“She looks so small,” Laura whispered almost to herself.
“Yes,” Samantha answered. “It’s hard to believe that she’s capable of the things she’s done.”
Lieutenant Nichols met them on the steps. “Thanks for the heads-up, McLain. I’d gone off duty at five.” His gaze touched Janet speculatively then went on to assess the rest of them. “Come on in, we’ll talk inside.”
The Desk Sergeant saw Rags in Samantha’s arms. “Sorry, ma’am. No dogs allowed except service dogs.”
Samantha tucked Rags into her coat and stared back at the sergeant, her gaze level and challenging.
Lieutenant Nichols saw he wasn’t going to get the woman without the dog and told the sergeant, “It’s okay this time, Avery.” He led the way to an interrogation room.
A patrolman followed. “Coffee? It’s pretty bad, but it’s hot.”
They all accepted gratefully. More than the temperature, the events of the day had left a bone-deep chill in each one of them. Only Janet Wilson seemed completely unaffected, looking around the austere room with casual interest.
As the young officer left, a stenographer entered the room and set up in a corner. Five minutes later the patrolman came in with the coffee he had offered. There was the usual business of doctoring it to individual tastes, then they settled down.
The patrolman took up a position at the side of the room.
After a long moment, the Lieutenant spoke. “Am I to understand that this young woman is the murderer you told me you were bringing in, Colonel McLain?” There was the faintest hint of disbelief in his tone as he regarded the slender girl.
“Olivia Charles’s murderer, and the attempted murderer of Jasmine Johnson and Mrs. Samantha Masters,” McLain stated firmly. “Furthermore, Mrs. Masters informs me that she also murdered Dr. Samuel Tiggs, the man you’ve been unable to identify.”
Janet turned to the Lieutenant and said with malicious satisfaction, “You couldn’t identify him because after I cut his nails I sanded off his fingerprints with my emery boards!”
Samantha shuddered to remember the casual way Janet had offered those very scissors and an emery board to Tyler for her broken fingernail at Wednesday Bridge. It explained why the police had used the words they had used to report it, too. In her mind’s eye, she could see it. Horror shook her.
Janet complained, “He was constantly reminding me to wash my hands. He pushed and harped and couldn’t get enough of telling me what to do. ‘Let’s cut those nails, Janet’, ‘Keep those nails neat and trimmed, Janet’, and ‘Wash your hands, Janet.’” The color was rising in her cheeks at the memories. She began to rant. “Well, I showed him, didn’t I? I washed and washed his hands after I killed him.” She tossed her hair and smiled archly. “Then I trimmed his nails really, really well and filed away every speck of dirt, even the shadows from his fingers.” She smiled, pleased with herself.
McLain put a comforting hand on Samantha’s.
Nichols watched Janet. “Have you anything more to say?”
“What is there to say?” Janet shrugged. “I did what I had to do. I was given no choice.” She arched a scornful eyebrow at the detective. “Surely, even you can see that I didn’t have one. My cousin Olivia not only insisted on trying to run my life, she’d lately decided to interfere in a plan that meant a great deal to me. A plan that would have made me rich.” She smiled. “Four million dollars rich.”
“Two,” McLain corrected gruffly. “You’d have had to split with the bogus Stoddard heir.”
“Not really.” Her voice was as cool as the glance she gave him. “Freddie would have been as easy to dispose of as Olivia was. And murder makes it mine. All of it. Right?”
“Miss Wilson,” Lieutenant Nichols cleared his throat and suggested to her, “perhaps you’d like to have your lawyer present before you say any more.”
Janet turned on him, fury in her eyes. “Why! Why would I want another meddler in my life? Haven’t I tried hard enough to get rid of them?” She stabbed a finger at him. “None of this would have happened if it weren’t for all the people who keep trying to run my life.”
Quietly, the Lieutenant read Janet her rights.
Janet waved a dismissive hand. Then dropped it and gripped the arms of her chair. “I thought I was free when I got rid of my parents, but, oh no, Cousin Olivia’s saintly pair had to step in and snatch away my new-won freedom.”
She glared at the homicide detective through narrowed eyes. “It was all I could do to refrain from getting rid of them, too. But they were old and I decided it was wiser to wait. I was only twelve, after all, and the world would have thought I still needed the protective cover of a family. So I waited.”
She shot out of her chair, suddenly agitated. “Then when they finally did die, and I thought I was free at last, what happens but that dear, saintly Olivia sweetly promised to take up just where they left off!”
The patrolman shoved away from the wall he’d been leaning against. Nichols gestured him back.
Janet began to pace the room.
The patrolman moved to stand in front of the glass- topped door.
Janet went on. “Boy, did she ever take over! Dragging me to psychiatrists. Visiting the asylum when I had to be sent back there. Yammering about how she would always be there for me. Always take care of me. Huh! She even gave her fiancé, Yancey Devlin, back his ring.” She shot her gaze around at each of them. “Can you imagine anything more stupid than that?”
No, I can’t imagine anything more noble, Samantha thought, fighting back tears of sympathy and admiration for her murdered friend. But then, I’m not a psychopath. She didn’t speak. The ranting girl was hanging herself nicely, Samantha thought with malice. Olivia Charles had been noble. She, Samantha Masters didn’t share that quality just now. She had no inclination to save Janet Wilson from herself.
“Cousin Olivia moved here to Virginia while I was still at the institute. She liked Norfolk and settled in as if she’d always been here. She thought all of you were soooo nice that even I would like being here.
“She used to write me long, long boring letters telling me everything about all of you there in Riverhaven. I had plenty of time to read them. I was stuck there at the institute for years.” She plopped back down in her chair. “When she finally found out that I’d used all the things she’d told me about the Stoddards to brief Freddie, she went ballistic.” She laughed. “Oh, that was so funny, seeing Saint Olivia blow her cool.”
She turned to the Lieutenant and explained politely, “You see, Freddie was in the institute at the same time that I was. He had a terrible crush on me, so when I saw that he looked just like the Benny Stoddard in my cousin’s photo album, I simply went back and got him to be Benny so he could inherit the four million for me.” She smiled when she saw that the man did understand.
She received no answering smile from the homicide detective. Lieutenant Nichols understood all right. Too well.
Spreading her hands wide, Janet asked, “So you see why I had to kill her, don’t you? She wanted me to unmask Freddie and even apologize to Brenda Talley for deceiving her. Can you believe how utterly stupid that would have been after all the trouble I’d been to?” She cocked her head inquiringly. “Embarrassing, as well, don’t you imagine?”
Receiving no answer from those around her she shrugged and stated simply, “Well, surely you can see that Olivia was getting in my way.”
She spun to face Samantha. “I slipped up when I tried to kill off Jasmine Johnson. I ran her down with the car I stole, all right, but I was too slow turning the car around to come back and finish her. That interfering man had already run out to see what happened, and his wife was on their porch so I couldn’t finish the job. I could hardly kill them all, could I?
“It would still have been all right since she had to spend so long in the hospital. That would have kept her from seeing Freddie was an imposter until the game was over.”
She spun toward Samantha. “But no. You had to get stuck
on the idea of dragging Freddie up to the hospital to see her, Samantha. I could see you really meant it.” She threw her hands up then slapped them down to her hips. “That would have given the game away for sure, and I couldn’t let you do it.
“Except for Olivia, Jasmine was the only one who would have recognized that Freddie wasn’t the real Benny. So then I had to take care of you, Samantha Masters. After all, you were determined to get ‘Benny’!” she made the little air quotation marks as she spoke the name and giggled, “and Jasmine together.”
Samantha was too busy thanking God that the man who lived at the site of the attack on her housekeeper had come out of his house in time to keep this madwoman from driving over Jasmine again that she didn’t even register that it was her own turn to be explained away.
Janet smiled sweetly at the patrolman guarding the door. “You can see why I had to take Mrs. Masters out of the picture, can’t you, officer?”
From her corner, the girl at the stenographic machine looked up, horrified, to meet the young officer’s incredulous gaze. She went back to her stenotyping when Janet turned from him and continued. “That was simple, of course, because all of you let me in on your plans to catch Olivia’s killer.” She laughed. “You were all so very, very sorry for poor little me.”
She grinned cheerfully at Samantha. “I knew I had you, Samantha, when you fell for my bait. And you were all so dumb! It scared me a little that you told Laura and Colonel McLain about my saying that Benny might not be Benny, but I had to give you that clue. After all, every one of you missed the one I gave you about Olivia and that maid maybe having some dangerous common knowledge.” She shook her head. “I thought you were really dense when you didn’t pick up on that. Things were getting dull, though, and I gave it to you because I needed the challenge.” Looking around at them she explained, “I can’t stand being bored.”
She tossed her hair back and smoothed it with both hands. “I knew I was home free, though, when you wanted to go paw through Olivia’s precious photo albums alone. Just the two of us. At that point, I could really begin to feel the excitement.
“I couldn’t wait to show you the picture Olivia had taken of Freddie and me at the institute to see what you’d do.” She cocked her head to one side and frowned a little. “Did you know, Olivia even commented on how much Freddie looked like a dear, lost friend of hers, but I didn’t put two and two together until later.” She frowned mightily. “I guess I was the slow one then.
“Oh, well. I needed the time to become a trusted member of the community anyway, so it didn’t matter.” Janet was glowing at holding center stage, basking in their undivided attention.
“After I killed Olivia, I had to figure out how to put suspicion on somebody. Brenda was perfect. She’d jumped at the chance to have ‘Benny Jr.’ stay at her house.” She made a little moué of distaste. “She even bragged about it. Since it was obvious that nobody liked her much, I chose her.
“Then I needed to add you, Samantha, to my list. To make that work, I needed to bury Brenda deeper. So I stole her car—that was easy, I just had to watch until I saw where she put her spare keys—took her raincoat, which was one of a kind remember, and picked you up in the hospital parking lot. Anyone seeing us would have figured I was Brenda. Which, of course, was the whole idea.
“When we got to Olivia’s old beach house on Willoughby Spit, I let the snoop in the first floor apartment see me in Brenda’s raincoat with the hood up to hide my face. And that was all it took.”
She stared at Samantha in triumph. “All I had left to do then was knock you out, tie you up, and set the house on fire.” She ticked each task off on three fingers. “Then nobody would ever figure out who Freddie really was.
“Everything would have been fine, too.” Her nostrils flared and her voice took on a hysterical quality. Her hands clenched and unclenched spasmodically. She turned and glared at McLain, her control beginning to slip. “Samantha would have burned to a crisp except for your damned meddling!”
At that, shrieking “Meddler,” Janet Wilson lost control completely. “Meddler! Meddler!” She flung herself at McLain, her fingers extended like claws.
Rags barked a warning.
At the last second, McLain caught her wrists and fought to hold her. In her madness, she was as strong as a large man.
The patrolman sprang forward to help. Janet fought like a wild animal, teeth bared. When at last they had the panting girl subdued, Lieutenant Nichols ordered, “Book her. And you’d better get some help.”
“Yessir!”
***
And it was all over. They were simply told to go home, the police would handle the rest.
It seemed so anticlimactic.
Frank was driving Brenda’s Lexus, taking Laura to her house to get her own car. Sensing that none of them wanted contact just now with anyone who ‘hadn’t been there,’ Laura had volunteered to follow Frank to Greater Tidewater Realty and bring him home after he’d dropped the Lexus off for Brenda.
That left Samantha and Rags being driven home by the Colonel in the big black Suburban. As the miles passed, silence stretched out between the Colonel and Samantha.
Even Rags was quiet. Occasionally he’d lift his head and look at the Colonel. Snuggled as he was in Samantha’s arms it would have been easy for her to tell if he was growling. There was no vibration, no hint of his ‘percolating.’ Samantha wondered if her little darling could have had a change of heart toward their neighbor.
She seemed to have had one herself. She wasn’t finding him as insufferably annoying as usual. Maybe both changes, hers and Rags’s, were based on the fact that the ‘Dratted Colonel’ had saved both their lives.
Looking down at him, she gave the little Yorkshire a loving squeeze. He settled more firmly against her.
At last, Samantha spoke. “Janet won’t really pay for killing Olivia, will she?”
“Ah, Sam,” the Colonel’s voice was a soft rumble, “don’t tear yourself to pieces. The girl’s nuts. She’ll spend the rest of her life in an asylum for the criminally insane.”
“And nothing will bring Olivia back.” Samantha wanted to weep. Finally she sighed. “A wonderful woman is dead, and a truly pitiful one will never really even realize what she’s done.”
She tried for a firmer tone, one that would seem to give them some small victory. “I suppose that justice has been done as well as it can be.”
“Janet has been stopped.”
“Yes. We did that. We all did that.” Samantha sighed again.
There was another long silence in the car. Samantha put her head back against the headrest. Slowly, bit by bit the tension of the past few days drained out of her. Her muscles relaxed, and she settled more comfortably into the luxuriously padded leather seat.
Finally she turned to face McLain. She could stand the silence no longer. “So, what now?”
“Now I take you and the mutt home, and you promise to stay out of trouble,” McLain told her.
Samantha tried a tentative smile. He had saved her life, after all. Immediately, she felt a little better. Looking over at him she said, “Only if you’ll promise to do the same.” Her smile became real. “What do you think the odds on that would be?”
McLain steered the big car into her driveway and stopped it. “Living here with you for a neighbor?” He turned and looked her straight in the eye. He was chuckling. “Zero to none, Sam. Zero to none.”
Thank you for reading Murder Makes it Mine by Christina Strong
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Christina Strong, Murder Makes it Mine (Masters & McLain Mystery Book 1)
Murder Makes it Mine (Masters & McLain Mystery Book 1) Page 22