“If you didn’t know anything about the bank accounts, what can you testify about?” I asked, noticing that Richard was shaking his head. I’d broken the attorney’s first rule: Never ask a question you don’t know the answer to. Because Richard knew the answer.
“I can say that Cass and Dad fought the day before he drowned,” Braden answered. “I was there and I heard it. He told her never to come back to his house and never to speak to him again. And her mother agreed with him. She said she never wanted to see Cassidy as long as she lived. That pretty much devastated Cass. She’s so devoted to Adrian.”
I remembered suddenly that I wasn’t an attorney in a courtroom and could ask any question I wanted because the point was to get an answer, not to convince a jury. Richard, hand cradling his chin (I bet he wished he had a goatee to stroke), was still shaking his head, but I went on.
“What was the argument about?” I asked.
Erika, apparently miffed that no attention was coming her way, waited until her brother was sipping from his iced cappuccino and answered ahead of him. “Adrian had gone out with Cassidy that day, and Cassidy had driven her to her dead husband’s grave,” she said.
“People visit the graves of loved ones all the time,” I told her.
“Adrian didn’t want to go. She thought she and Cassidy were going to go shopping or something and then she got taken to this cheap cemetery in Neptune.” It seemed the social class of the cemetery was the especially appalling part to Erika. “She didn’t want to get out of the car to visit the headstone, you know, but Cassidy shamed her into it, and when they got back, Adrian wouldn’t even talk to Cassidy. So Dad threw her out of the house.”
That confused me. “I thought Cassidy had her own apartment.”
“She does.” Braden had recovered from his sip and made sure he was once again the working spokesman for the Johnson family. “It was more a symbolic thing, like Dad was telling her not to come visit.”
“How did Cassidy react?”
Richard turned away.
“She said she blamed Dad for everything. She said Dad was the one who had poisoned Adrian’s memory of Cassidy’s father. And she said she wished that Dad was the one who had died.” Braden seemed to get special satisfaction out of that last part.
“And this was the day before he was murdered?” I said.
Braden nodded. “Less than twenty-four hours, actually. This was about seven in the evening, and the police called Adrian about Dad’s murder the next afternoon.”
“So your father hadn’t left for the Cranbury Bog the night before.” I was just trying to get my bearings and regain some sense of the conversation.
“No, he and Hunter drove up there together the next morning,” Braden said.
“Hunter Evans, his business partner?” I thought that was the name Richard had told me, and floating next to me now, he acknowledged I had remembered it correctly.
Braden nodded. “They liked to take the occasional day or two and go away, remember why they’d started a firm to begin with. Hunter knew Dad at Princeton. They were friends before they went into business together. Going to Cranbury was just a way to refresh those batteries. Dad said neither one of them was allowed to mention anything about the business while they were there.”
“So where was Hunter Evans when your father drowned?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” Braden told me.
“Evans said he was in his room taking a nap,” Richard said. “The innkeeper, Robin Witherspoon, said that as far as she knew, that’s where he was; she had helped him with the key to his room just before it happened. Apparently she’d given him the wrong key when he checked in.”
“Who do you think killed Richard Harrison?” I asked the two spoiled brats in front of me.
Richard made a sound with his mouth that probably would have been like a balloon deflating if he’d had the use of air. “We’re not talking about me!” he insisted.
“We did agree, Alison,” Paul reminded me. Had I been able to then, I’d have reminded him that he agreed and I hadn’t even been consulted.
Luckily I didn’t have to respond to either of them. Braden did his best to look thoughtful, staring off in a direction just over my right shoulder, where he would have seen Paul if that were possible. After the appropriate pause, he refixed his gaze on me and said, “If I had to guess, I’d say Cass killed him too.”
“Yeah,” Erika said, nodding. “That’s what I was gonna say.” She seemed peeved her brother had gotten to it first, but he’d given her plenty of time to jump in, and she hadn’t done so. Opportunity missed is opportunity lost.
Richard was probably glad he didn’t have a physical body at that point because I think he would have had a major health event. On the other hand, he was already dead, so the victory was somewhat Pyrrhic. “That’s . . . that’s . . . that’s absurd!” he managed.
To be fair, I had to agree. “What possible reason would Cassidy have to murder her attorney?” I said. “It seemed like Richard was the only one who didn’t think she killed your father.”
“Cass never liked that guy,” Braden answered. “She said he looked at her funny, and she thought he just wanted her money.”
Richard vanished. Flat-out vanished. One second there and the next second gone. Paul looked stunned.
“He kept coming around to talk to her about the case,” Erika added. “I think it was creeping her out a little.”
“That’s enough to kill him?” I asked. It seemed like a pretty big stretch.
Braden shrugged. “She’d already done it once.”
I stood up and, against my every natural impulse, thanked Braden and Erika for their help with my case. Then I turned and headed toward my Volvo with Paul directly by my side, still shaking his head in wonder.
“What do we do now?” I said as I pulled out my phone to make it look like I was talking to a living person.
Paul pulled himself together. “About Richard? He’ll be back at the house before we get there, I’m sure, or he’ll be in your car when we get into it.”
“About the case. Figuring out who killed everybody and saving Cassidy from whoever ran her off the road last night.”
Paul’s face moved back into deep-thought mode, but he didn’t go so far as goatee stroking. “I think it’s important we talk to Hunter Evans and Robin Witherspoon about what happened the day at the Cranbury Bog,” he said. “That means—”
“I know what that means. You want me to drive to Cranbury and then up to Bergen County to talk to these people. And I’m saying no.”
Paul actually stopped in what would normally have been his tracks. “No?”
“That’s right. This is the twenty-first century, Paul. Nobody has to go anywhere to see anybody anymore.”
He was right. Richard was in the car when we got there.
Chapter 19
“I helped Mr. Evans with a problem he had with his room key.” Robin Witherspoon, who looked exactly like her name, was probably in her mid- to late sixties, had her mostly gray hair pulled back in a bun, and was, at least from the waist up, wearing a very modest and unassuming outfit.
We were sitting in my bedroom. That is, I was sitting on my bed in my bedroom. Maxie, who was apparently caught up on her TV dramas, and Paul, only a foot or two beneath the ceiling, were looking down at me. I had my own ancient laptop computer open on the bed and power cord securely in the wall outlet (this thing wouldn’t run more than three minutes without a direct connection) and was looking at Robin, who had agreed to a FaceTime conference when I’d called her.
Richard had not even asked about joining the group. He had not said a word the whole way back to the guesthouse and had sunk into the basement immediately upon returning. Paul said it was not unusual behavior for his brother when things had gone badly for him. But he added that Richard always rallied.
It was amazing he had even shown up in my house after he died. How much worse can things go for a guy?
“Had you notice
d you’d given him the wrong key when he checked in?” I asked Robin. That was the story Braden and Erika had told me.
“Oh, no,” Robin answered. “To this day I believe I gave him the key to his room properly. How he had the key to another room still baffles me.”
Paul lowered down a bit. “Interesting,” he said. “Ask her which room the wrong key was for. If it was Keith Johnson’s, that would be a clue I’d be amazed the police would ignore.”
I asked and Robin said Evans had shown her a key for a room on the other side of the house. Not the one for Keith’s room by a long shot. So the Cranbury police weren’t complete idiots, anyway.
Robin said she had a four-bedroom house in Cranbury (that looked gorgeous on their website, the address of which I will not give you here because I want you to come to my far grungier place) and after her husband, Roger, had passed away had decided it was too quiet. She’d turned the place into a bed-and-breakfast catering to particularly upscale patrons and had been operating it that way for more than seven years now.
“You said you were sure you’d given Mr. Evans the right key. So was there a key to that room missing?” That was not a Paul question. That was a question an innkeeper would think of. Maxie told me to ask it.
“As a matter of fact, there was,” Robin said. “My best guess now is that I accidentally handed Mr. Evans two keys and he dropped one somewhere along the way.”
“I’m an innkeeper, Robin,” I said. “You know perfectly well you didn’t hand Hunter Evans two keys.”
“I thought you were a detective,” Robin said.
“I also own a guesthouse in Harbor Haven,” I reminded her. I’d tried to establish this earlier, but Robin had been so excited about being called in the Keith Johnson investigation that I don’t think she’d been listening. “But the keys. You’d never have done that.”
“It’s true,” she admitted. “I don’t really think that’s what happened.”
“So what do you think happened?”
“Between us?” Robin seemed to think that anything she told me would not be repeated anywhere else. That was largely because she couldn’t see the two transparent people behind me and I had not mentioned any intention of going to the police or the prosecutor with any information she might give me. Oddly that hadn’t come up.
“Sure.” Whatever.
“I think Mr. Evans deliberately took the wrong key so he could come and ask me about it later,” Robin said. “I think I was his alibi. I think Mr. Evans killed Mr. Johnson.”
“There was no evidence of that,” Paul said.
Meanwhile, I had the living person who could see and hear me to deal with. “What makes you think that, Robin?” I asked. “And why didn’t you tell the police or the county investigators any of this?”
I could only see Robin from the shoulders up, so it surprised me when she stood up and seemed to look from side to side, making sure we were “alone.” She sat back down and looked into her web cam. “Well I couldn’t be sure, could I? And I didn’t want to get a regular guest like Mr. Evans in trouble if I wasn’t certain. But it was very shortly before Mr. Johnson’s daughter showed up that Mr. Evans came down to ask about his key, and that had been about an hour after he checked in. He said he’d been down in the garden relaxing, but his bags were already in his room when I opened his door. So he’d been able to get in earlier. He’d had a key then. I think he came and switched them when I was away from the front room.”
I keep my keys locked up in a hanging box on the wall in my kitchen, but I wasn’t about to question the inn-keeping practices of someone who was clearly attracting high-end guests when I was struggling to keep my magic show going. “You said Mr. Johnson’s daughter came to see him. You meant his stepdaughter, Cassidy Van Doren?” I figured that’s what she’d meant, but Paul was in my ear (almost literally) making me double-check.
“Oh, no, Alison. Cassidy came a little later. His daughter Erika was here first. But there wasn’t any ruckus when she was in there. It wasn’t until Cassidy showed up that she screamed and came out yelling for nine-one-one a couple of minutes later.”
Instinctively I looked at Paul, whose eyes were widening a bit. “Erika was there,” he said quietly. Richard said nothing, and I didn’t look toward him. I didn’t want Robin to understand I was with other people, even if they weren’t actually there. If you know what I mean.
“How long did Erika stay?” I asked.
“Oh, not long at all. Ten minutes, maybe. But if you want to know the truth, I think she was involved in what happened.” She didn’t wait for me to ask the obvious question. “I found a pair of jeans just outside Mr. Johnson’s room. Women’s jeans. And they were soaking wet.”
Aha.
“Whoa.” That was Maxie. I was too busy processing that information.
“You found wet jeans outside Keith Johnson’s room?” I know, I know. She’d just said that. So I went on. “How did Erika—or whoever—get out of the room with no pants on?”
“That’s why I think Mr. Evans was involved,” Robin said. Clearly she was an accomplished gossip and a snoop, like any good innkeeper. “The rooms were right next to each other. If Erika had gone out the glass doors in the back and left the jeans because she was afraid the police might search, she could have gone directly into Mr. Evans’s room and changed clothes. Besides, I heard voices coming from Mr. Evans’s room, and one of them was a woman.” Her voice became very confidential. “He did not bring his wife with him.”
“Did she give the jeans to the police?” Paul asked, and I passed the question along.
“I couldn’t be sure it was evidence,” Robin said coyly. “I can’t infringe on a guest’s privacy.” Really. She said that unironically. “I hadn’t actually seen Erika wearing them, after all.”
“Who else could they belong to?” I said.
“Not for me to say.” She wouldn’t want to be indiscreet.
#
“Funny how Erika never mentioned she was at her father’s hotel the day he died,” I said.
Paul was floating in a somewhat tilted position. When he is thinking especially heavily, he loses some interest in staying completely vertical and tends to list a bit. It doesn’t mean anything, but it sure does look strange. He rubbed his nose for a moment and said, “But she didn’t have any water on her when she came out. Certainly ten minutes is enough to drown a man, but she wasn’t wet. Maybe Robin . . .”
“Clearly Erika is lying,” Richard said. He of course was absolutely upright. You could have put a level to his back and had all the bubbles come up in the middle, if he was capable of being touched. “She must be the one who really killed Keith Johnson. The wet jeans really make the point.”
“We don’t have enough data to reach a conclu—” Paul began.
“Oh, Paul, really!” his brother shouted. “It’s as clear as the nose on Alison’s face.”
“Actually, Paul’s nose is clearer,” I pointed out. “So is yours. I can see right through it.”
Richard looked at me with some impatience. “I think you have plenty of data,” he went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “I think you’re trying to prolong this process because you enjoy it, and that’s making you turn your back to what is obvious. Cassidy Van Doren did not kill her stepfather.”
“That’s not the point,” Paul said. “Even if she didn’t, we don’t know for a fact who did, and that isn’t going to help Cassidy until Alison can bring some proof to the prosecutor.”
“I don’t think you’re grasping the situation clearly,” Richard told his brother. “You are doing your best to keep this case active. Why don’t you know who killed Keith Johnson yet?”
Paul looked positively wounded, and you don’t do that to a friend of mine. “Because you just dumped this case on us a few days ago and there are enough suspects to fill Madison Square Garden,” I told Richard. “Remember, you decided to come here specifically not because you missed your dead brother and wanted to see him but because you needed h
elp and trusted him with this investigation.”
“Now, Alison, that’s not fair,” Paul said. “Let’s try to refocus—”
“Don’t defend her, Paul.” Richard looked like he was about to knight somebody he didn’t care for much. “She made accusations that can’t be recanted.” He turned his body, what there was of it, toward me. “You think I’m being unfair to my brother? Where were you when I practically had to raise him myself?”
“In grammar school. But thanks for asking. Since you got here you’ve done nothing but order people around and tell Paul how he’s doing everything wrong. So let’s leave it at this, Richard: either solve this case on your own or shut up and let us do it.”
“Alison!” That was Paul.
I didn’t feel like I’d gone too far, but apparently everybody else did, because Paul looked aghast and Richard almost had color in his face, something I didn’t think was possible in a ghost. Richard looked down at me—he’d risen about two feet—and pointed his right index finger at me. “You are insolent and rude,” he hissed.
“Yeah, but I’m not wrong, am I? What have you done to help?”
Richard didn’t vanish. He pretty much exploded, out through my bedroom wall and into the street, or the air above the street. And his velocity was impressive. You could practically see the vapor trail.
I looked at Paul, whose face was showing something on the fringe of despair. “I thought he’d never leave,” I said. See, you try to lighten the mood with a little joke.
Paul’s mouth opened and closed three times. “You . . . you . . . you insulted Richard.”
“Paul, Richard came into this situation with a predetermined set of opinions, and he’s been holding you back. You haven’t really been able to investigate this case because Richard won’t hear anything except that Cassidy didn’t kill Keith Johnson. He needs to be removed from any work we’re doing.”
“So you deliberately encouraged him to leave like that?” At least Paul’s power of speech was coming back.
“It wasn’t my original plan, but things escalated. Paul, don’t worry about it. Richard will be back. Right now we need to focus on the case. What do we have?” There’s nothing Paul enjoys better than reciting the facts of an investigation.
The Hostess With the Ghostess Page 15