Ben Abrams relaxed in one of the flower shop’s overstuffed chairs. In his massive right hand, he cradled a hot mug of coffee from the carafe that Kate had smuggled over from the Cookie House. A platter stacked high with tea sandwiches had been placed on the low table in front of him like an offering.
Oliver stationed himself next to the table, eyeing the plate with interest.
“Don’t even think about it, buddy,” the detective warned him.
Undaunted, Oliver took two steps closer to Ben’s chair and put his snout on the detective’s knee, looking up into his eyes.
Ben scratched the plush, soft hair on the top of the puppy’s head. Then slipped him a sandwich.
“Besides putting a dent in your food bill, does anybody want to tell me what I’m doing here?” the detective asked.
“It’s kind of a long story,” Kate started.
“There’s a pot of coffee and plate full of little sandwiches,” he said, shrugging. “If you keep ’em coming, we’ll call this my dinner break.”
“We know who killed Muriel Hopkins and Stewart Lord,” Maxi said, bouncing in her chair.
“Knowing it’s one thing,” Ben said, reaching for a cheese and pickle sandwich. “Proving it’s another.”
“That’s why it’s such a long story,” Kate said. “It comes with proof. Lots of proof.”
Ben finished off the morsel in two bites, took a slug of coffee, and looked over at the shop’s computer. “You two wouldn’t know anything about a document dump I received on our friend Stewart Lord, would you? Big ZIP file? Anonymous sender?”
“What’s a ZIP file?” Maxi asked innocently.
“Buried poor Kyle Hardy in a mountain of paper. Take the kid ten years to claw his way out. Found a few interesting bits, though. Not that I can share them with you. Since you don’t know anything about it, that is.”
Kate and Maxi exchanged a nervous look.
“OK,” he said, reaching for another sandwich. “You’ve piqued my curiosity. Shoot.”
“The whole thing starts a little over a month ago,” Kate began. “Muriel Hopkins loved Coral Cay. She visited a lot. And she planned to retire here.”
Ben nodded. Oliver looked up at him expectantly.
“As you already know, Muriel worked directly for Stewart Lord,” Kate continued. “She handled a lot of paperwork at Lord Enterprises. She knew Lord was planning to redevelop Coral Cay. She’d watched him in action. She knew that he would lie, cheat, and steal to put his plan in motion. He’d push out the residents and business owners, buy their land for a song, and expand the resort area. Condos. Hotels. Golf courses. Airport for the jet-setters. But the living, breathing Coral Cay? The working small town? Gone. Wiped off the map.”
“And Muriel had fallen in love with Coral Cay,” Maxi said. “It was her happy place.”
Ben reached for two more sandwiches. Thick slices of ham spilled out of one, while the second appeared to be a smoky cheese with mayonnaise. He held out the ham sandwich to Oliver, who took it gently from his hand.
“With you so far,” the detective said.
“So Muriel decided she was going to derail his plans,” Kate said. “From the inside. She searched out reports and records. Proof of what Lord was doing. And the lies he was spreading.”
“He told everyone that Coral Cay was sitting on a giant sinkhole,” Maxi added.
“Is it?” Ben asked, sitting forward suddenly.
“No, that was just a story he wanted to put out there,” Kate said, smiling slightly. “And I’m betting there might also be a little something about it in that mountain of paperwork Kyle’s shoveling through.”
“So how does this circle back to two murders? Not that I mind, as long as you have plenty of these,” he said, waving a sandwich in the air as Oliver followed it with his eyes.
Ben broke off half and slipped it to the puppy.
“She was bugged,” Maxi said. “Muriel.”
“What Muriel didn’t know was that Stewart Lord had installed surveillance software on his employees’ phones,” Kate said. “His executives and executive assistants, from what we’ve been able to learn. The stuff reads emails, listens in on calls, and tracks you in real life.”
“There something in the paper pile about all of that, too?” Ben asked.
Kate shrugged. “Or you could just have your tech guys look at a few of his employees’ cell phones.”
“So Lord knew that Muriel was on to him,” Ben said evenly.
“No, he learned that she was actively working against him,” Kate countered. “To keep him from getting the one thing he wanted most. And he reacted like a toddler when you take away his favorite toy. Pure rage.”
“And you know this how?”
“Muriel and Lord were poisoned with the same drug. A heart medication. Lord was keeping tabs on his workers. He knew who had which medical conditions, and what they took for them. He wanted to get rid of Muriel. And he needed something that wouldn’t trace back to him.”
Ben went quiet. He looked from Kate to Maxi and back again, then nodded.
“I’d be willing to bet you a dozen cookies that someone in Lord’s office lost a full bottle of that medicine shortly before Muriel Hopkins died,” Kate said. “And I’d go double or nothing that the employee in question kept those meds at the office.”
Ben stopped eating, mid-bite. He looked at her hard. “You’re guessing.”
“About that part, yes. But it would be easy for you to prove. Or disprove.”
“The medicine bottle was in a briefcase, as a matter of fact,” Ben said. “But the guy always kept the briefcase open on a table when he was at the office. So what happened next?”
“Stewart Lord put the drug into candy—a little box of chocolates,” Kate said. “It had to be chocolate because that was Muriel’s one weakness—the only indulgence she allowed herself that wasn’t on her diet. The box had to be small—just a couple of pieces—because he had to make sure she ate all of it herself.”
“Because if she shared it and a couple people got sick and no one died, his plan might be discovered,” Maxi added.
“He knew that Muriel was going in early and staying late digging through files,” Kate continued. “So he showed up early and gave her the chocolates. He claimed someone had delivered them for him. Probably told her to throw them out. I’m guessing by the time her co-workers arrived, she’d already eaten them. There were only a few pieces. And a couple of hours later, she was dead.”
“And everyone thought it was her heart,” Maxi said. “Even her doctor.”
“So Stewart Lord’s first murder is a success,” Kate said. “His enemy is gone. His Coral Cay development project is back on track. And no one is any the wiser. I’m guessing by this time the man was just about insufferable.”
“Not the word most folks used, but in the same general ballpark,” Ben said with a wry smile.
“No wonder,” Kate said. “He’d always been an egomaniac. Then he discovered he could literally get away with murder. There was absolutely nothing to hold him in check.”
“Why do I get the feeling there’s a ‘but’ coming?” Ben said as Oliver stretched out sphinxlike at his feet.
Kate smiled. “A few weeks went by and, despite Lord’s best efforts, he can’t get a toehold in Coral Cay. But he’s convinced that if he can snag just one piece of downtown property, they’ll all topple.”
“Like dominoes,” Maxi said, grinning. “Don’t ask.”
“He has two likely candidates. Sam Hepplewhite and Harper Duval. Sam’s been barely breaking even for a long time. And Harp, well, he’s looking at getting rid of his shop for personal reasons.”
“Yeah, I heard about Caroline,” Ben said. “Damn shame.”
“But Harp’s torn about selling. And Lord has seriously underestimated Sam’s tenacity. And his love for the Cookie House.”
“Mi padrino is tough. Like, Cuban tough.”
“Well, Stewart Lord is not a patient person,” Kate said. “And he sets his sights on the bakery. He knows Sam is a proud man who also has a lot of business debts. And medical debts from Cookie. And Lord enjoys a little coercion and shame. That’s in his wheelhouse. He probably figures he can goad Sam into selling. Failing that, he might be able to disrupt business just enough that the bakery goes under. Call in a few favors. Get suppliers to cut off credit. See if he can convince a lender friend to call in a loan or raise the rates. If the bakery went into foreclosure, Lord could pick it up for pennies on the dollar. And a land transaction in downtown Coral Cay means he can get some traction with the phony sinkhole story. A few merchants hear the gossip and want to sell. Nervous bankers hesitate to underwrite the loans. And Lord comes in with his patented combination of lowball offers and ready cash and buys up everything he can get.”
“And as the town started losing businesses and business leaders, the downtown district would get weaker,” says Maxi. “Some people leave town, so businesses fail. Then more people move and more businesses fail.”
“He was creating the perfect storm,” Ben said.
“He was,” Kate agreed. “But he needed one piece of property to kick it all off.”
“The first domino,” Maxi added. “The Cookie House.”
“Stewart Lord broke into the bakery early on that Thursday morning. He picked the lock. Not much of a challenge. He’d been a low-rent criminal back in his native London, all those years ago.”
“How would breaking into the bakery help him buy the bakery?” Ben asked.
“Because he was going to kill the owner,” Kate said.
“But Sam wasn’t there in the middle of the night,” Ben argued. “Sam was at home in bed. Asleep.”
Kate nodded. “But Sam’s rum was there. Everybody knew he kept a bottle under the counter. Lord alluded to it when he swept into the bakery that last morning. So he definitely knew about it.”
“So Lord broke in and dumped the drugs into Sam’s rum?” Ben asked.
“No,” Kate said. “As a former street thug, Lord didn’t want to hang around any longer than necessary. He came prepared. He had his own bottle of rum, purchased earlier that night. Probably dumped out most of it. He wrote off Sam as a drunk. And if a drunk finds a little less in his bottle, he’ll just assume he drank it. No problem. Lord doctored the remaining rum with that heart drug. Then he broke in and switched the bottles.”
“Wait,” Ben said, holding up a burly palm. “Can you prove that?”
“We can,” Kate said evenly. “Sam’s rum of choice is Isla Tropical. They number every batch and bottle. Sam bought his bottle at Causeway Liquors early last month. It’s on his credit card. And I have a copy of his receipt, which has the batch and bottle number. Stewart Lord bought a bottle of the same rum the evening of the break-in. At a liquor store about forty miles north of here. I’ll give you his receipt, too. Lord paid cash. But I have security footage of the sale. The clincher is that after Lord switched the bottles, he kept Sam’s. Like a trophy. It’s in Lord’s personal bathroom at his office. If you check the bottle number, you’ll find it matches the one on Sam’s receipt.”
“What happened to Lord’s bottle?” Ben asked.
“We’ll have to ask Sam. I’m guessing he used what was left and threw the empty bottle out with the trash.”
“The recycling goes out back,” Maxi said. “They come Thursday afternoons.”
“So it was already long gone when we showed up with crime techs the next day,” said Ben, shaking his head.
“If you can track down that bottle, you’ll find it matches the number on Lord’s receipt,” Kate said matter-of-factly. “It should also have traces of the drug that killed Muriel Hopkins and Stewart Lord. And, if we’re really lucky, you might get a couple of Lord’s fingerprints, too.”
“Wait a minute, if Sam drank the poisoned rum, why isn’t he dead?” Ben asked, exasperated. “And what the blazes happened to Stewart Lord?”
“For a guy eating free sandwiches, he’s awful cranky,” Maxi said to Kate.
“We’re getting to that,” Kate said, smiling. “The next morning, Lord stops by the Cookie House to survey his handiwork. Much to his surprise, Sam is perfectly fine. Working in the kitchen. Just like normal. So Lord decides to prime the pump. Make a scene, embarrass Sam. Get him to reach for the bottle.”
“But that didn’t work?” Ben ventured.
Kate shook her head. “By the time Stewart Lord came through the door, Sam had been on his feet baking for ten hours. He was exhausted. He wasn’t up to sparring. He gave Lord a half-dozen cinnamon buns just to make him go away. Rolls that Sam had made for himself. His own special recipe.”
“Sam was planning to eat them on the beach,” Maxi said. “Like a picnic.”
“Just one thing Stewart Lord didn’t know,” Kate said.
“What’s that?” Ben asked, sitting up straight.
“The secret ingredient in those cinnamon buns? It was rum.”