The maid led us through the house, up the stairs, and over to a door before disappearing.
Ian and I stood awkwardly in front of the door for a few seconds. We couldn’t hear anything, and I didn’t see what Julie would be so busy with in the middle of the day in her bedroom. Perhaps she was taking a nap.
I knocked loudly, but there was no response, and after a minute, I opened the door and Ian and I walked in.
Julie and Andrew were standing next to the bed, squished together in a tight embrace. As soon as we walked in, they jumped away from each other, and Julie quickly straightened her blouse and ran her hands through her hair.
She looked flushed and shocked to see us. “What are you guys doing here?”
“Haven’t you ever heard of knocking?” said Andrew.
“We did knock,” I said. “But nobody answered.”
“How did you even get into the estate?” said Julie. “You never told me you were coming by.”
“Patrick told the guards we were going to see him,” I said. “But we came over to your house instead. I figured I couldn’t give you much notice, because you didn’t want to talk to us.”
Julie’s bedroom was almost as large as Samantha’s, but it had no separate sitting area with TV and sofas. Instead, opposite her massive bed, there was an antique French provincial dressing table, and Julie went over to it and ran a brush through her hair. She fiddled with her lipstick for a while, and Andrew went and sat down on one corner of the bed.
“What did you want to talk to me about?” said Julie. “Now that you’ve completely ruined my plans for this morning.”
Julie and Andrew shared a secret smile that made my stomach turn in disgust, and before I could stop myself, I said, “How can you be getting together with Andrew? You’re married!”
Julie looked at me like I was an ignorant country bumpkin. “Marriage means different things to different people. Do you think my husband is being faithful to me, when he’s not even home ten months out of the year?”
“Maybe he is,” I said. “If you’re so unhappy that you would cheat on your husband, why don’t you just get a divorce?”
Julie laughed bitterly. “Divorce isn’t that simple when you’ve got significant assets to worry about.”
“I guess not,” I said. “But why Andrew?”
Julie shrugged. “Andrew was very persistent, and he’s good to me.”
“Wow,” said Ian. He’d gone all googly–eyed and was rotating his head from Andrew to Julie. “I can’t get a girlfriend, but a broke loser who draws weird abstracts can have an affair with a rich, gorgeous woman like you.”
Julie blushed slightly at the compliment, and said, “We’re not just having an affair. We plan to get married as soon as Andrew’s commercial art takes off. He’ll be earning heaps more money then, and with my divorce settlement and his income, we’ll do okay.”
“Ah–ha!” I said, turning to Andrew and unable to stop myself from sounding like an overly dramatic soap–opera queen. “I knew it! You are doing commercial art after all! What happened to following your heart and your dreams?”
Andrew shrugged sheepishly. “I guess it’s not that bad. I’m going to earn enough to keep Julie in style if I do commercial art, and once I’ve set myself up as a commercial artist, I’ll have an easier time promoting my more esoteric art.”
I nodded. “That kind of makes sense.”
“It’s been fun learning about your love life,” Ian said, “but we didn’t come here to talk to Andrew about his art.”
“Yes,” I said, remembering the original purpose of our visit. “And Andrew doesn’t need to be here for our conversation.”
“I don’t see why he should leave,” said Julie. “You two are the intruders here. Let’s get this over with, and then you can leave.”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine, Andrew can stay. So why don’t you tell us exactly what happened between you and Samantha?”
“Nothing happened,” said Julie. “Sure, we got on each other’s nerves sometimes, but that was it.”
“That wasn’t it,” said Ian. “You went ahead and killed her.”
“Don’t take anything this guy says seriously,” said Andrew. “He doesn’t even understand what good art is.”
“Andrew’s right,” said Julie. “You’ve got no right to come in here and accuse me of killing Samantha.”
“But it makes sense,” I said. “There was nobody on the list with the guards that day who’d be going in to see Samantha. But you didn’t need to be on the list since you already live here; you could just drive over and go talk to her.”
“You forget that I was home the entire time, hosting my brunch,” said Julie. “I would never have had the chance to go visit Samantha. Besides, perhaps someone did what you did—they asked someone else in the estate to let them in, and then they went over to talk to Samantha.”
I looked at her thoughtfully. “You’re right, perhaps somebody did that.”
“Maybe it was one of your brunch guests,” said Ian. “Maybe they told the guard they were coming to see you, but they stopped off at Samantha’s house first.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” said Julie. “My brunch guests didn’t even know Samantha.”
But there was a flicker of doubt in her eyes, and once again, I realized she was hiding something.
I said, “Did anybody else come to see you that morning?”
“You don’t need to tell them anything,” said Andrew. “These two have no right to meddle in your private business.”
Suddenly, Ian let out a loud gasp. “It was you! You came over to see Julie that morning.”
I looked from Andrew to Julie, and a mixture of fear and anticipation twisted in my stomach. Julie’s face had started to go pale, and there was a crazy anger in Andrew’s eyes. I knew that Ian had hit the nail right on the head.
“You can tell us,” I said to Julie. “It’s not your fault if someone came to see you, and then they went to see Samantha.”
“We can’t let other people know about our affair,” said Andrew. “Imagine the scandal. Your husband would want a messy divorce, and that would be a terrible thing.”
Julie looked at me silently, her eyes conflicted and panicked.
“It was Andrew manipulating you the whole time,” I said. “He’s the one who encouraged you to leave threatening messages on Samantha’s cell phone. You didn’t leave her prank threats just because you were bored, you left those threats because Andrew told you to.”
Andrew glared at us indignantly. “I’d never ask Julie to do such a thing.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” said Julie softly. “Leaving her messages was my own idea. I found out she was trying to keep Andrew from being a commercial success by bad–mouthing him to potential clients, and I needed her to stop.”
“You couldn’t leave your husband for Andrew if he wasn’t a successful artist,” said Ian slowly. “So you needed to make that happen.”
Julie nodded, looking miserable. “I’m so ashamed of myself now. But I wanted to help Andrew, and I had no idea anything bad would actually happen to Samantha.”
“I know you didn’t mean for anything bad to happen,” I said softly. “Even though you’re better off now that Samantha’s dead, and the cops might think you had something to do with that. But you only wanted to help out your boyfriend. And Andrew came to see you on Sunday morning, didn’t he? You can tell us, I promise, we’ll make sure the whole thing stays low–key. You did nothing wrong.”
“Yes,” said Julie softly. “He came to visit me at nine o’clock, and he left at nine thirty. I never told you before, because I didn’t think it was important. And I didn’t want to get either of us in trouble.”
“Just because I was here,” said Andrew quickly, “doesn’t mean I went to see Samantha afterward.”
“The guards at the gate will have a record of the time you left,” I said.
“Maybe I didn’t go to Samantha’s house,” Andrew repeated.
I look
ed at him skeptically. “Then what exactly were you doing for those next forty minutes? Just sitting around in your car? We’re not idiots.”
Andrew sighed. “Fine. I went to see her. But that doesn’t mean I killed her. I knew she was trying to sabotage me, and I just wanted to talk to her.”
I smiled triumphantly. “No, you didn’t. I’m sure a neighbor or two across the way saw you leaving, and that would be after the earthquake. Which places you at the scene of her death, at the time of her death—and it makes you responsible for her death.”
“How did you even get in?” asked Ian. “Your name wasn’t on the list to see either Samantha or Julie.”
Andrew glared at Ian. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I had an early–morning appointment to see a client who wanted a portrait of his family drawn up.”
“And you knew that it would be the perfect opportunity to see Samantha while staying under the radar.”
Andrew ran a hand through his hair. “Look. It wasn’t like that. I just—I thought I’d go see her, convince her to give me a chance.”
“That doesn’t sound likely,” I said. “I mean, you went to talk to her and suddenly decided to kill her? I’ve dealt with enough murders to know that if it’s not a crime of passion, it’s always premeditated.”
“Yeah,” chimed in Ian. “You’d already planned to kill her. That’s why you made sure not to put your name on Samantha’s or Julie’s guest list. You were intending to shoot Samantha or strangle her, and then when the earthquake happened, you saw an even better opportunity.”
“You knew that no matter what you did, what kind of art you tried, Samantha would do everything in her power to leave you an unsuccessful wreck. You realized that the only way to be successful was to eliminate her completely.”
Andrew’s lips twisted up in a thin smile, and his eyes narrowed at the memory. “The earthquake was such a stroke of luck. It stopped the cops from investigating, and I didn’t even have to try. I could’ve gone along with my original plan to strangle her, but I believe in seizing opportunities when they come up. And I’m done talking to you two nosy investigators. Shooting you won’t be as neat as strangling, but I always carry a gun with me for a reason.”
Ian and I took a step back, and I wondered if we had enough time to run down the stairs and escape.
“Not so fast.” We all turned to look at Julie, and as we watched, she slipped open one of the dressing table drawers, pulled out a small handgun, and pointed it at Andrew. “I was a fool to trust you, and I was an idiot to try to help you out by calling Samantha and threatening her. You’re not shooting anyone or going anywhere till the cops get here.”
I quickly found my cell phone and dialed 911.
Ian turned to Andrew and said, “Women, huh? It’s always so tricky trying to date them. Maybe if Julie hadn’t thought so highly of you, she wouldn’t have been so shocked to find out you’re a murderer, and she wouldn’t have made us call the cops on you.”
Chapter Twenty–One
A few days later, news of Andrew’s confession was splashed all over the Vegas newspapers. He admitted to visiting Samantha and planning to kill her—just as the earthquake hit and he saw his opportunity to fix his career once and for all. It was the perfect murder, until Ian and I came along.
A few more days went by. I didn’t hear anything from Stone and was starting to get anxious, when one day, as I was walking home from my shift, I met Johnson.
He appeared by my side just as I was walking down the dark alley behind the Cosmo Hotel, and I stifled my scream just in time.
“Johnson,” I managed to choke out instead. “It’s nice to see you again.”
“You too,” he said in a low, smooth voice. “We need your help. Eli’s going to be visiting Vegas soon. Can I count on you?”
“Of course,” I said, feeling a sudden rush of exhilaration. Perhaps tailing Eli would help Stone come out of hiding.
“Good,” he said. “I’ll text you his photo. We’ll start tailing him from the airport. We’re still not sure when he’ll arrive, but it should be sometime within the next two weeks. I’ll contact you the night before, to finalize our plans.”
“Tell me about Stone,” I said, unable to wait any longer. “Why is he in trouble?”
“Okay,” said Johnson, “it all started when he went to Afghanistan…”
THE END
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Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty–One
A Perfect Murder in Las Vegas Page 12