“Just now? But I see her there all the time.”
“She probably either used her relative’s membership or sponged off Andrea Payne.”
“Okay, that’s something,” Riley said. “How much does it cost to join the club these days?”
“We’ve been members for so long, I have no idea what the initiation fee is.”
Riley opened her laptop’s browser and pulled up the Belle Isle Country Club’s Web site. “Hang on, I’m looking. Hmmm. No mention of the fees. I guess it’s considered gauche to put it out there for the unwashed public to see. Sort of a ‘if you have to ask, you can’t afford to join’ mind-set.”
“I’ll text Ed and ask him to find out, and then I’ll call you back,” Parrish said.
“Cool. In the meantime, I’m gonna see what I can find out about Melody online.”
* * *
Melody’s LinkedIn profile wasn’t terribly informative. She’d attended college at UNC-Charlotte, and her current job description was vice president of lending, Baldwin Community Bank. Her Facebook listing wasn’t much better. Photos of dogs, funny dog videos, a few selfies of Melody and Andrea Payne at the beach, and some glowing color photos of Belle Isle sunrises. Riley tapped the sunrise photo to enlarge it. It was fairly generic, showing a glowing orange orb casting a molten glow on the surf. There was a strip of beach, but it could have been almost any strip of beach on the East Coast. On the far right corner of the image, she could just make out the arm of a familiar-looking wrought-iron chair. She maximized that detail.
“That bitch,” she fumed. The chair was one of a pair she’d personally dragged home from the Hickory Furniture Mart sample sale and placed on the master bedroom balcony of the house at Sand Dollar Lane. If she’d had any doubts before, they were gone now. The only way Melody Zimmerman was snapping sunrise photos that included that chair was if she’d spent the night in that master bedroom. And Riley was certain she hadn’t stayed there alone.
“Gotcha,” she muttered. She took a quick screen shot of the photo, just in case Melody decided to delete the photo in the near future. Other than that one slipup, Melody was disappointingly discreet with her social media posts. Her relationship status was single, and Riley couldn’t find a single photo that included anybody who even remotely resembled Wendell Griggs. She didn’t seem to have an Instagram or Twitter account.
Most of the hits she found for Melody were professionally related. Items from banking publications announcing her job promotions, a couple of items from her college alumni magazine, and a brief profile from a “Women in Banking” newsletter.
Riley scribbled some notes. Melody was thirty, a hometown girl who’d grown up in Southpoint, and had a degree in business administration. The profile noted that her first job out of college was at a law firm in Wilmington. Had she worked for Samuel Gordon, the lawyer who’d set up Wendell’s dummy corporations? The article didn’t mention it. She might have to do some more digging. After leaving the law firm, Melody had worked as a clerk at a Bank of America branch in Wilmington before starting to climb the career ladder at first Coastal Carolina Bank, and now Baldwin Community.
Her phone rang, and it was Parrish.
“Ed talked to one of his buddies on the club’s membership committee. Initiation fees are pretty steep these days—like twenty-five thousand!”
“Wow. How do all these young families we see hanging out at the club afford that kind of a hit?”
“I’ve wondered the same thing,” Parrish said. “I think it was something like five thousand when we joined, and at the time I thought that was all the money in the world.”
“I think Daddy probably fronted us our initiation fee as a wedding gift,” Riley said.
“Ed’s friend also told him that Wendell was one of Melody’s three member sponsors, the others being Andrea Payne, and somebody named Myrtice Zimmerman. She’s probably the relative who owns the house Melody lives in.”
“Twenty-five thousand dollars is a lot of money for a single woman, especially one who doesn’t even own her own home here,” Riley said. “What kind of money do you think a vice president of a small community bank makes these days?”
“Not that much,” Parrish said.
“So, she either has a sugar daddy or an outside source of wealth we don’t know about,” Riley mused. “I Googled her and didn’t come up with any useful info. However, I did find a possibly incriminating photo on her Facebook page that must have been shot from the balcony outside my master bedroom. At sunrise,” she added.
“So, that’s interesting, but it isn’t exactly a smoking gun,” Parrish pointed out.
“I know. What are you doing in the morning?”
“I was going to go grocery shopping in town. Ed will be in on the late afternoon ferry, and David and Amanda are coming down, too. I’m ridiculously excited because I haven’t seen him since Mother’s Day.”
“What’s the occasion?”
“Helloooo? Riley? Tomorrow’s Friday. And Sunday is the Fourth of July.”
“Already? I guess I’ve lost track of time. I feel like I’ve been living in some weird alternative universe ever since Maggy and I got here Memorial Day weekend.”
“You’ve had some stuff going on,” Parrish said. “Why were you asking about my plans for tomorrow?”
“Just wondering if you’d like to come along on a little stakeout operation.”
“What? You’re going to follow Melody Zimmerman around? How do you plan to do that? She knows you, Riley. She’d spot you in a minute. Anyway, what do you hope to accomplish?”
“I just want to see who she sees and what she does on a typical day in the life,” Riley said. “No biggie.”
“That’s what you say now,” Parrish said warily. “I know you, Riley Nolan. You’ve got something else up your sleeve. Something that could get us both in hot water.”
“With whom? My dad’s dead and so is yours, so it’s not like our parents are gonna put us on restriction or take away our cars for missing curfew. You said Ed won’t get here until late afternoon. What could it hurt for us to do a little après-shopping sleuthing?”
“I just know I’m gonna regret this,” Parrish said.
“No you won’t,” Riley assured her. “It’ll be just like old times when we used to stalk cute guys back in high school. What time do you want to pick me up for the ferry?”
“Lord help me. I’ll see you at nine fifteen.”
45
Riley hopped on Parrish’s golf cart Friday morning and gave her the thumbs-up sign. “Let’s roll.”
Parrish studied Riley’s appearance. Red-and-white-striped tank top, denim boyfriend jeans, and sandals. “I’m surprised you’re not dressed in a blond wig and dark glasses to go incognito.”
Riley donned the sunglasses she’d perched on top of her head. “See? I’m fairly anonymous just like this. It doesn’t take much.”
“Hah!” Parrish said. “You still get recognized as the TV chick everywhere you go.” She handed Riley a sun visor that had been hanging from the cart’s rearview mirror. “Here. Put this on.”