Stitch, Bake, Die! by Lois Winston

Author:Lois Winston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lois Winston
Published: 2021-08-19T00:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

“Maybe Beckwith saw us with Rhetta and figured she might have given the laptop to one of us,” said Cloris after we returned to our rooms and began straightening up the mess. Cleanup was swift, though, the thief having left nowhere near the havoc he’d wrought at Marlene’s home. Then again, the two rooms with adjoining baths contained little to search other than the items we’d gotten from Spa de la Mer Violette. Fifteen minutes later I had slipped into a pair of pink silk pajamas and matching fuzzy socks from the spa boutique and wrapped myself in the Beckwith Chateau’s complimentary plush white robe. Then I propped myself up against the bed’s numerous decorator pillows to continue my search through Marlene’s laptop.

This time I started with her text messages. Luckily, Marlene had the ability to send and receive texts from either her phone or her laptop and hadn’t deleted older messages.

Given the temptation, I wondered if she had ever realized the extent of Rhetta’s devotion. It became immediately obvious to me that Marlene’s personal assistant had never deliberately invaded her privacy, no matter how easy it would have been to do so. If she had, she would have uncovered far more information and possible evidence of criminal activity than she’d divulged to us.

I called to Cloris through the open door adjoining both rooms. “I can confirm Marlene and the doctor definitely had a relationship that crossed professional physician/patient boundaries.”

Also garbed in pajamas and robe, Cloris stepped into my room. She curled up in one of the cream and Wedgewood blue striped upholstered club chairs that flanked the room’s fireplace. “Please spare me the details,” she said, stretching her legs onto a matching ottoman and flipping open her own laptop. “But while you’re traveling that voyeuristic route, I’ll do an Internet search on Hargrove.”

“Good idea.”

“Hmm,” she said a few minutes later.

I had already exited out of Marlene’s text chain with Hargrove, having read enough to sear my eyeballs and turn my stomach. However, I couldn’t quite figure out who was manipulating whom in the relationship and to what end. Both Marlene and Hargrove appeared to have hidden agendas. “What have you found?”

“Dr. Chadwell Hargrove is a fourth-generation medical doctor but not the brightest tongue depressor in the stack.”

I raised an eyebrow. “It says that?”

“Not in so many words. You have to read between the lines. His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather all graduated from prestigious medical programs—Harvard, Columbia, and Vanderbilt. Chad the Fourth attended medical school in the Caribbean. My guess is he didn’t get in anywhere else, even with the help of family money. The Hargroves are loaded.”

“Loaded enough to hold a Beckwith Chateau membership?”

“Probably,” said Cloris, “but doubtful. They hail from Boston. Besides, wouldn’t Rhetta have known if they were members?”

“True,” I said, “but if Vernon hired him, my guess is there’s a connection between the two of them. How else would he have known he could trust Hargrove to do his bidding when it came to Marlene?”

“And did

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