by Patti Larsen
***
Chapter Twenty Seven
Katelyn appeared genuinely surprised by the reveal, so I could only imagine Andrew kept the inquiry from his daughter. He flinched before nodding slowly, clearly upset and shaken by everything falling apart around him.
“After the thefts,” he said, “I started to wonder. I asked her a few things and Thea grew angry with me. Told me we’d agreed to stay out of each other’s pasts. She was right, but I couldn’t let it go. So I hired a detective to look into her.” His misery was as real as Katelyn’s had been faked, I was positive of that. “I regret it and I had him stop even before he got started because I felt too guilty about it.” He tossed his hands in my direction. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you but I swear I never heard anything from the investigator and, as I said, I requested he drop the case.” Andrew swallowed hard, his own tears trickling as he leaned back against the fridge, sagging as though only its presence kept him upright. “She had nightmares,” he whispered then. “Would wake screaming at times. But she would never tell me anything.” Andrew met my eyes, pleading for me to understand in that simple gaze. “I just wanted to know she really was the good person I knew.”
I had more than enough of my own guilt to shoulder and couldn’t offer him comfort. “We’ll be in touch. For now, don’t leave Reading, either one of you.” I jabbed a finger at Katelyn. “And if I find out you’ve been warning Dominic we’re looking for him, I’ll arrest you and throw away the key.”
She bobbed a nod. Hopefully I got through to her. Not so comfortable leaving them there together, the wall between them growing by the second.
I couldn’t save everyone.
Instead, I climbed behind the wheel, accepting my phone back from Jill, hitting a quick thanks back to my dad while we buckled in.
“Interesting,” Jill said.
My favorite word. “Isn’t it, though.” I caught myself before I could sigh. “Let’s see if we can corner our choir master and have a heart-to-heart. The way things stand, I’m liking him for this.”
Jill grunted her agreement while I wondered if I should drop her off at the station instead of bringing her with me and opted for her having my back. She could keep herself together. Right?
Right.
The steep hill on the way to the church wound around a sharp corner. I always took that road too fast and, on habit, pumped my breaks a couple of times to slow my descent before preparing to accelerate into the turn, just like Dad taught me.
Only, when I touched the big pedal with the toe of my shoe, rather than the resistance I was used to, my foot hit the floor of the car hard as the brakes failed.
So many things flashed through my mind in the two or three seconds we had left before the corner. First, that I’d just had my car serviced a month ago and the winter tires put on so there was no way my brakes shouldn’t have been in perfect order. I’d had the front discs replaced at a hefty cost, after all, damn it. Second, that I had no idea what it felt like to hit an airbag as it deployed and wondered if it hurt. And third, as was my weird brain’s want to wander into the why are you even thinking that at a time like this, would it leave bruises I couldn’t hide when I got married or would I have to wait until after they healed so the pictures wouldn’t make me look like Crew beat me.
Yeah. Weird brain.
I didn’t meep or scream or say a word. And I didn’t have to. Jill seemed to assess the situation instantly, taking in what had to be a shocked and disbelieving look on my face, the rapid fire pumping of my foot on the unresponsive pedal, and reached out, grasping the wheel in one hand. I turned to look at her in the final moment as the car entered the sharp turn, saw her grim determination and lack of fear and took that as a good sign we were going to be okay.
Not the goners I now suspected we should be.
Honestly? Thank goodness for Jill, her expert driver training and quick thinking, because I was useless in the moment it took her to ease us into the ditch on the side of the road. Well, I say ease, but it wasn’t like she had much choice, but her angle and trajectory dropped the passenger wheels into the drop off instead of the jerking motion I would have attempted that would have likely flipped the car and/or thrown us headfirst into a tree.
Instead, the passenger tires mired in snow, we spun slowly sideways, the back end of the car embedding in the bank and jerking us to a halt where we both sat, panting and, at least in my case, terrified for a long moment.
I hugged Jill a second after I had my seatbelt undone, and she hugged me back.
“Thanks,” I whispered, shaking.
“Guess that advanced winter driving course came in handy,” she said with her own voice trembling.
The last thing I wanted was to call Crew, though as I sat waiting for the tow truck to pull me out, the appearance of him behind the wheel of Liz’s rental car, her in the passenger seat, wasn’t all that surprising.
Jill looked guilty but not apologetic. “He needed to know,” she said as he skidded to a halt. “Fee, that wasn’t an accident and we both know it.”
We hadn’t even discussed it, the pair of us standing on the side of the road in mutual silence, processing our near-death experience together but individually. I could have argued, but didn’t because I knew in my heart she was right.
He threw his arms around me, rocking me, not speaking as he held me tight, the warmth of him making it to me despite the thickness of his puffy jacket. I sank into his embrace, only by sheer force of will holding my tears at bay. Because I wasn’t going to cry and make a big deal of this. Not now, not today when we were supposed to be married by now. Not when I had a secret I’d kept from him, that this wasn’t the first attempt on my life in the last two days.
How could I possibly tell him about last night’s attack now? He’d kill me himself.
Instead, I pushed back and kissed him before speaking, cutting off his ability to. “Can you please give Jill and me a ride to the office?”
Crew looked like he wanted to protest. Liz had joined us and, bless her, spoke up in my defense.
“You got it, Sheriff,” she said, poking Crew in the ribs to get his attention. “Anything for the Reading Sheriff’s Department, right, Turner?”
It was a quiet ride downtown and even though I needed to go to the church and look for Dominic, was heading in the wrong direction, I couldn’t include these two in the investigation without getting blowback. Which meant picking up Crew’s white pickup. No, not anymore was it? It was mine.
When I tried to get out without talking about it, Crew grabbed my hand.
“Until we know if it was an accident,” I said, low and intense so I was accessing his logical brain like a good manipulative fiancé, “I have a job to do. Okay?”
He hesitated a long moment before kissing me. “I’ll be at the mechanic’s,” he growled. “I’ll look into it personally.”
Liz waved as she drove off, going with him, apparently, while I trudged up the steps and into the office. I needed to get the keys for the pickup, parked in the town hall lot just down the street, so I could finally go to the church and talk to the choir master and maybe solve this damned case and move on and get married and—
I looked up as I entered, catching the warning in Jill’s eyes, the unhappiness on Toby’s face, about a heartbeat before I spotted Robert, Rose beaming at his side, standing with one hand holding Dominic Twigg’s arms, tucked behind his back.
In handcuffs.
“You’re just in time,” Robert said. “I’m arresting this man for the murder of Thea Isaac.” He winked at me. “You lose, Fanny.”
***
Chapter Twenty Eight
You know what the worst part was? Not that I again stood in Vivian’s office with Geoffrey and Robert, Rose and Jill, Dad hovering in the background while my cousin took the floor. No, the very worst part was the fact that everything that came out of Robert’s ugly ass mouth?
Made perfect sense. For once.
He’d even given me a few mi
nutes to interrogate his prisoner, for all the good it did me.
Dominic’s sweating, anxious face, the shiftiness of his eyes as he met Jill’s gaze, the way he seemed on the verge of running at any second? Wasn’t doing much for his apparent innocence despite his vocal protesting.
“I didn’t kill her,” he boomed in that practiced singer’s voice. I waved off his protest.
“We know about Katelyn,” I said while Robert stood close, as if I was going to poach his catch. Made me tired, having his nasty energy so close to me. Frankly, with the last of the adrenaline from the accident (keep telling yourself it wasn’t attempted murder, Sheriff Fleming) burned out of my system and the layers of shock I was surely still dealing with taking a toll, I kind of just wanted to sit down and let my cousin have his win.
Except, well. I was a Fleming, right?
“What about her?” Dominic’s face registered the fact he instantly understood he shouldn’t have said a word. Especially when, once again, his gaze caught Jill’s. I glanced at the deputy and was actually a bit scared for the choir master in that moment. If looks could kill, he’d have been so mangled and broken by her stare of doom there wouldn’t have been much left of him to identify, and never mind an open casket.
“You argued with Thea about her step-daughter,” I said.
“And wrote a threatening letter.” Robert answered for his suspect, interrupting while Dominic’s face paled to ghostly white and I feared he might collapse in a faint. Or puke on my shoes. That would just be the best end to this entire disaster, cleaning this creep’s stomach contents off my footwear.
Instead, Dominic collapsed in on himself. “I want a lawyer,” he whispered.
And that was that, wasn’t it?
As he broke down the case, he sounded perfectly reasonable. He reiterated everything I’d learned about Thea and the thefts, about Katelyn and Dominic’s relationship. He’d even dug up old files Dad had started on the choir master and, as a pièce de résistance that put the apple in the sacrificial pig’s mouth, handed over the letter he’d found in Thea’s office, from Dominic, no less.
“Threatening her life,” he explained once again as Vivian scanned it before handing it to Geoffrey who didn’t even glance at it, shark grin firmly in place. “All I need now is his confession.”
“How about fingerprints on the murder weapon?” I grumbled that. “Or the murder weapon itself.”
Robert turned toward me, just a tilt of his body, enough I knew he was aiming his retort at me while giving Vivian his continuing focus. Since when had he learned to be political? Since that smarmy bit of ick at his side gave him lessons, I was guessing. By the way her lips practically moved every time he spoke, she’d coached him. For all I knew, he was really just a puppet robot and she was pushing his buttons. Whatever the case, he had a case and even I knew it.
“According to forensics,” he said, “the bottle of rubbing alcohol found in the church cleaning closet was the source of the poison.” A bottle I discovered, thank you very much. Not that he’d acknowledge that or anything. “And while there were no fingerprints found on it matching Dominic Twigg, we did find a number of pairs of white gloves in his office, along with the set of bells he uses as part of his choir.”
Damn. So he could have used the gloves to keep his prints off the merchandise.
Vivian’s face registered nothing of what she was thinking as she handed the report Robert (Rose) had assembled back to him. He accepted it while she nodded.
“Well done,” she said. “But I expect an airtight case, Deputy Carlisle. Get a confession and the sheriff’s job is yours.”
Craptastic.
I let Rosebert leave, ignoring their smirks, their self-confidence they had their man and my job all wrapped up. I even waited until Geoffrey exited, though it took him longer to go, him lingering with his hip on Vivian’s desk until her icy stare shooed him off. He grinned at me on the way by, not quite touching me but close enough I could see the stubble on his cheek in sharp relief against his skin.
Ew.
When the door finally closed, I spoke, but without hurry, and before Vivian could react. “I like Dominic for it,” I said, “but there are questions about Thea’s past that need to be answered. I’m not convinced he’s the murderer.”
Was that relief on her face? “While Robert is entertaining himself attempting to get a confession despite Dominic lawyering up, I assume you’re going to continue the inquiry.” Not a question.
I nodded, though my heart was heavy. “He might win this one, Viv.”
She shook her head sharply, but not in denial. “If that’s the case…” she looked up again, grim. “So be it.”
I wasn’t about to accept that outcome just yet.
***
We were a glum group that night, assembling like sneak thieves planning a heist already doomed to failure, huddled around Mom and Dad’s dining room table while my mother served up an amazing turkey dinner—yes, with all the fixings because Mom never did anything halfway—and we quietly and, quite unable to stop ourselves, talked about the case.
No raised voices, no overt shows of anger, not from any of us. The fact Jill was part of our little last supper wasn’t lost on anyone, I don’t think. Because that’s what it felt like. The fall of an empire, the final days of our town’s ability to stand up for itself, even in small ways, against the darkness that was the Pattersons and their agenda. And whatever Blackstone really represented.
We did little the first half hour but rehash everything we already knew, from the suspects and their motives to the murder weapon’s confirmed source at the church, around and around until Crew finally sat back, his cutlery rattling on the edge of his plate loud enough to make me jump.
“I need to know why we care.” His point-blank bluntness was met with more quiet. “I know, this is your town, John.” My fiancé softened a little, nodding to Mom, even reaching out to squeeze her hand. “Lucy.” When he turned to me, his blue eyes were soft around the edges, no anger in him. “Sweetheart. But.” He shook his head then, taking a sip from the bottle of beer in front of him before he finished his thought. “If the residents of Reading aren’t interested in being saved, who are we to force them into salvation?”
He had a point. I’d been thinking along those lines myself. Even Dad didn’t argue right away, or Mom, to my surprise. They both just looked a bit sad, my mother rather lost.
Crew slipped one arm around me, tucking me into his chest, kissing my cheek. “This was supposed to be our wedding day.” Again, no anger from him, just resigned acceptance. “I get it. We don’t have a normal life. And things don’t turn out the way we expect. Especially here. Especially with this amazing woman’s track record for getting herself into trouble.” He winked to soften the words but it wasn’t like I could argue with him. Besides, he was completely right. What use was it choosing to be annoyed or angry over something I couldn’t deny? “I’m on board with whatever you decide.” Now he was talking to me, only to me, despite the fact we weren’t alone. We might as well have been, for all the attention he paid the rest of the people in the room. “I’m yours, Fee, now and forever. You want to stay here and fight? I’ll be at your side, 100%, no questions asked from here on in. And.” He touched the tip of my nose with one index finger, the softest caress, the contact then trailing down my cheek to my jaw. “If you decide to cut and start fresh, I’m in. You just tell me what you want. I only ever want to make you happy.” He looked around the room then, a bit grim. “This isn’t making any of us happy.”
Dinner wrapped up shortly thereafter and I left Crew chatting with Dad and Liz, Daisy helping Mom in the kitchen, Jill departing herself quietly, claiming she had a text from Matt. Rather than hover in the gloomy air of the house, I harnessed up my pug and led her outside in the crisp air, letting her trot her way to the end of the walk to do her business.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, distracting. I checked the message, surprised to find it was from Dr. Aberstock.<
br />
Can we talk? I’m at Petunia’s.
I was walking before I’d finished reading, tucking my cell away and urging Petunia along the sidewalk. It wasn’t far so I didn’t bother texting back, my B&B soon looming at the end of the street.
He climbed out of his car as he spotted me, parked in the lot, naturally. I joined him and, instead of going inside, led him around the house and into the yard. He didn’t ask why or seem to think it was odd I avoided entering the house, and I wasn’t in the mood to talk about the mess I still had to clean up.
The koi pond had frozen over, but remained deep enough the fish themselves remained safe, if dormant, for the winter. It was always weird to trust Fat Benny and his buddies would survive Vermont’s intense cold, but so far, so good. No matter how many times I’d thought about relocating them for the winter, I was assured they’d be fine. Still had moments of nervousness anyway.
After all, Benny had solved Pete Wilkins’s murder for me, ultimately. I was rather fond of his pudgy red self.
“I still have friends at the forensics lab.” Not like the doc to dive in this way. I felt Petunia tug on her leash and unhooked her. She’d done half of what she needed to at the end of Mom’s driveway, but I knew she had other business to attend to and let her go take care of things while I chatted with Dr. Aberstock. She disappeared into the dark with her cinnamon bun tail wiggling while he went on. “That’s how I was able to encourage a review of Thea Isaac’s autopsy.”
Encourage, huh? “I take it they found something.” What had Barry missed? Or, more likely, purposely left out?
“Apparently, Thea had old, massive injuries,” Dr. Aberstock said, hands tucked deep into the pockets of his parka, the white fur around his face making him look… well. You know. Ho ho, and all that. “My friend was a paramedic at one point. She said it appears as if Thea was in some kind of accident, a near-death experience, in her opinion. She’s seen a lot of car wrecks, Fee. That was her assessment. That Thea had been in a crash years ago and lived to tell about it.”