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This book is copyright © Olivia Stowe 2011
First published by Cyberworld Publishing in 2011
Published by Cyberworld Publishing at Smashwords
Cover design by S Bush © 2011
Cover photo - © Harold Riddle | Dreamstime.com
E-book ISBN: 978-1-921879-77-7
Print ISBN: 978-1-921879-78-4
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All characters in this book are the product of the author’s imagination and no resemblance to real people, or implication of events occurring in actual places, is intended.
Other Books by Olivia Stowe
The Charlotte Diamond mystery series
By The Howling
Retired with Prejudice
Coast to Coast
An Inconvenient Death
What’s The Point?
The Savannah Series
Chatham Square
Savannah Time
Olivia’s Inspirational Christmas collections
Christmas Seconds (2011)
Spirit of Christmas (2010)
Other
Fiddler’s Rest
§
What’s The Point?
Charlotte Diamond Mysteries Five
by Olivia Stowe
§
Chapter One: Journey Back into Chaos
All of the instincts of retired FBI senior investigator, Charlotte Diamond, started to jangle as she gazed out across the swirling departure gate crowd at Amsterdam’s Schiphol international airport and her eyes settled on the figure of the young man lurking behind a column. What had arrested her attention was not so much what he was looking at but what he wasn’t looking at. What he wasn’t looking at was her very intimate friend, Brenda Boynton—known by most of those gawking at her as the top box-office movie star Brenda Brandon. Presently the silver-haired beauty, possibly more gorgeous in her late forties than she had been in her thirties, was struggling beside Charlotte, trying to gain control of the various boxes and bags she had accumulated in the duty-free stores. As she was doing so, she was attracting the surprised recognition and admiring attention of all of the men in the waiting area—except that one young man snuggling behind the column—and many of the women as well. The whole crowd had been set in motion by the announcement that the first class passenger boarding for the KLM flight from Schiphol to Baltimore’s BWI airport could now commence.
From many years of experience, Charlotte’s eyes traced to the focus of the young man’s attention. A distinguished-looking older man, with a younger, blonde woman on his arm, had reached the gate, obviously ready to board. As Charlotte watched, the older man turned toward his companion, leaned his head down, and they kissed. The young woman then remained standing where she was as the older man handed over his ticket to the attendant at the gate. At the entrance into the tunnel to the plane, he turned, and the young woman blew him a kiss.
Charlotte looked back at the young man standing behind the pillar and could see that he was intently watching all of this.
“Are you coming, Charlotte? They’ve called our flight.”
Charlotte’s attention was taken away from the brief exercise of her detective instincts, during which a dozen scenarios were going through her head, by the rich contralto voice of the woman she so deeply loved. Charlotte was no different from millions of theatergoers. All Brenda had to do was speak something in that gorgeous voice of hers, tilt her silver-blonde-encased head slightly to one side, and smile that shy, disarming smile of hers and Charlotte melted.
“Umm, sorry, I was daydreaming,” Charlotte said as she hefted her lumpy bulk out of the departure-lounge seat and stretched a good distance toward the ceiling, knowing that, first class or no first class, she’d feel cramped on the air journey home.
“Oh, so you weren’t watching that young man watching the May-to-December couple?”
“You’ve been with me too long,” Charlotte said, with a laugh.
“Never too long,” Brenda answered, looking levelly at her companion. “Almost too late, but never too long.” It was delivered like a classic line from an old wartime movie, and it made Charlotte glow and feel like she was the luckiest woman in the world.
Charlotte felt the inhibiting presence of several hundred people waiting to get on the Airbus A330-200. There was nothing she wanted to do at this moment so much as take Brenda in her arms and show her appreciation for the two having found each other.
“Wouldn’t that just make the evening news,” Charlotte muttered, grabbing for her carry-on bag to avoid the unnerving temptation to reach for something else.
“Beg pardon?” Brenda asked.
“Just that you’re right. I was watching that young man. And look, there’s what I expected to see.”
The young woman who had just kissed away the older man had walked back out of the crowd now bunching up around the podium waiting for their call to board. The young man had come out from behind the column, and the two had almost collided in an embrace. It was an embrace that included a more-than-friendly kiss on the lips.
“Come on, Sherlock,” Brenda said as she tugged on Charlotte’s arm. “If we’re going to make our call before they open the cattle gates, we have just enough time to thread our way through the gathering crowd.”
“Let them go,” Charlotte said, standing her ground. “I want to see what happens with that couple. How can they even be here if they aren’t getting on the airplane? And, as for the crowd, they can’t sit in our seats anyway. We’ll be entombed in that flying canister for hours. I prefer to be on my feet as long as possible.”
“Whatever you say, master.” Brenda smiled one of her brilliant movie smiles, and Charlotte thought she could hear a sigh go around the waiting room, where, although people were bunching up around the gate to the plane, many of them were still staring back at Brenda, obviously recognizing and reveling in who she was. Charlotte was fairly certain that if they’d moved toward the gate now, a wide pathway would open up to let Brenda pass. There might even be some bowing and scraping.
Instead, they both watched the young couple move away from them along the corridor between the gates. The couple stopped and both looked up at a flight board.
“There’s your answer,” Brenda said. “They have another flight to go to.”
“That’s certainly brave timing. And such chutzpah.”
“Well, we are in Europe, you know,” Brenda said. And then she laughed that lilting laugh of hers, and Charlotte heard another sigh go around the room.
* * * *
“What are you thinking? You’ve been quiet for more than an hour.”
“I’m surprised you noticed, as busy as you’ve been signing autographs.”
“But aren’t you glad I took the aisle seat?” Brenda asked, with another one of her signature laughs. “However, you’re changing the subject. Of course I noticed you were quiet.”
“That man.”
“What man?”
“The prosperous-looking banker type who was seen off by the young woman—he’s sitting just a couple of rows in front of us. I’ve been thinking about him. Don’t you think we should say something to him about what we saw back at the airport?”
“I declare, Charlotte Diamond, that when you took the Myers-Briggs personality test, you must have maxed out on the ‘Judgment’ scale.”
“Why, yes I did,” Charlotte said, with a laugh. “That’s pretty much required to get through the battery of tests to enter the FBI, you know.”
“I can imagine. Well, I’m not going to tell him. What did we actually see?”
“Enough. Enough to put him on guard.”
“Well, think about it for a while—but only off and on, please. Let’s enjoy what we spent to be in first class—and let him enjoy it as well. If you want to do it, wait until we’ve arrived and are picking up the luggage. Why spoil what he paid to luxuriate in first class?”
“I suppose.”
“What you need, Charlotte Diamond, is a vacation from all this sleuthing.”
“We’ve just had a vacation. We’ve had two weeks on a river cruise ship on the Rhine, enjoying the Christmas markets.”
“And what did you do on that cruise? You got yourself embroiled in a murder and a jewel theft.”
“But . . .”
“I know. But you thoroughly enjoyed it.”
“Yes, I guess I did. More after it was over, though.”
“We should travel with your brother and sister more often. They’re fun.”
“Travel again with Chance and Marilyn? Why ever for? You know what I said about them . . . what always happens when they are around. And it did so on this cruise, didn’t it?”
“Yes. As you said, murder and mystery follow them. But you thrive on mystery and murder. I do think you had the best vacation of all of us.”
“Yes, perhaps I did, but I’m looking forward to some peace and quiet in Hopewell. How soon did you say we needed to be down in Florida for the movie shoot?”
“Two weeks, maybe three. I’ll have to call Aaron when we get back home and find out if everything is still on schedule. And he said something about Tony and DeeDee coming for a week so Tony and I can do preliminary work with the movie script. I’m looking forward to some down time on the river too—even though January is usually my least favorite time on the Maryland Eastern Shore. I miss Sam and Rocket. I’ll bet Sherry will be glad to see us back too. It’s been virtually six weeks with the Hollywood shoot followed by this Rhine cruise.”
“Yes, a couple of weeks with just the two of us and the dogs sounds divine.”
“Divine? Did I hear you use the word ‘divine’? I do think that you have been suborned to the world of the movies already. I would never have thought of a hardboiled FBI agent using a word like that.”
“A much-retired FBI agent,” Charlotte countered.
“Not that much. You’re still up to your neck in intrigue. Even in the departure hall of Schiphol airport.”
“Look at him up there,” Brenda. “He looks like he doesn’t have a care in the world. And yet he’s living a world of lies and doesn’t know it.”
“Maybe,” Brenda said. “And then again maybe he does know it and yet still enjoys whatever time he has with a young trophy wife. It’s really quite European, you know. He might not be all that excited to hear from you on the subject of infidelity.”
When they got to the baggage area at BWI airport in Baltimore, Maryland, Charlotte was glad she hadn’t said anything and Brenda shot her an amused “I told you so” look.
As the baggage was arriving on the belts, a man in a chauffeur’s uniform was directed to three expensive bags by the distinguished-looking older man who had farewelled the young woman at Schiphol airport, and then the older man was hugging and talking with a woman near his age, who was matronly, but very well taken care of—and who was swathed in a mink coat.
Brenda and Charlotte watched as the threesome trundled out to the curb, where a black limousine, its engine idling and a policeman guarding it rather than what he should have been doing—giving it a ticket—was waiting for them.
“So, what do you think?” Brenda asked.
“About what? About who he must be to be treated so royally?”
“No. About the young woman at Schiphol. Mistress or daughter?”
“Who cares? Either way, I was wrong and you were right. I’ve had enough of sleuthing for a while. If your Jag hasn’t been stolen from the parking lot, let’s cruise on up route 50 to the Choptank. I’ve had enough of mystery for a couple of weeks; I’ve obviously lost my edge.”
“That would never happen, darling,” Brenda said with a twinkle in her eye. “I’m sure there will be yet another mystery or two awaiting you when we get home.”
* * * *
The drive home to the village of Hopewell on the Choptank in Brenda’s mercifully unmolested Jaguar roadster led east of Baltimore to cross the Chesapeake Bay on Route 50. From there they turned east on 331 on the way down the east side of the Choptank River to their normally sleepy riverine village. The first thing they saw in their entrance into the village, however, was a noisy bulldozer. It was working in the center of the riverside lot just to the north of Brenda’s eighteenth-century brick two-story mansion, which had once been the plantation house for the whole area.
“What in the . . . ? I thought that lot was yours, Brenda.”
“It is. Or at least I thought so too. This must be some sort of mistake.” Charlotte could tell that Brenda’s voice was strained, that the sight of the bulldozer felling trees on the lot was very disturbing to her. “But I’ll have to check. I admit that I haven’t kept track of property rights here. I’ll call my financial administrator, Frank Edmunds, straight away. Do you think we should go over there and—”
“Not much point in hassling the guy on the bulldozer,” Charlotte answered. “He’s not likely to know anything. We could ask him to stop until we got this checked out, but it looks like he’s closing it down for the night anyway. Can’t do any more harm before you have a chance to confirm your ownership. You go on in the house and call, and I’ll go over and ask this guy who he works for.”
“Vario Construction out of New York is all I know,” the bulldozer operator answered when Charlotte approached him. “I’m subcontracted from over in Easton. They’ve called in a whole bunch of dozers. I don’t know anything about a property dispute. But I’m shutting down for the night anyway.”
“Several bulldozers? I only see the one,” Charlotte said.
“Walk on up the street; you’ll see a whole line of them. I’ve heard they’re clearing this whole street out to the point. Sort of hope they don’t plan on taking the brick house next door down, though.”
“They can’t. It’s on the historical register,” Charlotte said, “and there’s no chance that the woman who owns it is going to sell it so it can be bulldozed down. I think someone’s got it wrong. Maybe even in the wrong town. I have a house on this street too. And there certainly shouldn’t be any bulldozing going on that I don’t know about.”
“Yeah, why?”
“Because I’m mayor of the town. No one’s come to the town council with any redevelopment plans.”
“Well, we’ve been working here for a week. Down the street, quite a bit has been done already. Maybe I should check in with my super before tomorrow morning.”
“Yes, maybe you should do that. I’ve been gone for several weeks, so I have some checking to do too.”
Charlotte marched back to Brenda’s house. As she was mounting the stairs to the main door in the floor over the English basement, it hit her that the name Vario sounded familiar. She’d have to dig deep in her mind to figure out the connection, though. She found Brenda sitting in a chair in the kitchen by the telephone and looking stunned.
“Did you get hold of Frank Edmunds?”
“Yes. But at home. He says he’ll have to go into the office to check the paper files . . . and he’ll call me back.”
“But does he remember—?”
“No. He says he doesn’t remember anything about an extra parcel of land here in Hopewell on my property list. But he said it could just be that it’s included in the plat for this house.”