by Joan Rylen
“And cobweb free,” Vivian added, then sighed. “My guess is the second wife nixed it.” She reached for the smaller box. “Let’s see what we’ve got inside box number two.” She easily peeled back the aged packing tape and opened the flaps.
Just as she reached her hand inside, a loud knock sounded on the bedroom door. She snatched her hand away, as if she’d been burned. “Oh, shit!”
Brandon’s voice sounded outside the door. “Anyone home? I came to get the trash.”
Vivian jumped up, grabbed the box from the luggage rack and threw it in the closet. Wendy started toward the door, just as a key went in the knob.
“We’re in here, hold on a sec,” Vivian said as she pulled a shirt off a hanger and tossed it over the box, then closed the closet door.
Wendy stood aside as Brandon walked in with a black trash bag. “I figured you girls would be out causing trouble somewhere.”
Kate sat on the bed. “I needed a break after all that breakfast, but I think we’re about to go on a walk around the lake.”
“It’s a beautiful day for it,” Brandon called from the bathroom. “It’s a little warmer than yesterday.” He emerged with the trash bag. A black smear of soot was on his cheek. “Be sure to take some water. I’ll be tending to the leaf piles if you need me.”
“Thanks,” Wendy said and followed him to the door, closing it behind him, then leaned against it and let out a sigh of relief.
“We almost got busted!” Vivian whispered. “Let’s hurry so we can re-hide the evidence!”
Wendy tossed aside the shirt, grabbed the box from the closet, set it on the bed and opened it up. She reached inside. “Oooh, la la, what do we have here.” She slowly revealed a black lace nightie with red trim.
“I’m guessing that’s not Tracy’s,” Vivian said.
Kate reached inside and found a framed picture of a middle-aged woman, very pretty, trim with brown hair and riding on a horse. Another picture showed the same woman with Brandon standing behind one of those replica ship wheels that serve as great moneymakers for cruise photographers. It read “Majesty of the Open Seas.”
“Definitely not Tracy,” Kate said, putting aside the picture. She then picked up a black lace 4x6 photo album with red trim. “Look, it matches the nightie.” She looked up at Vivian and Wendy with a mischievous smile. “Do we dare look inside?”
“You look,” Wendy said. “If it’s what I think it is, I don’t want to see it.”
Kate laughed and opened the album. It was Brandon and the woman standing on a white sand beach, turquoise water behind them. He wore a Hawaiian shirt, tan shorts and flip-flops, and she wore a strapless, peach dress and held a small bouquet of tropical flowers.
“This must be wife number two,” Vivian said, staring at the woman’s mouth, especially her lower jaw. Vivian felt the need to wash her hands again, but fought the urge. “She was pretty. Why would someone want to hurt her?”
“Maybe she turned out to be psycho, or was worth more dead than alive,” Wendy offered.
The rest of the album was more of the wedding, Brandon and Rebecca feeding each other cake, clinking champagne glasses. One picture was of their hands, bouquet in the background.
“That diamond is huge,” Vivian said, thinking back to the simple gold band from when she and Rick were married.
“This album didn’t turn out the way I thought it would,” Wendy said, “and I’m glad.”
Kate flipped to the last page. “Hold your horses there.” She showed them what she’d found. Rebecca was posing seductively in a black lace negligee. A white envelope lay opposite the last page so Kate opened it and pulled out more pictures. “Whoa! Naughty naughty!”
Vivian laughed. “I can see why he’s hiding these pictures from Tracy!”
Rebecca’s negligee had been tossed aside and Brandon had gotten full-body close-ups. Kate quickly shuffled through the rest, which became more and more intimate. Vivian wondered how they were able to get a picture of some of their more intricate poses.
Kate stuffed the pictures back into the envelope. “He’s not a bad looking guy, but I’ve seen enough.”
“More than enough,” Wendy said and rubbed her eyes.
“I thought you weren’t going to look,” Kate said.
“I had to look after you were so excited about what you’d found. Then it was like a train wreck, and I couldn’t look away. I’m going to have a difficult time looking at Brandon without thinking about, you know, it.”
Vivian dug in the box and pulled out a folder that said “Northwestern Mutual” on it. She opened it and scanned the first page. “What do we have here?”
Kate looked over her shoulder. “Looks like $500,000 in a life insurance policy on Rebecca Holt.”
“Who’s the beneficiary?” Wendy asked.
“Who do you think? Brandon.” Vivian flipped through more of the pages.
Kate tapped her finger to her lips. “Hmm, that’s a decent amount of money, but it’s not like Brandon could live forever off of that.”
Vivian pulled out the next document and scanned it before handing it to Wendy. “You’re the mortgage person, don’t you look at this kind of stuff all the time on your clients’ files? Am I reading this correctly with a balance of $2.9 million?”
Wendy took the investment statement from Vivian and looked it over. “Now this is something. Rebecca’s full balance was $2,974,329.07. Getting close to an even three. A little more interest and she’d have been there.”
Kate gave a low whistle. “Looks like Christine from the shop was right about her being rich. But where did she get that money?”
Wendy took the folder from Vivian and looked through more of the papers. She handed one to Vivian. “Read this. It looks like a will for a Roger White. I just ran across his death certificate, and it listed his spouse as Rebecca White.”
“What did he die from?” Kate asked.
“Myocardial infarction.”
“Heart attack,” Vivian said. She’d had a will done after her divorce from Rick, but this was much more complex. She might not have a law degree, but she could figure it out. “Rebecca stood to inherit 100 percent of his estate, money, house, investments, but only if they didn’t have any children. Do we know if they had any kids?”
“We didn’t see any children in any of the pictures in her box,” Kate said. “Did you find a will for her?”
“Ah,” Wendy said and pulled another document from the folder. She sat on the bed while she flipped through it. “Doesn’t look like she had any kids, and you know who her sole beneficiary was?”
“Lemme guess,” Vivian said, but before she could answer…
Knock, knock, knock.
29
The girls were frozen for a second before Vivian snapped to and whispered, “Quick, let’s get all of this back in the closet. Kate, look like you’re resting.”
“Just a minute,” Kate called toward the door. “Who is it?”
“Me again,” Brandon said.
Wendy and Vivian scrambled to get the papers into the box, and the box into in the closet. Vivian smoothed her shirt and fluffed her hair before opening the door. “Hi.”
Brandon walked in. “I just came to get the towels. What happened to your walk?”
Vivian’s phone rang, and she was glad for the distraction. She grabbed it off the nightstand and checked the display. Nicole.
Kate was lying down. She put her hands behind her head. “I just wasn’t feeling up to it. The girls were nice enough to hang with me while I rested. I’m fine, nothing a little more bacon can’t fix.”
Brandon smiled and slowly looked around the room. He smelled of smoke. “Okay, glad all is well.” He disappeared into the bathroom and soon emerged with the dirty towels.
“All is well, we’re just chilling.” Vivian sat on the bed next to Kate.
Brandon walked toward the door, then turned around. “There are makings for BLTs in the kitchen. Let me know if you’d like one.”
“Thanks
,” the girls called as he slowly closed the door.
“Oh my god,” Vivian whispered, hopping up and locking the door. “That was too close. Is he really working or just being nosy?”
“Nosy,” Wendy whispered back and opened the closet door. “We need to put this stuff up exactly as it was and go downstairs. I think we found some good info, though.”
“I really could use some bacon now that I think about it,” Kate said, but then she closed her eyes. “Mini-nap first.”
Vivian grabbed her phone. “That was Nicole who called. Let me call her back before we go down.”
Nicole picked up on the second ring. “What are you doing today? I’ve found some good info. Do you have time to visit?”
Vivian looked at the clock. “Larson should be here in two hours to take us out on the boat. Can you come here?”
“See you in 20.” Click.
They let Kate nap for 15 minutes, then the three headed downstairs. Kate helped herself to a BLT and offered to make one for the other girls but they declined. Vivian and Wendy sat out on the front porch while Kate made her sandwich and they waited for Nicole. They rocked and watched smoke billow from the piles of burning leaves around the property.
“Brandon’s really got those going good,” Wendy commented as he threw more leaves onto one of the stacks.
“It doesn’t take a pyromaniac to burn leaves,” Vivian said. “We used to burn trash at my grandmother’s farm in Alabama. A little lighter fluid and a few matches, and you’re playing with fire.”
They rocked for a few more minutes before a car pulled into the drive and Nicole got out carrying a big chrome briefcase.
“Hey!” Vivian said.
“Hi. Are Brandon and Tracy here?”
“Tracy’s not. Brandon’s over there.” Vivian nodded toward him.
Kate arrived at the screen door munching on her sandwich.
“I’ve been through my grandpa’s files and have found some interesting stuff. I wanted to tell you about it, but in private.”
Vivian opened the screen door. “Let’s go in. I gotta see what you’ve got inside that ginormous chrome case.”
They sat around the dining room table and Nicole pulled out several files. “My grandpa had notes on just about everyone in town. It took me awhile to sort through them and pick out some that are worth a closer look.”
Wendy spread out the folders and read the labels. “Everyone in town? Are there a lot of creepy people around here or something?”
Nicole laughed. “No, he just liked to keep tabs on everyone’s business. His theory was that everyone had a story and you never knew when it would become newsworthy.”
“Good thinking,” Vivian said and picked up a file. It read Jeremy Donaldson. She opened it and looked at several pages of handwritten notes in a bad scroll. She looked at Nicole. “I assume you can decipher this?”
“Grandpa wasn’t known for his penmanship, but this file is on a student of Mary Beth’s. She tutored him here at the house, and it was rumored they spent a lot of time together, like she took a special interest in him.”
“Was something inappropriate going on?” Kate asked.
“From what I gathered, I think he had a crush on her, but she was just trying to help him. I talked to him this morning, stopped by his house since he keeps his shop there. He said they would stay after school and she would tutor him. Then Mary Beth drowned and he not only quit school but went off the deep end. He couldn’t handle her death, and he left town as soon as he could. He worked on cruise ships, mainly in Alaska, and did that until his parents died in an accident a couple of years ago, when he came home.”
Vivian had been flipping through the pages in the file while Nicole talked. She turned over the last page and caught her breath. “I’ve seen this guy. Why do I know him?”
Wendy leaned over and looked at the picture. “It’s the locksmith who helped us at the trailhead the other day.”
“That’s him,” Nicole said. “Jeremy inherited his parents’ estate, but he still needed a job so he learned how to be a locksmith. He also wrote a couple of screenplays while he worked on the cruise ships, and he sold one of them, though I don’t think it was for a lot. I asked him today if he was working on anything new, and he said he was almost done with a movie script.”
“Interesting,” Vivian said. “I’ve always wanted to write a screenplay. What’s his about?”
“A student who falls in love with a teacher and they have an affair, but then she’s murdered.”
Vivian stared at his picture. “Wow. I’ve heard people write what they know. Maybe there was more to his affection for Mary Beth?”
Nicole shrugged. “I think so, and Grandpa didn’t think the love was reciprocated. His notes are hard to read, but he clearly says Mary Beth seemed to be in love with Brandon.”
“Scorned and rejected,” Wendy said. “Not a good combo.”
“What else did you find?” Kate asked. She picked up the thickest of the files, and the name read Mike Grimm. She set it upside down so she could easily flip to the back. She looked at the picture, then showed Vivian and Wendy. “We met him yesterday at the festival, right?”
“Sure did,” Vivian said. “I liked his dragon paintings.”
“He invited us to his studio,” Wendy said. “Maybe we should go?”
“Do what you want, but you probably shouldn’t mention Brandon,” Nicole said. “Mike, Mary Beth and he have history all the way through school. Mike went to college at the University of Oregon where he evidently started drinking way too much and got into drugs. He dropped out and went to Portland, joined a grunge band, moved from couch to couch. He’s been in and out of rehab several times. I know him to say hello, but not much else. I’ve heard he finally conquered his addiction and is clean.”
Kate had turned over the last page in the file and started working her way backward through it. “That’s great, but if they were friends, why shouldn’t we mention Brandon?”
“Wait for it,” Vivian said. “I can tell there’s more to this story.” Nicole was on the edge of her seat, drumming her fingers on the table.
“Mike moved home about a year before Mary Beth’s death. One of the files Grandpa had is on a friend of Mary Beth’s, a Suzy Fairlie, who says Mike spent a lot of time with Mary Beth once he was home. Brandon didn’t like it, thought Mike wanted more than friendship, even though Suzy doesn’t think Mike ever did anything of the sort to Mary Beth. Suzy says Mary Beth and Brandon had a big argument about it and Brandon forbid her to see Mike anymore. Things were strained between them for a few days, and then Mary Beth drowned shortly thereafter.”
Wendy sighed. “What a sad story.”
“It doesn’t end there. One of the documents in the file is a police report and arrest record from when Mike came out here and attacked Brandon. He apparently inflicted some major damage. Mike told the police he was trying to beat a confession out of him, but Brandon said Mike was crazy and couldn’t be reasoned with, like he was on drugs.”
“Did Mike and Mary Beth ever date?” Kate asked.
“Not that I can find, but their families hung out together. I guess their moms were good friends, so they’d go snow skiing, boating, hiking, take trips, you name it. His affection was more brotherly when they were younger, but Grandpa thinks that changed about the time Mike came back. And Grandpa’s notes say Mike never liked Brandon, thought Mary Beth could and should do better.”
“Is that all on Mike?” Wendy asked.
“Grandpa just didn’t like him much, thought there was something weird about him and that there was more to the story between him and Brandon. Mike always wears black, even turtlenecks and long pants in the summer. A lot of these notes are from Grandpa following Mike around town, just to see what he was up to. Grandpa didn’t think Mary Beth’s death was an accident; something wasn’t picked up on the autopsy. He doesn’t come right out and say it, but I think he was highly suspicious of Mike and that beating Brandon up for a confe
ssion was a cover-up attempt.”
Vivian glanced out the back window to make sure Brandon was still outside. He was tossing a tree branch on the leaf pile. “But if he had feelings for her, why would he murder her?”
Nicole shrugged again. “Drugs and alcohol can do crazy things to people’s brains, even after they’re sober. Or maybe Mary Beth wasn’t the intended victim.”
“Is Suzy still around?” Kate asked. “I’d like to talk to her.”
“Yes, she owns Tropical Fish, a fish store on the outer edge of town.”
“We’ll go talk to her,” Vivian said to the girls, then picked up the next file on the pile, April Robinson. “Who’s this?”
Nicole glanced at the file. “A fellow teacher, though they weren’t friends for long. Or co-workers. Mary Beth caught April changing answers on the state equivalency test and reported her. April was fired and her teacher’s license was revoked so she can never teach in the state of New York again.”
“That sounds like motive for murder,” Vivian said, knowing that test scores mattered in terms of school rankings and therefore funding, but cheating wasn’t the way to go.
“Yep,” Nicole said. “All the kids in her class had to retake the test.”
“My mom is a teacher, and she would not tolerate another teacher who did that,” Wendy said. “Mary Beth did the right thing, but it sucks that the kids had to suffer through the tests again.”
Nicole flipped through the file. “Mary Beth certainly did the right thing in turning her in, but April was none too happy about getting banned from teaching. April went off on Mary Beth the day she got fired and made a lot of threats. Was it heat of the moment, or more than that since Mary Beth had ruined April’s life?”
“No, actually, April ruined April’s life by cheating,” Vivian said. “Cheaters always lose in the end.” Like fuckin’ Rick!
Nicole tapped her fingers on the table again. “She really stands out to me as a suspect. The police haven’t looked into her as far as I can tell. She made those threats, had her life in shambles, and Mary Beth dies shortly thereafter? Coincidental?”