Arthur hadn’t called EMS because Dr. Lewis had reassured us that he knew how to handle hyperthermia; there was nothing they could do that he couldn’t. Plus, we had another problem, we’d missed the four o’clock ferry back to Sag Harbor. At the rate the snow was falling we wouldn’t make it onto the next one and might end up skidding into a wall like Sabrina had done.
A few minutes later, we were sitting in the kitchen around the fire. We’d already raided the cookie jar and polished off two of the four loaves of orange-cranberry bread warming on the counter. If Willa didn’t turn out to be Dr. Blake’s killer, Felicity said she’d see if she couldn’t get her to come over to Windy Willows and be the crew’s housemother and chef. Arthur had found a bottle of scotch in the pantry, but he held off drinking any until he was sure there was no way to leave the island. The flicker of lights told him it was time for that drink.
Tabitha came and sat on my lap. Even though I owned a cat, I wasn’t a touchy-feely cat person. I was like a parent who thought my kid was cute and adorable no matter what heinous crimes they committed, but from an outsider’s view my kid was just an obnoxious brat. Jo was a brat, but she was my brat. Tabitha had stinky fish breath, but I’d bet Willa loved her as much as I loved Jo.
“So, it looks like we might not leave the island,” Arthur said. “I’ve made sure my office knows where I am. It seems the pantry is stocked with food and spirits, so would anyone like to join me in a drink?”
“Count me in,” Felicity said. “I have a crazy proposition on how we could spend our time. What if we took turns reading the script for the pilot of Mr. & Mrs. Winslow? It might help us make sure there aren’t any late-1930s items we might have forgotten to pack up. The furniture’s already been tagged for when the truck comes.”
“Great idea,” I said. “It would be fun to play out all the parts. But are you sure with the recent developments with Langston, the miniseries will move forward?”
Arthur handed Felicity a glass and poured three fingers of scotch.
“Thanks,” she said. “Of course, Mr. & Mrs. Winslow will continue. I don’t know if the series will take place in the Hamptons, but I’m sure if Langston gets arrested, Jeremy won’t have a problem finding another director.” She took a sip, then another. “That warms your bones. And takes the edge off. Especially knowing we might have to spend another night here. Regardless if it’s with or without a killer on the loose.” Her words hung in the air for a few seconds before she said, “I’ll get a pen and paper and we can assign roles from the script.”
Felicity went rooting through kitchen drawers looking for a pen and paper. I remembered seeing a desk in the pantry that Willa must use and told Felicity to check there. When she came out, pen and paper in hand, she sat at the table and we fought over roles. The script was fifty pages long. As Felicity wrote down each person’s part, she told us that usually one page of a screenplay equaled about one minute of the episode or movie.
“I only have one copy of the script, so we’ll have to pass it around,” Felicity said with a slight slur to her voice. “I want you to know I feel comforted by everyone’s presence—especially yours, Detective.”
“I don’t think we have anything to worry about. It stands to reason if Ms. Sullivan or Dr. Lewis murdered Blake Nightingale, they wouldn’t have any need to kill one of us. This might be one of those cases where the perpetrator goes unpunished.”
I bristled at his statement. I knew from my father’s point of view, catching a killer not only made the public feel safer, but also gave closure to the victim’s family. Sabrina was the only family Dr. Blake had and she was upstairs unconscious fighting for her own life. Unless she was the one who killed her husband, then perhaps Karma had come calling. I kept my thoughts to myself and brought my empty plate to the sink and rinsed it. As I was putting the plate in the dishwasher, Dr. Lewis entered the kitchen.
Everyone looked expectantly at him.
“I think she’s going to be fine,” he said as he went to the urn, grabbed a mug from the tray and poured himself a cup of coffee. He turned and said, “Willa is going to stay with her. She’s in and out of consciousness and probably won’t remember what happened. As I’ve told Willa, it’s par for the course when dealing with hyperthermia. The tip of her pinky toe on her left foot might be permanently damaged from frostbite, but other than that, she’s one lucky woman.”
It was like one of those flashes you get when you keep trying to find a solution to a problem and the answer hits you on top of the head with a proverbial brick. I went to the coffee urn, my hand shaking, and grabbed a mug and filled it. I brought it to the table and announced, “I’m going to bring this to Willa, I’m sure she needs some respite and caffeine.”
Felicity put the pen down and looked up at me.
I had to use my right hand to steady the arm holding the mug.
“Are you okay?” Felicity asked.
“Yes. Just a chill. I’ll be right back.”
I hurried out of the kitchen, down the hall, and ignored the elevator and took the staircase in the foyer to the second floor. Spilling coffee on the Persian runner as I went. Coffee stains were the least of my, or anyone else’s, worries.
When I reached the top of the stairs and took a few steps, I heard the front door close with a bang. My hearing wasn’t good enough to hear a door open, but it sure was good enough to hear the door slam and the resounding vibration that followed in its wake.
I kept walking until I got to Sabrina’s sitting room. Looking down at the cup of coffee, I realized I’d lost half of its contents on the way up. I tiptoed inside, moved to the open door of the bedroom, and peered in.
Willa held a pillow in her hand. I watched, in what seemed like slow motion, as she brought the pillow to just above Sabrina’s face. She paused for only a second, then pressed down, covering Sabrina’s nose and mouth. Sabrina twitched like a beached flounder. I had a second to react. I heaved the mug at Willa. But missed. From behind, I heard a male voice, “Mother! What are you doing!”
I turned and saw a younger version of Dr. Blake Nightingale. He had the same amber wolf eyes.
Willa looked over, then crumpled to the floor, taking the pillow with her.
Chapter 29
“How did you know it was Willa?” Felicity asked me an hour after Arthur had handcuffed Willa and set her in the chair in the kitchen by the fire. Poor Tabitha nuzzled her as tears fell like water dripping from a sun-struck icicle. Willa’s son, Donnie, had sat mute in the other chair.
Elle, Felicity, Dr. Lewis, and I were in the drawing room, huddled around the fire even though the room was warm. Arthur had stayed in the kitchen, keeping an eye on Dr. Blake’s killer, and Willa’s and Dr. Blake’s son. He’d never drawn his gun. There’d been no need. Willa was as docile as the deer I’d spotted from the window of the attic the day I went to retrieve Elle’s phone. Willa had admitted to killing Blake after he refused to sign a check for Donnie’s tuition at Princeton. Apparently, Sabrina had forbidden him to spend one more penny on her husband’s illegitimate son. In a fit of rage, Willa stabbed an inebriated Blake with a pen to the heart. Being a nurse, there’d been no mistaking her target. Bull’s-eye! She transferred him onto a gurney, then flipped him onto the old hospital bed and finished him off with the ice pick. As for Sabrina, Willa admitted giving Sabrina some kind of sleeping pill in her coffee, upped her benzodiazepines, carted her to the Mercedes in a wheelchair, put her in the passenger seat, drove the car into the wall, then transferred Sabrina to the driver’s seat.
I took a sip of scotch. “In answer to your question, Felicity, when Dr. Lewis said Sabrina’s pinky toe had frostbite, it set off warning bells. I thought back from when we first arrived at Nightingale Manor. Willa had done an about-face on her feelings for Sabrina, saying she felt sorry for her. It just didn’t ring true. I also remembered the position we’d found Sabrina in in the car. Sabrina is at least five feet ten, yet the seat on the driver’s side was pushed close to the steering whee
l; the passenger’s side seat was all the way back. Detective Shoner went to the controls on the electric seat, but the battery had died so we had to pry her out. I also noticed Sabrina had no head wound but her head was resting on the steering wheel when we found her. Sabrina would have been traveling in the opposite direction for her appointment. The car had been hidden behind the only bush in front of the stone wall, leaving enough time for her to freeze to death before someone found her. But it wasn’t just that. What really caught my attention was when I saw the pen you’d taken from Willa’s desk in the pantry. I noticed it was the same as the one I’d found on the steps after the murder, only without the blood.”
“Didn’t it have an advertisement on it for the doctors’ practice?” Elle asked, leaning in. “I don’t think it would be a stretch for Willa to have it in her desk drawer.”
“True, but the pens were old. They were from before the practice changed its name to Southampton Aesthetics and the address printed on it was different than modern day. It’s a guess, but I remembered Willa had worked at the practice years ago, before they changed their name. Am I correct, Doctor?”
Dr. Lewis rubbed the area between his brows. “I haven’t seen one of those pens since the mid-nineties.”
“Dr. Lewis, did you know that Donnie was Dr. Blake’s and Willa’s son?” Elle asked.
“We all did, even Sabrina,” he answered.
Elle’s chocolate eyes opened wide. “I assume after Sabrina’s death, he would be heir to the Nightingale estate?”
“Yes,” he answered, shaking his head.
“After a DNA test,” I added.
He stood.
“One more thing,” I said. “Dr. Blake was holding something over your head, can you tell us what it was?”
He hesitated. “I better go check on Sabrina.”
“Please, Doctor. Answer my question.”
“Blake threatened to tell everyone that I performed the operation on the patient that is suing us after I’d recently been diagnosed with a neurological disease. The charismatic Dr. Blake Nightingale had been a showman, not a surgeon. He went to med school somewhere in the jungles of South America, but never learned how to perform real cosmetic surgery. He was basically a dermatologist who could only do injectables. He even froze at the sight of blood. I performed all the operations on Bungled, with the exception of the last. It was the only time I’d had to give up because my hands started to palsy. It wasn’t until afterward that I got the diagnosis. Blake took over on the last operation and we all know the results. I tried to fix what he’d done to her, but it was too late.”
“Why didn’t you tell someone?” Felicity asked.
“Blake threatened to lie and say that I’d done the operation. The patient only remembered my face before the anesthesia hit her. It was also my face she saw when she woke up because Blake had to do some promo shots for the series. I had no recourse but to bow to his demands. Although, now I see, I was just as culpable as he.” He looked down at his trembling long-fingered hands. “They seemed to have a mind of their own, my brain couldn’t control them. I’ve promised our bungled patient to make everything right, monetarily and physically. I’ve been in negotiations with Mr. Margulies, her attorney. Blake wasn’t too keen that I went behind his back—or should I say his façade. He was still trying to solve things through saying she’d signed a nondisclosure and waiver promising not to sue. We all know if negligence is involved those waivers are null and void.” Dr. Lewis met my eyes. “Don’t ever let fame and fortune turn you from your true calling. A guilt-free mind and a passion for what you do is more important than any television contract or an invitation to celebrity events.”
“One last thing . . .” I said.
“Will this really be your last question?” he asked calmly.
The doctor was hard to ruffle. “When I saw Willa leaving your office yesterday, why did she look so angry?”
“She wanted me to help her contest Blake’s will so his son would inherit instead of Sabrina. Tired of all the subterfuge, I said no.”
He left the room and the three of us looked at each other.
“I feel sorry for him,” Elle said, “but because he kept quiet on who really performed the surgery, it caused a lot of suffering for that poor woman. Even made her a suspect in Dr. Blake’s murder.”
“Agreed,” I said. And Felicity nodded.
• • •
A couple hours later, Arthur came into the drawing room. He explained that he’d locked Willa into one of the sitting rooms on the second floor. “It has one of those couch thingies that women used in the old-fashioned days to faint on.”
“A chaise?” I offered.
He shrugged his shoulders and held up a skeleton key. “She won’t be going anywhere until morning.”
Elle walked over to him and gave him a hug. “My hero.”
He blushed, then said, “She’s confessed to everything. She did it for her son. And this is an awful thing to say, but I think the kid was disappointed her plan didn’t work. That’s the reason I locked him in with his mother. How do we know he didn’t have a hand in the whole thing?”
“Good thinking, Detective,” I said. “Hope you checked to make sure they can’t escape through a window and you had them empty their pockets.”
“Yes, Ms. Barrett, there are no windows and I checked the only drawer in the room. No tools or keys for escape. Has anyone looked outside? There’s no way any of us are getting out of here tonight.”
“Well, I’m hungry,” Elle said. “Meg, let’s go see what we can scrounge up.”
I was happy she wasn’t upset about the weather. It seemed having your fiancé by your side made all the difference. Plus, I didn’t think any of us worried about Willa coming after us. Then again, I would have never pegged her as a cold-blooded killer. Which she was. I knew as events unfolded we would find out if the murder was premeditated or second degree. I got up and followed Elle into the foyer. “You know I can’t cook.”
“Let me come with you,” Felicity called after us, laughing. “I think I saw some leftovers in the fridge.”
“Oh,” I said. “In that case, I’m a pro at leftovers. I think I saw some herbs on the windowsill. Maybe I can teach you gals a thing or two about leftovers.”
Elle gave me “the look,” and I grinned.
When we entered the kitchen, Tabitha was sitting in Willa’s chair, meowing. I scooped her up, and Elle followed with a bowl of water and food. I brought her to the drawing room and handed her to Arthur.
Elle reached into his pocket and extracted the key, saying, “I think we should bring her up to Willa. Soon enough, Tabitha will need a home.” She looked over Arthur’s head to me.
Oh, no, you don’t, I thought. They’d bamboozled me into adopting Jo, and look where that had gotten me. Then I smiled.
“For now, she belongs with her owner,” Elle directed, then elbowed her fiancé. “Let’s go, warden.”
“Instead of a last meal, you’re giving her a last pet,” I said.
I didn’t believe we were going too easy on Willa. She would soon pay the price for what she’d done. And on top of that, she’d lost her only son.
Chapter 30
Lights on a trellised archway twinkled outside the doors to Pondfare. The outdoor fireplace had a fire burning and there was just the right amount of snow for a perfect Christmas Day. We filed inside the restaurant and Bella, Pondfare’s co-owner, came up to me. “Meg, we have your table for seven ready.”
“It’s only going to be six,” I said.
Bella gave me a knowing look and glanced at the rest of our group: Doc, Georgia, Claire, Arthur, and Elle. No Cole. Felicity had flown home to her husband but promised to be back for Claire’s New Year’s Eve party. Mr. & Mrs. Winslow would start filming at the end of January with Langston Reed as its director. We’d already staged the main room at Windy Willows. Almost everything they were using on set came from Nightingale Manor. Sabrina had wanted Langston and Jeremy to re
consider filming on Shelter Island, but with the stigma of the estate’s murderous past, they’d stuck to Windy Willows. Luckily for me, I hadn’t run into my ex-fiancé, Michael, or his wife, Paige, at Windy Willows. And I made sure to hide whenever Paige’s father and my former employer and owner of American Home and Garden magazine, Matthew Whitney, showed up. I could only imagine what lies Paige had told him about me. Serenity was once again my mantra. With that thought, I suddenly realized I hadn’t run into Cole’s ex-girlfriend and my archnemesis, Tara Gayle, in months. And that was a good thing. Except for Cole being grounded because of bad weather in North Carolina, I was determined to enjoy Christmas dinner, hoping Cole, my father and his wife would make it for New Year’s Eve at Little Grey.
“Right this way,” Bella said, grabbing some menus and leading us to a table overlooking Montauk’s Fort Pond. As usual, the restaurant was packed. Chef Patou had been at the helm since I’d moved to Montauk. He was a colorful character and a runner-up on TV’s Top Chef Challenge. Many times, his loud voice could be heard coming from the kitchen, demanding something or another from one of his underlings. Bella had told me his bark was worse than his bite. She should know because she’d just married him.
I put my napkin in my lap and said, “Elle, you should have your rehearsal dinner here.”
“Wow. Great idea,” she said. “Whaddya think, Arthur?”
He looked up from his phone, a pained look on his face.
“Oh, no. Don’t tell me, you have to leave?” she asked.
A waitperson put down a platter of crostini topped with goat cheese, cranberries, and rosemary then filled our glasses with sparkling water.
“And then there were five,” I said, grabbing a crostino from the center of the table and stuffing the entire thing in my mouth. Olive oil dribbled down my chin and I caught it with my napkin. Ready for another, I looked to the center of the table. The large platter was empty. “Elle, I think once Arthur starts his job in Manhattan, you’ll probably see more of him.”
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