by Неизвестный
Miranda was surprised to hear a flirtatious little giggle coming from Eleanor. Into the reflection stepped a man in his late fifties wearing sharp business suit. He had hawkish features and a severe hairline, and Miranda had no doubt that he was Joel Stephens, the family attorney.
As she watched, he stepped closer to Eleanor, and then took her into his arms.
They were obviously more than friends.
As Miranda was getting over her shock at this revelation, she heard Eleanor speaking. “I know I was rude to you yesterday during the reading of the will, Joel. I was a bad girl… can you ever forgive me?”
His smile was hungry as he traced a finger down her cheek. “How can I stay mad at you?”
“Mmm. Then we can go back to our original arrangement.”
“Of course we can,” he promised. Then he leaned in, and kissed her.
Forgetting her investigative intentions in the face of such an intimate moment, Miranda backed away from the door and began to make her way back along the corridor.
She was undone by one of the many side tables. It seemed to jump out into her path and catch her hip with its corner. The sound of it bouncing against the wall echoed loudly.
Not waiting to see if Eleanor or her new lover would poke their heads out to see her, Miranda rushed down the hallway, desperate to return to the sitting room.
The problem was, she’d lost all sense of where she was.
She ran down corridor after corridor and, in the end, drew up to a halt in front of a tall, beveled window. At least if she could see outside, she might be able to get her bearings.
Peering out into the morning light, Miranda was able to figure out she was in the deepest part of the house, far away from the sitting room she had intended to return to. So, if she wanted to get back then she needed to go this way…
The corridor she tried turned out to be a dead end.
A row of doors met her, and the one closest to her was unlocked and opened. Inside she could see a bedroom. Well, she decided, she was already here, it couldn’t hurt to have a quick look around.
As soon as she entered, Miranda knew that she was in the master bedroom. It was done in masculine décor with dark colors and heavy furniture. The bed was made up with creased lines and obviously hadn’t been used in days. Surely she was in Terence Crenshaw’s very own bedroom.
As she pushed the door closed behind her and walked further into the room, Miranda found herself hoping that Alice would appreciate just how much Miranda was risking to help her. But of course, Miranda was also helping herself. She needed Alice to move on. One ghost in residence at Ragged Rest was more than enough!
Miranda made her way to the bedside cabinet and opened the little drawer. There was a pile of neat paperwork inside, and she lifted it out all together before placing it on the bed where she could sit down and look through it.
At the very top of the paperwork was some sort of medical report, indicating that Terence Crenshaw needed a kidney transplant rather urgently.
She gasped as she read through the page. Although she could not take in a lot of the technical medical details, Miranda rather thought that the gist of it was that Terence would die without such an operation.
So, was Kyle right? Alice was missing a kidney. Terence needed a kidney to live. Only… Terence had died days ago. Why murder Alice for her kidney now if it was meant for Terence?
Miranda shuddered, remembering Alice Gill’s lifeless body and bloodstained appearance. Who on earth had cut a kidney out of the young woman in so brutal a manner?
Shaking off her disgust, Miranda kept searching. She found a rough photocopy of a will, and took her time absorbing the information from it. She found the provisions granting a sizeable portion of the estate to Alice, including much of the proceeds from the sale of the house. However, there was a provision that Alice’s inheritance in its entirety would revert to Eleanor Crenshaw should Alice pass away before her.
“Interesting,” Miranda said, under her breath. “Money does make for a great motive.”
Miranda continued to leaf through the paperwork until she found an unsigned release form for a donor kidney. The name of the proposed donor was printed on the paper, but she couldn’t make it out. There was an enormous brown stain on the paper, like from a coffee spill. Damn it, she thought. That was a key piece to this puzzle!
That was all there was to see. As Miranda hurriedly replaced all the paperwork just as she had found it, she heard tires on gravel. Hurrying over to the bedroom window, she saw a police car pulling up the drive. At the wheel was Detective Jack Travis. In a little panic, Miranda rushed back out into the hall, praying that she would find the sitting room this time.
She did, more by fluke than by purposeful exploration, and when she got there Miranda found that Olivia Crenshaw was gone. Her friend sat there, all alone. She lounged on the couch, one leg crossed over the other in that amazing dress.
Kyle and Alice were standing off to the side, both of them with anxious expressions. They had something to tell her. Briefly Miranda considered stepping back out in the hallway again and having them follow her, but Olivia’s friend was already watching her. No reason to make herself look even more suspicious.
“Would you mind if I sat?” Miranda asked, hoping that the woman was a little friendlier than Olivia had been.
The woman smiled at her vaguely, as if it didn’t matter. “Sure. Go ahead.”
“Thank you, Miss…?” Once again, Miranda was fishing for a name.
“I’m Faith Wood.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Faith. I’m Miranda—”
“I know, you told us earlier. You’re returning the dog or something, right?”
“Well, I was trying to.” Miranda said with a shrug, wondering exactly how it was that Faith Wood fitted into things. She was just as rude, and she acted like she owned this place. “Where did Olivia go?”
“To answer the door. Didn’t you hear the knock?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” Miranda said, with a smile that was lost on its recipient.
Faith seemed distracted, her eyes continually on the door to the sitting room, as if waiting for Olivia to come back. Of course, Miranda knew fine and well who had been at the door. It was Jack Travis.
Taking advantage of Faith’s obvious lack of desire for conversation, Miranda let her gaze turn to Kyle and Alice, and raised her eyebrows to ask a silent question.
“I used to date Faith,” Alice explained, her expression sad.
Miranda tried to keep her reaction to herself. That was… unexpected.
“She dumped me,” Alice went on quickly, “when she found out about Terence and me. I cheated on her, oh, I remember it all now. I’d forgotten what a horrible person I was. How could I forget that?”
“It’s complicated,” Kyle said, trying to help. “I know there’s parts of my life that I’ve forgotten, and some of it comes back in flashes just to disappear again…”
“Oh yeah?” Alice snapped, wiping away ghostly tears from her eyes. “Did you forget an entire relationship? Or how you ruined it by letting an old man take you to his bed and—”
“Okay,” Miranda said, cutting through the argument that was starting between those two. Faith glanced her way with an arched eyebrow. “Um…”
Thankfully she was saved from having to come up with yet another crazy excuse for her weird behavior when Olivia swept back into the sitting room, with Jack Travis following in her wake.
“And what might you be doing here, Miss Wylder?” Jack asked her. Was that a smile she saw at the corner of his mouth?
“The dog!” she blurted out. Then, a little more calmly, she added, “I came to return Butter. They don’t seem to want him here and I might have to keep him.”
“Well, that wouldn’t be so bad. He seems like good dog.” He was definitely smiling now.
And he was a dog person.
Oh, Miranda knew she was in trouble with this one.
“Well,” he said,
his demeanor becoming professional again. “This is an active investigation, Miss Wylder, and you’re a key witness. I’m sure you’ll understand when I say you shouldn’t be here?”
Miranda knew he was right, but she could not help but feel a little crestfallen by the brush off he was giving her, even if he was being polite about it.
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t think. You see,” she tried to excuse her presence here, “when you said that Butter ought to go to the family, I thought you meant immediately. I didn’t realize that there would be any sort of police investigation right here. I really am very sorry.”
He didn’t say anything at first. Everyone in the room was watching her, and Miranda felt her cheeks heating. Kyle and Alice floated to her side but only she could see them supporting her.
“Well,” Jack finally said. “Let me walk you out. Olivia, I’ll be right back.”
Miranda rose to her feet and meekly made her way out of the sitting room, Jack following her. She grew angrier with each step, until they were in the entryway of the mansion and alone and Travis was about to say something to her when Miranda cut him off.
“Look, I’ve already apologized, but I really do have something important to tell you.”
He blew out a breath, and then shrugged. “All right, I’m game. What do you want to say?”
“I think,” Miranda told him, “that I have a fairly good idea who killed Alice.”
Chapter 5
“Let’s walk, shall we?” Jack Travis said, lightly taking Miranda’s elbow. In truth, she didn’t entirely mind.
He waited until they were outside this time. Over in her car, Miranda saw Butter jump up against the partly-open window, panting and pawing at the glass for her attention. She wandered over to her car, Jack following her, to give the dog’s fur a good ruffling. “I won’t be much longer Butter, I promise.” She felt Jack watching her intently.
After a moment, he seemed to come back to himself. “Miss Wylder, you really should not be snooping around in a murder case. Do you want the investigation tainted? Do you want the guilty party to get away, Miss Wylder?”
“No, I don’t. Say… can you do me a favor?”
He looked surprised at the question. “You mean, other than not arresting you for tampering with a police investigation?”
“Yes, other than that. I really was only here to offer my condolences and deliver the dog.”
He snorted, telling her how much he did not believe her. “Fine. What’s the favor, Miss Wylder?”
“Can you call me Miranda?”
He blinked, and then chuckled. “Sure. Miranda it is, if you’ll call me Jack.”
With that settled, Miranda told Jack everything from the moment she had arrived at the house. She told him everything that Eleanor had said about her estranged husband and his relationship with Alice, including the idea that Alice had seduced him in order to be named in the will. When she told Jack about the intimate moment she had caught Eleanor in with Joel Stephens, the attorney, his eyebrows rose comically high.
Good, she thought. Maybe next time he wouldn’t dismiss her as just some red-headed ninny poking around where she shouldn’t.
“And,” she continued, “I’ve also found some evidence. You see, I was trying to find my way back to the sitting room and I ended up taking all the wrong turns. I found Terence Crenshaw’s bedroom, and there’s a drawer full of paperwork in there, and I think you should see it. Everything about it points to Eleanor Crenshaw being the murderer.”
“Well, it wouldn’t be the first time an abandoned wife had killed the mistress, now would it?” Jack said, interested now in Miranda’s take on things. “Except, I can’t just go walking through someone’s house and rifling through their drawers for incriminating evidence. I’m a police officer.”
“You can,” she smiled at him, “if you happen to get lost along your way back to the sitting room, and take the exact same wrong turns that I did, and if the drawer just happens to be open when you look in the room. Am I right?”
He nodded to her with something close to respect. “Yes. That’s true. Of course, I’d have to be sure I got lost in just the right way.”
“Lucky for you, I’m an expert at getting lost.” Giving Butter a last pat she said, “Come on.”
As they walked through several corridors, Miranda began to mentally run through each and every piece of paperwork she had seen. She knew which ones they should look at, and she was ordering them by which ones she thought were most important. Eventually they reached the master bedroom. The door was closed. Funny, she thought. Hadn’t she left it open? She reached for the doorknob.
It was locked.
“You sure this is the right room?” Jack said, looking up and down the short hallway. “Lots of doors here.”
“Yes, I’m certain… this should be open.” She tried to give the door handle another turn while pushing on it, to the same effect. It remained shut and locked.
“On a scale of one to ten,” he asked her quietly, “one being completely unsure and ten being swear-on-a-stack-of-Bibles sure, just how sure are you.”
“I’m sure!” she snapped back at him. “This was the door.”
Kyle’s head and shoulders materialized through the door and Miranda jumped back a step from him. “You’re right. This is Terence’s old bedroom. Alice says she’s spent a lot of nights in here doing—”
Miranda lifted a hand up to him, really not wanting him to finish that sentence. Then realizing how silly she looked holding her hand up like that she carried on and ran her fingers through her hair.
Sighing heavily, Jack reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a little cloth case. He grinned at her, and winked, as he withdrew two long and thin pieces of metal from the case. Then he bent over and fit them into the lock.
“You’re picking the lock?” she exclaimed.
“I suppose you could say that.”
Well, well. “Isn’t that an unusual sort of skill for a police officer to have learned?”
“Oh, well, occasionally I lose my house keys, and I find that this is cheaper than replacing windows.”
Miranda didn’t believe him for a second. Still, she liked the way his backside flexed with him crouched over like that, working the metal tools in the keyhole…
“Got it,” he declared, startling Miranda. She’d been rather focused on the curve of his rump.
Jack smiled triumphantly as he rose to his feet and turned the handle, pushing the door inwards. As the pair of them walked in, Miranda gasped. There, laying in the centre of the floor, was the very definitely dead body of Eleanor Crenshaw.
“Oh,” Kyle said with an apologetic sort of frown. “Did I forget to mention that part?”
Chapter 6
In no time at all, the house was swarming with police officers. In truth there was only four of them, five if she counted Jack, but they went rushing in and out so quickly that there seemed to be ten times that many.
Considering how small Moonlight Bay was, this could be the entire police force, Miranda thought to herself. It wasn’t like dealing with the Police in Melbourne, that was for certain.
She had been told to wait outside the bedroom door, and with nothing to do but wait she made use of her time by eavesdropping.
“I’m just saying, Jack,” one of the other officers was saying, “that this Miranda Wylder of yours has now been the first person at the scene of two homicides in as many days. You don’t think that’s suspicious? Maybe she has something to do with it all.”
“I doubt it,” Jack said, without any further explanation.
“Then tell me this. If the door was locked, where is the key?”
“I have no idea where the key is. I picked the lock.”
“You picked it?” the officer hissed in surprise, making it very hard for Miranda to listen in on what he was saying. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
“Yes, I picked it. Get over it,” Jack said, with a sigh. “And get over the idea, the very
simplistic idea I might add, that Miranda Wylder has anything to do with it. Really, why would such a smart woman lead a police detective to a dead body if she was the one who did the killing? Seriously, think about what you’re saying.”
“Ooh,” Kyle suddenly said at her elbow. “I really like this guy. Mmm, if I was still alive you’d have competition for him!”
“Shh,” Miranda held a finger up to her lips in the age-old sign to be quiet. “This isn’t about… I don’t like him in that way,” she said quietly.
Kyle’s smile widened, and even Alice gave her a mischievous look. Miranda rolled her eyes. “Just forget about that for now. I need you two to keep snooping about. I’m sure Eleanor killed you, Alice, but I’m missing something because who killed Eleanor?”
She clamped her lips tight as another uniformed officer hurried past her and into the bedroom to confer with Jack.
Alice shook her head. “I don’t understand why I’m still here. It’s obvious that Eleanor killed me, so why am I not moving on? I don’t care who killed Eleanor. She killed me over this inheritance thing, and now that you found the proof Miranda I want to go on to whatever is next. I don’t want to be this way anymore.”
Kyle put his arm around her shoulders, the blue haziness of their images mixing together at the edges. “Miranda will figure this out,” he promised. “In the meantime you’ve got me here with you. It’s not so bad, is it?”
Alice seemed less than convinced, but she didn’t try to move away from Kyle, either.