by Lauren Carr
“Which is why you called George from the ambulance on your way to the hospital,” David said.
“She was doing the right thing,” George said. “Giving me a heads-up about a potentially explosive situation that would’ve proved very embarrassing to our party.”
“Oh, yeah,” Mac said, chuckling. “I’m sure that all Erin cared about was doing the right thing for all the right reasons.”
“I don’t like your tone.” George slipped a protective arm around Erin’s waist.
“Tell us about the shooting,” Sheriff Turow said.
“I was here in the study looking for some files to take upstairs to work on,” Erin said.
“What files?” Mac asked.
“What does it matter?” she countered.
“If it doesn’t matter, then you should have no problem telling us.”
In silence, George Ward was looking at her.
With a shrug of her shoulders, she said, “A list of our campaign donors. I was going to send out invitations to a fund-raising dinner. I was looking through the folders on the desk. Suddenly, the light flipped on—”
“Why were the lights off?” David asked.
“Because I didn’t want to wake anyone up.”
“Why would the light being on down here wake up anyone?” Sheriff Turow asked. “The bedrooms are upstairs.”
Erin’s face turned pink. She clenched her jaw. “I was the one who got shot!”
“So the light was turned on,” Mac said. “And what happened then?”
“There was Nancy, and she was holding a gun. She started spouting all of this insanity about how I was out to get her and how she hadn’t worked all these years courting and sucking up to anyone and everyone so that she could get to where she was and then have a little slut steal it from her.” Erin rubbed her injured shoulder. “Then she pulled the trigger and shot me. Hugh and Nathan heard the shot, and they came running in and took the gun from her. They took her upstairs and gave her a strong tranquilizer. Then Hugh got rid of the gun, and they came up with this phony story about a burglar.”
“But you called George from the ambulance to tell him the truth,” David said.
“At which point you two started maneuvering to remove Nancy from the campaign and replace her with you,” Mac said.
“I have a degree in political science,” Erin said.
“I’m sure you do.” Mac turned to George. “Did Erin tell you that she took Nancy off of her meds without her knowing it?”
“Meds? What meds?” George Ward’s mouth dropped open.
“That’s right,” Mac said. “Your party’s chosen candidate was mentally ill.”
Guttural noises came out of George’s mouth as he looked from Mac to Erin and then back again.
“They’re lying!” Erin said.
“That’s why Nancy was losing it,” Mac said. “The pathological lying. Making herself out to be more important than she really was. Showing signs of having delusions. Paranoia.” He grinned. “Though the paranoia might have been because someone close to her really was out to get her.”
“You can’t prove any of that!”
“Nathan gave her doctor permission to tell us what’s in her records,” Sheriff Turow said. “He had referred her to a psychiatrist for treatment of her delusions of grandeur and paranoia years ago. She’d been on antidepressants and antipsychotic medication for several years—until Erin here started swapping out her meds for sugar pills.”
“The medical examiner found gelatin capsules in Nancy Braxton’s stomach,” David said, “but no meds in the tox screen. She did a hair analysis and found that up until six weeks ago, she’d been taking regular medication and then had suddenly stopped.”
“The primary was six weeks ago,” George said.
“When did Erin start putting the moves on you?” Mac asked.
“You can’t prove it was me,” Erin said. “I didn’t even know Nancy was on meds. She obviously didn’t want anyone to know. Not even her husband knew.”
“Now, why would you say that?” Mac asked. “We just told you that Nathan gave the doctor permission to tell us what’s in her records. Why would you think he didn’t know—unless Nancy told you that she didn’t want him to know?”
“There are no pills in this house,” Erin said. “You’ve already looked.”
Mac slipped on evidence gloves. “I haven’t looked yet.”
Sheriff Turow took an envelope out of his pocket and handed it to Erin. “Another search warrant for the house and the entire grounds.”
After the sheriff called in one of his deputies who was stationed outside to watch Erin and George, he and David led Mac upstairs to Nancy Braxton’s bedroom suite. On their way out of the room, they saw that George was glaring with disdain at Erin Devereux.
Once inside the master suite, Mac stood in the middle of the room and looked around, turning in a complete circle.
“My people tore this room apart,” Sheriff Turow said. “Went through all the garbage, too.”
“No, she has them in the house,” Mac said. “She’s smart. As soon as she found out that Nancy Braxton was dead, they all went into cover-up mode. Nancy didn’t tell her husband about the psychiatrist and the meds. I doubt that she told her brother. She was not a woman who got close to anyone.”
“Erin was the first assistant she had who lasted more than a year,” David said.
“Only because she was as ambitious as Nancy Braxton.” Mac went into Nancy’s bathroom and looked around. He peered up at the shower-curtain rod. “Knowing that no one knew about Nancy’s condition, Erin bided her time until the right moment and then took her off the meds.” He reached up and tapped the rod with his fingertips. “Then she went about seducing George Ward and priming him for blackmail so that when Nancy Braxton had her breakdown, she could swoop in like Wonder Woman to save the party.”
Without touching anything, Mac hurried out of the room to the hallway. “Where’s Erin’s room?”
Sheriff Turow pointed to the room across the hallway. Mac threw open the door and went inside.
“You mentioned blackmail,” Sheriff Turow said. “George Ward was adamant that he wasn’t being blackmailed.”
Mac went into Erin’s bathroom. “That’s how I know he’s lying. Erin said she was in the study looking for a list of donors to Nancy’s campaign.” He peered up at the curtain rod and grinned. “That information would have been digital—on her laptop.” Climbing into the tub, he studied the brace holding the rod in place.
“Which wasn’t in the study,” David said before turning to Mac. “Be careful. You were in the emergency room just a couple of days ago.”
“Yes, Dad,” Mac said with sarcasm. “I’m willing to bet that she was really looking for the charities that Braxton Charities pays out to.” He tapped on the curtain rod. His taps made a noise that indicated that the rod was not hollow. Mac held out his hand to David, who slapped a multitool pocketknife in his palm.
“More than one person has told us that Nancy Braxton was not qualified to be the mayor of Spencer,” Mac said while unscrewing the brace that held the rod in place. “She didn’t have the experience or personality to win the election. George was literally taking a big chance by backing Nancy Braxton. Erin had been working with Nancy. She must’ve seen what was going on and realized that George Ward was taking bribes. But in order to blackmail him into replacing Nancy with her, she needed proof.”
“Nathan Braxton told us on the night of the shooting that both Erin and Hugh used the study,” David said.
Mac yanked the curtain rod down. “Erin was in the study looking for records showing a money trail from Braxton Charities to George Ward. She needed to prove that Nancy Braxton was paying him off so that he would get her elected into some leadership position that would fulfill her fantasy of being queen.”
Mac turned the curtain rod vertically and shook it. With a rattle, four prescription bottles, each of which contained several pills, fell out of the tube and onto the floor. Realizing that there was something else still in the rod, he took a toothbrush from the bathroom counter and pushed its handle down the rod until he managed to pry out a clear plastic bag containing powdered sugar.
“Looks like we have our killer.” Sheriff Turow stuffed the pill bottles into evidence bags.
“Nah,” David said.
“Nah?” the sheriff said. “We have the pills and the sugar that she replaced them with—”
“According to the security recording from the night of the murder, Erin Devereux never left the grounds,” David said. “Hugh went looking for Nancy. Erin stayed here.”
“Why would Hugh Vance have killed his sister?” Sheriff Turow asked.
Mac took the pills and the powdered sugar. “Let’s go find out.”
“This confirms everything that Mac and I uncovered about Braxton Charities.” Archie picked up one of the stacks of paper work and thumbed through it.
Archie had raced over to David’s house as soon as Dallas had told her about the box that had been left on the doorstep. While sorting through the paper work, which included government reports collected from the Freedom of Information Act and witness statements, and scanning Sandy Burr’s unpublished manuscript, they drank a whole bottle of white wine.
After sorting through each piece of paper, Dallas went into the kitchen to open a second bottle and to freshen their drinks so that they could sit back and digest what they had learned.
“How did Caleb Montgomery end up with this box?” Archie asked while accepting the glass of wine being offered to her.
“I assume he found it in Sandy Burr’s room.” Dallas sat on the arm of the sofa and stroked her sleeping dog.
“What was he doing in Sandy Burr’s room?” When Dallas had no answer, Archie grinned. “You know what they say: when you assume, you make an ass out of you and me.”
“Are you thinking he killed Sandy Burr?” Dallas asked. “Like, Hugh Vance paid him to do it? That’s why Caleb was so insistent that Hugh Vance wasn’t the fat man at the bar.”
“If Hugh hired Caleb to kill Sandy Burr, he wouldn’t have let this business-slash-extortion-business continue for all of these years,” Archie said. “Vance would’ve made damn sure that he got this box as part of the arrangement. Caleb came upon the box in another way. Like, he happened upon it.”
“He witnessed the murder,” Dallas said, “or the killer running away. Went into the room to check it out and found the box with the manuscript. Before that he had witnessed Sandy Burr’s meeting with Nancy Braxton—had seen them arguing. All he had to do was read the first few pages of the manuscript to realize how valuable it would be, so he took it.”
Archie’s brow furrowed while she leafed through the paper work.
“What do you see?”
“It’s what I don’t see.” Archie paused to take a sip of her wine. “While we’ve been going through all of this and talking about it, one name keeps coming up in regard to Braxton Charities.”
“Hugh Vance,” Dallas said.
“Not Nancy Braxton, who was the person Sandy Burr interviewed and argued with that night.” She shook a copy of a contract at Dallas. “Yes, Nancy signed some stuff, but the guy who is really running things is—”
“Hugh Vance.” Dallas stood up. “What was it I heard someone say? Nancy Braxton is the face of Braxton Charities. She goes around hobnobbing with all the big wheels and getting them to donate to it, but it’s her brother who runs things behind the scenes.”
“Which means that when Sandy Burr met with her to discuss the money laundering, she most likely honestly had no idea what he was talking about.”
“Which would have given Hugh a big motive to want Burr dead.” Dallas sat down across from her.
“We need to confirm all of this.” Archie picked up a dusty weekly organizer that they’d found in the box and thumbed through the contacts listed in it. “We know he met his contact in Deep Creek Lake the afternoon of the day he died.”
Dallas was looking through the appointment section. “Maybe he made a note—” She jumped in her seat. “Someone with the initials ‘NB.’ Can’t be Nancy Braxton, can it?”
“Of course he would’ve used initials,” Archie said.
“Who does he have listed in the Bs?” Dallas asked. “We want a last name starting with B that has a Deep Creek Lake phone number listed with it.”
“But not Nancy Braxton.” Archie ran her finger down the list of contacts. Her eyes widened with surprise.
“There is someone, isn’t there?” Dallas held her breath.
“You’re never going to believe who it is.”
As Mac, David, and Sheriff Turow had expected, when they returned to the study with the pill bottles and the powdered sugar they’d found in her bathroom, Erin Devereux immediately claimed that someone else had planted them there.
“I can see you learned from the best,” Mac said. “You’re going to claim that your political enemies are perpetrating a vast conspiracy.”
“I am being framed.”
“So when we dust these pill bottles for fingerprints, your prints won’t be on them?” Sheriff Turow asked.
“They will be. I ordered the pills for Nancy, and I opened the package and gave them to her—”
“And after Nancy Braxton had a breakdown and ran out of the house and into the night—ending up dead—you didn’t hide the pills to keep her condition from being made public?” When Erin shook her head, Mac grinned. “Not even to protect the image of your party?”
With a sigh, she relented. “Not because I’d done anything wrong. You have to understand. Ms. Braxton was a brilliant woman. If it got out that she had a psychiatric condition, her legacy would have been ruined.” Pleased with how well she had thought on her feet, Erin grinned.
Impressed, Mac chuckled. “There’s only one problem with that explanation. Why would you have been so concerned about preserving Nancy Braxton’s legacy before you even knew she was dead?”
“Allegedly,” David said, “you didn’t know she was dead until I came here to tell you she was at nine thirty the next morning.”
“Until then,” Mac said, “supposedly, you only thought she was missing.”
“I hid them after Chief O’Callaghan told us she was dead,” Erin said, “but before they searched her room.”
David and Sheriff Turow both shook their heads. “My officers and I kept everyone down here on the main floor,” David said. “You had no access to Nancy’s bedroom, and an officer was with you at all times.”
“Which means that you hid Nancy Braxton’s medications the night before,” Mac said. “Which means that you knew she was dead before Chief O’Callaghan arrived here the next morning. You had to get rid of the pills so that we wouldn’t discover that you had tampered with them.”
Erin turned to George Ward, hoping he would defend her. Instead, he turned away. “I’m the party’s mayoral nominee! If I go down, you’re going down with me.”
“I had no idea that Nancy was on antipsychotic medication and that Erin was tampering with her meds,” George said. “I had seen Nancy losing it, but she was always demanding, and I swear that she wouldn’t have known the truth if it’d bit her on the butt. But I didn’t think—” He paused and pointed at Erin. “She called me from the ambulance on the way to the hospital and told me that Nancy had lost her mind and shot her. She told me that Nancy was having a breakdown from the stress of the campaign. That’s all I thought it was.”
“And the night of the murder?” Mac asked.
“Erin called and told me that Nancy had had a complete breakdown and run out,” George said. “She asked me what to do. I told her to wake up Hugh and send him out to find her before she did
something crazy and ruined everything we had done for her.”
“What set Nancy off?” David asked them.
Erin looked from George to her feet and then cast her eyes around the room.
Mac folded his arms across his chest. “You’re looking at being charged with negligent homicide and accessory to murder, Ms. Devereux.”
“I didn’t kill her!”
“You tampered with her medication, causing her to have a breakdown and to run out into the night,” Sheriff Turow said. “While she was out there, someone killed her.”
“If a prosecutor wanted to, he could argue that if you hadn’t tampered with Nancy Braxton’s medication, she never would have had the breakdown that sent her out into the night to be murdered,” Mac said. “If you help us, we’ll put in a good word for you.”
Erin folded her arms across her chest. “I saw that Nancy was at the breaking point—especially when she told that outlandish lie at the debate about landing in sniper fire in Somalia. Then, when those nuts called threatening her life after someone planted that story about Gnarly, she completely lost it. She fired me, saying that I was out to get her.”
“But you said you got fired a couple of times a week,” David said.
“Not like that time,” Erin said. “That time was for real. I did dismiss it, and just like always, I went to my room to go to bed. But then Nancy came banging on my door, screaming for me to get out and saying that she wasn’t going to have me in her house for even one more night. We got into a huge fight, and then my cell phone rang. She looked over and saw George’s picture and name on the caller ID. Then she totally lost her grip and said that we were conspiring against her to oust her from the campaign.”
“Which was true,” Mac said.
Erin frowned when she saw George step away from her. “That was when she became completely unwrapped and ran out of my room, down the staircase, and out of the house. I ran outside to try to find her, but I couldn’t.”
“But not right away,” David said. “According to the time stamp on the security tape, you were seven minutes behind her. Instead of going after her to make sure she was okay, you called George to snitch on her.”