by Kathi Daley
“The best way to figure that out is to find out when the boys saw Paula with Hollander. Maybe we should have another chat with them.”
“Let’s go by the theater first,” I suggested. “I want to look around one more time. Maybe something will come to us that we haven’t considered.”
“Okay,” Colt said. “I’ll get my sandwich to go, and we’ll go now. We’ll take my car and come back for yours.”
The theater was deserted as I suspected it would be. I headed down the hallway and tried to map out in my mind who, given the timeline as we knew it, would have been where. We knew when Hollander arrived at the theater. Well, approximately when he arrived. We didn’t know if he went straight to the rehearsal room, but it seemed like he had. Ariella was in the cast room, and the boys were in the prop room, so he hadn’t headed toward either of those rooms. If Hollander had headed directly toward the rehearsal room, why had he headed there when he was already late?
“The boys said they were playing in the prop room when they heard voices,” Colt said. “They poked their heads out into the hallway and saw that the rehearsal room door was open. They peeked inside and saw Paula and Hollander kissing. They watched for a minute and then went back to the prop room. I asked them if they noticed the turkey when they were spying on Mrs. Dearborn and Mr. Hollander, and they said no, they didn’t think the turkey was in the room.”
“So if the door was open, then maybe the turkey wandered in after that point,” I said. I tried to think back. “When I entered the rehearsal room, the door was closed, and the turkey, as well as Hollander’s body, were already in the trap-room. I’ve been trying to remember if I saw Scotty or Paula that evening, but I don’t remember seeing either of them. With everything that had happened to that point, I was really focused on Lacy, and making sure she didn’t have a meltdown.” I closed my eyes and tried to remember. “There were a lot of people milling around and a lot going on. It would have been easy for someone to have snuck away.”
I walked over to the middle of the stage and looked around. I tried to imagine where Paula and Hollander had been standing. They hadn’t seemed to have noticed the boys, since I would assume if they had, they would have stopped what they were doing and shooed them away. Of course, if Paula had lied, and they had been kissing, they may have been in the moment and might not have noticed them right away, and if the kids had been able to stand there and watch without being seen, then it stood to reason that anyone could have stood there and watched without being seen. And then it hit me.
“Scotty is single,” I said.
“Divorced,” Colt answered.
“He’s a good-looking guy with a good job. He seems to spend time at the gym, given his overall physique. And based on what I’ve noticed, he tends to be a bit of a ladies’ man. He’s usually quick with a smile and a wink, and he has a certain charm that women are likely to find appealing.”
“Are you going somewhere with this?” Colt asked, actually sounding jealous.
“When we asked around about Paula, there were several people in town who mentioned to both of us that she was a flirt who seemed to spend her time driving her daughter around to her various after-school activities and maybe engaging in harmless flirtations in order to stay occupied while her daughter was busy. No one I spoke to seemed at all surprised that Paula and Hollander had been caught locking lips. What if Paula and Scotty had been having a thing?”
“A thing?”
“An affair. Maybe Scotty was really into it, but Paula was just playing with Scotty the way she seems to play with a lot of men.”
“So are you suggesting that Paula was kissing Hollander, and Scotty happened to see them on his way to the bathroom?”
“If he was even heading to the bathroom. It seems more likely that Scotty noticed Paula leave when she went to meet Hollander, and he followed her. He sees Paula kissing Hollander and flies into a jealous rage, which ends with him killing the man.”
“So, where do the kids come in?” Colt asked. “The boys said they heard voices, went to check it out and saw Evette’s mommy kissing Mr. Hollander. If Scotty came along after that and killed Hollander, he would have had to have come by after the boys returned to the prop room.”
“True. But Scotty could have shown up after the boys returned to the prop room. Scotty either had a pipe wrench or picked one up and hit the guy over the head. I guess we have to assume that Paula didn’t scream since the boys didn’t hear anything.”
“Seems sort of unlikely that Scotty would kill the man Paula was kissing, and she wouldn’t make a peep.”
“Yeah,” I had to agree. “What if Paula is the killer? We didn’t consider her at first, since she wasn’t tall enough, but what if Paula planned to kill Hollander for some reason? She arranges to meet the man in the prop room for a make-out session, but the extra-curricular smooching is really part of a larger plan to kill the guy. Maybe she even put the turkey in the trap-room ahead of time. Hollander shows up for some of what Paula seems to have freely offered, and while they’re kissing, Paula mentions hearing something in the trap-room. Hollander volunteers to have a look, and while he’s bent over, Paula hits him with the pipe wrench she already has on hand.”
“So we’re talking about premeditated murder,” Colt said.
“I guess it might have been.”
“Okay, why?”
“I’m not sure. Did you ever run Hollander’s phone records?”
“I did. His cell is unregistered, and his office line is blocked. I checked his home line, and there hadn’t been any calls to it for days before the murder. The man was an attorney who was unpopular with a lot of local folks, so he knew how to protect his privacy.”
Yes, I supposed he would. I opened the trap-room door and hopped down inside.
“What are you doing?” Colt asked, shining a flashlight in from above.
“Following a hunch.” I felt around for a switch that turned on a very soft light. The light was provided so the magician’s assistants could see what they were doing during the execution of a trick, but the light couldn’t be too bright, or it would be seen through the cracks in the floorboards.
“What sort of hunch?” Colt called back.
“One that wonders if Hollander still had whatever he’d stopped home to pick up on his body when he was pushed into the pit.”
“I didn’t find anything.”
“He might have had it in his pocket, and it could have slipped out, or maybe he had it in his hand, and he dropped it.”
“I suppose that’s a possibility. Be careful.”
“I will. Let me borrow that flashlight.”
He handed it down to me. “Do you want me to turn on the stage lights?”
“No. I think that might actually work against me.”
The room was small, and there wasn’t really anywhere to hide an item unless it was really small. I got down on my hands and knees and looked around on the floor. I didn’t see anything, but there was a very small opening between the floor and the little ledge that was used to help the person in the hole boost themselves out. “Hang on, I see something.”
“What sort of something? Do you need help?”
“No.” I stood up. “I found a thumb drive tucked under the ledge. I’m coming up.”
I passed the drive and flashlight up to Colt and then climbed out. If I had to guess, I’d just found the item Hollander had taken the time to stop at home to pick up the night he’d been murdered.
Chapter 16
After I found the thumb drive, we headed to Colt’s office to look at it. Included on the drive were pages and pages of documents that didn’t seem to make a lot of sense, except that I did recognize a list of names on one of the sheets toward the middle.
“What are we looking at?” I asked.
“It looks like names, followed by pages of notes, banking, and other personal information.”
“Maybe they’re notes for a case he was working on,” I suggested.
; Colt frowned. “Perhaps.”
I pointed to the screen. “Ava and Craig Murray.” I looked at Colt. “Velma told me that Ava and Craig were in couples counseling due to the stress created in their marriage after they lost all their money in the investment fiasco Daryl Prater was involved with.”
Colt looked more closely at the names on the list. “Jason Oliver, Frank and Jennifer Wilson, and Sam and Louise Parsnip were also part of the lawsuit against Prater, and they’re all included on this list as well.”
“Hollander was working with Prater and his wife to protect the money the group was after,” I said. “Money she brought to the relationship from before the marriage.” I sat back and considered the situation. “I suppose the information on the drive is simply banking and personal information on each person involved in the lawsuit.”
Colt pointed to the screen. “It looks like Jason Oliver has been cheating on his taxes, and Louise Parsnip spent time in prison under the name Louise Jones before she was married.”
“So was he digging up dirt on the individuals involved in the lawsuit?”
Colt tilted his head to the side as he read. “It looks that way. I guess his plan might have been to find dirt on the individuals trying to get at Mrs. Prater’s money, which he could then use to convince them to drop the whole thing.”
“Okay,” I said. “So if this thumb drive is the item Hollander stopped to pick up on his way to the theater that night, why did he stop to pick up this particular item on that particular night?”
“I don’t know,” Colt said, furrowing his brow.
“Who else is on the list?” I asked. “I remember someone saying there were twelve individuals involved in the lawsuit.”
“Actually, there were twelve individuals from Holiday Bay. There were more than twenty involved in all.” He scrolled through the document. “Here’s a list of all those named. All but seven are crossed out.”
“Which seven?” I asked.
“Doctor and Mrs. Dearborn, Harold and Connie Brewbaker, Jason Oliver, Susan Grover, and Howard Langley.”
“Howard Langley, the electrician?”
Colt nodded. “It appears so. There are notes associated with all these names, but the fact that the names aren’t crossed off seems to indicate to me that Hollander was still working on getting these seven people to drop the lawsuit.”
“Okay, so we saw notes earlier indicating that Jason Oliver had been cheating on his taxes. I don’t know, nor have I ever heard of Harold and Connie Brewbaker or Susan Grover. Perhaps they’re from out of the area. What did Hollander have on Langley and the Dearborns?”
“I’m not sure.” He continued to scroll down.
I scooted closer to try to see what Colt was looking at.
“According to this, it looks like Langley recently spent time in rehab,” Colt informed me. “I’m not sure that Hollander having that information would be enough to get Langley to drop the lawsuit, but it might be embarrassing for him if word got out.”
“And the Dearborns?”
“It looks as if Doctor Dearborn was involved in a malpractice lawsuit a year ago. He settled out of court, but it looks like the man who brought the case forward had proof of negligence, and had the case gone forward, it looks as if Dearborn might have lost his medical license.”
“That doesn’t really sound like dirt since the case was settled.”
“That would be true, but it looks like Hollander dug up some additional information which seems to indicate that the case that was settled was not the first case involving negligence on Doctor Dearborn’s part.”
“So maybe it was Paula who killed him.”
“Maybe.” Colt saved the file to his computer and then grabbed the drive. “It looks like I need to have another chat with the Dearborns.”
“So let me get this straight,” Georgia said later that evening. “Hollander dug up all sorts of dirt on the individuals who were suing Prater over the investment fiasco in order to get them to drop the lawsuit. One of the individuals involved was Doctor Dearborn, who had originally worked for a clinic in New Mexico where he’d been involved in more than one malpractice claim. All the claims had been settled out of court, but Hollander managed to dig up the details, and he planned to use that information to get the Dearborns to drop out of the lawsuit.”
“Yes.”
“So Hollander stops off at home on the way to rehearsal to grab the thumb drive, which I assume must have contained a copy of his files. Why?”
“Paula said that when Hollander came to them with the information he’d dug up on her husband, Doctor Dearborn hadn’t wanted to cooperate. He claimed the malpractice claims had been settled, so could no longer harm them, but Paula wasn’t so sure. She liked living in Holiday Bay, and she didn’t want the happy life she’d built here ruined, so she indicated to Hollander that she was willing to cooperate and would find a way to get her husband on board. The problem was that Doctor Dearborn wasn’t budging. He wanted the money he thought they would get from the lawsuit and wasn’t willing to drop it. And then Paula ran into Howard. I guess they both have daughters in gymnastics. They got to talking and came up with a plan to get the dirt Hollander had on all of them and to get the man out of the picture.”
“So, they came up with a plan to kill the man?”
“Basically. Paula called Hollander and somehow got him to bring her a copy of the proof he had on everyone. She convinced him that she had a plan to get everyone who wasn’t currently cooperating to do so, including her husband. Once she lured Hollander into the rehearsal room where she had arranged to meet him, she distracted him while Langley snuck up behind them and hit Hollander over the head. They then dumped the body in the trap-room, after which Langley left, and Paula returned to the main stage where everyone had gathered for rehearsal.”
“And Paula just told Colt all of this?”
I nodded. “It was Langley who actually killed the guy. When Colt came to her home, Paula knew that she was in over her head, so she agreed to cooperate in exchange for a lighter sentence for her part in the whole fiasco.”
“And the turkey? How does the turkey fit into all of this?”
“She said the turkey got in after Langley pushed Hollander inside, so they just left him there.”
Georgia rolled her eyes. “Talk about a crazy ending to a really absurd mystery.”
Chapter 17
It was nice to wake up wrapped in Colt’s arms on Thanksgiving morning. We planned to join Tanner and his Thanksgiving party this evening, but since we weren’t even eating until seven-thirty, we figured it would be a late night. Georgia had made homemade cinnamon rolls, which she’d left on the counter along with a note letting us know there was a breakfast casserole warming in the oven and freshly squeezed juice in the refrigerator.
“That’s quite the roomy you have there,” Colt smiled as he poured us each a cup of coffee from the pot that had been left warming.
“Yeah,” I agreed, looking out the window at the snow flurries that filled the sky. “She really is great. She’s a friend, roommate, business partner, and soul sister, all wrapped up as one. I know she feels a certain debt to me. She’s mentioned several times how I saved her and Ramos from a life on the streets by giving her a job and a place to live, but the truth is, she saved me. Maybe not from a life on the street, but from a life with nothing to distract me from my dark thoughts and my searing grief.”
“It does seem that the two of you came into each other’s lives at the opportune time.”
“Thanks to Velma.” I pulled on oven mitts and slipped the casserole out of the oven. It looked and smelled wonderful.
“Are you planning to spend time at the inn today?” Colt asked as I dished up the food onto plates from the cabinet.
“I was going to pop by at some point. I’d like to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving. Georgia is planning to serve the Thanksgiving meal at four, so I suppose I’ll pop in then. I know that she and Jeremy have things under control, but I
like to have a presence during events and special occasions. I’m free until then. Did you have something you wanted to do?”
He forked a piece of the casserole and then answered. “Actually, I thought we might call my parents and the kids and then go for a hike. It’s so quiet without my family in the mix this year. I didn’t think I’d miss them, but I do.”
“I suppose you could have gone with them to visit your aunt.”
“I could have, but when my mom mentioned me joining them, a huge family holiday sounded awful.” He reached up and caressed my chin. “Besides, I wanted to spend the day with you.”
“And I’m happy that you did.” I took a sip of my juice. “I guess you’ll have the kids at Christmas. Do you know how long they’ll be here?”
“I’m not sure. Originally, they were going to be here for two weeks, but they’re balking at the idea. I get it. They miss their friends when they’re here. I suppose I’ll wait and talk to my mom about it. I don’t want to force them to come if they don’t want to. Maybe I can go up and see them for a few days instead, or maybe they can still come here, but for more of a long weekend.”
“It’s nice that you’re taking their wishes into account.”
“Always.” He took a bite of his cinnamon roll, chewed, and swallowed. “I feel like these sorts of things are their choice to make unless, of course, my mom tells me that she and Dad really need a break and would appreciate it if I would take them for a while.”
“Do you think she will want a break?”
“Probably not. At least not at Christmas. I think Mom and Dad like having the kids around for the holidays, and the reality is that I’ll need to work for most of the time they’d be here, anyway.”
“Maybe the kids could come after Christmas,” I suggested. “Perhaps over New Year’s.”
“That might be a good solution.” He got up and refilled his coffee. “Did you ever talk to your sister about coming out for the holidays?”