“So what are you doing here on a Wednesday night all by yourself?” he asked with that pretty-boy smile. “Not that I’m complaining.”
“I wanted to ask you a question,” I said.
“If you’re asking for my phone number or a piece of my heart you can have both,” he said, pressing one hand to his chest.
His flirting was so obvious I laughed in spite of myself. Zach could be charming in a clueless-little-boy way.
“You saw the altercation between Lewis Wallace and my friend,” I said. “The other night when I was here you said something about karma catching up with Wallace. What did you mean?”
At first he didn’t say anything. I waited, knowing most people didn’t like the silence and would end up saying something to fill it.
“Aww, what the hell. I guess there’s no point in keeping it a secret now. I’ve already told the cops. Wallace was about to be investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. I had copies of a lot of the paperwork from my grandfather’s business. I gave them pretty much everything, and that, along with a bunch of other stuff, was pretty much going to put Wallace out of business and behind bars in an orange jumpsuit.”
“Redmond Signs was your grandfather’s business,” I said. “In Red Wing.”
He nodded. “Yeah, Wallace and his buddies put it out of business.”
“Why were you at the hotel the night he died?”
He looked away. I was afraid he was going to walk away as well. I put a hand on his arm to keep him there and waited.
“I went because I wanted to gloat that he was going to be brought down,” he finally said. “But I didn’t talk to him.”
I frowned. “What do you mean? He wasn’t there?”
Zach shook his head. “Oh, he was there. He was standing in one of the hallways arguing with someone. I couldn’t see who it was and I didn’t hear the other person talk.” He’d been looking down but now he met my gaze head-on. “I didn’t kill him if that’s what you think. I left then. I realized how stupid what I’d been going to do was. He was alive when I left and I have an alibi for after that.” He cleared his throat. “There’s this girl I’ve seen a few times. I was with her.” His eyes flicked away for a moment and then came back. “At church. She volunteers overnight a couple of times a month at the shelter they run.”
Church. Zach had been at church. That alibi was just far-fetched enough to be true.
I spent a few minutes at lunchtime on the computer trying to track down Lewis Wallace’s ex-wife, Julie Kendall. I didn’t have much luck. I had no idea if she was still in the Montreal area or somewhere else in Canada. I wasn’t even sure what last name she was using. For all I knew she could have remarried. There had to be a better way of finding her.
Mary walked by my door carrying a stapler. An idea began to spin in my mind. I shut off the computer and went downstairs.
I found Mary at the front desk stapling a report for a slightly panicked teenage boy. “There,” she said. “Next time don’t leave things until the last minute.”
“Yes, Mrs. Lowe,” the boy said. Then he jammed the paper in his backpack and headed for the door.
Mary shook her head and turned to me. “I’m trying not to think about the fact that someday that child will be running the world.” She smiled. “What can I do for you?”
“I have a proposition for Bridget.”
“And you want me to put in a good word for you?”
“I was actually hoping you’d get her on the phone so I wouldn’t have to go through her assistant.”
I waited for Mary to ask what my proposition was, but she didn’t. Instead she reached for the phone. “Hi, kiddo,” she said when Bridget answered. “I’m with Kathleen and she has a proposal for you. I think you should listen to her.” She handed me the phone.
“Hello, Bridget,” I said.
“Hi, Kathleen,” she replied. “Mom says you want to talk to me about something?”
I braced one hand against the counter. “I do. I know you must be digging into Lewis Wallace’s background. Did you know he had an ex-wife?”
“No, I didn’t,” she said.
I’d been counting on that. The Mayville Heights Chronicle may have been an award-winning newspaper but like most papers these days it had to do more with less. Without Burtis’s magazines I wouldn’t have known Julie Kendall’s name.
“How would you like her name along with the name of the last city I can confirm she lived in?”
“What’s in it for you?” Like her mother, Bridget was direct.
“I know you have a source connected with the police department, so I know you’ll be able to get this information eventually. I’m giving you a way to get it now. In return, all I want is the woman’s contact information. You have sources I don’t. You can find her a lot faster than I can.”
“What’s her name?”
“We have a deal?” I asked.
“We have a deal,” Bridget said.
I gave her Julie Kendall’s name and my cell number.
“I’ll be in touch,” she said.
I ended the call and handed the phone back to Mary.
“Does Marcus know about this?” she said. “Or is this don’t ask, don’t tell?”
“If he asks, I’ll tell,” I said. I was really hoping he didn’t ask.
The text came at four thirty. Just a phone number. Since I was still at work I decided to wait until after supper to call it.
I stopped at the St. James on my way home. Melanie had called. The chef had made a test batch of Eric’s maple cookies. She wanted me to try one before she called Patricia. It had been the kind of day that would benefit from having a cookie or two added to it, so I said yes.
Eric’s maple leaf cookies had turned out perfectly—thin and crisp but not crumbly and with just a hint of maple sweetness.
“These are delicious,” I said.
“According to the chef, it’s the recipe,” Melanie said. “Please thank Eric again.”
I nodded. “I will.” I picked up my bag and was about to leave, but something made me stop. Some instinct, maybe?
“You helped him cheat,” I blurted.
“I already told you,” she said, a tinge of annoyance in her voice. “I didn’t have anything to do with stealing those tests.” Her shoulders were rigid.
“I believe you,” I said. “But you did help Wallace get his marks up, and it wasn’t by tutoring him.”
Silence hung between us like smoke in the air. I didn’t need her confirmation. The look on her face was enough.
She put both hands flat on the top of her desk as though bracing herself for whatever was coming. “What I told you before about not wanting to jeopardize my chances of moving up in this business by having that old scandal come up was true.”
I nodded but didn’t say anything.
“There was a lot more to it. I didn’t help Lew steal those tests. That’s the truth. And I didn’t know for a long time that he had.”
“But you did help him cheat in some way, didn’t you?” I said.
“Yes. I did his assignments. Not perfectly, mind you; no one would have believed that. I just did them well enough to get his class average up.” She slid her right hand over the desktop as though she was feeling for blemishes on the wooden surface.
“And the university suspected.”
She nodded. “Suspected but never proved. I needed the money, Kathleen. It sounds like an excuse because, well, it is. And it’s the biggest mistake I ever made. I should have gotten a job waiting tables or selling my blood. Anything would have been better. That one mistake has been following me around for twenty years.”
I studied her across the desk. Nothing in her body language or her tone suggested she was being anything less than one hundred percent truthful. “Was it just chance that Wallace decided to approach the town about setting up his business? Or was it because you were here?”