I pushed my nose around his shoulder to read. Light pencil shading brought the impression of block letters into high relief.
YOU WANT TO SEE THIS. WALK NORTH ALONG THE LAKE.
My heart clipped with intrigue and vindication. I knew it! Lifting words from an underlying page was a real thing, not just a trick used in TV detective shows. And okay, I’d had the wrong bedroom, but I’d been on the right track last night.
Nate’s eyes lifted from the page to Julie. “You found this in Charles Sitter’s room?”
She nodded. “The drawer in his bedside table.”
“How did you get into his room?” I asked. “When I tried his door last night, it was locked.”
Julie dug into the folds of her skirt and flashed a slim leather compact at me.
“You just happen to have a lock picking set on you?” Nate said. He did not sound happy about it.
“I never leave home without it,” Julie declared.
I gave the leather compact a hungry look. “I need one of those.”
“It’s not a magic wand,” Nate said dryly. “You still need to know how to use the tools.”
“I could teach you,” Julie said as she put the compact away.
Nate growled. “Don’t encourage her.”
I paid him no attention. “So,” I said to Julie, rather impressed with myself, “I’m the one who changed your mind about the Parkers? The hypothesis I put forward must have been really compelling.”
“Not at all,” she said matter-of-factly. “But then Charles abstained, and I knew at once.”
Nate stepped forward. “What do you mean?”
“Charles turns seventy next year and he’ll be forced to retire as an Honored Master. We have a cut-off age to make place for new blood,” Julie eagerly explained. “I never suspected the Parkers, not for a minute, although it did feel good to have my say about them. They were my parting gift to Charles, you see. I bumbled my reveal so he could claim sole victory in solving Lydia’s murder. I honestly expected him to announce Jonas Sash as guilty.”
Her enthusiasm dampened. “Charles wouldn’t dismiss an opportunity like this, the Holy Grail of all murder mysteries. There’s only one reason he would ever abstain.”
“And that is?” Nate prompted.
Julie looked at him a long moment before speaking. “Charles would never stain his flawless record by putting forward a wrong verdict. Even if he were the only one who’d ever know. And he couldn’t accuse himself of murder, could he?”
“Do you have any idea why he’d kill Lydia Fieldman?”
“Lydia had a lot of respect for him.” Julie shook her head. “I can’t imagine her doing anything to turn Charles against her, not enough to start an argument, let alone kill her. But he did, of that I’m sure.”
Nate’s rapt attention faltered. “Your hunch won’t stand up in court any more than my gut feeling will.” He folded the paper, our only piece of real evidence. “Neither will this. Even if our analysts verify this as Charles Sitter’s handwriting, it’s circumstantial evidence at best.” He glanced at me. “I’m going to put this somewhere safe. Don’t go anywhere.”
I waved a hand over the stacks of pots and pans. “I’m not going anywhere for a good, long while.”
“Detective Bishop is right,” Julie said as we watched him walk out. “But that note is all the proof I need.”
“Yeah, well, the courts need a little more,” I sighed. “A full confession would be great.”
“Hmm…” She put a hand to her mouth, drummed her fingers on her lips. “I might just have an idea about that.”
Julie talked and I listened.
She was gone before Nate returned and I was ready for him with an alluring grin and a soft glint in my eye.
He saw through me in a heartbeat. “What are you up to now?”
Life wasn’t fair. Nate grinned and my knees buckled. I grinned and he got suspicious.
“Come on, I’ve got something to show you,” I grumbled, pulling him by the arm out the kitchen door.
“Where are we going?” he said as we headed up along the lakeshore.
“It’s, um, just this lovely spot I found. It’s really beautiful.”
“Is that so?”
We passed the terrace on our right and it occurred to me that someone could be watching. I grabbed Nate’s hand in mine, swung our arms (a little roughly) to match our stride.
His fingers twined in mine, warm and strong and totally not according to my plan. “You don’t have much experience in seduction, do you?”
I glared at him. “Keep that up and you’ll never have to worry about it.”
“Ah, so you have given it some thought.”
“Not now, Nate.” I spied the small winterberry bush at the water’s edge and led him behind it.
“Maddox, what the—”
“Shhh,” I hissed, tugging him to his knees with me.
He shuffled around to face me. “What the hell are we doing here?”
“Spending some quality time together?”
“Here?”
“It’s not so bad,” I lied. The ground was soggy and we were knee-deep in slimy reeds. On the other hand, our fingers were still twined and his mouth was right there…um, yeah! I slid my fingers from his and fell back until something sharp poked me in the spine.
Nate tried to stand and I pulled him down again.
He gave in with a weary grunt. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”
The sound of voices approached. I panicked and grabbed his hand again, put a finger to my lips.
Nate’s frown deepened, but he went still and kept further protests to himself.
“I know why you did it,” Julie was saying as they came within hearing. “All these years solving murders with so little challenge, you wondered what it would be like on the other side. You knew you could do better, execute a murder that would never be solved. Your final curtain.”
“An interesting story, but that’s all it is.”
Nate’s fingers tightened around mine as he recognized Charles’ voice.
“Oh, come now, Charles, you wanted me to know all along,” she exclaimed. “That’s the part I couldn’t figure out. Why would you abstain when you knew it would trigger my suspicions?” The voices stopped moving directly across the bush from us. “At first I thought it was because you couldn’t bring yourself to be wrong about any murder, even the one you committed.”
“Conjecture,” he argued.
“Then it hit me,” Julie went on seamlessly. “You’d committed the perfect crime and no one would ever know. But if you abstained, I would eventually draw the right conclusions and then at least one person would know. And I’d never be able to do anything about it.”
Julie chuckled, the rich, throaty sound of someone suitably impressed. She probably was. “The perfect murder and the perfect confession. Absolutely brilliant.”
They fell silent. If she’d hoped to get a full confession out of Charles by admiring his brilliance in not confessing, it wasn’t working.
Beside me, Nate tensed.
I yanked at his hand, bringing his eyes to me before I shook my head. Mouthed, “It’s okay.” We had a safe word Julie would use if the situation turned dangerous. Poppies. Don’t ask me, it was her choice.
“But why Lydia?” Julie finally said. More silence, then, “I’m not an idiot, Charles. I brought you all the way out here where we wouldn’t be overheard. You can talk to me. Even if I wanted to turn you in, which I certainly do not, it would be your word against mine. I just hate loose ends, you know that, and I don’t understand why it had to be Lydia.”
“Neither do I. Lydia was a good person,” Charles said in a tone that could pass for regret. “She never gave anyone a reason to harm her.”
I clamped down on a frustrated breath. He wasn’t giving anything away.
“Oh, yes, now I see,” Julie drew out. “It’s nearly impossible to pin a murder without establishing motive. You had no reason to k
ill her. No one did. That is indeed clever, almost as clever as Ms Storm.”
“Maddox Storm is a babbling buffoon,” he muttered irritably.
“I must agree,” Julie said. “She probably stumbled on the truth by mistake and didn’t even realize it.”
Traitor!
“Still,” Julie continued, “it is remarkable how spot on she was. I read something about that once, you know. It’s called the Subconscious Genius, I think.”
“That woman is no genius! She actually thought I’d have enough time to meet Lydia at the tree, subdue her, string her up and get back. I was only gone from the lounge fifteen minutes.”
“Ah, yes,” said Julie. “When you went to fetch your newspaper.”
“And that red wine was an accident,” Charles huffed, his irritation rising. “But when I walked out of the dining room, I realized how easy it would be to grab the rope from under the stairs.”
My eyes widened and froze on Nate. This was it. We had him. The composed Charles Sitter had been undone by his own miserable irritability.
“How did you know the rope was there?”
“I heard Ms Storm speaking to someone about the rope and envelopes in the passage, and deduced she was storing her props in the alcove. I keep an eye out for these things, have been doing so for months. That’s the fundamental basis of the perfect murder. Using opportunities as they’re presented. Not having any plan that must be followed. A random victim. No deadline. If any step failed along the way, I could just abort and try another time. I stashed the rope in my bedroom and wrote the note to lure Lydia out later that night. It didn’t even have to be her. Lydia just happened to be seated next to me at dinner.”
“That’s when you slipped the note to her.”
My heart raced, thumping so hard, I was sure it would give us away.
Nate’s jaw hollowed, the look in his eyes intense.
“I had a half hour while you were all eating dessert to tie the rope in the tree and adjust the noose and return to the lounge,” Charles said. “When I met Lydia there later, she was so eager to explore the crime scene she thought Ms Storm had set up, she practically stepped into the noose on her own accord. All I had to do was give one good yank and secure the end of the rope.”
“You’re an egotistical maniac,” Julie said hoarsely.
Nate moved, on his feet and around the bush between one breath and the next.
I jumped up to watch, legs shaky from the adrenaline rush and nervous excitement.
“Charles Sitter, you’re under arrest for the murder of Lydia Fieldsman.” Nate grabbed the shell-shocked man and locked his arms behind his back. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right—”
Charles recovered and started struggling.
“This is entrapment!” His gaze darted furiously between us all and settled on me. “It will never hold up.”
“Nate and I were simply stealing a private moment alone by the lake,” I told him. “The detective had no idea you’d wander along and confess out of the blue.”
The simple truth, and why Julie had warned me to not say a word to Nate about what we’d arranged.
Nate’s eyes met mine, held. His grin came on slow and lasted a long, long moment. “I’ll see you later, okay?”
I smiled. Too choked up to speak. So this was what it felt like to be at the receiving end of Nate’s praise instead of wrath.
He jerked Charles by the arm, dragging him around the side of the house to the courtyard out front. “You have the right to an attorney,” he continued. “If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.”
Proving he did actually know the words to the “Miranda” Rights, even if he seldom bothered to use them.
Julie folded her arms. “It was touch and go there for a minute. I wasn’t sure I’d crack him.”
“I’m sorry,” I said to her. “It must have been hard, doing that to a friend.”
“Justice must prevail,” she said, not particularly overwrought. “I couldn’t have done it without your hypothesis, especially the parts you got so terribly wrong. Charles’ ego couldn’t handle the thought of me believing that you, of all people, had retraced his steps and figured everything out to the last detail.”
My mouth turned down at the corners. If this was the best she could do with a compliment, she really shouldn’t bother. Ever.
Julie studied me with a thoughtful expression. “Have you considered joining the GRIMMS, Ms Storm?”
“Dear Lord, no,” I gasped before polite manners could kick in.
“That’s to be expected, I suppose,” Julie said. “We haven’t put our best foot forward this weekend, have we? I’m sure you’ll be pleased to see the back of us.”
Truer words had never been spoken. I managed to restrain myself from nodding and agreeing, though, which was more than she’d done for me when Charles had called me a babbling buffoon.
EIGHTEEN
Hollow House was mostly restored to normal. The last GRIMMS had finally left and Burns was nodding off at the reception desk. I foolishly thought it safe to tiptoe past him to the lounge in search of a well-deserved cappuccino.
I slammed to a halt in the archway as I saw my mistake.
Mr Hollow had cornered Miss Crawley near the coffee maker. “It’s a Federal offense to obtain illegal access to a man’s financial statements.”
He stomped his cane for emphasis, which was lost on the thick rug.
“A minor felony at best,” Miss Crawley responded calmly. “Besides, which, I did no such thing. I do not have an inside person at the bank, unfortunately. I can barely gain access to my own finances when I go into the branch.”
“Then how do you know about my second mortgage?”
I retreated swiftly and quietly, and prayed Miss Crawley stuck to her guns about never giving up a source.
I’d forgotten about the state of my bedroom until I stepped inside. The floorplans pinned to the wall. The whiteboard next to the bed. I stood in the middle of my room, my heart folding in on itself as I thought about the last couple of days and Nate.
As happy as I was to get my room back to myself, it felt a bit strange that he wouldn’t be here to send me off to sleep tonight.
Now that the case was closed, I couldn’t help wondering if he’d disappear from my life as quickly as the last time. He’d said not, but what people said and what they did didn’t always coincide.
Which led my thoughts straight to Joe, and the uneasiness that had been building inside me.
I stripped the floorplans from the wall. Took extra care to not erase any of the marker pen when I collapsed the whiteboard. If there was one thing I’d learnt, Nate could get really crabby when you messed with his crime scene and that probably included all related materials.
I stored it all inside the flat canvas bag, which I propped against the wall near the door with a flourish, feeling a great sense of satisfaction. There was something to be said about zipping up the loose ends of the entire sordid affair.
There really was.
That sense of satisfaction bled away as my mind turned to the loose ends in my own life that needed zipping, and I knew I had a difficult decision to make. An irreversible decision, but it was time to grow up and sort my stuff out.
Joe’s door stood wide open, his back to me, his gaze outside the window. The room was straightened, the desk uncluttered. That was either a good sign or a bad omen, depending on whether he’d finished his book or developed a strain of writer’s block.
I took a deep breath and knocked.
He turned from the window, hands shoved in his pockets, his expression steeped in thought. It took a moment longer for him to register my presence. His brow cleared. “Charles Sitter, huh?”
“You heard?”
“I saw Nate cuff and put him in the back of the truck,” Joe said. “And Julie Brown stopped by to fill me in. She was full of praise for you.”
>
“Their numbers are down,” I snorted and crossed the threshold. “She’s on a recruitment drive.”
Joe smiled, some of that familiar humor feeding into his eyes.
I felt the tug, past memories and the swell of warmth. But it wasn’t enough and it should have been. That was a big part of my decision.
“Joe, I’m sorry,” I said as I walked up to him. “I think we need to start proceedings on the divorce. I know the situation I’ve put you in, but I have nothing and I’m not about to contest for anything of yours. It should go through pretty quickly.”
Dull acceptance replaced the humor in his eyes. “I’ve been expecting this.”
“Nothing has to change for now,” I told him, then remembered. “Actually, our Hollow House shares all belong to you. You can start charging me rent, or kick me out altogether.”
“I’d never do that, Maddie.”
A smile of regret twisted my mouth. “Yeah, I know.”
“I only wish I’d done better for you in our marriage.”
“You’re not the only one to blame.” I placed a hand on his arm. “It was so easy to love you, Joe. You made it easy. You’re so warm, funny, creative, cute and charming...” I sighed. “And you doted on me. We fell so hard and fast, and everything just got more perfect with every day, but it was an illusion. Life isn’t like that. You made a mistake, but it could have been me, or anything else. Somewhere down the line, life would have hit and I should have been able to stand with you.”
Unshed tears blurred my eyes. My throat thickened. I’d thought what Joe had done to me was bad, but this was worse. Taking that look in the mirror and realizing you’re not the person you thought you were.
“Maddie…” His hand came out his pocket to cup my cheek. “I shouldn’t have screwed up so royally.”
“But I should be able to forgive you,” I said. “Give you at least one more chance.” I swallowed hard. “If I loved you the right way, the way I honestly thought I did, I would be able to do that.”
“Come here.” He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me into a tight hug. “We’ve really made a mess of things, haven’t we?”
The Butler Didn't Do It (A Maddox Storm Mystery Book 2) Page 15