A Dagger Cuts Deep
Page 1
A Weatherford Sisters Mystery
Jackson – book 4
Kathy L Wheeler
Chisel Imprint Puyallup, WA
A Dagger Cuts Deep
A Weatherford Sisters Mystery
Book 4
Copyright © 2021 by Kathy L Wheeler
All Rights Reserved
https://weatherfordsisters.com
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination and/or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without express written permission from Terry Andrews.
Cover Art © 2020 by Novak Illustrations
Edited by CJ Obray
Formatted by Kathy L Wheeler
For up to date news on new releases, recipes, and author spotlights,
consider signing up for Kathy’s newsletter NovelNotes.
Books by
Kathy L Wheeler
Rebel Lords of London
Enchanting the Earl
The Earl’s Error
The Marquis’ Misstep
The 7th Son
The Viscount’s Vendetta
Lady Felicity’s Feud with Christmas (Regency Christmas Kisses anthology)
The Weatherford Sisters Mysteries
A Bullet to the Heart – Kathy L Wheeler
Hanging by a Threat – Terry Andrews
Fatal Drip of Wisdom – Sanxie Bea Cooper
A Dagger Cuts Deep – Kathy L Wheeler
Mail Order Bride Series:
The Counterfeit
The Breakaway (IDA finalist)
The Betting Billionaires
Coming soon:
Fool’s Fortune
Fool Hearty
Fool’s Gold
Foolishness
Blooming Series
Quotable (IDA finalist)
Maybe It’s You
Lies That Bind
Martini Club 4 Series
Reckless – The 1920s and Pampered — The 1940s
Other fun novellas
Nose Job – Scrimshaw Doll Tale
The Mapmaker’s Wife – Civil War Novella (IDA Winner Historical Short)
Blood Stained Memories – A World of Gothic novella
Trust in Love – Four Holiday Shorts
Cinderella Series
The Wronged Princess – book i
The Unlikely Heroine – book ii
The Surprising Enchantress – book iii
The English Lily – book iv (Scrimshaw Doll Tale)
The Price of Scorn: Cinderella’s Evil Stepmother
Table of Contents
A Weatherford Sisters Mystery
Jackson – book 4
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
Epilogue
Blood Stained Memories
One
1
Midnight, July 18, 1939
Deidre Michelle Spence set her lantern at her feet then closed the car door. Gently. The soft huff and click reverberated across the silence of the Trinity Church graveyard with an eeriness that set her teeth on edge. Long Island was terrifying enough during the day, let alone the middle of the night. Whatever had possessed her long-absent sister to choose a cemetery for a rendezvous? It was just like her twin to seek the most dramatic backdrop for her little surprise visits, and, frankly, Deidre was sick of it.
It was full-on summer, but the cold tombstones and oversized crypts rising from the ground sent shards of ice prickling up her spine.
This wasn’t the reunion between the estranged sisters she’d envisioned. Surely Charity had to acknowledge the idiocy of a midnight meeting. In a cemetery. The sinister undertone of her sister’s note had pricked Deidre’s sense of foreboding. Yet not agreeing to this unorthodox get-together was out of the question.
Deidre lifted her lantern, for all the good it did, and looked about, shivers quivering through her. The silence in the shrouded memorial park was unhindered by the usual night sound of spring creepers or mating crickets. The fog was a nice touch too.
Irritation flooded Deidre, momentarily pushing out her trepidation. “Charity, you promised there would be no tricks this time.” Her words echoed against tombstones and her frayed nerves drew tighter.
CRACK! Deidre froze, her fear making a resounding comeback with a chill going bone deep. Someone was there. “Charity?”
She wished she’d remembered to bring the small derringer Charity had left behind on her last visit to Queens. Heart racing and blood pumping drowned out her ability to pinpoint where the sound had come from. It took three breaths before she calmed enough to attempt assessing her surroundings.
She studied the area more closely as another prickling of apprehension shot through her. One so ominous, it stole her breath. Slowly, Diedre made her way around the stones, her mind screaming get out, but her steps propelled her toward the largest crypt located in the center of the cemetery. She stopped. Dear heavens, this was not just any cemetery. This was the resting place of the Montgomery ancestors.
Breathe, she told herself. Just breathe.
Diedre reached the corner of the plastered white structure and hesitated. She ran numbed fingers over the unforgiving block wall and crept around the corner. The blood in her veins congealed to a slushy mesh.
Dear God. A body lay sprawled across the stone steps in front of double wooden doors. Legs clad in dark trousers, jutted from the bottom of a sable fur. Her breath caught. She recognized that fur. It belonged to Charity. A memory shot through her heart.
“You’re married? But…” Diedre dropped into the closest chair. “You never said a word. When? Who?”
A bitter smile curved her identical twin’s lips. “Victor Montgomery’s only son, Jackson. A year ago.”
“Is that why I’ve heard no word from you?” Irritation flooded her. “Don’t bother answering, Charity.” Her eyes went from her sister to the bundle swaddled in pink she held. She hadn’t seen her sister in over a year. “I can see why you are here now.”
“Victor paid me to leave.”
Deidre gasped. “With a child?”
“Of course not. He paid me before I knew I was with child. I-I had to hide. Don’t you see? He would have taken her, Dee. He would have stolen her from me. But I’m almost out of money, and I’ve nowhere else to turn.” She started crying. “I couldn’t let him take her could I?”
Deirdre jumped to her feet and hurried to her sister, all aggravation fleeing in the face of her sister’s distress. Deidre looked down into a small, wrinkled face. “What’s her name?”
“Delores. Delores Michelle.”
“You… named her after me?” she whispered. “Might I… I hold her?” Deidre took the baby before Charity could answer… and fell in love.
“I call her Lori.”
“Lori,” she breathed. “You could sell the coat—”
In a blink, Charity’s tears were a memory. “Don’t be stu
pid, Dee. It was a wedding gift from Jackson. The only thing the drunkard ever gave me.”
Deirdre shook away the memory, her body going hot then cold. The coat. Why was someone wearing Charity’s sable coat? And in July? In a graveyard, at midnight? Deidre’s gaze moved up the length of the figure. She gasped at the familiar, yet not familiar, face. Platinum blonde hair was matted against her head, and her skin was a chalky, ghostly white. “Charity?” Deidre’s question came out as a shrill screech.
Her sister’s fingers twitched and Deidre rushed to her side, falling to her knees. “Dear God, Charity. What happened? Can you sit up?”
“No.” Charity’s hoarse voice whispered. “The secret, Deidre. You have to protect my secret.”
“What secret, darling?”
“Lori. You must keep… Lori safe…”
Panic strangled Deidre while she struggled for calm, for normalcy. Only this wasn’t normal. “Don’t worry about Lori. I’ll keep her safe. We must get you help. Where are you hurt?”
“I-it’s too… l-late… for me, Dee.” Charity wheezed. “Go.”
Deidre gripped her fingers, they were ice. “Charity, I-I can’t leave you here.”
“Can’t move.” Her voice was raspy. Full of remorse. “I’ve been a horrid twin. I shall miss you. Jackson—” she whispered, her grip tightening. But a second later her fingers went slack.
Deidre shuddered as she felt the bond between them sever. Her twin, her sister. Dead. Slowly, Deidre pulled her hand away. The move parted the sable coat from Charity’s stilled body. Blood cascaded from her chest like a dark waterfall, saturating her coat and forming a small pool on the stone steps beneath.
Bile erupted in Deidre’s throat. Her hand flew up to cover her mouth and stopped, catching sight of her blood-stained hands. The blood appeared black in the fog-shrouded night. Charity’s life blood poured out at the base of the Montgomery family crypt and it took every ounce of Deidre’s verve to—
“Miss? Miss? I heard a scream. You all right, miss?”
Deidre’s gaze lifted. “W-who are you?”
“The gravedigger, Miss.”
“Find a policeman,” she whispered. “My—” she gagged back a surge of bile and took a shallow breath. “My… sister has been murdered.” She huddled in on herself, the first tear falling, weeping for her only sibling and the four-year-old niece who would never know her mother, and the lost opportunity to share anything with Charity ever again.
“Right away, Miss.”
After a long moment, Deidre raised her head and boldly addressed her dead sister. “Jackson Montgomery, you’ll pay for this. I vow it.”
~~~
Montgomery Island, July 20, 1938
Jackson Montgomery, the late Victor Montgomery’s only son, and heir to his mother’s Claremont Estate, made light work of the mandatory safety check on his weapon. He braced the butt of the rifle on his shoulder and breathed deeply at the familiar posture.
Restlessness had him by the throat. Nothing ever happened on this godforsaken island. Nothing like a little target shooting to take the edge off. He squinted into the brilliant summer sky. Ravens squawked overhead as he readied himself. He caressed the fine wood finish and slid his index finger in the metal hole and breathed through, holding steady against the trigger. Hold, hold…
“Pull!” he yelled. The reverberation of the clay pigeon trap echoed across the field as it launched the targets. A pair of skeets catapulted skyward. In two quick successive shots, Jackson hit one then the other.
The clay plates shattered and the shards rained from the sky.
“Bravo, Jackson.” His cousin, Lydia Weatherford Gould, sidled up to his right. “Excellent shot.”
Jackson held the gun out to Carver, the Montgomery’s longtime chauffer of the Montgomery-Claremont clans. “You’re late,” he said to Lydia.
She grinned. “I know. Can you imagine? The ferry was behind schedule. I reminded Captain McGuire of your beastly temper.” Her gentle ribbing would not have found its way to Jackson’s humorous side eight months ago.
His lips twitched. “Hell, the old goat still owes me a week’s paycheck.”
Lydia burst out laughing. “Jackson, you should have collected that money when you were nineteen. That was the last time you worked for McGuire. Besides, it’s not as if you have to worry over funds like my sisters and I. Not with Aunt Mary’s inheritance. That’s more than you could spend in a lifetime.” She narrowed her shrewd reporter eyes on him. “And once you marry…”
Jackson scowled, resentment surging through him again at the idiotic call he’d made less than a week ago to his ex-wife, Charity Spence-Montgomery. The words were carved in his brain. “Charity,” he begged. “Think of it. We’ll remarry. Just that act alone will satisfy the terms. My cousins and I will inherit and you will have everything you’ve ever desired.”
He been set to hand her the opportunity of a lifetime to change her life. Forever. But she’d had the nerve to hang up—on him. She hadn’t even allowed him to explain that he no longer drank; that he had a real job whether he needed it or not—however sporadic the detecting business was. But no. She’d hung up on him.
As if he cared, he told himself. Wasn’t she the one who skipped out on their marriage the minute his father offered her a check?
Lydia took his arm and set her head on his shoulder. “Ah, come on, Jackson. You know I’m just giving you a hard time.”
“Damned will.” Life was perfect, or would be, if his father—the tyrannical Victor Claremont—hadn’t attached that ridiculous codicil to his will stating that Jackson and his cousins—Josephine, Lydia and Tevi—each marry within one year of the reading of Victor’s will. The terms had been very specific: if any of the four of them failed in securing their nuptials, their entire inheritance would be turned over to Stone, the island’s only town, to be managed by the Guthries’ Law Firm. Jackson did not care for the Guthries. The senior of two Guthries acted too much like Jackson’s late father—dictatorial. The junior of the two, Jackson had known since they were all kids. And, well, that just about said it all as far as Jackson was concerned.
Today marked the 20th of July, and the clock was ticking toward mid-October with the speed of Seabiscuit racing War Admiral at Pimlico. It would have been laughable if it weren’t so infuriating.
He loosened his shoulders. “Well, get your gun out and let’s get started.” He looked up and squinted into the sun. “The day’s getting warmer by the minute.”
Another figure, the sheriff of Montgomery Island, city of Stone, Wyn Smith strolled purposely forward and came to a dead stop in front of Jackson.
“Hey, Wyn. What is it this time? Catherine Pascal’s cat gone missing again?” Jackson didn’t bother disguising his annoyance.
“Buck up, Jack. We’ve got a dead body.”
2
“Deidre, I really believe you should rethink this crazy plan of yours.”
“I appreciate your opinion, Mrs. Phillips, but I cannot sit by and let my sister’s murder be considered a random act of violence, regardless how the police insist on dubbing it. Jackson Montgomery had something to do with her death. I would stake my life on it.” Deidre tore through her closet, tossing dresses, blouses, and trousers willy-nilly into her suitcase, shoving out the call she’d received from her late sister’s husband three days ago. Worse, was her own audacity in allowing him to believe he was speaking to Charity. Thinking of her own actions sickened Deidre. She’d called him a drunken spiv; told him to never bother calling again and hung up. Her face grew hot thinking of her unusual loss of temper. She never lost her temper.
“What of Lori, my dear? You know she will be devastated to find you gone.” Mrs. Phillips went over to Deidre’s bag and begin folding garments.
Deidre paused. “Yes. You are quite correct.” She let out a breath. “Perhaps you and she should accompany me. I’ll go over to the island and find a place to stay then send for you. Yes. That
is what we shall do.” She resumed her packing, tossed in her unmentionables and toiletries, then slammed the case closed and dragged out of the tiny bedroom and down the hall to the door.
“Mama?”
Deidre’s heart caught in her throat. Struggling to contain her emotions, she inhaled a deep breath, then turned to face her sister’s—no. Now her—four-year-old child. Lori, small for her age, stood in the doorway to the kitchen, clinging to the last gift Charity had given her this past Christmas, a Raggedy Ann doll.
With Lori’s dark hair, she looked more like Deidre than Charity, despite Deidre and Charity being identical. Lori’s shy nature was also more reminiscent of her aunt than her mother. Since the age of fourteen, Charity had taken to bleaching her naturally auburn-brown hair to blond and wearing it in the more popular short style. Whereas Diedre wore hers past her shoulders and usually pulled back in a twist secured at her nape.
Seeing the red-yarn-headed doll stirred up Deidre’s mixed feelings. Lori had slipped and called Deidre “Mama” in front of Charity that Christmas afternoon. Charity had thrown an apoplectic fit, slammed out of the apartment, and hadn’t contacted them again until Deidre had seen Charity’s note telling Deidre to meet her that night in the cemetery.
“You’re leaving?”
Deidre hurried over to the four-year-old and knelt before her. “I shall see you within a couple of days, darling. I’m going to find us a new place to stay on an island. It will be a grand adventure for us.”
The worry in Lori’s beautiful face broke Deidre’s heart. “You promise you’ll come back?”
Diedre concentrated on steadying her voice to reassure Lori. “You and Mrs. Phillips will be taking a ferry to join me on the island. Doesn’t that sound exciting?”