Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
“I don’t think Mae killed anyone,” Roz said as they buckled up again in her car. She backed out in a hurry and zoomed down Main Street, eyeing the destination she’d already put into her phone. She couldn’t believe one of their own correspondents was now their chief suspect.
“I agree,” said Alden. “I think Mae’s in the clear. But her aunt Enolia had plenty of reasons to be ticked at Wayne.”
“Only if she realized Wayne was a huckster. We’re going to see Sheryl first. I hate to think it, but …”
“She sabotaged the airplane.” Alden’s tone had no trace of his usual humor.
“Maybe she did. I want to find out. I’m hoping she’ll be home.” Sort of. What if she was a killer?
“The thing is, why would she kill Sebastian?”
Roz couldn’t keep the disgust out of her voice. “To help Wayne. So Wayne would inherit the movie studio project and all the money.”
Alden grunted. “True love.”
“Hardly. Misguided infatuation, more like.” Roz reached A1A and turned left.
“Where does she live?” Alden asked.
“Off Lighthouse Road.”
“Fancy.”
“Not one of the waterfront places. In one of the neighborhoods behind it that backs up to the wildlife preserve.” Roz enjoyed the brief elation of soaring over the Star Inlet bridge, marveling at the late afternoon sunlight twinkling on the water.
The sky’s blue had softened, and the clouds held a hint of peach.
They turned at the next light toward the lighthouse at Stargazer Point, past the grand houses that faced the inlet here, most of them with large boats and larger docks.
Roz caught a glimpse of the lighthouse and the sea as they turned south again, then navigated a less exalted neighborhood before parking in front of Sheryl Pugh’s house.
It was definitely nice, though not at McMansion scale. It had that modern Florida look, one story but with a taller peaked roof that suggested high ceilings inside. The outside was a pale peach stucco, and the yard was generous.
That’s where the place stood out. The landscaping took Roz’s breath away: various trees and flowering bushes, crepe myrtle, beds of native wildflowers, and a grapefruit tree laden with big yellow globes, all prettily arranged. A rustic path of flat stones meandered through the half acre.
Sheryl was pruning some rose bushes near her front door, wearing a wide white hat and bright green gardening gloves. She stood as they got out of the car and walked up the twisty walkway.
“Roz! Alden? What are you doing here?” Sheryl smiled and dusted at her faded McKee Gardens T-shirt. “Forgive my mess.”
“No one expects you to dress up for gardening,” Roz said, keeping an eye on the wicked-looking pruners in Sheryl’s hand. “Do you have a minute to talk?”
Sheryl sighed. “Is it about Wayne again?”
“I’m afraid so,” Alden said. He also eyed the pruners as Sheryl tucked them into her gardening belt.
“Why don’t we go around back?” Sheryl beckoned, and they followed her around the house and into a lovely backyard.
There were islands of plantings and more open grass back here.
No swimming pool, always remarkable in a lot of this size in Florida.
A couple of big oaks shaded a weathered brick patio dotted with a few simple metal chairs, an empty fire bowl, a couple of small round tables and a freestanding two-person wooden swing.
Sheryl took off her tool belt and set it on a table. She glanced at the swing as they each took a chair. “Wayne and I used to sit in that and enjoy the evenings out here.”
“You really miss him?” Roz asked.
Sheryl shrugged. “I do. I’ve thought about what you said. What you suggested about him. That he might not have been working that hard on making my movie. I don’t know. Maybe you’re right. But we still had special times, you know?”
Roz gave her a skeptical look. “You’re not upset about him taking your money?”
“If that’s what he did, it’s what he did. It’s water under the bridge now, and I’m not getting it back. And I certainly learned some things.”
She sure did, Roz thought. Painful lessons.
Alden asked the next question. “Did you feel like it was your job to help him make the movie studio a reality?”
Sheryl gave him a puzzled look. “No. He said I was the talent, like other writers he was talking to. He said he learned the hard way that writing was not where his talent lay, so he dedicated himself to bringing great stories to the screen. Building a movie studio is definitely not my department. Why do you ask?”
“Did he tell you about the deal he had with Sebastian Esquivel?”
“The developer? Nicole’s husband? No. What deal?”
“You didn’t know Sebastian was Wayne’s partner in the movie studio?” Roz asked.
Sheryl took off her hat and turned it around in her hands.
Nerves? “I knew they were friendly. Wayne mentioned they were friends one day when he took me to the airport and showed me around so I could get some good details for my script. He showed me a couple of planes he said belonged to Sebastian Esquivel and a mechanic who works out there. I didn’t meet either one of them, though.
He showed me Blake Burbage’s plane, too.
Did you know he and Blake were friends? He knew all the stars. ” Sheryl’s eyes shone with memories.
But she still hadn’t implicated herself in the plane crash. If anything, she seemed oblivious, and Roz didn’t think Sheryl was that good of an actor.
“Did you find out what you needed to crash the airplane in your script?” Alden asked.
Sheryl’s eyes widened. “How did you know about that? Had Wayne told you? He was so helpful. But I didn’t get what I needed at the airport.
I ended up figuring it out online. The bad guy blocks an air filter in a small plane where no one can see it.
Apparently, that’ll do it. Oh, my God! You just crashed in a plane, didn’t you?
” She looked from Roz to Alden and back.
And fortunately ignored her tool belt with the sharp gardening implements.
“Is that why you’re asking? Was the plane—oh no. It wasn’t sabotaged, was it?”
Roz just stared at her. Was she really this clueless?
Sheryl clapped a hand to her mouth. Then she slowly lowered it. “That was Sebastian Esquivel’s plane, wasn’t it? Do you think someone—do you think I tried to crash that plane? You can’t possibly! Please tell me it wasn’t the air filter.” She was getting hysterical.
“Sheryl?” Roz used her most soothing voice. “Sheryl. Calm down, Sheryl.”
“But you think I tried to kill you!” she screeched.
“Actually,” Alden said, “we thought you tried to kill Sebastian.”
Roz gave him a scolding look. But now that it was out there, she turned back to Sheryl. “What do you know about it?”
“I told you, nothing! Wayne was the one who was the expert in airplanes. I mean, he did a lot of research for me. Came up with all kinds of ways to sabotage a plane for my script. I picked the scenario that worked for my plot and found the rest of the details online. He cared about me that much.”
Alden leaned forward and spoke in a low tone that made Sheryl freeze. “Or maybe he went to all that trouble to make it look like you were the one who sabotaged Sebastian’s plane, in case investigators figured out that’s what happened.”
Roz sucked in a breath. A convincing theory. And it would mean Sheryl wasn’t the evil mastermind either.
Sheryl gaped at him. “You think Wayne framed me? But that would mean—” She swallowed, unable to finish the sentence.
“That would mean,” Roz said, looking at Alden, “that Wayne tried to kill Sebastian.”
“But Wayne was murdered before his own murder plot succeeded,” Alden replied. “We really need to know what was on that guy’s laptop.”
“I’ll ask Duke.”
“Of course you will.”
Sheryl interrupted them. “There’s no way Wayne would have done something so nefarious. He wasn’t that evil!”
Roz turned back to her, speaking in her gentle voice again. “He was evil enough to steal your fifty thousand dollars.”
“You don’t know that!”
Sheryl sat there under the weight of their gazes, looking like a trapped bunny rabbit. Then she started crying.
Crap. “I’m sorry,” Roz said.
“He said he was going to help me!” Sheryl sobbed.
“The others, too. I know he was talking to Nicole, but I didn’t realize he had a deal with her husband.
I think the rest of the writers gave him twelve hundred apiece to get a premium listing on some site that he said would put their IP in front of the right people.
That’s how he first helped me. He talked a lot about IP. ”
Roz caught Alden in an eye roll at the jargon for intellectual property. Sheryl, her face in her hands, didn’t notice.
“The police might end up talking to you again,” Roz said. “But I’m glad to hear you weren’t trying to kill anyone.”
“Of course I wasn’t! Who do you think I am?” Sheryl looked up at them, angry now. “I’m a gardener, for goodness’ sake!”
“You have a lot of sharp tools in that belt,” Alden quipped.
Roz was about to glare at him when, to her surprise, Sheryl hiccuped a laugh. Then she sniffled and wiped away a tear. “I still love him, you know.” Her expression turned accusatory. Because it was their fault, after all, that her dream was shattered. “I think you should leave.”
“All right.” Roz stood. If Sheryl was a liar, she was a darn good actress.
Sheryl didn’t say anything as Roz and Alden walked out of her little patch of paradise.
Alden finally spoke as they got into her car. “What do you think? Did Wayne try to kill his partner?”
“I think you’re on to something,” she said, “but I’m not positive. We need more before we can report this. I’m texting Duke.”
“Greeaaat.”
Roz snorted and typed out a text to the deputy asking if he had any information on Wayne’s laptop, including investment schemes and research on bringing down planes, with a promise to tell him what she knew later. And she asked whether he knew if Wayne had a will.
She put down the phone when she was done and started the car. “That was draining, talking to Sheryl. I don’t know how she could still love that guy.”
“Love is blind.”
“Is that what it is?” Roz turned to him.
“Not always. But it’s powerful.” Alden’s heat-filled gaze focused on her, saying so much more than his words.
Am I in love with Alden?
Probably.
Yes.
But saying it would make things so complicated. Would force her to confront the future. She didn’t think she was a scaredy-cat, except when it came to big emotions. She didn’t know how to deal with those. Work, she understood.
He’d already told her he loved her. But now wasn’t the time for her to get into all those sticky feelings. So all she said was, “Can we really rule out Sheryl?”
“Not entirely, but we can see if your buddy Duke finds anything to implicate her.” A corner of his mouth lifted, and the moment passed. “She’s a better suspect than the other writers who only coughed up twelve hundred bucks. That’s a piddly amount.”
“It’s not piddly if you’re starving in your writer’s garret,” Roz said.
“You mean your reporter’s garret?”
“Same thing,” she said as she pulled away from the curb.
“If the other women were anything like Sheryl and Nicole, they weren’t starving,” Alden said. “They were ripe for the picking. When he got them on the hook with the web listing, he led them on and asked for more.”
“The way Sheryl was conned.”
“Maybe not exactly the same way,” he said. “I think she was a con with benefits.”
Roz cringed. “She’s in bad shape. I don’t like making people cry.”
“And if you think that was fun …”
“What?”
“We still don’t know who killed Wayne,” he said. “And we really have to talk to Enolia.”
Right, she thought. Because Nicole saw Enolia yelling at Wayne behind the bookshop.
“You don’t think—” Roz tried to see Enolia as a killer. The ego. The need for prestige.
“I don’t know what to think,” Alden confessed. “But Wayne seemed to inspire strong emotions in people, especially women.”
“Should we get a police escort?”
“Of course not,” Alden scoffed. “The pen is mightier than the sword.”
“Especially if you blow someone up with one.”
“Different kind of pen,” he said.