“I’m pretty sure they can have the suite that Roger and Jessica vacated this morning. Send them back over here, and we’ll see what we can do.”
“I’ll tell them.”
“And Kristy, I’m sorry you were raided. I had no advance notice.”
Kristy laughed. “Of course, you didn’t. Talk to you later.”
When Celeste hung up the phone and turned around, both Abby and Emma asked the same question in unison.
“What has happened to Missy?”
Celeste sighed and perched on the stool. “Have you seen the news this morning, Emma?”
“Oh, heck, no. I’ve been deliberately avoiding it.”
“In Charlotte, there was a big drug bust this morning at the home of Jerry Hardison…”
Before she could finish, Emma gasped and covered the mouth with both hands.
“I take it you know him,” Celeste said.
“Yes, he owns a small chain of stores that sell vitamins and herbal medicines. He was one of my clients at the PR firm before Bill stole him away.”
Bill Matthews? Why does his name keep appearing on the pieces of this puzzle? Celeste didn’t like the thoughts going through her head—not one bit.
“Jessica works for him,” Emma said. “She manages the main store in Charlotte.”
“The police came here this morning and escorted Jessica to Charlotte for questioning,” Celeste said. “And that was Kristy Stone at the Evergreen Bed & Breakfast where Tom and Missy spent the night. She told me that the Charlotte police arrested Missy.”
Emma shook her head. “Missy? She has nothing to do with Hardison’s business. She works as a paralegal at Roger and Tom’s law firm.”
Celeste shrugged her shoulders. She opted not to voice aloud her amateur observations of Missy’s behavior or her suspicion that the woman might be addicted to weight-loss supplements—perhaps, supplied to her by Hardison.
Abby whipped out her phone and tapped on a news app. “Let’s see if anything is being reported on Missy’s arrest.” She used her index finger to scroll down through the items. “I don’t see anything. The police must be keeping it under wraps.”
“Earlier, you were saying that Kylie pressured you to turn over your land to Wes,” Celeste said.
“Yes, pressure is a good way of putting it,” Emma said.
“I guess it’s time for me to confess something to you,” Celeste said. “I overheard a conversation between Bill and Kylie the morning after Wes died. It sounded as if she was in a panic. She didn’t know what would happen with the whole development deal.”
“What exactly did they say to one another?” Emma asked.
“For one thing, Kylie confessed to taking your keycard and ransacking the honeymoon suite,” Celeste said. “She told Bill that she was looking for the papers you were supposed to sign for Wes. Apparently, everything hinged on it.”
Emma leaned forward. “Did you tell that to Detective Woods?”
“Yes, I did before I saw you burning the papers and you told me your story. I have no idea if he questioned her concerning it. When I pressed him for a little bit of information this morning, he shut me down so I don’t want to press my luck on that score.”
Emma wrapped her arms around her stomach. “I’m going to be sick. If he wants to know what happened to the papers, and I tell him the truth, he might believe that I burned them for some nefarious reason.”
Celeste rose from the table and poured a glass of ice water from the refrigerator.
“Here, drink this. It will help settle your stomach.”
Emma swallowed a large gulp. “Wes intimated to me that there was a silent investor in the project.”
“Could it be Bill Matthews?” Celeste asked.
“Bill has done very well for himself, but I’m not sure if he has that kind of money,” Emma said.
“I remember Beverly saying that Ryan learned your land could sell for at least seven million dollars,” Celeste and. “And apparently, Kylie thought that without it, the whole deal could fall through.”
“It’s one hundred acres in the western part of Mecklenburg County and contains a large pond. Wes said that it would be very attractive for developers of golfing communities.” She took another sip of water and set her glass on the table. “Oh, I don’t see how it could tie into why someone would murder Wes. On the other hand, I thought Kylie wanted to kill me when I told her not to bother me with those papers on my wedding day.”
Celeste had another question for Emma on the tip of her tongue but had to hold it when she heard tapping on the cottage door.
“Excuse me,” she said.
A young woman who seemed familiar stood on the other side of the door.
“Is my Aunt Emma staying here?” she asked.
“Please come inside,” Celeste said.
Emma stood and went to the door to greet her niece. The two women hugged.
“Celeste, this is my niece, Tessa. She was one of my bridesmaids.”
“Oh, yes, now I remember,” Celeste said. She’s one of the bridesmaids who resembled Emma.
“I’m so sorry, Aunt Emma,” Tessa said. “I don’t know what to say. Dad told me that the police are making you stay here until they figure out what killed Mr. Carlyle.”
“Yes, unfortunately.”
“Would you like a glass of iced tea?” Celeste asked Tessa.
“Oh, no, ma’am. I had lunch with a friend in Blowing Rock, but I wanted to drop by here and see Aunt Emma.”
Emma took her hand and led her to the sofa.
“I wish I had some news for you,” Emma said. “But I’m still in limbo.”
“Well, I wish the police had interviewed me,” Tessa said. “I would’ve told them that there’s no way you could murder anyone. By the way, I have something for you.”
Tessa opened her purse and retrieved a small, plastic case that held a microSD card from a digital camera.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d want these, but Dad said that I should go ahead and give them to you. It’s the photos I took at the dinner dance.”
Emma took the card from her. “Yes, I do want them. I’ll copy these onto my tablet.”
“Don’t trouble yourself,” Tessa said. “I have a bunch of those cards.”
Emma dropped the card on the coffee table next to her tablet. “I’ll look at these later,” she said. “I’m not up to it right now.”
“It seemed surreal when I scrolled through them,” Tessa said. “We were having so much fun and then just a little while later, Mr. Carlyle was gone.”
“Yesterday, I stood on the spot where Wes and I exchanged our vows,” Emma said. “I stared at the mountain, and asked it what the hell happened?”
Emma began to cry. While her niece comforted her, Celeste returned to her seat at the kitchen island.
Abby leaned close to her and whispered, “Before her niece arrived, Emma said something that started me working on this puzzle of yours.”
“I thought I saw the wrinkles in your forehead deepen.”
Abby ran her fingers across the creases. “I’m at the age where I have to curtail those extreme facial expressions.”
“You look ten years younger than your age,” Celeste said. “It’s those good genes from your ninety-nine-year-old grandmother.”
She didn’t have a chance to ask what had caused Abby’s extreme facial expression because Emma and Tessa came into the kitchen from the living room.
“I’m doing a summer internship and don’t want to be late,” Tessa said. “Thank you for taking care of Aunt Emma, Mrs. Adams. I’ll be sure to tell everyone about your hotel. It’s very pretty here.”
“I appreciate that,” Celeste said.
Emma and Tessa hugged again, and Tessa saw herself out.
“I don’t want my family to worry,” Emma said. “But I’m afraid.” Tears rolled down Emma’s cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m crying too much.”
Celeste put an arm around her shoulders. “There�
�s no such thing as too many tears when you’re grieving.”
An incoming call sounded on Celeste’s smartphone, and Maddie’s name appeared on the screen.
“Yes, Maddie.”
“Detective Woods is here, Mrs. Adams. He’d like to see Emma.”
“Send him out to my cottage, Maddie.”
She laid the phone on the island. With her curiosity working overtime, she wanted to hear what Brad had to say to Emma.
“Who is Maddie sending over?” Abby asked.
“Detective Woods. I think he might have some news for Emma.”
Emma closed her eyes and buried her face in her hands. “They did the autopsy this morning. He must have the results.”
Celeste went to the door to keep watch for him. She spotted him walking around the side of the hotel from the direction of the pool. He didn’t have a uniformed officer with him. That’s a good sign, isn’t it? She turned to Emma.
“He’s on his way. Now, try to be calm.”
Abby had brought a fresh box of tissues into the living room and placed them on the coffee table. Emma grabbed one and clutched it in her closed hand. Celeste waited for a second before answering Brad’s knock on her door.
“Come in,” she said.
Like a well-trained police officer, he walked in and took note of his surroundings.
“Brad, this is my friend Abby Benson,” Celeste said.
Brad extended his hand to her. “I believe I’ve seen you before.”
“Yes,” Abby said. “We take our pets to the same vet. You have two labs if I remember correctly.”
He nodded. “My duck hunters.”
“If you’d prefer to speak with Emma alone,” Celeste said. “Abby and I will go in the kitchen.”
Emma shot a backward glance at her. Her eyes pleaded with Celeste to stay. Brad must have caught on to the exchange.
“You don’t have to go,” he said. “I’m sure that what I have to say will be on the news in a little while.”
Celeste moved closer to the sofa and placed a hand on Emma’s shoulder. Brad sat in Howard’s recliner. Why does that make me feel uncomfortable?
“The autopsy confirmed the suspicions of the ER doctor who first examined Mr. Carlyle,” he said. “While the amphetamines in his system would’ve only debilitated or knocked out a healthy person, Mr. Carlyle had also taken medications for diabetes and heart disease. Those three in combination was enough to bring on the stroke that killed him.”
Emma took a few deep breaths while seeming to process what Brad had told her.
“So what happens now?” she asked.
“I need to continue with my investigation,” Brad said. “To discover if someone gave this drug to your husband with the intent to harm him or…” He paused and turned his head downward.
“Or, what?” Celeste asked.
“Could Wes have taken the drug himself?”
“Oh, no,” Emma said. “You’ll never make me believe that.”
Celeste’s intuition told her that Brad knew something he didn’t want to share.
“Mrs. Carlyle, sometimes you think you know a person but he could have a part of his life that he keeps hidden. From what you’ve told me, you met Wes six months ago and became engaged three months ago. You were married for twelve hours. Can you really say that you knew him?”
Emma bowed her head and Celeste squeezed her shoulder.
“Couldn’t you have been a little more tactful?” Celeste asked.
He glanced up at her, started to say something, but stopped himself. Instead, he continued questioning Emma.
“The drug had to have been given to Wes not more than an hour before he died,” Brad said. “Were you together the whole time at the restaurant?”
“Yes,” she said.
A thought occurred to Celeste. Maybe Emma has a more definitive way to answer his questions and possibly, get to the bottom of what happened to Wes.
“Emma, you should show those pictures that Tessa took to Detective Woods.” Celeste shrugged a shoulder at Abby. “Do you remember when I told you that surprising things can show up in photographs? It could be dusty light fixtures or maybe even a killer.”
“Are these photos of the dinner dance?” Brad asked.
“My niece brought them to me a little while ago,” she said. “I haven’t looked at them yet.”
Emma inserted the SD card into the slot on her tablet. It took a few moments for the pictures to appear. The first photo contradicted Emma’s answer to Brad’s question. It pictured Emma dancing with Alan. While Celeste spotted other family members in the background, Wes wasn’t visible.
“Oh, I forgot that Alan asked me to dance,” Emma said. “So I did leave Wes for that one song.”
That one song. Perhaps, she was reading too much into one dance, but Celeste couldn’t help remembering Alan’s words of concern for Emma. Apparently, he was one of Wes’s sons who didn’t have an unfavorable opinion of Emma. It seemed that the feeling was mutual.
“But I’m sure that Wes would’ve noticed if someone had slipped something into his drink,” Emma said. “He was very observant.”
“Let’s see the next one,” Brad said.
Emma swiped her index finger across the screen. A wide shot of the restaurant’s party room appeared. Celeste reached for the reading glasses she always kept on the end table. While scanning the group pictured, her eyes landed on a particular person. Why am I not surprised to see him there?
“Was Bill invited to your party, Emma?”
“No, he wasn’t,” she said. “He’s standing in the door talking to someone, but I can’t see the other person. Maybe, he was having dinner at the restaurant, saw us there, and stopped by to wish us well.”
Celeste could think of one person Bill might have been there to see. Surely, he wouldn’t have been so brazen as to meet with Kylie at a family party but then, he’d had a romantic rendezvous with her at the wedding. Emma swiped to another photo.
“Oh, what the…what was he doing there?” Emma asked.
“Is that Jerry Hardison?” Celeste asked.
She’d seen two photos of Hardison. The guy in this picture, though at an odd angle, did resemble him.
“Yes, it’s Jerry. He’s talking to Bill,” Emma said.
Brad leaned closer. “That’s him, all right.”
“Bill handles public relations for Jerry’s company,” Emma said. “But neither one of them should have been at our party.”
“We’d better look at the rest of these pictures,” Brad said. He sat next to Emma on the sofa, and she handed the tablet to him. “I’ll scroll through them, and you tell me if you see anything suspicious.”
He swiped the screen to the next photo.
“Oh, that’s my niece and her sister taking a selfie,” Emma said.
Celeste squinted. “Wait, Brad, Emma, check out the background of that picture. Isn’t that Kylie speaking to Jerry Hardison?”
“Yes, it is. Why was he in Blowing Rock at our party?” Emma asked.
Now, the puzzle pieces are starting to make sense. Was Jerry Hardison on the other end of the phone call she’d overheard Kylie making in the gym? Could he have been the silent investor in the golf resort?
Brad spread his thumb and index finger across the screen to zoom the picture. “Look at this,” he said. “Do you see the same thing I’m seeing? It looks like he’s putting a small envelope into her purse.”
Before she could voice her theory about Jerry aloud, Celeste’s smartphone buzzed, and Maddie’s name appeared on the screen.”
“Yes, Maddie,” she said.
“Mrs. Adams, is Detective Woods still with you?”
“Yes, he is.”
“You’d better send him over to the hotel,” she whispered into the phone. “Alan called down to the desk and said that Kylie has locked herself in the bathroom and is threatening to kill herself.”
Celeste clutched the back of the sofa for support.
“Oh, my God. I�
�m giving the phone to Detective Woods, Maddie. Tell him what you told me.”
Brad took the phone from her and listened to Maddie for a moment.
“Okay, tell her husband to stay calm and keep talking to her,” he said. “I’ll notify the proper authorities.”
He passed Celeste’s phone to her and used his own phone to place the call to nine-one-one.
Abby hopped off the barstool and came into the living room. “What has happened, now?”
Celeste shook her head. “Kylie is threatening to kill herself.”
Holding her phone out in front of her, she tapped the speed dial number for Bill’s cell phone. It rang through to voicemail.
“Bill, it’s Celeste Adams. If you’re in the area, could you swing by the hotel? I’m going to need your advice on a matter that has just come up. Thank you.”
Emma shifted her position on the sofa and gazed at Celeste. “Do you think Bill can talk Kylie down?”
“I’m more interested in whether or not he wants to talk her down,” Celeste said.
Chapter 11
Within minutes, the paramedics arrived at the rear of the hotel. Brad had told them to be discreet and not come to the front entrance for which Celeste was grateful. Brad met them and escorted them to the kitchen door. Less than a minute later, Bill parked his SUV beside the ambulance, and Celeste walked to the parking lot to greet him.
“What’s going on here?” he asked.
“Kylie is locked in a bathroom on the fourth floor, threatening to commit suicide,” she said.
His face blanched, and he turned away from Celeste. “I told her not to worry,” he whispered under his breath.
“What could she be worried over that would drive her to do this?”
He regained his composure and shrugged off her question. “With her father-in-law’s death and everything else that’s going on with the family, I guess she was worried for her job.”
“I didn’t realize that you knew her that well. As I recall, you told me that you didn’t know the Carlyles personally.”
“That’s right. I knew Emma and Kylie, who used to be the administrative assistant in the PR firm where Emma and I worked. She kind of had a thing for me that never amounted to much. That was before she met and married Alan.”
Mrs. Carlyle's Second Honeymoon Page 11