Dad opened the front door before I reached it. He must have been peeking through the parlor window, because his scowl was ready to go before Joe even stepped inside behind me.
“Joseph,” he said with unmissable hostility. There wasn’t a trace of the usual sunshine creased into his leathery face. “I heard you were staying up at the big house.”
“Only temporarily.” Joe gave a restrained smile. “How are you, Mr Storm?”
Totally ignoring him, Dad wrapped an arm around me and led me into the front parlor. “I managed to calm your mother down a little,” he said. “She told me one of your guests had been murdered.”
“Yeah, Lydia Fieldman.” I spotted Mom on the paisley sofa with an enormous cognac glass that contained no more than the customary swirl, although the liquid was deep red instead of gold and I’d hazard a guess it hadn’t started off as a mere swirl. “How much sherry did you give her?”
“I tipped the bottle out,” Dad admitted sheepishly.
“That poor, poor woman,” Mom said as she saw me. “I feel so terrible about it.”
I rushed over, my gaze combing her like a hawk, but she didn’t seem too tipsy. “Okay, start at the beginning and tell me everything.”
Mom offered her glass to me. “You may want a drop of courage first.”
I took the glass and deposited it on the center table. “I’ll take my chances.”
Dad came up to stand with us.
“Well…” Mom wrung her hands in her lap. “I know you said I wasn’t allowed to look inside the envelopes, honey.”
The bottom dropped out of my stomach. “You went back to the wicker basket.”
“After Burns served the main course, I had a moment while the dumplings stewed,” she said. “I didn’t see the harm, truly.”
Joe stepped forward. “I don’t understand. Maddie? Is this what you’re so upset about?”
“Not now, Joe.” I sent him a furrowed look.
“And that’s when I saw it,” Mom whispered hoarsely.
“We were trying to keep a lock on the mystery reveal, but it’s no big deal,” Joe said. “In light of everything else that has—”
“You heard what my daughter said,” Dad grunted. “Back down, Joseph.”
Joe threw his hands up. “Only trying to help.”
I blocked them out, turning my attention on Mom again. “That’s when you saw….” I coughed to clear the scratch in my throat. “The rope?”
“Yes.” Mom nodded slowly. “Well, to be more precise, I saw that it wasn’t there, and I distinctly remember you coiling it on top of the envelopes before you closed the basket. I checked thoroughly anyway, took everything out the basket to see if the rope had slipped beneath, but it was gone.”
“The rope was gone?” I stared at Mom, dumbfounded. This was her big confession?
“I meant to come and find you at once,” Mom said. “I thought maybe you’d taken it, but I wanted to make sure. You would have been in an awful panic, honey, if you found it gone when you had to stage your murder scene.” Her eyes dropped to her lap. “I thought I’d just put the chocolate on a slow boil before I told you, and then Burns returned from serving the main course and I dished him a plate of supper and the missing rope slipped right out of my mind.”
I sank onto the sofa beside her, my limbs instantly weak with relief. The shock took a while longer to get the message and subside. “That’s not really an issue anymore.”
“If I’d told you, you’d have known that the murderer took the rope,” Mom said in a small, miserable voice. “You would have known to be on the lookout for something amiss, maybe stopped him, I don’t know, but something would have been done different and maybe that poor woman would still be alive.”
“You can’t blame yourself.” My heart went out to Mom. “You weren’t to know the rope would be used as a murder weapon.”
“But if only I’d said something,” Mom said, looking at me with tears welling in her eyes. “I’d meant to, and who knows how it might have foiled his plans if I had? It feels like it’s my fault, honey, it really does.”
“There are many things we could blame ourselves for in hindsight,” I told her. “That doesn’t make them our fault.”
As I spoke, it occurred to me how valuable this new information was.
“What matters is you’ve given us a new lead that could solve this case.” I took Mom’s hands in mine, smiled widely. “You’re not to blame for anything, but you’ve been an enormous help.”
“How’s that?” asked Dad.
My smile swerved up to him. “The murderer wouldn’t have expected us to know the rope was taken before the main course was served. However meticulously he—or she—planned, they didn’t plan for us being able to narrow our suspects down to those who left the table at some point during dinner.”
“I do hope so,” Mom said. “I feel so dreadful about that woman. It would be nice to know I’ve made up a bit for my mistake.”
I squeezed her hand. “Nate will get the murderer, don’t you worry.”
Mom leant in to speak near my ear, “Who is this Nate you keep mentioning and when do we get to meet him?”
“You’ve already met him, Mom. It’s Detective Bishop.”
She snapped back to light her eyes on me. “Oh, Nathanial Bishop. He seemed very charming and, of course, he did save your life.”
I had to ask, although I really knew I shouldn’t. “Meaning?”
“Meaning it’s only natural you’d feel a special connection to him.” Mom leant in closer again, snuck a peek at Joe. “Does Joe know you’ve started seeing ‘other’ people?”
As simple as the answer was (no, Joe doesn’t know I’m seeing other people, because I’m not), Mom wouldn’t leave it at that and I was not having this conversation drawn out in front of my STB-ex.
I sent Dad a look, a desperate plea for help.
“Come on, let’s go put the kettle on,” he said congenially. “Your mother could use a cup of tea after all that melodrama.”
“And all that sherry,” I inserted as I popped up from the sofa.
Joe shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “I should go.”
“You probably should,” Dad agreed rather loudly as he brushed past Joe.
I flinched inwardly, one of those hindsight things that always seemed so obvious after the fact. I should have realized how hostile the environment would be and left Joe waiting in the car.
“I’ll just drive Joe home quickly,” I said to Mom, “It won’t take long.”
“No need, the walk will do me good.” Joe turned to go with, given the circumstances, a somewhat pleasant, “Goodbye, Mrs Storm,” for Mom.
I went after him anyway, if only to show him to the door. Someone had to maintain the illusion of polite manners in our family.
Joe reached the front door first and stepped outside.
I held onto the door. “Thanks for seeing me here safely.”
He shrugged, shoved his hands in his pockets. “Your father hates me.”
I bit down on an automatic apology. I didn’t approve of Dad’s outright rudeness, but it wasn’t totally undeserved. And to be honest, I’d done my fair share of apologizing in this break-up and Joe had done precisely none.
“You’re not surprised, are you?” I said.
“No, not surprised.” He hung his head, looked at me with those puppy eyes that literally drooped sorrow. “I hurt you, Maddie, and I’m sorry.”
Well, that came out of nowhere.
Four weeks too late.
“Took you long enough,” I shot back, not exactly kind of me but I was reeling from the whiplash of unexpected anger. Don’t ask me why. Wasn’t this what I’d wanted, what I’d been waiting for? The grand apology?
“I’m supposed to be a writer,” Joe said. “I’ve been trying to come up with something a little more adequate, but turns out there really isn’t any substitute for those two words. I’m sorry,” he said again, “I never meant for things to go that far
with Chintilly.”
Red and yellow fireworks went off inside my head. And yes, my anger had escalated into multicolored fury.
“As opposed to?” I lurched forward, pulling the door closed behind me. “When should you have stopped, Joe? When you put your hands all over her? When you ripped her dress down around her waist?” I slammed my palm against his chest, knocking him back a step. “Or maybe you think everything would have been just fine if you’d stopped at a few stolen kisses.” I slammed his chest again, my throat thick with bile as realization hit me. “My God, how long had it even been going on for?”
“Maddie!” Joe grabbed my hands. “It wasn’t like that, I swear. I never gave Chintilly a second look before that night.”
I jerked my hands from his grasp. “So it was just some random pickup?”
“I know how bad this sounds, but yes, that’s all it was.”
Was he kidding me?
“And when did these urges start?” I said hotly. “Before or after we got married?”
“It wasn’t about me.” He rubbed his brow, no longer able to look me in the eye. “It was about the hero in my new thriller. Or anti-hero, I guess, since he’s a serial killer.”
“Sure, blame the fictional character inside your head!”
“Will you just listen to me for a second?” His hand fell away, left a weary scowl behind.
“Go ahead.” It’s not like it could get any worse.
“My serial killer picks his victims up at a bar and I was stuck on that scene. I mean, I’ve flirted, but I’ve never picked a woman up and taken her home. I couldn’t work the dialogue, everything read back like flat wood. I couldn’t suspend my disbelief. Every line I wrote sounded cheesy and I couldn’t believe any woman would actually fall for it.”
Joe hesitated, looked at me as if it was my turn to say something.
I stared back at him in silence, hard.
“I went backstage that night, to use the restroom,” Joe went on. “Chintilly called me into her dressing room. She needed help with a zipper—”
“Seriously?” Talk about suspension of belief.
“Classic, right?” Joe said. “So I thought, why not try out my scene on her, just a couple of lines so I could judge her response. It was fascinating, watching her transform into this malleable woman. I couldn’t say anything wrong, couldn’t do anything wrong, she sucked it all up. And I kept thinking, just a little more, then I’d walk out.”
“This is your half-brained lame excuse?” I spluttered. “Research?”
“Not an excuse,” he said sadly. “Just an explanation, you deserve that much. I thought I could handle the situation, treat it like a clinical experiment and remain aloof, but I got carried away in the moment, obviously, and…” Finally, he ran out of words.
“And if I hadn’t walked in on you?” I said. “Would you have stopped at all?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
As swiftly as it had come, the fight went out of me. There was only the blur of pain left, a muscle-deep hurt that bruised me from the inside out. And now I knew why I didn’t want Joe’s apologies even though I’d thought I did, because with it came this, raking through the details, and everything hurt.
My legs buckled out from beneath me and I sat down heavily on the porch step. “Where was I in all this, Joe? Did I even cross your mind?”
“Of course you did.” He moved off the porch to stand in front of me. “I told myself you’d understand, that it wasn’t much different from what actors do when playing an intimate part.”
I’d never played those kinds of steamy Hollywood parts, but I got the drift of where he was going with this and it was totally not the same.
“When actors do it,” I informed him tersely, “there’s an entire production set cramming around them, bright lights flooding the mood and a director yelling ‘cut’ just when things get interesting. There’s a reason actors don’t sneak off into their trailers for a private rehearsal session. Or if they do, it’s no longer called rehearsing, it’s called an affair.”
“I’m not an idiot,” Joe muttered. “I told myself what I wanted to hear, so I could be edgy and authentic to my story. I screwed up royally, Maddie, I know that, and I knew there’d be no way to say this without pushing you further away.”
I gave a dry laugh. “That’s the first thing you’ve said that sounds about right.”
His jaw hollowed from biting down on his emotions. “Well, now you know.”
Lucky me.
He stood there, the look in those expressive eyes filled with regret.
I pushed to my feet, turned my back on him and went inside.
Yeah, I was a twisted, bitter piece of work. But I had nothing else to give him. He’d worn me down to the bone, good and proper.
Dad was waiting for me in the kitchen. He’d had time to put two and two together and he was not happy.
“The murderer is still there,” he said gruffly. “One of those people staying up at the big house.”
“We don’t know that,” I deflected. “It could have been a stranger passing by. The lake front is open to the public.”
Not a lie, exactly. Anything was possible.
“Then how did he get the rope?”
“The French doors to the terrace were open the whole time, Dad.” Which didn’t explain how he knew to find the wicker basket hidden in the alcove beneath the stairs, but hopefully Dad hadn’t thought it through too well. “The murderer could be anyone.”
The kettle whistled, drawing Dad’s attention to the stove. “I still don’t like you being up there.”
“Yeah, well, if I ran every time there was a murder at Hollow House, I’d be permanently camped outside beneath the stars.”
He took my sarcastic retort literally, turned to me with open arms. “Your room will always be here for you, pumpkin.”
“I know, Dad.” I walked into his hug and pressed my cheek to his comforting shoulder. “And if things become too scary at Hollow House, I’ll be here with my bags before you can say boo.”
ELEVEN
It was early evening before I finally got away, with Mom’s recipe for slow roasted side of beef tucked into my back pocket. She’d recovered enough to insist she should come over tomorrow to at least cook the Sunday roast. I’d insisted just as strongly that that was not an option. We’d comprised on the recipe.
Those couple of hours relaxing at home with Mom and Dad, though, had breathed new life into my soul. There was something to be said for unconditional love.
Before starting the car, I put a call in to Savage Garden for our take-out supper. I ordered enough to feed a small army and was told it would be ready within a half-hour for collection. That gave me the perfect opportunity to stop by The Vine to catch up with Jenna.
Tourist season had arrived and Silver Firs was bursting at the seams with festive cheer. A banner streamed across the far end of the North Pier announcing next weekend’s country fair. Patty’s Pancakes had put a table outside on the boardwalk, and I caught a glimpse of Agatha flipping pancakes on a portable gas stove.
The parking behind the communal hall was full, so I pulled up into one of the long bays reserved for the wine touring buses with attitude. My best friend was dating the only functioning law official in town and I had a detective living in my bedroom. I figured I had all bases covered.
Jenna’s family owned and worked The Vine, a delicatessen and wine tasting bar that took its décor to heart. From the gnarled wood door to the vines creeping along the exposed ceiling beams, it was like stepping into an overgrown vineyard. It was tasting hour, and Mr Adams held court at the long bar with the usual group of rosy-cheeked regulars and a press of new faces. He was giving his token speech on the history of some bouquet, so I waved him hello but didn’t interrupt.
Jenna saw me and flew from around the back of the cheese counter.
“Coffee break,” she called out to her mom and aunt, and swept me straight back onto the pavement outside. “S
orry, I just wanted to warn you. I haven’t told anyone about Lydia Fieldman, not even my parents. Jack wanted to keep it quiet.”
“That’s not going to last,” I said as we crossed Birch Street and cut through an alley to the square. “I had to tell my mom. Actually, I’m surprised Miss Crawley hasn’t trumpeted the news with her usual fanfare.”
“Not a peep.” Jenna threw me a grin. “I’ve been checking all the usual suspects, but she hasn’t posted, tweeted or pinned a single thing all day. Any progress on whodunit?”
“We’ve definitely narrowed it down to one of the GRIMMS,” I said dryly.
“So, that would be a no.”
A discordant note clawed the air like a devil she-cat. My spine snapped stiff. Several people cursed. A toddler nearby started bawling.
Across the green, the school marching band went into full cacophony mode as they warmed up their instruments.
I watched the effect jolt through the sea of innocent visitors with a sigh of content. “I missed this.”
Jenna laughed. “You have a seriously evil streak.”
We pushed through the frosted door of Cuppa-Cake and joined the back of a rather long line. Within minutes, however, Lily waved us out of the line. The perks of being local and a valued customer. I guessed this meant she was unaware of my occasional sneak into Cuppa-Cheeno across the green. The two establishments had been engaged in unfriendly rivalry for two years and I’d planted my flag firmly in Lily’s quarter, but all was fair in love and war when it came to Mr Bellaney’s almond croissants.
Lily had our regular order ready to-go, cappuccino for me and latte for Jenna. She leant across the high counter as she handed them over. “How’s it going with the murder?”
I flinched. “That was quick, even for my mother. She must be taking lessons from Miss Craw—Ow!” I yelped as Jenna stamped on my foot. I glared down at my injury. “You’re lucky you’re wearing sneakers.”
“You’re lucky I’m wearing sneakers.” Jenna leant in and whispered, “She’s talking about your mystery weekend and my murder, you idiot.”
An idiot, and then some.
I beamed a smile on Lily. “Oh, you mean the murder,” I improvised, and proceeded to lie through my teeth. “Everything went as planned.”
The Butler Didn't Do It (A Maddox Storm Mystery Book 2) Page 9