Suspicions with Murder (A Rilynne Evans Mystery, Book Four)

by Vakey, Jenn

  Cyndi didn’t seem to know what she was talking about at first, but recognition quickly settled over her face. She appeared to have given up on wondering how Rilynne knew exactly what to ask, because she didn’t hesitate before answering.

  “Rick pulled something in his back when he was carrying the girl into the lake,” she explained. “It would have raised suspicions if he went to the doctor, so I gave him some muscle relaxers I had leftover from a ski accident I had last year.”

  Rilynne thought over everything again to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything. After a few moments she was satisfied all questions had been answered. “In addition to the written statement for the death of Brittney Price, you’ll also need to give Detectives Steele and Tylers the location of the property you stole.”

  Cyndi just nodded as Rilynne rose from her seat and walked quietly toward the door. She was just about to reach for the doorknob when she stopped.

  “One last thing, Mrs. Lewis,” Rilynne said as she turned back toward her. “How long have you been having an affair with Rick Olsen?”

  Tears now flowed freely down Cyndi Lewis’ cheeks. She appeared to have completely broken as she whispered, “Three years.”

  A wave of emotions spread over her as she closed the interrogation room behind her. With everything answered, the case could finally be closed and she would be able to get back to her real life. Though she had been undercover for only a week, it somehow felt like a lifetime.

  “How?” Matthews asked simply when she walked back into the observation room. The men were all staring at her in complete disbelief.

  “Her behavior wasn’t consistent with a murderer,” she replied as she sat on the corner of the table. “And the staff made a good point. If Cyndi Lewis wanted to get rid of her, she would have just fired her. Her refusal to cooperate with the police topped it off. If she had been guilty, she would have tried to shift the investigation away from her. Instead, she refused to let anyone close to her at all. The only reason she would be so worried about letting someone in the manor, is if she was more concerned with protecting someone else. Especially someone who couldn’t protect themselves, like a child.”

  They all seemed satisfied with the response she gave, because they didn’t push further.

  “As for the valuables,” she continued, “the staff was having a conversation about it the other night. It turns out that when Mrs. Lewis took her jewelry in to be cleaned, the cleaners discovered that all of the stones were fake. They of course would have informed Mrs. Lewis when she went back to pick them up. If Jared Lewis had been buying her fake jewelry, there would have been an explosive scene when she arrived back to the manor. The fact that there wasn’t meant that she already knew the stones weren’t real. That could have only happened if she’d replaced them herself.”

  “How on earth did you know she was having an affair with the security guard?” Steele asked.

  Rilynne shrugged. “She called him Rick. She doesn’t call anyone by their first name. Not to mention, if someone’s willing to help you hide a body, you generally have a relationship more than just that of an employee and employer. If I had to guess, I’d say he was also assisting her in hording the valuables from the manor.”

  “How’d you find the bat?” Steele asked.

  “When I realized Mrs. Lewis was covering for one of her children, I knew it would have likely been a toy that was used to strike her,” she stated. “A baseball bat best fit the parameters. I figured they would have tossed it on the way to dispose of the body. A dumpster would be the best place to put it where there would be almost no chance of it being discovered, so I looked at the restaurants along the way. They’re usually the fullest, and have a lesser chance that someone’s going to go snooping around in them unless they’re looking for something to eat. Addison Valley doesn’t really have a high homeless population. Market Café was the only one they would have passed. Instead of being buried like they hoped, it appears that someone at the café pulled it out, more than likely to used it to push down the bags and make more room. Ben found it leaning against the wall next to the dumpster,” she explained. She impressed herself at just how quickly she had pulled a reasonable story together. Usually she would prepare something in advance, but she had been so concerned with getting to the station that she forgot.

  No one seemed to know what to say, so she continued.

  “Well, I’m going to head back to the manor before dinner. I’ll maintain my cover until you have Rick Olsen in custody, and are sure no one else is involved. Let me know as soon as everything is closed.” She walked toward the door, leaving them staring wide-eyed at her in disbelief.

  After dropping her car back off, Rilynne jogged the rest of the way back to the manor, sneaking back through the hole in the wall so no one would realize she had left.

  She stepped into the kitchen just as Lisa placed a large meatloaf in the middle of the table.

  “Hey Naomi,” Casey said. “So what did you think about that scene earlier. Can you believe Mrs. Lewis was the killer?”

  “No,” she replied honestly, trying not to let her face give away the fact that she knew more. “Do you really think she could have pulled it off by herself?”

  “She must have,” Lisa said. “No one here would have helped her. It doesn’t matter what she said or what threats she made, no one would have gotten involved in such a hideous act. I wonder why she did it.”

  “Maybe Brittney really was having an affair with Mr. Lewis,” Cole offered. “Though I honestly don’t think she would have cared. Maybe she just had enough and snapped. We’ve all seen her come close to losing it before.”

  Rilynne finished her meal in silence, entertained by the speculations being thrown back and forth amongst the staff. She was also amused by the fact that Nancy sat at the end of the table in silence, not saying a single word to anyone at the table. When everyone was done, Rilynne retreated to her room. Though there was still the entire days worth of chores she was supposed to complete, she decided just to climb into bed early.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Why hello, Detective Evans.”

  She stopped in her tracks, surprised not only by the sound of her own name, but the confident voice speaking it. When she turned around, she found Jared Lewis leaning against the doorway, an air of sophistication surrounding him she hadn’t seen before. “I wasn’t entirely surprised you didn’t leave with the officers yesterday after my wife was arrested, but I thought for sure you’d be gone by today. Don’t tell me your stint as a maid was so pleasurable that you decided to stay in my employ.”

  She didn’t know how to respond other than to stare at him curiously. The man standing before her wasn’t the same man she had been conversing with the past week. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought him an entirely different person all together.

  He seemed to take pleasure in the confused look sitting on her face. “That right there,” he said, though the statement didn’t provide any clarification. When her bemusement only intensified, he continued. “The look on your face is the answer to the question you’re asking yourself. Well, one of answers,” he stated with an amused grin. He glanced up and down the hall before walking in the room and shutting the door.

  “You’re not crazy,” Rilynne stated bluntly. As she did, she felt her cheek growing warmer. She opened her mouth to apologize, but he held his hand up to stop her.

  “No,” he laughed loudly. “Not strictly speaking, at least.”

  “Then why do you pretend to be?” she asked, still not entirely sure about what was happening. “You not only have your family and staff fooled, the entire city thinks of you as… eccentric.”

  He smiled as he sat down on the chair in the corner. “I never actually wanted this life,” he told her. “Don’t get me wrong, having money is great, but it’s also incredibly stressful. You never know if people actually like you as a person, or just like what you’re able to offer them. Take my wife.”

  “S
he doesn’t know?” Rilynne asked, though she already knew the answer. She sat down on the edge of the bed as the information started to soak in.

  “Of course not!” he exclaimed. “She’s another reason, actually. See, I realized not too long after we married that my money was the only thing important to her. With the ridiculous pre-nup we signed, I’d have to leave her nearly half of everything if I left. Now, if she were to leave me, she would receive much less.”

  “So you’ve convinced her that you’re crazy?” she asked as a smile stretched across her face.

  He shrugged. “It would have worked,” he said confidently. “Although that isn’t an issue anymore, because there are also stipulations in there about the commission of a felony and having an affair. Both of which would result in her being awarded nothing. While there’s always the possibility of her being able to talk her way out of serving any time, she won’t be so lucky when it comes to the divorce proceedings.”

  “I don’t know if that’s clever or genuinely crazy,” Rilynne said as she thought over it.

  “I’m going to go with clever,” he stated. “It also keeps things interesting, and I love to watch people’s reactions when they see something I’ve done. You should have seen Cyndi’s face when she walked into the study last week. I nearly died!”

  “I’ve actually been wondering about that,” she said. “How is it that you managed to cover the walls and ceiling in paint, but everything else was left clean? There wasn’t even a drop on anything else in that room.”

  “That one I had to time very carefully. I knew that Cyndi would be busy with the party arrangements all morning, so I went down in the middle of the night and moved all of the furniture to the middle of the room. Then I laid tarps out on the floor and over the furniture,” he explained. “I actually painted the entire room before anyone woke up, and was left with plenty of time to move everything back into place. After breakfast, I put the paint-covered clothes back on, splashed some in my hair, and started walking around the house. I knew as soon as she saw me, she would go looking for the scene. She just didn’t know I’d done it hours before.”

  Rilynne didn’t know whether to be amused or annoyed. “Then I was left with a mess that took hours to clean up,” she said.

  He shrugged again. “It prevented you from spending half of the day scrubbing oil stains off of the driveway,” he stated.

  “That’s right,” she thought back. “I was supposed to start on those shortly after your wife pulled me out of the library. You planned that?”

  “Of course,” he said with an impish grin. “Everything I do has a good reason behind it.”

  “I take it you planned your events around Brittney’s cleaning schedule?” she asked. “Nancy was complaining about having to always do her work whenever you made one of your messes. You were getting her out of the hard jobs, I’m guessing.” The grin on his face told her she was right. “And that explains why they were so unusually easy to clean up. That doesn’t explain the peanut buttered statues, though.”

  “Now that one was actually quite improvised,” he said leaning forward. The look on his face reminded him of an old man with an exciting story to tell his grandchildren. “I was just leaving the kitchen with a snack when I heard Nancy and Miss Finley walk in. They were speaking very angrily about Brittney, as well as you. I knew it was something you should be hearing, so I was forced to sacrifice my snack. It was actually lucky that Cyndi walked by when she did, so I didn’t have to waste time looking for her.”

  “And the car?” she asked curiously.

  He leaned back in his chair and pulled his hands up behind his head. “I’m sure if you think hard enough, you won’t have any trouble figuring out that one all on your own.”

  She thought back to the events surrounding the incident when a spark of recognition hit. “You wanted me to see the blood stain in the trunk, so you sabotaged the car the cook was supposed to take,” she stated confidently. “It’s one of the maid’s jobs to help bring in groceries, so you knew that I would see it.”

  “Bingo,” he replied.

  She thought over everything before she asked, “How long did you know?”

  “Even before you arrived,” he stated. “The department did a great job setting up your identification, surprisingly so. If I hadn’t made it my business to research the members of the department after Brittney was killed, even I wouldn’t have known it was a farce. For fun, I even tried to find fault in it, but I couldn’t. Give my compliments to whoever set it up.”

  “I will,” she stated. “But if you knew who I was, why didn’t you just come to me with the information you had instead of playing games? Wouldn’t it have been much easier that way?”

  “Even I didn’t know who was involved with Brittney’s death. If I’d come to you with my information and let on that I had been putting on a show all these years, it would have just given you more reason to spend time looking at me,” he explained. “Now, I knew that I had nothing to do with it, so I decided it would just be easier to let you do what you needed to do, while putting you in the right place from time to time.”

  Rilynne didn’t know what to make of him at all. While she understood some of the reasoning behind his behavior, it was still incredibly hard to believe that he had successfully pulled it off for so long. “Brittney knew,” she stated abruptly.

  “See, I knew you were a clever one. She was my one confidant in the house,” he explained. “I would have surely gone completely crazy if I hadn’t had someone to talk to and she was a good listener. I’ll forever regret the last time we spoke, though. She wanted me to tell my wife it had all been a facade, and I snapped at her. I’ll never forgive myself for that.”

  “One thing I’ve learned over the years is the last conversation you have with someone doesn’t define the relationship,” she said soothingly. “You were her friend, and she knew that. Having a disagreement doesn’t take all of that away.”

  He smiled at her warmly as he stood up. “Thank you for finding out what happened to her,” he said as he extended his hand. “I’m in your debt.”

  “I’ll have to remember that,” she said before he turned and walked toward the door.

  “I did want to give you my assurances, though, that I didn’t know who was responsible for her death,” he stated again before he pulled the door open. “If I had, I wouldn’t have continued this façade. Even if it had meant putting an end to the plan I’d been working on. I truly loved Brittney. She was the best friend I’ve ever had.” He hesitated for a moment before continuing. “Can you just tell me one more thing?”

  Rilynne nodded. “I can try.”

  He took a deep breath and sat down on the edge of the bed beside her. She could see the pause on his face, and she knew exactly what was going through his mind. He was considering asking a question that he wasn’t sure he wanted an answer to. “Did her choice to allow Brittney to succumb to her injuries have anything to do with the relationship we had?”

  Rilynne reached out and gently placed her hand on his forearm. “This in no way was your fault,” she said firmly. “It’s our belief that Cyndi truly believed the fall had killed Brittney. While her decision to hide her instead of calling for help was foolish, it does appear that she only did it out of fear for your daughter.”

  He seemed relieved by her statement, but the sadness didn’t leave his eyes. They sat in silence for several minutes before Jared stood and walked back toward the door. “I meant what I said,” he stated as he pulled it open. “If there’s ever anything I can do for you, don’t hesitate to ask.”

  Rilynne was left with a wide range of feelings as Jared disappeared down the hall. While she did find herself having a newfound admiration toward him, she still couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. She knew he would never forget that last conversation he had with Brittney.

  She had just finished putting the last of her stuff back in her suitcase when another voice came from the door. This one didn’t hold the same no
te of amusement.

  “Who are you?” she heard the cold voice ask. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before turning around.

  Danny stood much like Jared Lewis had-arms folded and leaning against the door-but his demeanor was very different.

  “You’re not really a maid,” he continued. His tone was hardened and the kindness on his face had disappeared. Instead, he just looked hurt. “Your arrival could have been coincidental, but not your departure. I’m guessing police.”

  “Detective,” she said softly.

  She sat back down on the bed, but he didn’t move from the doorway. “Is your name really Naomi?”

  She shook her head. “It’s Rilynne,” she responded. “Rilynne Evans. I’m a homicide detective. After Mrs. Lewis refused to cooperate, I was brought in to get information about Brittney’s death.”

  He nodded in acknowledgement, but his expression didn’t change. Rilynne tried to push the guilt coursing through her aside. She couldn’t think of anything to say, so just stared quietly at him.

  “You definitely are good at your job,” he said after several long minutes. The comment wasn’t what Rilynne had been expecting, and caught her off guard. When she didn’t respond, he continued. “I guarantee no one here knew that you were really an undercover cop, pressing us all for information.”

  “Mr. Lewis did,” she said, trying to steer the conversation away from where she knew it would eventually turn. “He knew from the beginning, though he didn’t tell anyone, including me.”

  He raised an eyebrow curiously. “How on earth did he know?”

  “Apparently he did research into the police department prior to my assignment, and recognized me,” she said. As she said it, she heard the sound of tires rolling across the driveway outside of her window. To her relief, when she peered out the window, she saw Matthews stepping out of his car. “Well, that’s my ride,” she said quickly as she reached for her bag. Before she could grab it, though, Danny had his hand around the handle.