Rick and Tandy slipped out of the observation room during the game of 3D legal chess, the main participants claiming territory and threatening each other. I was still thinking. “Occam? Was Stella trying to put the original poly marriage back together?”
He slid his eyes to me. They looked greenish in the odd lighting. “Not just the original version. FireWind thinks she wanted a houseful of partners, some new, some old. Check this morning’s summation.”
I frowned and pulled up the summation, scanning it fast. Then I skimmed through the pics of all the injured and dead. They all fell into a similar age range and they were all attractive, single people. “Was she having an affair with Monica Belcher too? And what about Verna Upton, the housekeeper?”
Occam gave a half smile, watching the people on the other side of the window wrap up the interview. “Yes, she was, Nell, sugar. Does that creep you out?”
“Creep me—” I tapped on his shoulder.
He didn’t turn to me, but his smile did widen.
“Occam. Let me be perfectly clear. I am not offended or emotionally distressed about the lifestyle of these people. I may not like looking at photographs of a bed full of naked people, but I am not a prude.”
He laughed. “Oh, Nell, sugar.” Occam’s eyes captured mine, and he put his hands on my shoulders, massaging them with his fingers. The stiff ones felt weaker than the others, but they were warm and my tension slid away. “I don’t think you’re a prude. In fact, I know from very pleasurable personal experience that you are not a prude. But in a lot of ways you are god-awful innocent. You’re still kind and compassionate and virtuous and—” He stopped, as if trying to decide to say the next part. I scowled at him. “And a little naïve,” he finished.
I huffed at him. “I am not naïve.”
“Not about humans, no. But about sex, yes. You are. If this had been a man having sex with all the females, you’d have understood it perfectly. But it’s a woman having sex with all the men and all the women, and that fights against your upbringing.” He leaned and kissed me on the forehead, like he might a child. Without another word, Occam left me alone in the observation room. Which was probably a good thing, because I was irked. Very irked. Maybe even riled. Because I thought I had hidden it so well.
Goode and the grieving Mrs. Merriweather left HQ and I left the observation room.
Back in my cubicle I opened the files Jo had scanned and downloaded to us from the Merriweather financial records and began comparing information. And I found something that inserted a lot of questions into Cadence Merriweather’s sworn interview. But... did my discovery mean that Cadence had successfully lied, perhaps by omission, to Margot Racer?
I stood from my office chair and carried my tablet to the conference room, where FireWind, Rick, Margot, and JoJo were discussing the case. FireWind was standing in the doorway, acup of coffee in his hand, his crisp shirt blinding white in the bright lights. As I walked up the hallway, he stopped in midsentence and turned to me. “Ingram. You have something?”
“Some of the companies that the Merriweathers own are listed solely in Cadence’s name,” I said.
“Of course,” FireWind said. “There can be tax benefits to putting some businesses under one name.”
I said, “Cadence Merriweather owns forty-nine percent of the silk-screen-printing business that handles Stella Mae’s promotional merchandise. Merry Promotions, and by extension, Cadence, made the T-shirts in the box at Melody Horse Farm. She said she ran into Stella Mae at an antiques store. But she’s had a business connection to her for over two years. And the person who owns fifty-one percent? Is a man named Hugo Ames.”
Rick whispered a soft curse. JoJo started pounding on her keyboards.
I said, “Hugo knows Cadence and is blackmailing her. And Hugo knew Stella Mae. But Cadence might not know Hugo was doing business with Stella.”
FireWind asked, “Why didn’t she tell us that? Did she lie by omission?”
Margot said, “No. No way. There was not one single hint of a lie in that woman.”
FireWind started to speak and Margot interrupted. “Not one hint.”
FireWind held up a hand as if to stop a possible tirade. Margot glared at him. “I am not saying you were wrong, Racer. We can’t assume that Cadence knew Merry Promotions’ connection to Stella Mae Ragel’s death, because we haven’t released that information to the press. If her husband set up the business arrangements, she might not even have known she owned the business. It happens. We need a subpoena for Merry Promotions. We need to work this by the book.”
“Or,” I said, “Hugo was blackmailing Cadence about her past life in return for money poured into the business, money Hugo took out. Like money laundering.”
“Hugo is our linchpin,” Rick said, dropping to a chair and pulling his laptop to him. “He knew everyone.”
JoJo muttered, “We told Goode there would be nointerference in her client’s life. We signed papers drawn up by a very expensive, very astute, very unhappy lawyer.”
“But if Luther Merriweather had figured out that his devoted wife was in the process of a legal separation and wanted to point a finger at his bride, what better way than to use her business. I’ll contact Goode,” FireWind said, “and find out if Mrs. Merriweather knew she owned the business that provided promotional merchandise for her lover. And I’ll ask if the blackmail against her client involved money poured into the business. Jones, facilitate subpoenas into the company’s financial records and Hugo’s financial records. The rest of you, gear up. We need to raid Merry Promotions before anyone can destroy any evidence.”
***
As we changed clothes, and checked weapons, ammo, null pens, comms equipment, psy-meters, and vests, JoJo created a timeline on Luther Merriweather’s travel, based on his business credit card expenses. Luther was in Nashville the week the T-shirt box was delivered to the horse farm owned by Stella Mae, and Nashville was only a short drive away. But Luther was a big guy, six feet, two inches, two hundred forty pounds. We had video of the delivery and the person was shorter, stout, and the body mechanics looked female. Luther Merriweather did not deliver anything to Stella Mae’s farm.
However, Hugo Ames, the blackmailer, was smaller, knew about Cadence’s and Stella’s past lives, and he lived close enough to Stella’s to have made the delivery.
Jo also checked into Cadence’s whereabouts that week. Mrs. Merriweather was in Atlanta with two friends from her church, attending a play and a concert and shopping. She flew both ways and spent a fortune. It was possible for her to drive to Tennessee and make a delivery, but it was extremely unlikely.
