“He came here… to the door?”

“Well, yes. He asked to speak to Mrs. Patrick, claimed he was expected. Mr. Patrick heard that and flew into a rage. He yelled something about not borrowing money from his wife and that he should feel lucky he had the job after the way he’d behaved. Mr. Patrick asked him to leave, and I saw him drive off.”

“Wow. That’s some morning. Do the police know all that?”

“Well, yes, or most of it. I answered all their questions.”

Cam tried to look sympathetic, then thanked Giselle for watching out for the camera.

Cam began in the parlor, searching more carefully now that all the party guests were gone. She wondered how she’d not heard about Mr. Patrick’s angry encounter with Jean-Jacques before now.

For the time being, however, she had moved on to Ian’s murder. What she really wanted to know, though she suspected she wouldn’t find out until she talked to Jake, was Ian’s cause of death. She didn’t think brownies had anything to do with it, since the Patricks had announced that Barney’s reaction was nothing more than chocolate’s natural toxicity to dogs.

When she was confident the parlor held nothing interesting, she decided to check with the police officer who was still assessing the murder scene in the servant’s house, in hopes she could convince him to share something.

“M
iss? You shouldn’t be here,” he said as she approached.

“Sorry. I was here last night. I just wondered.”

“You’ll need to stay out.”

She tried a few more times to just talk to him, but it was useless. So much for that, she thought, glaring at the unfriendly officer.

“Fine. Where did Tom and Hannah go?”

“A hotel, maybe? At least until all our evidence is collected.”

Cam nodded, irritated that none of her leads was panning out, but reluctantly admitting to herself that if any evidence had been in the little house, it had probably been taken anyway.

After the previous day’s rain, the morning air felt thick, even though the temperature wasn’t too warm. It was perfect flower weather, primed to bring about happy blooms.

She yawned and began to pace the garden, hoping for a little peace, since she obviously wasn’t going to get any answers just yet.

She wandered for about ten minutes before she found Henry Larsson. He was replacing a rosebush that had only a single leaf with blight.

He looked up and saw her frowning, then looked back to his rosebush with pride.

“Spreads like wildfire if you let it.”

Normally, Henry was too reserved to invite conversation, so Cam was surprised when he spoke. In fact, this was only Cam’s second direct conversation with him, but she welcomed it.

“Oh, I know—worst thing for a rose garden ever. I’m just impressed, in this huge garden, you caught it so fast.”

He chuckled. “I suppose that’s what they pay me for.”

“Roses were my mother’s specialty. Do you remember my mother?” It was a hunch, but Roanoke was only so big. Her mother had been a gardening enthusiast, too, before the Garden Society existed.

He nodded, smiling. “Lovely woman. She shared one of her specially bred plants with me. It’s a hybrid-tea variety, similar to the Voodoo, but with more defined veins of coral through the yellow—it’s lovely. She called it a Campet. Now I’ve got four of them at home. Another pair and I may share with Neil, but don’t get his hopes up. I’m awfully attached.”

Cam knew the breed—her mother had actually helped a botanist create it. She’d called it Campet for Camellia and Petunia—it was gorgeous, and her mother had been very proud of her success. Cam smiled at the memory.

She hoped this earned her a little insider credit, but then she had a disturbing thought. “You don’t know about what happened here last night, do you?”

“I know there’s something going on. I saw the police car up at the guesthouse. I make it my business not to snoop, though.”

“A man was killed last night.”

“Another one?” He looked thoroughly startled.

Cam nodded. “And last time… You remember when I asked you about the jasmine? Well, I found the victim’s cell phone in the bushes. Would you mind just keeping an extra watch? And anything you find—that looks off, could you just let the police know?”

“Well of course. Was that the mangled jasmine bush?”

She nodded. “The first guy, the photographer, must have
died in it—the girl who identified him said he smelled of it—that’s why I asked you about it.”

Henry nodded, then went back to trimming, and Cam figured he preferred to be left alone.

Cam wandered a bit longer but finally turned in the direction of the house. The camera crew would be arriving soon. They’d agreed there were only two or three hours left to finish the project, so they should plow ahead in spite of everything. The weather looked as though it might cooperate for an hour or two in the event they had any outside shots left to take.

As she neared the house, she saw a familiar face.

“Jake!” She couldn’t tell if she was glad to see him or just shocked, but decided to go with glad, as it would be more productive.

He looked uncomfortable. “Um… Hi, Cam.”

“So, can you tell me anything?”

“Not really. It’s still under investigation.” He scuffled his feet and wouldn’t meet her eye, but she attributed his demeanor to the situation with Annie.

“Look, Annie’s heard that was your sister.”

“Listen, Cam, we’re swamped. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“I’m going to hold you to that,” she said. She was annoyed that he’d blown her off, but more than that, she could tell there was something he didn’t want to tell her. She doubted that was good news.

Then Cam spotted something. One part of her mission had just walked out of the servant’s house in the hands of a woman in a protective suit, or rather, it was carried out in a large ziplock bag.

Annie’s camera had been found at the scene of the crime. And if Cam wasn’t mistaken—though she hoped she was—it appeared to have dried blood on it.

Cam closed her eyes and tried not to think about it as she went inside the main house. She sank onto a sofa, hands over her face.

F
inally the staff for the shoot began to arrive, Jane Duffy first, delivered by Cam’s father, then the photo crew from
Garden Delights
, then a few members of the Garden Society, and finally Annie, cutting it close, but making the official start time.

Unfortunately, as soon as Annie appeared, Jake descended upon her and began reading her her rights. Cam started to hyperventilate; she couldn’t believe Annie was being arrested. She could barely concentrate but managed to hold it together, designating alternate tasks to get the
Garden Delights
crew out of the way.

Cam felt torn in a thousand directions. She argued with anyone who would listen. Annie could not have done this. What she understood from the responses she got, though it was clear there was a lot she wasn’t grasping or being told, was that Ian had been bludgeoned with Annie’s camera.

She sank back into the chair and absorbed very little else for a while.

“M
iss?”

Giselle brought Cam out of her daze. “Yes?”

“You said something about a lost camera and film. I think you meant a good camera, but Miss Hannah, the gal who was staying in the servant’s house, said she found a camera in a corner of greenhouse one.”

“‘Winter’?”

“Yes, ma’am. I just thought to ask her when I saw her this morning, and she gave it to me. She said she found it yesterday and put it in her duffel and forgot.”

Giselle held the strap of a small point-and-shoot—a lower-end digital camera. Cam stared, wide-eyed for a moment, then thanked Giselle and took a bit of the strap. She didn’t have a ziplock bag like the cops used, but she did have a plastic grocery bag she carried for those odd
occasions a person needed a receptacle for their garbage, so she dropped the camera in. Giselle scurried away. Cam was sure it wasn’t Annie’s, but it might be useful in any case.

The policemen with Jake had taken Annie around front to the police cars, where Annie now sat as they made their reports and calls. Jake was still at the servant’s house, looking at what Cam imagined was evidence with his forensics team. Cam approached, holding the bag by just the tips of her fingers.

“Jake?”

He turned, surprised. “Hi, Cam.” Not exactly enthusiastic, but he sounded at least a little warmer than he had earlier. She supposed now that Annie’s arrest was behind him, there were no more avalanches to set off, so he was less afraid to talk to her.

“Giselle found a camera. She was looking for Annie’s camera, and this obviously isn’t it, but I thought it might be important.”

“Annie’s camera isn’t lost. It was used to bash in the head of Ian Ellsworth.”

“Fine. You’ll excuse me if I don’t believe that means Annie did it. Do you want this or not?”

“Yeah. Give it to Doug. He’s the guy—”

“I can figure out who to give it to. I just thought maybe you gave a damn.” She stomped away without letting him respond.

C
am was annoyed, and not in the mood to cooperate if nobody was going to listen. She walked around front to where Annie waited in the police car.

“Annie, you want me to make sure your stuff gets to your house?”

“Please, the cameras especially. I don’t want them all lying around.”

“It’s all evidence, ma’am,” said the officer guarding Annie.

“No, it’s not,” Cam argued. “For starters, Annie didn’t do this, but besides that, only the one camera was involved.”

“And the poisoning.”

“There was no poisoning. Take a brownie sample if you want proof, but just for the record, nobody got sick except the dog, who was reacting to the chocolate, not poison, and Joseph, who may have come last night with a bug already. If it was poison, all of us would have gotten sick.”

The officer looked uncomfortable.

“Cam. It’s okay. My purse is in the den with the photography stuff. Why don’t you bring it out for the officer?”

Annie communicated without words. Cam was to take what she needed and bring the rest.

What Cam
needed,
at least if she was going to make any progress investigating what really happened, was a car.

So Cam retrieved Annie’s purse, making sure there was nothing too embarrassing in it, and extracted the keys. Then she brought the camera equipment in three trips, carefully documenting each scratch and ding out loud as she set things down and noting them on a pad of paper, so the officer would be worried about damaging the state-of-the-art equipment.

The officer finally left with Annie, shooting a nervous look behind him. Cam followed only a minute later, toting the camera from the greenhouse. She’d changed her mind about turning it over right away, as police competence seemed to be low. She headed for home in Annie’s Bug.

She got as far as her kitchen table, retrieved a pair of disposable gloves she’d swiped from Jake two days before, and began to look at the pictures.

She gasped.

Almost all of the shots were of Evangeline, wearing not very much.

She shoved the camera back into the plastic bag and then rushed back to La Fontaine. She’d changed her mind—Doug was definitely the best person to take the camera into custody—she wanted nothing to do with it. She was just glad she’d known enough to wear the surgical gloves she’d lifted from Jake.

The hardest part was sneaking back in the house with it, but she managed.

“T
here you are, sunshine! They said you were here, but I couldn’t find you!” Nelson Harris greeted Cam warmly, his eyes reflecting his concern. She’d found him chatting amicably with Henry Larsson.

“Daddy!” Cam hugged her father, and he held her close. Henry excused himself with a nod.

“What’s all this nonsense about Annie?” he asked after a moment.

“They think she’s the murderer!”

“Annie? Our Annie?”

“They arrested her. Look—can we go? Just… go?”

“Of course we can. Let’s go to your place. We can have some coffee and talk.”

Cam nodded and told Samantha they were leaving; her father told Jane Duffy the same.

On her way back out with her father, she turned over the bag with the camera to Officer Doug, telling him everything as it had happened, except, of course, her detour to see what the pictures were of, then they left, her father in his car, Cam in Annie’s.

C
am didn’t say anything as she made coffee and got out bagels. Her father arrived ten minutes later with a bag of Krispy Kremes and pushed the bagels aside, opting instead for a fruit-filled delicacy that coated his lips with powdered sugar.

“So how do you think this happened?” he asked as she set his coffee next to him.

“Someone hit Ian with Annie’s camera, but I think the idea that Annie’s the murderer was planted by Ian himself—this crowbar accusation.”