by L. T. Vargus
“And what kind of business is he in?”
“Biotechnology.” At the sound of her phone buzzing against the coffee table, Marjory snatched it up and studied the screen. “Sorry. Jude’s firm is the one handling the marketing campaign for the foundation, and he’s passed me off to some totally incompetent underling. But then that’s no surprise. Jude will take any chance he gets to pretend he’s above the rest of us.”
Charlie had been wondering how to broach the subject of Jude, and now here Marjory was, practically serving it up on a platter.
“Speaking of Jude,” Charlie said, “I thought we might discuss… well, you know…”
Marjory regarded her with a tight smile. Her eyelids fluttered innocently.
“Discuss what about Jude?”
“Holy balls.” Allie choked out a laugh. “She’s a terrible liar.”
“Marjory, I know about Jude,” Charlie said. “Gloria just filled me in.”
The sweetly ignorant expression dropped from Marjory’s face.
“She told you?”
“I figured most of it out on my own, which begs the question: if nearly everyone in the family knows, and I—a stranger—can suss it out… don’t you think there’s a chance Jude could too?”
“No. We’ve been very careful about it.” Marjory closed her eyes. “It’s one of the reasons that Dara doesn’t know. She’s too… naive. She’d end up spilling the beans without even meaning to.”
Marjory’s eyes popped open, and she leaned in suddenly.
“You can not tell Jude.”
“I wasn’t planning—”
Killian rushed into the room, and the air of intimacy that had just settled over the conversation was instantly shattered. He stooped over the back of the couch, practically pressing his lips to Marjory’s ear to whisper something.
“Oh, that’s just perfect,” Marjory said, throwing her hands up. “I’m going to have to cut this interview short, Ms. Winters. Apparently I’m the only one capable of getting things done the proper way.”
Charlie saw her chance to discuss the matter of Jude’s paternity in more detail dwindling before her eyes.
“You can’t give me just a few more minutes?”
Marjory stood.
“I’m afraid not. There’s an urgent matter I have to attend to. Killian will show you out.” She stepped closer to Charlie to offer her hand, lowering her voice as she did so. “And I must urge you again to please… please remember what I’ve said. Jude can’t know.”
Killian led Charlie to the front door, holding it open for her.
“I’m sorry that got cut short, but you have to understand. She works so hard,” he said, his head shaking back and forth the entire time he spoke.
Charlie didn’t know what to say to that, so she smiled and nodded and exited the house. She dug around for her keys as she followed the brick pathway outside back to her car.
“Cougar alert. Rawr!” Allie said, making a cat noise.
“What?”
“Oh, come on. I know you saw the way Marjory and that boy toy assistant kept brushing up against one another. He practically nibbled her earlobe when he came in to tell her about that urgent phone call.”
Charlie unlocked her car and climbed inside.
“I guess they did seem a little touchy-feely.”
“A little?” Allie scoffed. “He was practically getting a boner talking about how uh-maze-ing Marjory is.”
“Anyway, I think I have to put the Jude thing on the back burner until I can talk to Vivien Marley.” Charlie started the car. “As far as his siblings are concerned, he has no idea.”
“They could be wrong.”
“Sure,” Charlie said, turning out of Marjory’s driveway onto the road. “Though they did manage to keep it a secret from Dara. That’s something.”
Goosebumps plumped on Charlie’s arms as soon as the gate in front of Dutch’s estate came into view. Passing the scene of the old man’s murder felt like driving past a graveyard.
Charlie glanced up the drive as she passed. A flurry of movement out in front of the house caught her eye and roused her curiosity. She slowed the car, steering over to the shoulder.
“Whoa. What are you up to now?” Allie said. “Are we sneaking? It feels like we’re sneaking.”
Charlie parked and jabbed the button on the front of the glovebox. The door popped open, and she pulled out a pair of binoculars.
“Yes! Now we’re talkin’,” Allie said. “I love when you bust out the ’nocs.”
Exiting the car, Charlie crept through the gate and crouched down behind one of the willow trees. She trained her binoculars on the front of the house and waited. Less than a minute later, Wesley reappeared.
Through the binoculars, Charlie watched him tote a painting out of the house and load it into the back of his Cadillac.
“What’s Wesley up to now?” Allie asked.
“Helping himself to some of Dad’s art collection, looks like.”
It also solved the mystery of what he’d been talking about on the phone. She wondered who he’d been talking to. One of his siblings, or someone else?
“That rascal,” Allie said. “Are you gonna bust him?”
“No.”
“No?”
“I’m not getting involved in the family drama,” Charlie said.
She trudged back to the car, replaced the binoculars in the glovebox, and slammed the door shut.
“But I love family drama,” Allie whined.
“I’ll tell Gloria about it, but the rest is up to her. For now, I need to go press my favorite member of the Salem Island police force for details on the Dutch Carmichael murder investigation.”
FIFTEEN
When Charlie arrived at the Salem County sheriff’s office, she spotted Zoe Wyatt at the far end of the lot. She rolled into the spot beside her friend and put down her window.
“Just who I was coming to see,” Charlie said, noting that Zoe was still dressed in her deputy’s uniform but had been in the midst of climbing into her personal vehicle. “Are you off-duty?”
“Yes, ma’am. My shift just ended, and I’ve got a hankering for a double cheeseburger from the Lakeside Tavern.”
“Mind if I join you?”
“Hop in,” Zoe said. “But be quick about it. I skipped lunch, and I’m starving.”
Charlie parked and got out, hurrying around to the passenger side of Zoe’s car. She pulled the door open to find the seat absolutely piled with a random assortment of stuff.
“Shoot. Just gimme a sec,” Zoe said, grabbing her crap by the handful and tossing it into the backseat.
Same old Zoe, Charlie couldn’t help but think. Her car may be different—no longer a hand-me-down from her parents—but it was still chock full of clutter just like it had been in high school. From outside, Charlie spotted four shoes—none of them matching—a desk lamp, two sweatshirts, and a hockey stick.
When the seat was finally free enough for Charlie to sit, she slid inside and closed the door.
Zoe reversed out of the parking space and exited the lot. Charlie noticed what appeared to be a zip-up CD case on the floor next to her foot.
Charlie plucked the case from the floor and undid the zipper, thinking it couldn’t possibly contain CDs. But it did.
She flipped through the first few pages, scanning the titles: The Essential Billie Holiday, Born This Way, Led Zeppelin III. Most of the CDs were burned, the labels handwritten in Zoe’s messy scrawl.
Charlie snapped the case shut and held it in the air.
“Why do you have this?”
“What do you mean?” Zoe asked.
Charlie pointed at the dash.
“There’s no CD player in this car.”
“Yeah, but my old car had one.”
Charlie stared at her, trying to make it clear that this was not an acceptable answer.
Zoe nodded.
“OK, so when I bought this car, I had all this stuff in my old car, and I kind of just threw e
verything in here with the intention of sorting it out later.”
“And that was how long ago?”
Zoe’s lips parted as if to answer, but then she seemed to think better of it.
“More or less than a year?” Charlie pressed.
“I don’t see why your arbitrary timeline is relevant.”
Charlie chuckled. Zoe’s refusal to answer told her plenty.
“Look, it’s not doing anyone any harm is it? I mean, it’s just a case of CDs. And it’s not like I don’t use this stuff.” Zoe gestured in the general direction of the heaps of junk in the backseat. “These are practical items.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I know what you are,” Zoe said, sticking an accusatory finger in Charlie’s face. “You’re one of those psycho minimalists, aren’t you? One of those Marie Kondo cultists who want everyone to throw everything away for no good reason. Well, I’ll tell you what I think about that. It’s wasteful. This is all good stuff. Useful stuff. And it’s mine. No one can make me get rid of my stuff.”
“Whoa there, Zoe. Calm down. You sound like Gollum talking about his ring,” Charlie said, laughing. “No one is trying to take your Precious.”
It was solidly between the lunch and dinner rush when they got to the Lakeside Tavern, which meant the place was practically empty. They chose a booth overlooking the water and ordered without even needing to look at the menu: a double cheeseburger for Zoe and a turkey Reuben for Charlie.
After the waitress returned with their drinks, Zoe took a sip of her Coke and raised an eyebrow at Charlie.
“Well? What do you want?”
“What makes you think I want something? Can’t a girl go out with her old pal just because?” Charlie asked, blinking with eyes full of mock innocence.
“When the girl in question is you? No. You only come around when you want information.”
Charlie made a face before fessing up.
“OK, fine. What do you have on the Dutch Carmichael murder?”
“Let me guess… the daughter hired you. What’s her name? Gloria.”
“Good guess.”
Zoe nodded.
“She was pretty pissed off about the press getting their hands on the autopsy photos. Came down to the station and gave Sheriff Brown an earful.”
“How’d that happen, anyway?”
“Some lackey over at the medical examiner’s office leaked them, so it wasn’t really our fault, but what can you do?”
The conversation was put on hold when the waitress came to drop off their food. When she’d gone again, Zoe jumped back in.
“The thing is, whoever did it came very close to getting away with it.”
Charlie squirted a blob of ketchup onto her plate.
“How so?”
“Think about it.” Zoe shrugged. “An old man, who needs a cane to get around, found at the bottom of the stairs? Any idiot would come upon that scene and think it looked like he fell.”
“So what tipped you off?”
Zoe lifted her burger and took a hefty bite.
“One of the crime scene techs found a broken shard of pottery in one of the air ducts.”
“How is that significant?” Charlie asked.
“It had blood on it, and it was a match for Dutch.” Zoe wiped grease from her fingers onto a napkin. “The running theory is that the murderer used an ornamental vase that used to sit at the top of the staircase to hit him over the head. Probably thought it was heavy enough that it wouldn’t break, and that the wounds Dutch sustained from the fall would cover up any injuries from the initial blow to the head.”
“Only things didn’t go to plan.”
“Nope. The vase broke, and when they tried to clean up, they missed a piece.” Zoe took another bite and closed her eyes. “This is the only place in town that can make a decent burger.”
Charlie polished off the first half of her turkey Reuben and started on the next.
“OK, let’s talk alibis.”
“Who should I start with?” Zoe asked, still chewing her last mouthful of double cheeseburger.
“Do the girls first.” Charlie got out a pen. “Gloria, Marjory, and Dara.”
“Dara was in Farmington Hills watching a horse give birth.”
“Really?”
Zoe nodded.
“She documented the whole thing on Instagram, and let me tell you, I will never unsee that. You know what a horse placenta looks like? Because I do.”
Charlie snorted.
“Gloria was at home, and we were able to corroborate that with cell phone records.”
“Hold on. That just means Gloria’s phone was at home.”
“True,” Zoe admitted. “But do you really think she’d hire you to look into her father’s murder if she killed him?”
“No, but I don’t believe in ignoring the facts, even if they’re inconvenient. Unless you have something better than cell phone records, I’m putting Gloria down as not having an alibi.”
“Fair enough,” Zoe said, slurping at the dregs of her Coke. “That leaves Marjory, who was also at home.”
“Alone?”
“Well, her assistant, Killian Thatcher, was there, and he says she never left the house.”
Charlie raised an eyebrow. “I sense a ‘but’ on the horizon.”
“Marjory was in her room for most of the day, sleeping off a headache. I guess it’s a chronic thing for her. She has pills for it, but they knock her out. So the assistant was in the house with her…”
“But it’s possible she could have slipped out without him even knowing,” Charlie mused. “And she lives right down the road from Dutch.”
“Exactly.”
Charlie scrawled this in her notebook.
“OK. What about Wesley, Brandon, and Jude? Brandon mentioned playing poker when I talked to him.”
“Indeed,” Zoe said. “We talked to the pit boss at the MotorCity Casino, who confirmed Brandon was at the poker table the entire morning and afternoon. Let’s see… Wesley was schvitzing at the health club. We couldn’t find anyone who could say he was there for sure that day, and they don’t have cameras, but he did have a credit card slip for the parking lot just outside the club.”
“What about Jude?”
“Jude was at work.”
“On a Sunday?”
“Claims he’s a workaholic.”
Charlie rolled her eyes.
“Any witnesses to that effect?”
“No, but he was all too eager to provide timestamped security footage of him entering and exiting the building.”
“And we both know how easy that is to manipulate.” Charlie dredged a fry in ketchup and popped it in her mouth. “So it sounds like Brandon, Dara, and Wesley have fairly solid alibis. Marjory’s on slightly shakier ground, while Jude and Gloria are pretty much twisting in the wind.”
“That’s about what we made of it.”
“What about Vivien Marley?”
“Ah, yes.” Zoe folded her hands together. “The elusive girlfriend.”
“Elusive?”
“We keep trying to set up a time for an interview, and she keeps blowing us off. The detectives even paid her a few house calls, but her maid answers the door and says she’s unavailable.”
Ice cubes clinked as Charlie swirled her straw around in her iced tea glass.
“That’s interesting.”
“Yeah, so if you manage to track her down, everyone down at the station would be very eager to hear what she has to say.”
“I’ll keep you posted,” Charlie said. “Have you guys found anything that might suggest what Dutch did with all his money?”
“Nah. As far as we’re concerned, that’s the family’s problem to sort through. And from our perspective, it doesn’t change the most obvious motive, which is the money. Even without the millions that are supposedly missing, there’s the house, the art, the horses, a dozen or so priceless sports cars… those kids will all get a hefty sum.”
When the c
heck came, Charlie insisted on paying.
“I figure I owe you lunch and then some,” Charlie said, frowning. “It’s true what you said earlier, isn’t it? I only call you when I want help with a case.”
“It’s OK.” Zoe reached over and patted her shoulder. “I know you’re socially challenged.”
“Damn.” Allie laughed. “Zoe’s dropping truth bombs today.”
Charlie wrinkled her nose.
“I’m kind of a shitty friend, aren’t I?”
“Kinda,” Zoe said, winking. “But not shitty enough that I have to stop hanging out with you.”
Charlie sighed as she signed the credit card slip.
“I can do better. I swear.” She set the pen down. “What’s new with you?”
Zoe chuckled.
“Oh, we’re doing this now?”
“Sure,” Charlie said. “Why not?”
“Well, as it happens, I have some interesting news for once.”
Zoe’s expression was so pleased that Charlie found herself leaning in.
“Go on.”
“I just found out I have a sister.”
“What?” Charlie said. Zoe had always been an only child as far as she knew.
“Technically she’s my half-sister,” Zoe explained. “I guess my dad had a one-night stand back in college. Some girl he met at a party and never saw again. This was years before he met my mother, of course. He had no idea this other daughter even existed! And we wouldn’t have known at all except that I got my parents one of those genealogy kits for Christmas.”
“No shit,” Charlie said.
“I know! I mean, I’ve read stories like that, but I never thought it would happen to me.”
Zoe was grinning from ear to ear, but Charlie wondered if the rest of the family was as delighted as she was about it.
“And everyone is happy about it… I mean, what did your mom think?”
“Oh, she’s thrilled. Rebecca, that’s my half-sister, she’s got three kids. My mom keeps talking about how she’s finally a grandma,” Zoe said, rolling her eyes but still smiling.
“So you’ve met?”
“No. She lives in Toledo, and my parents drove down to her place last month, but I had to work.” Zoe frowned, looking genuinely disappointed. “But Rebecca’s coming up on Saturday, so I’ll finally get to meet her then.”