by K. J. Emrick
Ashton, oblivious to Kyle’s snark, was shaking his head. “I don’t want to leave him alone. I want so badly to help him but I can hardly get him to speak.”
In truth, the light had gone out of Paul’s eyes. He was staring at the rug, flexing his hands over and over where they laid on his knees. He was devastated by what had happened to Leah, and to Maisie.
But, did that mean he wasn’t the killer?
Although Miranda was certainly leaning that way, she knew that people could kill in a fit of rage and then feel remorse about it afterward. Especially when the victim was someone they cared about. The question that she needed answered, was how much had Paul really cared about the two women he’d been married to. Maisie, the ex and Leah, the current?
“Ashton,” she said gently, “Paul might be more willing to come out of these doldrums if he’s talking to a stranger. It’s worth a try, don’t you think?”
“Well, maybe. Sure. But it’s not like the police at the door are going to just let me just leave, right?” He waved his hand vaguely toward the sitting room door. “They stationed two guys out there to make sure all us murder suspects don’t go anyplace. You’re aware that includes you now, Miss Wylder?”
Kyle thought that was hilarious, floating up higher on gales of laughter. “You must be better at this than you thought if no one suspects you of being a mole!”
“I’m not a—” she started to snap at Kyle, then she cleared her throat, and remembered she wasn’t alone. “I’m not a suspect, Ashton. At least, I shouldn’t be.”
“Neither should I,” Ashton growled indignantly.
“Nor I,” they were surprised to hear Paul say, in a weak voice.
Ashton blinked at him, and then at Miranda, obviously just as surprised as she was. Patting a hand on Paul’s shoulder, Ashton got up from the couch. “Well. It would appear you were right, Miss Wylder,” he said. “He just needed someone different to talk to. Well. I’ll let you and Paul have some time together.”
He hesitated even still, obviously hurt that Paul had chosen to open up to Miranda rather than him, but then he cleared his throat and marched straight over to the door where the police officers waited. Miranda could hear him asking to be escorted to the bathroom. A moment later he was gone.
“Well then,” Kyle said, folding his hands at his waist and leaning back in the midair. “maybe it was a good plan after all.”
That was the easy part, Miranda thought to herself. Now she was left with a man so despondent that he wouldn’t say more than two words at a time. She wondered what on Earth she could possibly say to Paul Wells to get him speaking again. There were things that she needed to ask him but, at the same time, she didn’t want to do irreparable emotional damage to a man who already seemed broken.
“Just do your best, Miranda,” Kyle said gently, encouraging her.
Despite the fact that Kyle couldn’t do much more than be moral support, Miranda still felt comforted just to know that her friend was there with her. She sat down on the couch, next to Paul. “Kyle, can you go and make sure Maisie doesn’t come wandering over here? Keep her distracted. Take her somewhere else, please.”
Paul blinked over at her. “Maisie? What about Maisie?”
Kyle clucked his tongue, already floating away. “Ooh, good luck with that one. I’ll just… yeah. Maisie and I can just go for a walk, then.”
Miranda was left with a suddenly all-too-attentive Paul Wells staring at her. She’d kept her voice at a whisper, sure that in his state he wouldn’t have heard her. So much for that. Well. Now that this particular cat was out of the bag, maybe she could use it to her advantage.
So she moved and sat herself down on the foot stool that Ashton Perry had just vacated and reached out to cover Paul Wells’ hand with her own. “You’ve been through a lot,” she told him. “The police are going to want to ask you about Leah’s death.”
He nodded, his eyes gradually coming into focus on her. “She’s dead.”
“Yes,” Miranda said, because there was nothing else she could say.
“Maisie is dead, too.”
“Yes.”
“You said…” Paul swallowed, and for a moment he lost his train of thought, having to start over again. “You said something about Maisie?”
Miranda took a deep breath. Ever since coming to Moonlight Bay from the bigger city life, she had tried very hard to keep out of everyone’s way. She wanted to keep her secrets hidden. People knew she was a writer of crime novels. They knew her family had owned the home at Ragged Rest for generations now. They knew she was kind and thoughtful and mostly kept to herself.
What they did not know, was that she was psychic medium.
That would change, at least in part, if she told Paul about Maisie.
But she just didn’t see any other way.
“Paul, there’s something that I must tell you. I’ve been speaking to Maisie. She’s been here, this whole time.”
“What?” Paul said. His head snapped up so quickly that Miranda was sure she heard his spine crack. “What the hell do you mean by that? Why would you say something like that?”
Paul had gone from almost catatonic to alert and agitated in a heartbeat. That was progress, she decided. Of a sort. “I’m telling you this because it’s true, Paul. Maisie’s ghost, her spirit, is still here. Okay. Let’s start from the beginning. There’s something you need to know about me. It’s the whole reason I came to your house in the first place.”
“Are you mocking me?” Paul was still trying to wrap his mind around the wild claim Miranda had just laid on him. “Are you poking fun at me after I just lost two people I cared about in less than twenty-four hours?” He was growing angry and Miranda knew she would have to say something before that anger turned violent. “Well? Speak up!”
Here came the moment of truth. “Paul, I’m a psychic medium. I can sense those who have moved on to the next world. I can talk to them. They can talk to me.”
His eyes narrowed. “So this is a scam? You want to bilk my family out of the money we have left, claiming that Maisie is speaking to you through the paintings in the hall or your Ouija board, or whatever?”
She laughed softly. “Believe me, it’s not like you see on television. It’s very different.”
“Miss Wylder, I’m in no mood for jokes. I don’t believe in all that psychic mumbo jumbo. I’m your classic sort of skeptic and the fact that these two women in my life are now dead will not give you an excuse to come in here and spread your lies.”
He kept his voice down, thankfully, because as it was the officer at the door kept looking their way. “That’s all right, Paul. At the moment it doesn’t matter whether or not you believe in such things, I just need you to hear me out,” she added firmly. “Will you do that?”
His anger eased up, but only a little. “I’ll listen for long enough to hear your nonsense, and then throw you out of my house. If I wasn’t being held hostage in my own home while the police bumbled about I wouldn’t even give you that much consideration.”
He almost spat the words at her and Miranda was surprised that he had this much aggression in him. Thus far she’d only seen him give in to whatever anyone else wanted for him. His mother Natasha, his second wife Leah, even Maisie had used him for her own concerns.
Was there a side to Paul Wells that she hadn’t seen yet?
She had succeeded in opening him up and he was talking to her. That was all she needed for now. Best not to waste the opportunity. “All right. Please understand, this is no scam. I have always been able to have contact with people who have passed on. It’s not something I asked for and it’s not even something I particularly want for myself. It’s just the way it is. I consider it a gift, even if it’s one I wish I could return some days. As such, I use it to help people whenever I can. People like Maisie Fraser, whose lives have been taken prematurely and at the hands of another.”
That seemed to strike the right chord with him. “Go on,” he said solemnly.
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br /> “I came to your home last night to see what I could do to help Maisie. I was there on the beach when the police were led to her body. I knew she must have fallen from the cliff in your back yard. I was hoping, if I could find her ghost, that I would be able to help her move on or at the very least find out who had killed her. And I found her here, wandering up and down the corridors completely confused, as most ghosts are when they have died suddenly and violently.”
Tears brimmed in Paul’s eyes. The thought of Maisie in that state, whether he wanted to believe Miranda’s claims or not, had obviously hit him hard. “I can’t believe what you’re telling me. I won’t believe it.”
“She’s worried,” Miranda continued, knowing that she needed to ask her questions quickly if she wanted to keep Paul from closing himself off again. “Maisie was a wonderful woman, Paul. She said that she regrets lying about you in the divorce.”
Paul snorted. “You heard my mother say that. I know a sham when I see one.”
Miranda could see that even though it didn’t matter to her if Paul believed what she was saying, she wasn’t going to get anywhere with him unless she made him understand she was the real deal. “All right. Um. She also said that she loves your mother’s roast. She mentioned that your mother uses just a pinch of pink sea salt and basil. Unless you think your mother told me that bit, too?”
His eyes had gone wide. “No. No, Maisie never told anyone that she liked my mother’s roast except me. She and my mother didn’t get along well, you see, and Maisie couldn’t bring herself to give my mother even the barest of compliments. And my mother never gives out her recipe. To anyone.”
“All right. There you go. I know about that because Maisie told me.”
He looked at her, and although she could still see the doubt in his eyes, it was tempered by a desire to want to believe her as well. “If you’ve seen her, then can she tell you who killed her?”
“No,” Miranda said, “she can’t. That’s a common theme with ghosts. Maisie knows that there was someone out there with her, just like you saw. She also said she was pushed. So that leads us to a couple of questions.”
“What questions? What are you talking about?”
“We both want to find out who killed Maisie,” she said, and then very intentionally she added, “and Leah as well. So. You said you were watching out the window of your room when you thought you saw Maisie walking around the back of the house?”
“Yes. If only I’d gone out there, to meet her, and hadn’t been such a coward.”
“A coward? How’s that?”
He sighed, and dropped his hands helplessly on his knees. “Leah didn’t want me to have anything to do with Maisie. Neither did my mother. But you see, I still cared about her. Even after everything that had happened between us, I still cared about her… as a person. You understand? I know she did what she did to me because she felt it was the only way to be financially set. It backfired on her, and it ruined me, but I really feel like she didn’t do it out of spite.”
In Miranda’s mind, it all amounted to the same thing, but she supposed a grieving heart could see a difference where she couldn’t.
“You can’t live your life on regrets of what you didn’t do, Paul. What’s important now is helping Maisie and Leah find their way to the other side.”
“Leah? You’ve seen Leah, too?”
Miranda couldn’t say why, but somehow the way he said that showed a different sort of concern than he had shown for Maisie. “No, I haven’t seen her. If I do, I’ll let you know.”
He regarded her sharply. “Well, I suppose if this was a scam then you’d have claimed to have seen both of them. What do you want to ask me, Miss Wylder?”
“When you saw Maisie outside, where was everyone else? Your mother. Leah. Ashton. Where were they?”
He shrugged helplessly. “I’ve no idea. I had gone upstairs to my room at that point. When I did, all three of them were in the dining room getting set up for our night of dinner and cards. Ashton said he was going to change in his room, I think. I’m afraid that doesn’t help us much, does it? Ashton certainly didn’t kill either of them.”
Miranda kept silent about that. She wasn’t yet convinced that Ashton was innocent. Or Paul, either, because his saying that he was in his room at the time of the murder by himself could simply be a convenient alibi. The tears he was shedding could be for himself, rather than for Maisie and Leah.
“Somebody wanted them both dead, Paul.” This next part had to be put delicately, if she didn’t want to find herself thrown out of the house on her ear. “The thing of it is, that there really aren’t that many suspects. Can you think of any reason that any one person would want both your wife and your ex-wife dead?”
“You don’t have to be so discreet. I know that it comes down to either Ashton or my mother in the end. It’s a sad thing, isn’t it? I can’t believe Ashton did this, and I can’t believe my mother did this, but I have to accept it was one or the other now don’t I? That is, of course, unless you suspect me of being the killer.” He shrugged, almost as if it didn’t matter anymore. “They are both selfish, you know. Ashton and my mother, I mean. I suppose, now that I’m being honest with myself, that maybe finding out either one was a killer wouldn’t surprise me overmuch.”
Now they were getting somewhere. “How so?”
“Well, Ashton’s always tried to hide his true feelings for me and, to be honest, I felt so guilty these last years knowing that I can’t do anything about how he feels for me.”
Miranda simply couldn’t hide the look of surprise on her face. Well, well, well. So Ashton’s little secret wasn’t so much of a secret after all.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he added quickly, “Ashton’s affection for me doesn’t make me feel uncomfortable in the least. It’s just that I can’t return it. I don’t feel that way about him. I truly loved Maisie, and I truly loved Leah, differently but the same.”
“I see.” Miranda wasn’t passing judgment on him. Not for this.
Paul let out a great sigh, and looked for all the world as if he were betraying Ashton in some way. “Ashton didn’t approve of either of my marriages, and I know it was for purely selfish reasons. I suppose you’ve noticed that he likes me in more than just a brotherly way? Yes. I thought as much. He wanted me to himself. Because of that, he was forever trying to drive wedges into my relationships. So I found myself in the position of choosing either my friend or my wife, and usually I ended up disappointing both.”
“That must have been exhausting for you, Paul.”
“It really was. More than once, I found myself just wanting to be out of the whole situation. The divorce from Maisie was rather a relief, in a lot of ways. That was why I didn’t fight her on whatever she asked for, or whatever she said about me.”
“Sometimes bad relationships can ruin your life.”
“True, but that’s not what did that. It was my mother who made me the way I am. She’s treated me as if I were nothing more than a little doll all my life, a puppet whose strings she’s firmly got hold of. She wanted to keep me as mommy’s little boy forever. I have been suffocating my entire adult life, Miss Wylder. My mother seemed to like Maisie at first, but soon enough she began to hate her. Not for anything she did, but because she was taking her little boy away from her. She resented the time I spent with my wife, and I know she hated Leah in the same way.”
He certainly was talking now, and no doubt about it. “Do you think… do you think your mother could have killed them?” she asked him.
Paul shrugged. “I don’t know. I just don’t know. As it turned out, my mother was right about Maisie. I would think that if she wanted to kill Maisie, it would have been during the divorce, or before. I suppose I should have recognized Maisie for what she was, too. I knew she was only into me for the money.”
“So why did you marry her?” Miranda asked. It might not be important to the murder, but then again it might.
“Because nobody else wanted
me. That’s why.” He clutched his hands into fists, like he was pleading for her to understand. “And I thought, in the end, she might fall in love with me. She never did, but it didn’t stop me loving her. We met at the accountancy firm that handled my family’s business affairs. She seemed so innocent, then. So ready to accept me for who I was. It made it easy to love her. I was just… so blind.”
He wiped at the tears on his face with his sleeves. Miranda gave him a moment. There were still more questions, but somehow she sensed that the information about meeting Maisie would be helpful, in several ways.
Chapter 14
There was a squeak of a door opening and a clack of heels as Natasha Wells stepped back into the room. As soon as she did, Paul shut his mouth tight, and began staring at the spot between his shoes again.
Jack was with her. The officer at the door nodded to him, and Miranda was thinking how it was horrid timing when Natasha cleared her throat. “I see you’re still here, Miss Wylder,” she said sourly.
“Yes, I’m still here.” Miranda said as politely as she could manage.
“I would have rather hoped you would be gone by now. This has become a family matter. Can’t the police send you home?”
Miranda looked to Jack for help. He cleared his throat. “We can’t send any of you home until we’ve spoken to everyone. Miranda, if you would come with me then we can get your statement.”
It was clear that he wanted to talk to her in private, and she definitely wanted to talk to him as well. The things she’d learned from Paul had helped her get a clearer picture of the mystery. There were just the three suspects now—Natasha, Ashton, and Paul—and when Miranda put her mind to the clues it became obvious that—
“Were you talking to my son?” Natasha suddenly blurted out. “He seems more upset now than when I left him!”
Everyone in the room waited for Paul to say something for himself. When he didn’t, Natasha turned her razor-sharp gaze on Miranda.