“But what were you doing in my office, Nora?” Bertie asked, his whiny voice cutting through the misty night as a rumble of thunder rolled across the sky. He whimpered. “I gotta go, but tell me why you were in my office.”
“Never mind, Bertie. Just leave it alone.”
Sophie’s mind teemed with ideas, but one possibility suddenly struck her: Nora was in his office and Bertie wasn’t there at all? She could easily have stolen the key at that moment, gone up to get the teapot from Nana’s room and put the key back with no one being the wiser. Nora had ample reason to want Zunia dead. She would obviously not want word to get around about Zunia and Walter’s affair. Or would it matter to her? According to Nana, she was fine with her husband’s cheating as long as he was reasonably discreet, so she certainly wouldn’t kill to conceal it.
“Tell me. I want to know!”
“Look, Bertie, just go home and forget all about it. Just leave ITCS business to us, and everything will be all right.”
“No, Nora, I’m so afraid.” There was a weird emphasis in his nasal tone on the word “afraid.” “Someone killed Zunia, and if you all leave they’re going to pin it on me, I just know it!”
“Keep your head and let it go,” Nora warned again. “All I wanted in your office was to figure out if you had actually sent me that e-mail or not. I didn’t want to accuse you outright. But it doesn’t matter now, does it? Zunia was out of control. She was trying to force Walter into divorcing me. She actually said she’d expose their affair and send an e-mail to every member of the ITCS.”
“And you couldn’t allow that, could you?”
Sophie gasped as a new voice entered the conversation. She peeked out, and there was Pastor Frank Barlow, his hands bunched into fists. “Admit it, Nora. You did it. You killed my Zunia!”
“Are you out of your mind? Where did you get that idea?” Nora shrieked. “I don’t have to stand for this, Frank. Maybe I’m looking at the guilty party right this minute!”
But Frank Barlow was not Zunia’s killer, Sophie was sure of that. Neither was Nora. Her mind had been sorting through the threads, and there was only one logical solution. In a high school critical-thinking class she had been taught the principle that if you have competing theories, you should select the one that required the fewest suppositions. In this case of the murder of Zunia Pettigrew, the answer to many questions came down to one person.
Who had the simplest access to the housekeeping key?
Who had access to Bertie Handler’s e-mail account, and thus to send the e-mail telling Nora about Walter and Zunia’s affair?
Who could move about the inn with impunity and knew it better than anyone else?
Whose whereabouts for the pivotal time were questionable, and/or had no witness, now that it was clear he had lied?
Who had she eliminated based solely on his own behavior, which would have been an easy fake? The scene with Bertie and the blood aversion had been calculated to put an end to any supposition on her part.
Thunder rolled across the sky as a shot rang out, the sounds mingling and competing. Frank shrieked, in fear or pain, and Sophie darted from cover, anxious to prevent another murder. Without a second more to spare, Sophie tackled Bertie Handler, who now was pointing a handgun, taking aim to get another shot off at Frank. They tumbled to the ground together.
“Call nine-one-one,” Sophie screamed as she wrestled with the wiry innkeeper. She threw her cell phone to Frank Barlow, who appeared to be unscathed even as he shrieked and hopped from foot to foot in a frightened dance. A dog barked and thunder crashed, building in crescendo. Someone in the distance shouted.
Sophie had all she could handle, grabbing fistfuls of the inn owner’s short-sleeved shirt, the fabric ripping and sliding from her grasp. “Call nine-one-one now! What are you waiting for?” she yelled. “I don’t know how long I can hold him.”
Bertie was writhing beneath her, cursing and threatening, his body odor intensifying into a sour stench. “Get off me, you stupid little witch!” he screamed. The gun went off again, thunder crashed and the rain began.
Sophie put her hands over her ears and screamed in terror, but she hadn’t been hit. Her ears rang, but whether it was the gun’s report or her own fear causing it, she didn’t know. Bertie heaved her to the side and she rolled in the wet grass, rain spattering into her eyes.
“Stop!” Nora screeched as the pastor wailed and began to babble into Sophie’s cell phone. “Why, Bertie? Why’d you do it?”
“Why do you think? Zunia Pettigrew was out to ruin me!” Bertie skidded as he tried to stand.
Sophie rolled onto her back and managed to kick at his wrist, connecting. He yelped in pain or surprise as the gun flew out of his hand and away. He didn’t stop to retrieve it and ran, staggering and wailing, into the bushes as sirens filled the air and police descended on them. There was no way Sophie was going to follow him. It was one thing to tackle him when someone’s life was at stake, but another to be stupid and imagine she was Kinsey Millhone.
As Sophie babbled her story to a uniformed officer, more police arrived and, with guns drawn, they searched the bushes. An officer escorted Sophie, Nora and Frank to separate cruisers, but Sophie was close enough to the edge of the park that she could still see the flashlights as they scanned the groves of shrubs. In five minutes they had located Bertie, squatting in the bushes judging by how filthy and wet he was, with leaves sticking out of his soaking wet hair. Two Butterhill officers led him away in handcuffs to another police car. He shot a malevolent look at her as thunder rolled overhead.
Once he was secured in the cruiser Sophie ducked out and retrieved her cell phone from the wet grass, where Frank had dropped it as the police arrived. She hopped back in the backseat of the car and wiped it off, then thumbed the button along the side; it glowed, and as she swiped the screen, a string of text messages came in just then.
One was from Dana. “Bertie NOT afraid of blood, Melissa/housekeeper says,” it read.
If only she’d known that a half hour before.
The next was from Jason: “Where are you??????”
“Meet me at the Butterhill police station,” she texted back to Jason.
Then to Dana, she wrote a short “Case solved: Bertie guilty. Tell you all soon.”
Three hours later she emerged from the Butterhill police station with Eli, who wanted to make sure she got back to the inn all right. But Jason was there waiting. She introduced the two men, who shook hands.
Eli regarded them both in the yellowish light of the police department parking lot, the wet pavement gleaming, the air scrubbed clean of the muggy heat by the vigorous thunderstorm that had roared for an hour or more. Detective Hodge turned to Sophie and said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d tell my aunt and granddad that I will see them in the morning, after which I hope they will head back to Gracious Grove.”
“Sure will. Anything else?” She watched him, her head tilted to one side.
He smiled. “And tell Dana I’ll give her a call. I’ll be coming to GiGi next weekend, work permitting. Maybe I can see her then.”
Sophie nodded and let Jason take her in his arms. A close hug felt so good, even though she was still damp and muddy from her experience. “I think she’d like that,” Sophie murmured. “Maybe we can all get together.” A triple date: Wally and Cissy, Dana and Eli, and her and Jason—it sounded wonderful, but just then she wanted home and quiet and sleep in the worst way. However, she had to go back to the inn.
Jason drove her there, but though she could feel his desire to ask questions, as he glanced over at her again and again, she didn’t want to talk about it until they saw everyone. The place was a bustle of police who were tearing apart Bertie Handler’s office as well as his private quarters, looking for evidence. Melissa, the housekeeper, sat on a stool behind the check-in desk, her expression glum, shoulders slumped.
; “What are you doing here?” Sophie asked, heading to the counter and leaning on it. Jason followed and put his arm around her.
She shrugged. “Dom called me to check in after he was done this evening. I wanted to go over things with him, just to make sure he had gotten to everything on the list. When he told me about the blood and Bertie’s claim that he was blood phobic, I didn’t know what to think. I came over to talk to him, but he was already gone. That’s when I saw Dana and the others in the coffee shop and asked what was going on.”
“How do you happen to know he’s not afraid of blood?”
“Sophie, Bertie was an EMT before his aunt left him the inn,” she said. “He wasn’t very good at it; in fact he had lost his job because of something that happened, some negligence on his part, and a guy died in his ambulance. I know there was some lawsuit, and a judgment against him. He’s got to keep paying it, so if he lost the inn, he’d be bankrupt. But anyway, the upshot is, he could never have been afraid of blood, not on that job, not for seven years. I couldn’t think why he was pretending otherwise.”
“I don’t suppose anyone but you would have known that,” Sophie said. She’d had some time to think about things while waiting to be interviewed, and she knew how Bertie had timed it so that she’d be the one to find him with the bloody gash, crying and wailing about his fear of blood, too. She had been downstairs, and he must have known that; he had security cameras trained on the kitchen, after all. When she headed toward the stairs he must have been right there, ready to gash himself. Why? The only reason she could think of was that her questions and intent to get to the bottom of things must have unnerved him.
“So let me get this straight, the innkeeper was setting it up to look like he couldn’t be guilty of bashing the woman over the head because he couldn’t stand the sight of blood,” Jason said.
Sophie nodded. “He couldn’t leave well enough alone. It was the one thing over the line among all the tricks he used to cast the blame on different folks. If I’d heard that—what you told the others, Melissa—I would have known immediately, but I was so sure for a while that it was Nora. She had been seen in Bertie’s office—she was apparently trying to figure out if Bertie really did write the e-mail to her—and I knew whomever was guilty had to have access to the key, so she made sense to me. Plus she had ample reason to hate Zunia. Of course, Bertie was the one person who always had access to the key.” She paused. “But what about the thunderstorm fear?”
“Oh, that’s real enough,” Melissa said.
“I suppose he really was hiding in his panic room while the thunderstorm raged, but he first let poor Pastor Frank out without letting him know it was he who unlocked the door.”
“Why would he do that?” Melissa asked.
Sophie shivered as the air-conditioning finally got to her wet skin and clothes. Jason hugged her close, using his body heat to warm her up.
“He wanted to cast doubt on Frank’s story,” Sophie said. “He could always tell the police that Frank must have had the master key and let himself out, if he decided to lay the blame on him. He made his decision to steal and use Nana’s teapot to point the blame at her as soon as he heard the story of Zunia and my grandmother’s argument, but he was hedging his bets. It was like he was using a scattershot to put the blame on lots of different people, figuring he’d muddy the waters, I suppose. It sure worked for a while. I was so confused I couldn’t figure out who was telling the truth and who was lying.”
“I just don’t know what to think,” Melissa said, tears in her eyes. “Bertie and I got along all right. I can’t believe he’s a killer! Why’d he do it?”
Sophie shook her head. “Fear. He was losing his grip on everything, including this inn, and coming unglued. Zunia was threatening to take the convention away, and he was scared it would be the nail in the inn’s coffin. With her gone he hoped everything would return to normal.” She had a feeling he followed Nora and Frank intending to kill one and frame the other.
Melissa, calmer, sniffled and said, “His aunt, the one who left him the inn, was a lovely person—my godmother, actually.” She grabbed a tissue and mopped her eyes, taking a deep trembling breath. “I guess I’ll take care of things here until the police tell me what to do. I feel like I owe it to her more than Bertie. She loved this old place.”
In a thoughtful mood, Sophie accompanied Jason upstairs and led him to her grandmother’s room. Nana, her lined face weary, jumped up as quickly as any octogenarian could when Sophie entered the room to a chorus of her friend’s voices, chattering and asking if she was okay, and what had happened, and was she sure she was all right! Nana stiffly toddled across to Sophie and enveloped her in a hug, trembling. “Thank the good Lord! I was so worried when I heard what had happened. We stayed together; they all kept me from going crazy. How could you do something like that, heading out after folks when there was a murderer among the group? Young lady, I ought to tell your mother!”
“Nana, it’s okay,” Sophie said, hugging her hard. “I’m all right.”
After some chatter and crowding around, and satisfying them all that she really was okay, Sophie changed her clothes and washed up, then joined her friends and Nana. Sophie sat beside Jason cross-legged on a bed in Nana and Laverne’s room with a mug of tea. The room was crowded, but it was hours yet before the coffee shop would open, and everyone wanted to hear what had happened.
She told them all how she had been waiting for Jason, but when she saw Nora slinking out of the back door and staying in the shadows, she felt the need to follow. At that point she was still vacillating as to the identity of the killer. She had first settled on Nora, because Thelma had seen Nora coming out of Bertie’s office; it was a perfect opportunity to snag the key, she figured. But her alternate was Pastor Frank. His evasiveness over where he was that night, his uncertainty over who had let him out of the locked room, his weird obsession with Zunia: it had all contributed to her thinking that he must have done it.
“It was only at the last minute that I decided it just had to be Bertie. There were so many conflicting stories and lies told for a variety of reasons, I was confused . . . still am. So let’s figure this out,” Sophie said, taking in the room at large. “There were several people who could have done it. If I’d gotten the text about Bertie not being afraid of blood, I would have figured out he was the guilty one earlier. I mean, otherwise why the sham?”
“So many people were lying about so much,” Nana said.
“I know . . . so many lies, I had trouble keeping track of them all.” The e-mail outing Walter and Zunia’s affair that Bertie claimed he did not write, Orlando lying about being on the phone and claiming he knew all along about her affair and that it wasn’t serious, Bertie lying about having an affair with Nora, Emma refusing to explain where she was all night . . . so many lies, large and small. She glanced around at the gathering. Nana, Thelma and Laverne occupied straight-backed chairs by the little table. Jason sat on Sophie’s cot with her, his back against the wall, while Dana, Cissy and SuLinn—who had not gone home after all—sat on the two double beds. Sophie had been informed by Laverne that Josh was downstairs with the two elderly gentlemen, learning to cheat at gin rummy.
“So . . . what really happened? Are we clear yet?” Nana asked.
They went over the evening before the murder. “What gave us pause,” Laverne said, “was Frank Barlow coming to the Pettigrews’ door and confronting Orlando. Where was Zunia at that point?”
“I have to imagine she was in bed or getting ready for bed,” Sophie said. “She didn’t come to the door at all, right?”
“No,” Nana said. “And Walter was at his door, so he wasn’t with her. She must have been in their room, probably fed up with Frank and not willing to talk to him.”
“But when she was found dead she was still in the same clothes she had been in earlier,” Sophie said.
“True,” Nana said.
“She either never changed out of them, or put them back on before she went out.”
“I don’t think the police ever found her cell phone, but it’s probably safe to say she got a text or call saying Bertie wanted to come clean about the e-mail, so she went out to meet him.” Sophie explained to the others about the e-mail to Nora Sommer that Zunia believed Bertie had sent, the very e-mail that it seemed he really did send, hoping to get Zunia in trouble so deep she’d be thrown out as ITCS New York State chapter president, no doubt. How could he know that she’d pretty much call his bluff with a fake lawsuit? That was likely when the scheme to kill her had occurred to him.
Laverne said, “But her body wasn’t found until three thirty A.M. or so. Surely she would have been in her pj’s by then.”
“I wondered, what would I do if I was at an inn, already in bed or ready for bed, and got a text or e-mail asking to meet someone? I’d put the clothes back on that I’d worn that day. Orlando fell into a deep sleep—the scotch and allergy meds made sure of that—so he didn’t even know when she left the room.”
There was a tap at the door just then. Sophie bounced up and crossed the floor, flinging the door open.
Rhiannon Galway stood in the doorway, a smile on her face. “Can anyone join this party?”
“You’re welcome, of course,” Sophie said, and crossed back to the cot. She introduced Rhiannon to Jason and brought her up to speed.
Rhiannon took a deep breath, clasping her hands together in front of her. She glanced around at the gathering. “I can add to the conversation. First, you were wondering about Walter Sommer, right? Where he was when the murder happened?”
Sophie watched her. “Well, yeah, that’s one of the things we wondered about.”
“He was out looking for me,” she said, her pale cheeks pinkening.
Sophie felt bad for her, having to admit to that. “But you were with your . . . uh . . . friend.”
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