A Branch Too Far (The Leafy Hollow Mysteries Book 3) Read online

  There was no preamble this time.

  “I, Lucy Grenadine Carmichael, declare this to be my last will and testament. I hereby revoke, annul, and cancel all wills and codicils previously made by me…”

  Wilf’s voice droned on. I checked my watch again. Eventually, he got to the good stuff.

  “…other than the codicils noted below, I leave the entirety of my estate to Thérèse Dionne.”

  Several people gasped, myself included.

  Wilf pretended not to notice. He continued by reading out minor bequests—many of them to other book club members. A first edition here, a china set there. Nothing of immense value.

  Sue leaned in with a puzzled expression. “Are you saying that Lucy left everything to… Thérèse?”

  Wilf nodded. “That’s correct, except for the bequests I just read.”

  “Which are worthless.”

  Wilf flinched. “I’m sure those items carry a special significance to the deceased’s friends. They will serve as a fond remembrance…”

  “Yeah, worthless.” Sue slumped back with a snort. “This will be a shock to a few people.”

  “Whatever do you mean?” Wilf demanded. “Are you implying—”

  She held up her hand. “Nothing at all. But that old house is worth a lot of money, isn’t it?”

  On the other side of the room, Harriet cleared her throat. We turned to face her. “It’s an extraordinary example of a Victorian home and is in wonderful condition. It is historically significant as well.”

  Lucy had recounted her home’s long history to me during a book club meeting. I zoned out during most of her exposition, but I remembered something about Loyalists and the American Revolution. The house had been in her family for generations, she said. An official plaque attached to the exterior wall near her front door attested to its significance.

  “Never mind the history lesson,” Sue said with a snort of disgust. “What’s it worth?” She swiveled in her chair to look at Nellie. “Well?”

  The realtor tossed her hair and gave Wilf a questioning glance.

  He shrugged in one of his why-not looks. “Go ahead,” he said.

  “The last time I did an appraisal for Lucy,” Nellie said, “we estimated the house at half a million or more. But that was several years ago.”

  More gasps. Half a million? I mouthed to Emy, whose eyes were wide.

  “And then there’s the contents,” Nellie continued. “Lucy’s family had a number of exceptional antiques, both furniture and artworks.”

  Sue narrowed her eyes. “Lucy had a lot of restoration work done in the past few years. Must have cost plenty.”

  “I can’t comment on that, but the house is in incredible condition,” Nellie said. “Everything in it exceeds the building code, yet Lucy took care to maintain the original structure. She even had the Leafy Hollow Historical Society advise on the restoration. So, really, the entire estate is worth substantially more than half a million.”

  Wilf cleared his throat. “There’s also her investment portfolio.”

  You could have cut the astonishment in that room with a Loyalist butter knife. Lucy Carmichael, who had no visible sign of employment other than phantom bookkeeping gigs, possessed an investment portfolio?

  “How much is that worth?” Sue asked.

  “I believe that’s a matter for her inheritor,” Wilf said firmly. “I can’t comment. It has nothing to do with her neighbors or the book club.”

  Everyone in the room gawked at Thérèse, whose gaze was fixed firmly on the carpet. She raised her head, smiled feebly, and said, “I’m not trying to hide anything, Wilf. You might as well tell them.”

  My eyes swiveled sideways, taking in Emy’s pained expression, but I forced my attention back to the front.

  “Well, if you insist,” Wilf said, “we have a printout here, and the total comes to…” He took a deep breath, scanning the sheet. “Another half-million, give or take a few thousand.” He scanned the paper in his hand, his lips moving silently as if he were checking it one more time, then placed it on the other papers in the portfolio and shut the cover.

  Conscious that my mouth was hanging open, I closed it.

  Thérèse lowered her head into her hands with a soft sob. Emy slid close and flung an arm around her shoulders. I rummaged in my purse for a tissue and handed it over. Emy took it gratefully and gave it to Thérèse, who slipped it under her hand and dabbed at her eyes.

  Sue raised her eyebrows. “Nice haul, eh?”

  I glared at her. “Wow. That’s… insensitive.”

  “Well, I’m sorry,” she huffed. “But that’s a heck of a lot of money.” She looked at Anne and Owen Sage, Lucy’s neighbors, who seemed unable to move. “Wouldn’t you say? I mean, where did it come from? Lucy’s father was a school teacher, and her mother was a housewife. She didn’t get it from them.”

  I sat ramrod straight, staring at Wilf’s desk, trying—and failing—not to picture that flash drive in Rose Cottage.

  Sue flopped back in her chair with a chuckle. “Wow, Thérèse,” she said. “Do you realize this makes you a prime suspect in Lucy’s death?”

  Emy stiffened, but Thérèse didn’t appear to have heard.

  I turned to face Sue. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Relax…” She held up a roughened hand. “I’m just kidding.”

  As I flounced around to face the front, I caught a glimpse of Jeff. His dark eyes were intent on Thérèse and Emy. He seemed to be gauging their reaction to Sue’s outrageous comment. Jeff would have heard the village gossip after Lucy’s death. Up to now, there’d been no reason to think any of it deserved a second hearing.

  That had just changed. Big time.

  “Wait,” I said, anxious to deflect attention from Thérèse. “Lucy had a cousin in Moose Jaw, didn’t she? What about her?”

  “I don’t know anything about a cousin,” Wilf said. “Lucy Carmichael had no relatives that I’m aware of.” He gestured at the will. “She certainly never mentioned any to me when I prepared this will last year.”

  Jeff pushed off from the wall and straightened up. “Speculation is not helpful. So let’s end it now. Thérèse, where were you on Friday morning between the hours of nine and eleven?”

  I recognized that was roughly the elapsed time between my encounter with Lucy at Bertram’s and the discovery of her body below the Peak.

  Everyone faced Thérèse, who continued to stare at the floor, seemingly unaware of the question. Emy shook her arm.

  Thérèse slowly raised her head. “Excuse me?” she asked.

  Jeff repeated his query.

  We waited.

  Thérèse straightened up. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.”

  “Mom,” Emy urged, her eyes wide.

  “I can’t. I’m sorry.” Thérèse weakly waved a hand. “Obviously, I had nothing to do with Lucy’s death. But I can’t tell you where I was.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Emy hustled her dazed mother out of Wilf’s office and down the street to the bakery. I followed, conscious of Jeff’s intense gaze on our departing backs. I hoped he wouldn’t press Thérèse for an alibi. Not yet, anyway. Not until she had her story straight.

  Yet, the very thought that Thérèse Dionne needed an alibi was crazy.

  The minute we walked through the entrance, Emy flipped her Open sign to Closed, locked the door, and pointed to the table in the back. Thérèse and I meekly sat while Emy put her hands on her hips and gawked at her mother.

  “What on earth was that about?” she demanded. “You can’t tell us where you were? This isn’t dinner theater, Mom. Tell Jeff what he wants to know, so he can eliminate you as a suspect and find the real killer.” She narrowed her eyes. “And frankly, I’m a little curious myself.”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Mom, stop.” Emy dropped into the chair beside her. “You’re scaring me.”

  “I’m sorry, sweetie, but I can’t tell you,” Thérèse said. “And
it doesn’t matter, anyway. I didn’t… I couldn’t…” She tapped the silver brooch at her throat and looked away.

  Emy took her mother’s hand. “Just tell me. Then we can explain it to Jeff and put an end to this.”

  Thérèse shook her head and pulled her hand away. “I can’t.”

  Emy slumped back and gave her mother an astonished look. “Are you seriously refusing to—”

  I cleared my throat, and both women turned their attention to me.

  “You’re getting ahead of yourself, Emy. It doesn’t matter where Thérèse was. Lucy may have taken her own life. Which would mean there is no killer. We won’t know for certain until—” I clapped my mouth shut at her warning glance.

  Thérèse looked stricken.“Lucy wouldn’t do that, would she?” She rocked forward with her head in her hands. “It’s my fault. I should have done something.”

  “Mom, don’t say that.” Emy gave a frantic glance to the locked front door. “Especially not when Jeff gets here. Whatever happened—it wasn’t your fault.” She pried her mother’s fingers away from her face. “Are you listening? It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Wasn’t it?” Smiling grimly, Thérèse straightened up, wiped a tear from her cheek, and leaned back. “Remember the house tour, Emy?”

  “Last Christmas—to raise money for the library? Sure.”

  “I tried for years to convince Lucy to take part, and last year she agreed. But she let only two people at a time indoors, and followed them around. ‘Don’t touch anything’ she said, over and over.” Thérèse shook her head. “That was embarrassing enough. But when somebody picked up an antique paperweight to take a closer look…” Her voice trailed off.

  She didn’t have to continue, because we knew the story. Everybody did. Screaming at the top of her lungs, Lucy had shoved everyone out the door—including Thérèse. Then she slammed and locked it, leaving them outdoors in the cold.

  Villagers swear they heard her ranting inside.

  A few minutes later, Lucy flung open the door, marched down the walk, and tugged the “Holiday House Tour” sign from her lawn. “Tour’s over,” she screamed at the crowd milling about on the sidewalk. She flapped the cardboard at them. “Go home.”

  Then she rushed the stragglers, holding her sign like a matador’s sword.

  Even today, you could elicit chuckles from Leafy Hollow villagers simply by uttering the words, “Lucy Carmichael’s house tour.”

  “I don’t see the relevance,” Emy said.

  “Well, it wasn’t normal, was it?” Thérèse entreated. “The way she was acting. I should have known something was wrong. I should have tried to help her.”

  Thérèse’s gloomy expression made me cast about for other explanations. Some of the ideas I came up with were pretty far-fetched. For instance, what if Lucy had changed her will before killing herself, knowing Thérèse would be blamed? Perhaps Lucy had a terminal illness, and decided to punish Thérèse for some imagined slight before she died.

  Perhaps I read too much Agatha Christie.

  Emy’s words jerked me out of my trance.

  “C’mon, Mom. You can’t possibly believe that it’s your fault.”

  If anybody could pry an alibi out of Thérèse, it would be Emy. I was only getting in the way. Plus, I’d promised to delve into the book club accounts.

  I pushed my chair back. “I should go.”

  Neither of them looked up. After unlocking the front door, I slipped out onto the sidewalk. A glance back through the window showed two black heads touching over the table. Emy was holding her mother’s hand.

  Originally, I agreed to a brief probe of Lucy’s death only to reassure Emy and satisfy my own curiosity. I hadn’t intended to do more than poke around Pine Hill Peak and report back.

  The reading of Lucy’s will had changed everything.

  I thought back to the trampled shrubs at the second lookout, the broken fence railings, and Lucy’s professed fear of heights. Something didn’t add up. But until the police faced up to that fact, the only way I could help Thérése was to conduct an enquiry of my own.

  And the most promising lead was sitting on my aunt’s desk at Rose Cottage.

  I inserted the flash drive into my aunt’s laptop, opened her bookkeeping program, and started in on the files Thérèse had given me.

  An hour later, I gave up in confusion. After examining every entry for the past six months, I couldn’t find a single discrepancy. The charity account showed all the money collected in the fundraiser was still in the bank. Yet a check with the bank showed that account was empty.

  If only Thérèse had confronted Lucy with the bounced check when it was still possible to prove Thérèse wasn’t involved. It was too late now, I realized with a sinking feeling as I closed the laptop and slid a finger along its cover. Where did the money go? I longed to find an explanation other than the one that stared me in the face.

  Worse, what if Thérèse did confront Lucy about the loss, and they argued? Could that have led to violence?

  The scrape of my pushed-back chair startled the General awake from his snooze. He gave me an exasperated, one-eyed glare before flopping back down on the sofa. I wanted to join him in a catnap, but my head was pounding and the walls were closing in. Should I sit still and do breathing exercises, or pace the floor? The distraction of pacing won out. At least it would work off a few scone-induced calories.

  But thoughts of scones led to thoughts of Emy, and that led back to her mother and the missing funds. So much for distraction. I headed for the kitchen instead, where I peered into my near-empty fridge with dismay before selecting the only viable option.

  Sucking on my beer while leaning against the counter, I reviewed the facts.

  Someone—probably Lucy—withdrew fifty thousand dollars from the book club’s charity account.

  Thérèse discovered the fraud.

  Lucy died in suspicious circumstances.

  Thérèse benefited from Lucy’s death.

  The setup didn’t look good. No one who knew Thérèse Dionne could suspect her of fraud, never mind murder. But the police weren’t always concerned with a suspect’s reputation, as I knew from experience.

  Lucy’s betrayal might have infuriated Thérèse. How could she explain to the other Originals that she’d given her trust—and their money—to a thief? At minimum, Thérèse would suffer a terminal blow to her reputation. Worse, she might face conspiracy charges.

  Not to mention the serious setback to her favorite charity.

  I made another circuit of the cottage, beer in hand. This time, the General merely opened his good eye to watch my progress, not willing to leave his comfy perch for anything less than a handful of liver treats.

  A new idea brought me up short.

  How well did I know Thérèse? She was Emy’s mother, and Emy was my best friend, but the only personal contact I’d had with Thérèse was asking her to help Lorne. I couldn’t vouch for her ethics, not really. But I could attest to her temper. Thérèse had once chewed me out for a good ten minutes after an unavoidable incident that may, or may not, have involved surveillance of an illicit tryst that turned out to be, well… something else entirely. Not my fault, really. I would have realized our error and ordered a hasty retreat if it hadn’t been for the wet leaves hanging over my face from my camouflage hat. Which had proved to be a completely inadequate defense against local wildlife, by the way. Long story.

  In any event, I winced at my recollection of the language Thérèse had used.

  With a loud sigh, I dropped onto the sofa, shaking the cushions.

  The General uttered an annoyed “Mrack” and jumped onto the floor. He stalked into the kitchen, tail waving, probably checking to see if kibble had appeared while I was pacing. Perhaps he expected Rose Cottage’s imagined tenant, the rumored Loyalist ghost, to top up his bowl.

  “Regardless of what you’ve heard, there’s only one of me,” I called after him. “No twin.”

  With a solid slap t
o my forehead, I sat up straight as realization hit. For heaven’s sake. What a dunce I was.

  Then I bent over with a groan. Was it so hard to remember a swollen eye?

  Gingerly patting my forehead, I assessed my breakthrough. It was obvious, really. Lucy set up two accounts for the book club’s charity—a classic smokescreen, as I knew from my bookkeeping days. She prepared a fake account for Thérèse—with fake transactions—while using the real account to track her own withdrawals. All I had to do was find Lucy’s record of the real account. Then we’d know where the money went. I crossed my fingers. Hopefully it would be on her home computer and not hidden somewhere else. That’s what I would do, if I was embezzling thousands of dollars—hide it elsewhere.

  Wow. It was entirely possible my new life was teaching me things I really shouldn’t know.

  Meanwhile, uncovering the real account would clear Thérèse of fraud allegations because it would prove she didn’t know about Lucy’s deception.

  It wouldn’t clear her of the suspicion that she pushed her friend off Pine Hill Peak, but accomplishing that would have to wait. First, I had to learn more about the mysterious hobby Sue mentioned at the book club meeting. It couldn’t be fraud, since Sue seemed genuinely surprised by the generous amount of Lucy’s legacy. But if not fraud, then what else was Lucy involved in?

  I was back. And this time, carrying bribes.

  “Sue,” I called from the gloom underneath her tree blind. “Are you there?”

  No reply.

  “I have sandwiches,” I called, brandishing a Tim’s paper bag in one hand. A breeze lifted a tendril of hair from my face while a bird twittered overhead. Or maybe that was a squirrel. “And cappuccinos,” I added, holding up a cardboard tray in my other hand.

  The hatch swung open, and Sue’s face appeared.

  “Donuts?”

  “Of course. Maple-glazed.”

  “Come on up.”

  We shared our food and coffee in companionable silence, sitting in the chairs facing the open window. Branches shivered in the breeze, and there was a hint of rain in the air.