Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Chowder met us at the door with his bow tie askew and his attitude firmly in place. He sat in the middle of the foyer and stared at me with the flat, unblinking accusation of a hanging judge.
“I’m sorry,” I told him.
He turned his back and waddled toward the kitchen.
“He’s going to make you pay for leaving him home all day,” Dash said.
“He knows how to hold a grudge.”
The Silver Sleuths had let themselves in with the spare key I’d left under the rock in the back flower bed.
Walt had been at my house since early this morning, the designated organizer of the boxes, while Hank and Dottie and Bea and Deidre had gone about the tasks of interviewing the former board members.
They were seated around the dining room table. Walt had spread papers in orderly stacks that suggested a military briefing was imminent. Deidre had her tote bag open beside her chair. Bea had a glass of something that wasn’t sweet tea.
“James spent the day here going through boxes with me,” Walt said, without looking up from his papers. “He said he wished he could be here, but he already had dinner plans for the evening.”
“Speaking of dinner,” Hank said. “Maybe we could use one of those apps my grandson has and order dinner. It’s really quite convenient.”
“You still have a flip phone,” Bea said. “Even I know you’ve got to have a smart phone for the apps. It’s how I schedule the vet appointments for my cat.”
“How about Chinese,” Dash said, pulling out his phone.
Once everyone agreed that was acceptable and gave Dash their orders, Dottie asked, “So how was your day?”
Chowder chose that moment to appear from wherever he’d been sulking and stationed himself under the table on my feet.
“Very productive,” Dash said, taking the chair across from Bea. “Winston Malone gave us a lot to work with.”
I walked them through the conversation with Winston. The embezzlement. Close to a million dollars missing across different areas of the organization. His visit to Henry’s and his loss of temper.
“Which lines up with what Estelle Pruitt told us,” Dottie said. “She watched the whole thing from her upstairs window.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “It sounded volatile coming from her statement.”
“Winston certainly had access to the money,” Hank said. “He probably had the easiest access. The only person who knows what was said between him and Henry that day is him.”
“You think he’s lying?” I asked.
“My dear, everyone lies when you’re dealing with murder,” he said. “Even little white lies get told without people thinking about it. Everyone wants to paint themselves in the best light. No, Winston can’t be ruled out as a suspect.”
“Who had full financial access to the foundation besides Winston?” Dottie asked. “Who were the people who could actually move money?”
The doorbell rang and Dash got up to greet the delivery driver with our food.
I got up to clear the table and answered, “Winston said besides himself, there was Henry and James. Then also a small executive staff—an operations director, a grants coordinator, and a logistics manager who handled the overseas supply chains.”
“You have names?” Walt asked, moving his papers to the side so I could put plates out from the sideboard.
“Winston didn’t give us names. But James would know them.” I looked at Dash once he came back in with the bags.
“Let me give him a call,” Walt said.
While Walt put his glasses on and dialed the number, Dash handed out cartons of rice and everyone’s orders.
“I got the shrimp,” Hank said. “I can’t have beef anymore. Gets caught in my teeth.”
“Y’all pipe down,” Walt said. “It’s ringing.”
James picked up, and I could hear noise in the background, but I couldn’t tell what it was.
“James,” Walt said. “Can you give us the names of the three executive staff members who had full financial access to the foundation’s accounts. It would have been the operations director, the grants coordinator, and the logistics manager.”
“Catching me just in time,” James said, and his voice had the warmth of a man in good spirits. “Josephine and I are heading to dinner. Hold on. Let me think for a bit.” He paused for a bit and the only sounds were the clank of forks and the cartons being passed around the table.
“Our operations director was a fellow named Gary Sharpe. Nice fellow. We kept him on after we expanded. He left us maybe five years after Henry died. Got a job offer he couldn’t refuse. Not sure where he is now.
“Our grants coordinator was Carol Simms. She just retired a few years ago and still lives in the Charleston area I think. And our logistics manager…I’m trying to remember.
I believe it was Frank Delaney, but don’t hold my feet to the fire on that.
He either left right before Henry died or right after.
He oversaw all the overseas supply chains. ”
Walt wrote down the names, thanked him, and hung up.
“Well, well, well,” Bea said, arching a brow. “James Everett and Josephine Wainwright Hale.”
“They’re old family friends,” Dottie said.
“People who are old friends go to dinner in groups,” Bea said. “Just two people going to dinner is something else entirely.”
“Bea,” Walt said.
“I’m just saying.”
“Lord have mercy, Bea,” Deidre said. “When you get as old as they are everyone in your friend group is mostly dead. They’re all they’ve got left.”
Bea nodded in concession. “Good point.”
No one bothered to mention that most of the people sitting around my dining table were in the same age range as the people they were gossiping about.
We all ate and talked about inconsequential things happening on the island, but Dottie eventually pushed back her plate and reported on her meeting with Edward Fairchild in memory care, and how he hadn’t had any recognition of Henry at all or of the time he’d spent as a board member.
“I’d rather just take a bullet to the brain than end up like that,” Bea said, shaking her head.
No one disagreed with her.
Then she gave her report on Robert Ainsley, leaving out Deidre’s obsession with the man’s roses and her questionable driving abilities.
Then it was my turn to tell them about Jennifer Hollis.
“James called a closed board meeting after Henry died,” I said.
“That’s when they were told about the financial inconsistencies.
She said they were told that evidence pointed at Henry, and it was assumed that was the driving factor behind his suicide.
James asked them to close ranks and protect Henry’s legacy. ”
“And they just went along with it?” Deidre asked.
“Unanimously.” I picked up my tea. “They felt like any scandal would only hurt the organization. She also confirmed the relationship with Jameson’s daughter. She witnessed her sneaking into Henry’s hotel room one night. But she said she didn’t believe that Byron knew about the affair.”
“How can she be so sure of that?” Hank asked.
I shrugged. “She said Byron had a pretty steep temper, and that if he would have known, he’d have killed Henry.
I mean, according to Jennifer, Henry and Byron were pretty good friends.
They’d gone to school together. I can’t imagine Henry sleeping with his twenty-something-year-old daughter would have strengthened the bond. ”
“Happens all the time,” Bea said, waving her hand in dismissal. “Men don’t look at that stuff like women do. It’s in their DNA to look for someone who can breed and continue their line. Men are primal.”
“I hate to admit it, but it’s true,” Deidre said. “Just look at Patrick, dear. He never would have looked for a woman closer to his own age. Once women get into their thirties things start to dry up.”
“Thank you, Deidre,” I said, dryly. “Good thing I’m only thirty-four.”
“Well, you’re not getting any younger, dear,” she said, and then gave a pointed look at Dash.
“Doesn’t anyone care what a man has to say about this?” Walt asked. And Dottie, Bea, and Deidre all said, “No,” simultaneously.
“But Byron’s temper does put a different light on things,” Bea said. “If he found out about the affair he could have killed Henry in the heat of the moment.”
“A staged suicide isn’t exactly the heat of the moment,” Hank said. “That’s premeditated. But I agree. People can go to unimaginable lengths when they’ve been betrayed.”
“I did a search for the daughter after our talk on the phone,” Bea said.
“Serena Jameson is Serena Lovell now. She’s married with three children.
Graduated from Charleston Southern University with a degree in elementary education.
She’s been teaching at a school on Amelia Island in Florida for the last seventeen years. ”
“When did Byron Jameson die?” I asked.
“According to my information,” Bea said. “Six years ago. He never remarried or had any other children.”
“Byron Jameson stays on the list,” Dash said. He looked at me. “And we need to talk to Serena as soon as possible.”
“Before you make that call,” I said, “there’s something from the Noreen Goble interview you need to hear. James and Jackie Henshaw were having an affair. Noreen caught them herself.”
Hank’s eyes narrowed. “James was here all day helping Walt go through boxes and never breathed a word of it when Jackie’s name came up.”
“No,” I said. “He didn’t.”
“Did Henry know?” Dottie asked.
“Noreen said no. But she also said Henry would have been furious if he had. He thought the world of Edie.”
Deidre was quiet a moment. “James and Edie did separate for a time. I assumed it was just one of those rough patches couples go through. They got back together and nobody ever said why.” She looked at me. “I suppose now we know.”
“And Jackie knew about Henry and Serena,” I said. “Noreen confirmed it. She’d figured out early on that Serena’s clinic visits weren’t medical. Kept it to herself.”
Bea turned her wine glass slowly. “Interesting.”
Dash’s phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen. “That’s the lab.” He pushed back from the table and stepped into the hallway.