“Does she really believe none of the people she described would kill her former boss?” Marla asked as soon as they were both inside the SUV, even before she buckled in. “I heard a possible motive in every one of her descriptions.”
“Do you think that was intentional?”
“I didn’t get that impression, but this was our first time meeting her,” Marla said. She thought about that last statement. “It frustrates me that we can’t get all the information we need from just one interview.”
“Is that why you attempted to jump into it immediately with her when you went right to the argument on the court last Saturday?” he asked.
“I saw your reaction. It was brief, and I’m sure she didn’t notice, but I knew you weren’t happy with my question.”
“Your question was fine. It just seemed a little premature. My style is to warm up a little first.”
She laughed. “Really? Could’ve fooled me. You’re Mr. Direct. No beating around the bush with you.”
He didn’t reply. Instead, he focused on his driving.
“Rex? I said that in a friendly way. It wasn’t meant as an insult.”
“Why don’t you call Grace and tell her we’re on our way.”
She apparently had insulted him even though she hadn’t meant to. Should she try to make things right or wait until later? Their arrival at Grace’s house settled that question.
The former owner of Essy lived in a modest bungalow in a quiet neighborhood in West St. Paul. Only a couple of cars were parked on the street at this time of day. The yards were all well-kept. A few houses down, a dog barked at their arrival and strained to escape the fence keeping it safely away from them.
Everything seemed so ordinary. Who’d have thought they were here pursuing a murder investigation?
Grace came to the door immediately. “Come in. I’ve been expecting someone from the police department to show up.” She stared at Marla, her hazel eyes curious. “You’re Marla Dane! You were handing out water at pickleball last Saturday.”
“Ms. Dane and I are consulting with the police on this case,” Rex said. “Anything you would say to them, you can say to us. And vice versa.”
“Mr. Alcorn and I worked with them before because we were familiar with many of the persons of interest in a case. So we were asked to help again with this case.”
“Where can we talk?” Rex asked.
“Would you mind coming to the kitchen? I’ll be more relaxed around the kitchen table.”
They followed her through an archway that led immediately to the kitchen but waited for her to show them where to sit.
“Where do we start?” she asked before they had a chance to take the lead.
“How about telling us how you know the deceased and your relationship with her,” Rex said.
Elbows on the table, she folded her hands and leaned into them. “Tall order because there’s so much. I guess I’ll start at the beginning. I started the company eleven years ago with a small inheritance from my grandfather. I’d been out of college a few years and was making my way up the ladder in a large entertainment representation agency in New York City. In order to claim my inheritance, which was a considerable sum of money, I had to agree to relocate to the Twin Cities and remain at least five years. My grandmother had predeceased my grandfather by a few years, but they had both been disappointed when I left town. Other than coming back and staying for five years, I could do anything I wanted with the money.
“It wasn’t easy leaving my career in New York, which had taken time to establish. At least I didn’t have to say goodbye to someone close to me. I’d been engaged years before, but that didn’t work out. There’d been no one since. I chose to start my own PR firm. That’s what I’d planned to do in college until I got the job working with fledgling actors. I was so inexperienced in that field, I chose to call myself Springboard Concepts, instead of coming right out and using PR in the title. That was my first lesson in PR. I wanted to show potential clients how creative I was. I quickly learned that in order to get those clients in the first place, they had to find you. That didn’t happen with an esoteric title, brilliant as I thought mine was. So I shortened it to its first initials, SC. And that name quickly morphed to Essy.”
She stopped. “That was more than you wanted to know. I’ll move ahead. Despite the name change, Essy grew slowly. I faced a lot of competition here in the Twin Cities area. Companies that had been around much longer, that were larger with established reputations. I only had one advantage: myself. I’m good at what I do. Not only am I creative, but my time in New York introduced me to an entertainment network not all my competitors enjoyed. But it was a constant struggle to stay on top of each client’s needs and still expand the business. I needed an assistant. Enter Eloise.”
“When was that?” Rex asked.
“About nine years ago. Eloise came to me on the recommendation of her husband, Brecken. I’d known him from school years before and ran into him by chance at a local nursery. They’d been unemployed for a few months, and though he didn’t say so, he seemed rather desperate. He briefly described her qualifications, which meshed to a certain degree with what I was seeking. I didn’t do any further recruiting. In retrospect, probably not a good idea.
“She came across as likable, agreeable and very interested in helping me do my job better. Those qualities soon began to fade, although she changed so seamlessly, it was months before I noticed. I was unveiling a client plan and noting the tasks I was assigning her and she simply said, ‘That doesn’t make any sense. I’ll handle the initial presentation instead of you.’ Up until then, she’d say things like, ‘Why don’t I do X instead?’ or ‘Here’s another suggestion.’ But that day she came right out and told me what she would do.”
“How did you react to that?” Marla asked.
“I was so surprised, I went along with her. And wouldn’t you know? She did great. I couldn’t very well turn her down the next time she said she’d take the lead, and that’s how she began to make herself indispensable. Six months later, she asked for a promotion, or should I say, demanded I recognize her efforts. Next, it was a bonus. She’d saved my bacon by remembering a project deadline I’d overlooked. It wasn’t until after I’d sold the business to her that she bragged about intentionally misfiling my reminder notes.
“She’d only been there five years when I had no choice but make her partner. I wanted to expand the business and needed the money she was ready to invest. She seized upon my expansion plans and made them her own, all the time letting clients know who the real brains of the business was. Even with that track record, I wasn’t prepared for her to take over more and more of the leadership and decision-making from me. She claimed she was sparing me from having to deal with the day-to-day details so I could focus my mind on the bigger picture, finding new clients. But every time I thought I had a fresh lead, I discovered she’d gotten there first.”
“And then what happened?” Marla asked, giving the woman a chance to breathe.
“My old clients began making excuses why they couldn’t meet with me. Eventually they outright told me they preferred the service they were receiving from Eloise. When I confronted her about what had been happening, she told me I was the one who was hurting the business and that if I didn’t do something about it soon, we might even lose the business. When I foolishly asked her what exactly that meant, she came right out and told me to sell Essy to her. I laughed at first, but within a few weeks, as my first and favorite client told me she’d rather deal with Eloise, I agreed to discuss the sale. I was lucky Brecken was around to coach me how to negotiate a fair price, or I might have sold too low.”
Her discourse had taken her inside her own thoughts, but now she appeared to realize how long she’d been going on. “That was much more than you asked for. Once I got started, I couldn’t stop.”
“But very helpful,” Rex said. “I never met the victim, and Ms. Dane only met her briefly. You’ve helped us understand how it was that she took over your business.”
“But it’s still not clear to me how it happened without you realizing what was afoot,” Marla said.
Grace nodded. “I get that. It still confounds me how I could be so blind. All I can say is that Eloise was a force like I’d never known. She could be so ingratiating and yet so slippery.”
“Where did she get the funding to buy into a partnership and later to purchase the company?” Marla asked.
“You haven’t heard that part? About five and a half years ago, she won the lottery. She cleared about seven million. Of all people to benefit from one of those sweepstakes, leave it to Eloise. I did my due diligence. My financial advisors assured me she still had most of what she’d won.”
“Did you involve your own accountant, Nell Hampton, in this transaction?”
“Nell and I went way back to almost the beginning of Essy. She intimately knew every detail of the company, and I trusted her judgment. I involved her from the beginning of my decision to sell. I hated having gotten myself in that position and turned to her for advice about how to get out of it. We spent many hours debating the pros and cons of several options, but in the end, neither of us could see my way out. I needed the continued confidence of my clients, and everywhere I turned, she seemed to have taken that away from me.”
“Was the parting amicable?” Marla asked.
Grace sniffed. “What do you think? No, but I kept my cool as best I could. I learned long ago not to burn bridges.”
“Why did you agree to be part of the pickleball team?” Rex asked. “The woman took your business away from you, the business you worked so hard to build.”
“It hasn’t been easy. Besides reminding me in her own subtle way how she’d beaten me at my own game, the PR business, and boasting about how much more successful it now was without me, she has been an unrelenting team captain, constantly telling me what I’d done wrong and how I was hurting the team. But I wanted to maintain contact with my former associates, Nell and Tanner, to get updates on the so-called success she’d been claiming. I dragged my feet reinvesting the proceeds from the sale, hoping someday I could buy it back. Crazy, maybe. But I kept hearing rumors that things weren’t that great.”
“Rumors?” Marla said. “From whom?” Neither Tanner nor Nell had mentioned that the business was suffering. Would they have told the former owner it was?
“I guess it’s okay to talk about it now that she’s gone. Nell obviously is unhappy at being fired, but even before that, she’d complain from time to time about Eloise’s financial decisions. And ever since Chloe came on the scene, Tanner has thought he was being replaced.”
She seemed to stop short of saying more. This from the woman who’d gone on extensively about her relationship with the dead woman.
“Anyone else?” Marla asked, attempting to get Grace to finish out her thought.
“Uh, mostly those two. Occasionally Brecken would say something.”
“Brecken?” Rex asked. “Where was he getting his information? He never worked there and was no longer married to the woman.”
“You’d have to ask him that,” Grace replied, backing away from her previous statement.
“Let’s talk about last Saturday,” Marla said. “We heard there was an argument on the court before play. What was your part in it?”
“I was an onlooker. Even though she was no longer part of Essy, Nell wanted to have it out with Eloise over a recent purchase. I think I heard it was an apartment, although it didn’t make sense to me why Eloise would think she needed one. She has—had a beautiful home in St. Paul.”
“You didn’t get involved, express your opinion?”
“No, that was the last thing I wanted to do, get into it with Eloise. But I did want to learn more about why Nell was fired. Since the two of us are no longer with Essy, I thought maybe we could partner up on another project. It was just an idea at the time but enough to make me stay close on the sidelines.”
“And afterwards? Were you able to make contact with Ms. Hampton?”
“No. She took off right after the match, and we haven’t had a chance to talk since then. And now with Eloise’s death, things are different.”
Marla couldn’t resist the opening. “Different? How?”
“Neither of us cared much for Eloise. But we never wanted or expected her life to end like it did. Being murdered. My brain hasn’t really grasped the horror of it all. If Essy continues, who will lead it? One or both of us may have a chance to go back. But so much is still up in the air. Eloise’s killer has to be found. And no one seems to know the terms of her will.”
“Who do you suspect killed her?” Rex asked, returning to the key question.
“I didn’t, if that’s what you’re asking. Nor do I think Nell or Brecken did. I can’t say about Tanner or Chloe. And I don’t know Liz that well.”
“That said, is there anything else you can tell us that relates to the murder?” Marla asked.
Grace studied a fingernail a few beats.
“Ms. Adamson?” Marla prompted. “Is there something else you’d like to share?”
“I don’t know if it’s pertinent to your investigation, and I’d hate to get anyone in trouble needlessly.”
“Let us judge how pertinent it is,” Rex said.
“It’s about Chloe Reardon. If you haven’t looked into her background, I hope you would consider doing so. I still don’t understand why Eloise hired her.”
“Thank you. Can you share an example of your thinking?”
Grace took a moment to consider. “I was gone by the time she was hired, but both Tanner and Nell were surprised and skeptical when she first came on board. There’d been no formal recruitment or hiring process, although I guess she’d already worked for Eloise as an intern. When Nell told Eloise there was no budget for new staff, she was told to rearrange proposed expenditures and make it happen.”
Marla wasn’t tracking. Why would Chloe’s background or how she was hired make her a killer? “Aside from how she was hired, do you have any other concerns about Chloe Reardon?” she asked.
“Everything I’ve heard about her from Nell and Tanner suggests unbridled ambition that would hesitate at nothing to get ahead. As the one who’s been betrayed by Eloise in the past, I’d say she deserved whatever she got from Chloe. Anything short of murder.”
“Thanks,” Rex told her. He offered her his card and asked her to get in touch if anything else occurred to her.
They left right after that.
Rex shook his head as they drove off. “What did you think about Grace’s suggestion we look deeper into Chloe’s background?”
“I’m not sure. It could be she was trying to deflect our investigation off herself and her friends by steering us toward Chloe. Or as a third party, she may have heard things about Chloe from her friends that concerned her. She struck me as pretty levelheaded, even though Eloise Wallace managed to steal her company from her.”
“She didn’t have to warn me about Chloe,” Rex replied. “After you left last night, I checked out that flick you mentioned yesterday. All About Eve? I found an article describing how the film depicts the classic trope of the younger actress seeking to replace the older actress. We definitely have to give her a closer look.”