Dylan’s eyes widened and he blushed a little. And then he remembered. And the color drained from his face. This hadn’t been what he was expecting. The condolence caught him off guard.
Annabelle hurried to come to the rescue.
“Miss Meredith, is there a place we can go to talk?”
“Of course,” she said, gesturing toward the spiral staircase across the vast library-like room. “We can talk upstairs.”
Annabelle followed her through the stacks of books and couldn’t help scanning the titles of them as she went. A lot of them were classics. Homer’s Iliad, To Kill A Mockingbird, Oliver Twist. A few of them were newer classic-type books, like Robert R. McCammon’s “Boy’s Life.” And then there were the books she’d never heard of but with titles interesting enough that she almost desperately wanted to stop and read their back-cover summaries.
When Meredith led them up the staircase and back to an office at the back of the store, it dawned on Annabelle that the small woman worked at the Lavender Garden.
As if she had read Annabelle’s mind, Virginia turned and offered her an explanatory smile. “I own the store,” she said, somewhat shyly. “Well, actually, I will own it. Some day. In, say, sixty years.” She opened the door and led them inside, gesturing to a few chairs that were around a round table at the center of the room. “Right now, Wells Fargo owns it. I pay them to let me work my butt off here.”
Annabelle and Dylan took seats at the small table and took off their jackets.
When Virginia sat down across from them at the round table, Annabelle got right to the point. “Miss Meredith-”
“Please, call me Ginnie. Or Merry. Either one.” She smiled warmly.
Annabelle blinked. “Okay, Ginnie.”
Ginnie nodded.
“Ginnie, the reason we’re here is…” She glanced at Dylan to make sure he was okay with this. He nodded at her, swallowing audibly.
“Dylan’s father, Max, was also killed recently. And we have reason to believe that his death and Teresa’s death are linked… To Craig’s death.”
This time, it was Ginnie’s turn to blink. Her eyes got very wide. She paled. “Oh my.”
“Obviously, you and Craig knew each other quite well,” Annabelle continued, making certain that her tone was gentle, her voice low.
“We were lovers,” she blurted, her color returning to paint her cheeks pink. She fidgeted in her seat, obviously a little stunned that she’d suddenly out-and-out admitted so much. With wide eyes, she went on to explain. “We were lab partners in school and we spent a lot of time together and…” Her voice trailed off, her cheeks reddening further. “Well… Anyway, we were close.” She looked down at the table, lowering her lids. Her countenance drained away, then, from friendly and jovial to poignant.
“I know how you feel,” Annabelle and Dylan both said at the same time.
They looked at each other. Surprised registered on Dylan’s features.
Ginnie looked up, her gaze sliding from one to the other. Then Annabelle looked away from Dylan and stared down at her hands for a moment before going on. “I’m so sorry, Ginnie, about what happened.”
She shook her head, biting her lip. “I don’t care what they tell me, I can’t believe that he would have been so careless as to leave his gas on and blow himself up. I have never believed it. I never will.”
“That’s what they told you happened?” Dylan asked. He was still stealing glances at Annabelle, obviously wondering what had happened to her that she would know how Virginia Meredith felt. But Annabelle knew that he wouldn’t bother her about it now. She and Dylan had been friends for a long time. He was probably not so much surprised as a little hurt that whatever had happened to her, she hadn’t already shared it with him.
“Yes. They said it was a gas explosion. But, the problem is, he didn’t have a gas stove. He had a gas-assisted fire place. Which he never used. Trust me, I know because I often asked him to light a fire so we could…” She trailed off again and then shrugged. “He didn’t like fire. Was afraid of it. He had a huge scar across his fore-arm from where a Bunsen burner had seared off all of his hair when he was in high school. He didn’t smoke, he never lit candles. Nothing.”
Annabelle nodded, digesting the information. “I believe you, Ginnie.” She took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. Then she leaned forward and looked Meredith straight in the eyes. “The truth is, Craig was murdered. He was murdered because of something that he discovered while he was working for a pharmaceutical company called MediSign. And the Andersons were killed for the same reason.”
Again, Ginnie blinked. If the color had drained from her face the first time, she looked positively ghostly now. “M-…” She stammered, her mouth went slack, she blinked again, and then she tried to speak once more. “Murdered?” Her voice was so soft now, if they hadn’t been alone in a very quiet room, the other two would not have heard her.
Annabelle nodded, once. “Yes.”
“They killed my mother for something on her laptop,” Dylan said. “We think that it was something Craig Brandt gave to her or told her. They killed my dad six years later – the day before yesterday – because he found the laptop.” He stopped and licked his own lips, looking down at the table for a long while before he went on. “Do you have any idea what-”
“Yes.”
Annabelle and Dylan both stared at the small blonde. “What?” they asked, simultaneously.
“Yes,” she repeated, her voice dry but urgent. “I think I know what it was.”
“Are - are you serious?” Annabelle asked, her heart suddenly racing.
“Yes,” she nodded, becoming excited now. “Because he gave me something and told me to hide it and, well, not show it to anyone or tell anyone about it. But, now…” She paused, fidgeting. “Well, he’s dead, and I just know in my heart that I’m supposed to give it to you.” She attempted a smile. It lit up her face.
“You know, in your heart?” Annabelle asked, feeling stupid immediately upon asking the question.
“Yep,” Ginnie said, nodding. “Actually, when you called, I knew it. I get feelings sometimes. And I’m never wrong.” She smiled brightly now; telling them about her superpower made her happy. “Actually, I sense I’m not the only one at this table who gets them sometimes.” She turned her gaze on Annabelle and narrowed it.
Dylan looked from her to Annabelle and back again. He blinked at her and then looked down at the table again and cleared his throat.
The sound seemed to pull Ginnie back to the bleak subject at hand. She straightened and forced her face into a more serious expression. “Tell you what,” she said, leaning forward. “Come see me after the lunch hour and I’ll tell you where it is. I hid it, like he asked. But I can give you a map.” She pushed her chair back and stood up. Annabelle and Dylan followed suit.
“I close down for an hour from twelve to one.” She looked down at her little silver watch. “So, two hours? Come back then?”
Annabelle nodded as they made their way to the door to the office and Ginnie opened it for them, leading the way back out into the store and toward the winding staircase.
“My apartment’s not too far from here. Just a ten minute walk or so. I go home for lunch every day. I love to cook,” she explained, talking to them over her shoulder as they descended the stairs. “In fact, I almost couldn’t decide between opening my own restaurant and opening a bookstore.”
“What happened to the medical stuff?” Annabelle asked, wondering why she’d gone to Columbia if she was going to become a small business owner.
“I had to read so many sucky books in school and eat so many buckets of take-out, it just proved to me that it must not be my thing,” she explained, coming to the first floor and turning to face them as they stepped down. “Craig was always telling me as much. All of those Kung-Pao Chickens and medical journals...” She shook her head and grimaced. They came to the base of the stairs and made their way down one of the stacks of books to the main entrance of the store. “I yearned for real food and real books. So, it was one or the other. Books won out.” She gestured to the store around her.