Bad Intent

by Cheril Thomas

  Mosley rarely ignored an invitation to argue. “I don’t want this firm tied up in a lurid murder case — another lurid murder case — when you’re gone. And, as I’ve already said, this Overton situation is not the kind of work I handle.” It was a long statement for him, and he stopped for a deep breath. “Grace, you will remove yourself as the Overtons’ counsel immediately, please.” With a brief nod, he left the room.

  Lily said, “I quit.”

  On the desk, the monitor changed to a shot of a long narrow riverboat gliding past a crumbling medieval castle. Grace felt it was more of a taunt than a promise. She nodded and said, “Me, too. Let’s go to the Egret, and I’ll buy you a drink.”

  “Yeah, right.” Lily stood and turned away, saying, “Not such a good idea, is it? You should stick with tea.”

  Grace followed Lily into her office. “What’s wrong? Talk to me.”

  “I am leaving.” Lily rounded on her, hands on her hips. “Just like you are. Gone. Quitting. I got another job. I was willing to work after hours and weekends here to help Mr. Mosley out, but he’s been impossible. And I’m not breaking in a new lawyer. Not even Jake.” She hesitated, then added, “Especially not Jake. This is insane.”

  It was hard to argue with her about that.

  “Okay. I’m sorry I’ve been so dense. How did all this Jake business start, anyway?” Grace asked, watching Lily yank open a desk drawer and grab her purse.

  “Stupidly. And all my fault. Jake and I were at Scossa in Easton for our six-month anniversary. Mr. Mosley came in with some friends and joined us for a drink. That’s when I should have made Jake leave. The next thing I knew, he and Mr. Mosley were one-upping each other with golf stories. Then Jake started talking about night school and his long-range plans, and that ran through dinner. Mr. Mosley picked up the check, which pissed me off, I can tell you, and Jake didn’t shut up about the great man until we got home.” She stopped and sank back in her swivel chair. “They clicked.”

  “Hard to believe,” Grace said, trying to image the handsome, thirty-something Jake being buds with Mosley.

  “Not really,” Lily said. “Jake’s like a puppy. He likes everyone and has the energy of ten people. He can talk to a wall and learn something new. And we know what Mr. Mosley wants.”

  “A partner who’ll do what he’s told,” Grace said, realizing yet another reason for Lily to be angry with her.

  “Yes. And he’s certainly not getting that from you, is he?”

  Grace almost apologized. But she was only sorry Lily was being hurt by the changes. Anything truthful she said would sound patronizing. Life was moving on for all of them, and it never paid to stand in the way of a celestial steamroller. She knew this firsthand and had the scars to prove it.

  Grace was exhausted and ready to leave by three. She picked up Leo from Avril’s, went home, and for the second day in a row, took a nap, only to be awakened an hour later by barking. She sat up to find David standing in the doorway of the bedroom.

  “I wish you’d make up your mind,” she snapped as she tried to control her racing heart. “Either stay mad and stay gone or get over it. This arguing then showing up unannounced isn’t working for me.” She picked Leo up and tucked him under her arm. “And while we’re at it, I want your key back.”

  “Well, someone’s grumpy.” David hugged her as she passed him and was rewarded with a none-too-gentle shoulder punch. “Ow!”

  She showed no signs of hearing his complaint as she moved into the kitchen area and settled Leo in his crate with a fresh chew stick. When the little terror was corralled, David tried again to act like they were having a normal conversation.

  “I heard about the latest mysterious death in your client circle and decided I’d come help. Let’s go out to dinner.” He watched her fill a glass with ice and open a Coke. “That’s not your speed, babe,” he tried, but still got no response.

  When hovering over her got him nowhere, he settled on the sofa and waited for her to land somewhere. It took an inordinately long time, and when she finally sat in the chair across from him, her face was grim.

  “What’s wrong?” He gave her a hurt look, the version with puzzled eyes, and a defeated slump of his shoulders. This was a go-to staple of their conversational fencing. If telling her didn’t work, and coercion and yelling failed, he usually doubled back to Prince Charming. Wounded Little Boy was the Hail Mary pass.

  Grace started to respond, then stopped herself as she realized she didn’t care what he wanted or how he felt. It was over. She couldn’t go back, and he wouldn’t change. There was a new feeling growing in her heart, one that would take some getting used to. She thought it might be pity. Wherever she ended up in life, he would always be a part of her. It was time to find out how big his role would be.

  Half an hour earlier, she’d been asleep, a tangled series of stressful dreams working away in her subconscious. The actions she’d taken and decisions she’d made, even the events she couldn’t control, all seemed to have led here, to the third floor of Delaney House with David.

  She said, “I need a few minutes alone, and after that, we’ll talk.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “They aren’t home.”

  The voice appeared to be coming from a holly hedge to the right of the Overtons’ front porch.

  Talking to shrubbery wasn’t the oddest thing McNamara had done in his career as a police officer. “When will they be back?” he asked the hedge.

  “I’m observant, not nosey. You may as well come on over for coffee.”

  He crossed the lawn to find Avril weeding a bed of Hosta on the far side of the hedge. Her rental property was neat and well maintained, but Avril’s residence was a showplace. The interior of the house was a jumble of mid-century modern, but the exterior was a House and Gardens example of late Georgian architecture.

  Avril got to her feet and stood next to Louise, whose only response to McNamara’s appearance was a slow wag of her bushy tail. The shepherd looked ferocious unless you knew she’d lost half her teeth and used Avril for protection. McNamara was glad they’d found each other.

  Once they were in her avocado green kitchen, he watched her make coffee in a battered aluminum French press. He knew where the Overtons were and could call Desiree Marbury for an update, but talking to a friend was more appealing.

  “I can’t keep up with that family’s antics, and I’m rather disappointed that you have to ask me,” Avril said.

  The coffee smelled amazing, and McNamara wondered if it was the kind she used or the old pot she made it in. He accepted a cup and declined cream.

  “There’s a Kingston County Sheriff’s cruiser parked at the curb,” he said, “so I stopped to see if they needed a hand. Finding you and being invited for coffee was a bonus. And,” he added when her snort made clear she wasn’t buying the flattery, “I’m always interested in your observations, Miss Avril.”

  “Only what any reasonably observant person would. Bobby Nelby rode up to Baltimore with the Medical Examiner. Someone will be along eventually to get the car.”

  McNamara didn’t bother to ask how she knew the Sheriff had sent one of his officers to accompany Felicia Jones’ body to the morgue. That was the thing about Avril. She knew everything that happened, and most of what was going to happen. Once you accepted that irritating fact, you could make use of it.

  “What’s your theory?”

  “Took you long enough to ask,” she said and got up to top off their cups. “They had a big row at dinner time and another around eight o’clock last night. I was out on the screened porch and heard a good bit.”

  She gave Louise the second of three small brown cookies she’d lined up along the table’s edge. Training treats, she’d called them, but she hadn’t said which of them was being trained. McNamara decided it was Avril since Louise had mastered sitting quietly and staring at the food until she got it. Her human, on the other hand, seemed antsy. McNamara thought Avril had probably lived on the porch next
to the rental house since the Overtons had moved in.

  “What was the fight about?”

  “The usual thing three wives with one husband and eleven children fight about.” Avril’s laugh took years off her face. “Not that I’m anyone to talk about things like that. As you well know, I was a scandal in my day.”

  McNamara knew. A gay woman openly living with her partner, if not a scandal, was an anomaly in Mallard Bay during the years Avril and her beloved Glenda had been together. He remembered Glenda Grant as a beautiful woman who’d taught music and lived in this big, fashionable house with Avril Oxley. They were ‘too — too,’ according to his mother, who counted them among her closest her friends. What he remembered best from that time was Halloween. The ‘ladies at Oxley House’ gave out great treats — full-sized candy bars, the good stuff — and they’d let kids trade in raisin boxes and jaw breakers from lesser houses for Snickers and PayDays.

  “Hello? You just going to ignore that?”

  McNamara pulled himself out of the late sixties and refocused on the wizened face across the table. “I was remembering how beautiful Miss Glenda was. You, too, as I recall.”

  A glint of moisture appeared briefly in Avril’s eyes and was quickly blinked away. “You don’t play fair,” she said, but there was a smile with the words.

  “I only tell the truth.” And then, because it was Avril, he added, ‘usually’ and made her laugh. “Seriously, my father said you looked like Kathryn Hepburn. Used to make my mom jealous.”

  “I’m a foot too short for that comparison, and your mother was an angel. But thank you for your bullshit. Seriously.”

  “Your turn,” he said. “What were they arguing about?”

  “Money.”

  “Not their missing husband?”

  Avril shrugged. “It sounded to me like he was the money. The young new one said they had to stop asking people to find him because it kept the police stirred up, and that was bad for their deal. There was a lot of ‘who do you think you are’ back and forth. Then one sister told the upstart she was bankrupting them. And the other sister — I can’t always identify them by their voice — anyway, she said if Felicia knew Heath was dead, she had to tell them so they could file for his life insurance.”

  After Melanie’s performance during her interview, he wasn’t surprised but tried to look as if he were. It didn’t pay to disappoint Avril.

  “So, you already knew that part, huh?” Avril shook her head. “It’s so hard to keep anything quiet around here.”

  McNamara nearly choked, trying not to laugh.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “that’s when the new wife said it was Whitney and Melanie who were causing all the problems by keeping Grace around. Well, I really started paying attention at that point.”

  “I’ll bet,” McNamara said. “You got out the binoculars and microphones, and then what happened?”

  “You want to make jokes or find out what they said about Grace?”

  “My apologies. Please continue.”

  “The new one started yammering about getting rid of Grace. She said having an attorney poking around made them look guilty because an innocent family wouldn’t need a lawyer to manage their lives.”

  “What did the sisters say?”

  “Melanie agreed with Felicia, which set Whitney back, I can tell you, until Felicia said she’d met with Grace and told her to leave the family alone. She said they had a good deal however the situation with Heath turned out, if they just didn’t screw it up. She did not, however, say ‘screw’ if you get my point.”

  McNamara nodded, but he wasn’t thinking about Felicia and her F-bomb; he wanted to hear more about the good deals. “Give me the rest,” he said when Avril’s dramatic pause went on too long.

  “Felicia said they could wring their hands all they wanted, but like it or not, Heath had married her. Had chosen her over them. I couldn’t hear much after that. They were standing sort of bunched together, and it was getting dark, so I couldn’t see as well through the bushes.”

  “The bushes? I thought you were on your porch.”

  “I had to get a little closer when they started talking about Grace, didn’t I?”

  He let it go and hoped Avril wouldn’t have to retell her story on the witness stand. The women’s argument was interesting. It was also a reason to question the Overtons further, but words didn’t kill. Not directly, anyway. “Anything else?”

  Avril looked thoughtful but didn’t answer.

  He changed direction a bit, hoping to jog her. “I’ve seen you with the Overton children. Have they won you over?”

  To his surprise, Avril didn’t have a sarcastic comeback.

  “I’ve gotten used to them. They’re nice kids. They come over when they can get away from the asylum over there. First, they dared each other. The whole family seems to think I’m deaf. When the kids discovered Louise and Leo were friendly, and I had cookies, I started having regular guests every time I was out in the yard.”

  “Where is Piglet, anyway?” McNamara asked, looking around for Leo.

  “Grace took him home when she finished next door this morning. She thought he was too much for me after all the excitement.” Avril’s tone said she didn’t appreciate the consideration. “She needs to look after herself and leave that poor dog here where he’ll have company. I barely get his diet straight and his digestive tract under control before she takes him and gets him all riled up again.”

  McNamara wanted to ask why she thought Grace needed looking after, but Avril wasn’t finished.

  “Since we’re on the subject, maybe you and Ashley would take the little guy. Leo, I mean. Grace says Niki will keep him while she’s traveling, but a vet would be a better choice. Grace is going to be too busy when she gets back to handle a dog with dietary issues.”

  He wasn’t going to discuss Ashley with Avril. And while she’d grabbed his attention with the comments about Grace, that subject was off the table as well.

  “Did the Overton kids tell you anything interesting?” he asked.

  Avril’s evil smile said she knew she had him worried. “Only the little ones. And I’m not sure how reliable they are. The bigger ones keep family matters to themselves. Doesn’t stop them from accepting cookies, though. They’re concerned about their dad. The older ones are bored and want to go home, wherever that is now, and the little ones ask a million questions and give me tidbits like the new mommy yells a lot, and they don’t need any more babies. Faith said her mommy cries a lot. I’m guessing she’s Melanie’s. I explained to Faith that nobody likes a weak woman, but I think she’s too young to grasp the concept.”

  “Indoctrinate early and often,” McNamara said with a smile.

  “Don’t be snide. And in that woman’s case, it’s just so much show. All that crying and wringing of hands and the ‘Can’t somebody do something?’ whining. Some people genuinely need to be cared for, but that little schemer isn’t one. If she had to, she would mow down anyone who stands between her and what she wanted.”

  “We’re still talking about Melanie, right?” McNamara asked and earned a snort from Avril.

  “Yes. Melanie, the crier. The other one is the enabler.”

  “The other one being — ”

  “Oh, good grief. We’re gossiping, Lee, not laying out directions for brain surgery. The weak sob-sister is the manipulator, the real power. The other one thinks she’s in charge and keeps everything running. The third woman is dead, so I’m not sure she’s important to this topic. I met her just after the kids ruined all her clothes. Which, I have to tell you, is very hard to talk about and keep a straight face.”

  “Do you even try?”

  “Of course not. It’s a waste of energy.”

  “What’s your opinion of the Overtons, overall?”

  “It’s interesting, isn’t it?” she said. “If you removed emotion from the mix, practically speaking, they have a workable situation. They have the large family they all seem to want and eno
ugh hands to handle the work. Children always thrive with more people to love them, and if the adults could get along and follow a sensible schedule with sex, it should work.”

  McNamara set his cup down, thankful he hadn’t taken a sip of coffee before that last part.

  Avril didn’t miss his discomfort. Dozens of wrinkles bloomed into a brief but bright smile. For an instant, McNamara saw the pretty woman who’d traded him a giant-size Mars Bar for a three-stick pack of gum.

  “Emotion rules everything, Lee,” she said. “You’d do well to remember that. All three women were in the same boat, but none of them wanted the same thing. You understand what I’m saying?”

  He didn’t, so she told him.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Power. Love. Money.

  McNamara thought about Avril’s theory as he drove back to the station. The argument she’d overheard could be the answer to everything or mean nothing at all. He needed to find out what the women had done when they left the porch.

  He pulled into the parking lot behind the station and lowered the Explorer’s windows. The rain had blown out to the Atlantic, and the early afternoon sunlight carried the heavenly smells of roses in full bloom and the latest offering from the bakery. It wouldn’t do to rest his head on the seat back and close his eyes, but that’s what he wanted to do. He was tired. No good reason for it; he hadn’t exerted himself unless you counted emotional athletics. But there was no point in brooding over that. He took out his notebook and jotted down details of his conversation with Avril. If he waited until he was in his office, any number of distractions might waylay him.

  When he looked back over his notes from the past week, he thought how easy it was to form opinions about the Overtons based on generalities and social norms. The truth was more elusive. Truths. Fifteen people were involved in this family drama. Four of them were worth five million dollars each, but only if they were dead. Right now, the sisters could be five million ahead and closing in on ten. Not the worst motive he’d ever heard for murder.