by Leslie Caine
The priest gave Steve and me a somewhat forced-looking smile. For all of the weddings at which he’d officiated, I doubted he’d had the police interrupt a rehearsal to interview a family member. “I’m sure the ceremony tomorrow will be every bit the blessed event that you’ve been anticipating.”
“Thank you, Father,” we replied in unison.
“I sure hope you’re right,” George said to the priest. “The circumstances have been anything but ‘blessed,’ for the past week and a half.”
Just then Michelle rounded the corner from the priest’s office. She had obviously been crying. When our gazes met, she made a slight motion with her head as if to say that she needed to speak to me. I squeezed Steve’s arm and excused myself to see if I could reassure Michelle—afraid that she was about to drop yet another bombshell and would ask me to cushion the upcoming blow for Steve. The way things were going, the officer might be calling for backup so that they could arrest the entire wedding party.
When I neared, Michelle turned and led us partway back to the office in an obvious attempt to give us a measure of privacy. “Is everything okay?” I asked. Obviously the answer was no, but my mind was in a whirl and that was the best I could do.
She shook her head. “The officer left a couple of minutes ago.” Michelle’s voice was shaky and emotional. She cleared her throat, as if to get better control. “I just needed a little…time to myself. And Mom’s still trying to calm Amelia down.” She searched my eyes and asked, “Do you know who the killer is?”
“I really don’t, Michelle. Do you?”
Her eyes welled with tears. “Erin, they’re blaming me. The police think I did it.”
“Why?” I asked.
“They know that Fitz and Drew both had big arguments with me. Mark said in his statement that he lost his temper because Fitz and Drew had flirted with me publically.”
I had witnessed for myself that Drew still had had a thing for Michelle; his feelings for her had led him to attempt to intervene, and cost him his life. It was possible that Fitz was into her, as well, although I’d gotten no indication of that from him. “Is that the truth? That he was angry with you out of jealousy?”
“Yes, but it wouldn’t have mattered. Mark has spent every day of our marriage angry with me over something or other. That’s just the way it is. He also said that I have been physically abusing him, which is a total lie.”
“Do you think Mark is the killer?” I asked.
She nodded, dabbing at her eyes. “I’m afraid that’s possible. I’m sunk either way. If the police decide I’m a killer, I go to jail. If Mark is found guilty, he goes to jail, and I’m left with two little kids and no means of financial support.”
“He belongs in jail, though. If he’s guilty. You have your family here. We’ll all help.”
Michelle sighed, as if unconvinced. “We could use your help with Amelia now. Before she loses it completely.” She grabbed my elbow and started ushering me down the hall. “I need you to reassure her that you’re going to give me a hand with the police. Then she’ll regain her control.”
“I’m of course going to be supportive, but…I don’t have any sway with the police.”
Michelle furrowed her brow. “Steve said you helped him when he was in trouble and the police thought he was guilty of killing his ex-girlfriend.”
“He probably overstated the importance of my role. A Crestview officer has become a close friend of mine. But I don’t know anyone in the Denver police force.”
Michelle glared at me. “Just…make up something reassuring to tell Amelia then. I can’t stand to see my sister in so much pain.” She swept open the door, we stepped inside, and she promptly shut the door behind us.
Amelia was rocking herself again. I got down on one knee in front of her, so that she couldn’t help but look at me. “Amelia?” I said, vowing not to lie to her unless I had no other choice.
She didn’t look at me. Her face had become so pale, I was afraid she was about to faint.
“I have a good friend on the Crestview police force. Her name is Officer Linda Delgardio, and I would trust her with my life.”
Amelia covered her eyes. “I’m going to let everybody down. Nobody understands. I was only trying to protect my sister.” She dropped her hands but was now veering backward and forward in her hardback chair as if she was moving to wild music that she alone could hear. “I killed Fitz and Drew. Because they were hurting Michelle. They were threatening to kill her if she didn’t do what they told her to. I saw a note that Fitz wrote to Michelle and Mom.”
“Oh, my God!” Michelle cried. She stepped between me and her sister and grabbed Amelia’s shoulders so firmly that she stopped Amelia’s motion at once. “What are you saying, Amelia?!”
“I’m so sorry,” Amelia whimpered. “I did it. I killed them.”
Chapter 31
“Stop it, Amelia!” Eleanor cried, all but shoving both me and Michelle aside as she knelt in front of Amelia’s chair and tried to gain eye contact.
Michelle turned away from her sister and faced me. “Erin. Don’t listen to her. She would never kill anyone.”
“I killed them both,” Amelia said, her voice so emotionless it was eerie. “I told Fitz at the party to leave my family alone, and he just laughed at me. So I put poison in his coffee. I saw Drew using drugs at Michelle’s house. I was babysitting Zoey. I gave him a second dose, because I wanted him to stay away from Michelle and Steve. Mark didn’t tell the police that I was there, because he didn’t want to get me in trouble. He covered up for me.”
“Don’t listen to her, Erin,” Eleanor said, also turning to face me as she rose. “Amelia’s lying to protect us.” Her expression was one of abject despair. She put her arms around Amelia. “You don’t have to do this, honey. You can’t. I won’t let you.”
“Us?” I repeated, feeling desperate. Steve’s entire family was crazy. How were we ever going to get past any of this?
Amelia started sobbing that she was sorry. Then she said, “I need to turn myself in to the police and confess.”
“Erin,” Eleanor said looking at me in despair. She was now seated on the floor in front of Amelia. “What do we do?”
“Get Amelia a lawyer right away, and listen to his or her advice.” I turned to Michelle. “She didn’t say any of this to the police officer, did she?”
Michelle started shaking her head and muttered, “No, thank God,” just as Amelia said, “I’ll tell the lawyer what I did.”
“No, Amelia,” Eleanor cried in a now-guttural tone, swaying as she got to her feet. “You’re innocent. Stop making false statements! Or else I’ll have to tell the police that I did it.”
“Mom! No!” Michelle cried. “This is crazy!”
“Amelia,” Eleanor replied, “I know you’re innocent, because I did it.”
“No, you didn’t. You were with Daddy.” Amelia stomped her foot. “You were at the funeral services for Fitz.”
“I wasn’t with your father the whole time.” She shifted her gaze to me. “I killed Drew because I believed he’d raped Amelia.”
I gaped at her. Could she be telling the truth?
“Mom! He never raped me, and you know he didn’t,” Amelia said. “You’re only saying that so you can make it sound like you had a legitimate motive for killing him!”
“I know that now. But I didn’t at the time. Amelia is innocent. So is Michelle. This was my doing. Mine alone.”
Not only was Amelia no longer rocking herself, but she was suddenly articulate and forthright. What was going on? Was she putting up a front? Was Eleanor? I felt sick to my stomach.
My thoughts raced. Eleanor absolutely had to be giving a false confession to try to spare her daughters. There was a fierceness in her gaze that unnerved me. How can I possibly stop this avalanche? Maybe, in her shoes, I would do precisely the same thing. “You can’t do this, Eleanor,” I protested, despite knowing I was wasting my breath. “Steve and your husband are just a short d
istance away. What’s your false confession going to do them?”
“It’s my moral obligation to confess,” she said evenly.
“I’m getting Steve,” Michelle said over her shoulder as she darted out of the room, closing the door behind her.
“How did you get the poison, Amelia?” I asked pointedly, thinking that proving how flimsy her story was could bring a quick end to both her and her mother’s ruses.
“I ordered it from the Internet.”
“What was the precise name of the poison you purchased? What did it say on the label? Was it liquid or powder?”
She narrowed her eyes and met my gaze. “It was cyanide. A white powder. That’s all I remember. Computer records of my purchase will still be listed on my store account, and on my hard drive. The police will examine my computer and can prove that I did it.”
Eleanor’s eyes widened for an instant. “That only proves that cyanide was purchased using your computer.”
Eleanor closed her eyes for a moment and clenched her fists, as if steeling herself. “Even if that’s true, which it isn’t, you weren’t in your right mind. You aren’t guilty of murder.”
Michelle reentered. “I had to get Daddy to fetch Stevie,” she said. I assumed that meant he was in the men’s room.
“And I can’t believe for a moment you’d have killed Drew,” Eleanor said to Amelia. “You always liked each other.”
“So did you,” Amelia retorted. “You used to call him your second son.”
“I did, didn’t I?” she said wistfully. “I’d forgotten that.” Eleanor raked her hand through her hair, in a motion that reminded me so much of her son that I felt a pang. “How he used to make your brother laugh.”
“What’s happening?” Michelle asked her mom. “Amelia isn’t still trying to insist she did it, is she?”
“She’s confused,” Eleanor began. “She—”
“I killed them!” Michelle shouted. “I’m not letting either of you take the rap for me!”
Dear God! Twenty-four hours from now, I was going to be in this chapel, marrying Steve Sullivan! How the hell could this be happening! “You’ve all got to stop this!” I cried, losing my thin grip on my emotions. “It’s a federal offense to confess to a crime that you didn’t commit.” I wasn’t actually sure if that was true, but it certainly should be a criminal offense.
“In which case, I’ll go to jail for my having committed a crime,” Eleanor fired back. “And that’s what I’ll deserve. I’m getting the priest and confessing to him.”
I blocked the doorway. “Please don’t do this,” I told Eleanor. “I know why you’re making this false confession. But you can’t blame yourself for murder just because you made a mistake in judgment. Even if it had terrible consequences.”
The sound of footsteps resonated in the stone hallway. They were Steve’s; I could recognize his gait. I rushed into the hallway. My eyes misted with relief at seeing him and knowing he could help.
“What’s going on?” he asked me.
“Michelle is scared she’ll be arrested for the murders, so Amelia claimed she did it, and now your mom’s claiming she did it to protect Amelia.”
Steve gaped at me and said, “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
I nodded.
Steve marched past me, clearly livid, and I closed the door and followed him. “Are you trying to scare Erin off from marrying me?” Steve demanded, scanning the faces of his family members.
“I’m telling the truth,” Michelle said. “It’s Mom who’s lying to protect me.”
“She’s protecting me, Stevie,” Amelia said. “I killed Fitz and Drew.”
“No, I did,” Eleanor and Michelle said in unison.
“Mom, you cannot plead guilty to a crime you didn’t commit and go to jail in anyone’s place. Drew had a lot of faults, but he was my closest friend and meant a lot to me. You’re turning the investigation of his murder into a circus.”
Eleanor was grinding her teeth but said nothing.
“Michelle, stop acting like the watchdog and protector of the family. You have your own life to lead, and your daughter and soon, an infant, to take care of. Just tell the police the truth.
“Amelia,” he said, softening his voice. “What you tell the police will have a permanent impact on many people’s lives. Are you absolutely certain that you killed both of these men? That it wasn’t something you dreamed you did in retrospect?”
She nodded.
“You remember buying the poison,” he prompted, his tone of voice skeptical.
“I used Mark’s name. I said it was for killing pests on that property they own on the Western slopes. Where they’re raising the grapes.”
“You remember crushing the pills?”
“It was capsules. I opened them. I put it in his coffee. Then I saw Drew put a needle in his arm on Michelle’s porch. I was there, babysitting. He rang the doorbell, but I didn’t want to answer. Mark had run out on an errand. So it was just me and Zoey. I watched from the window. I went out and said he had to leave…that there was a little child in the house, so he couldn’t be there. He said he was just trying to wake himself up and gave himself some vitamins. But then he went to sleep. I gave him another injection. And he died.”
Now she sounded both articulate and believable. The effect was harrowing.
“Did you tell Dr. Whiting about this?” Steve asked, his voice and bearing now tense.
“No,” Amelia said, shaking her head. “I didn’t want Doctor Susan to know what I did. She likes me. I didn’t want her to start hating me.”
Steve looked at his mother, his stoic expression nearly crumbling. The sight broke my heart. “I’m calling a lawyer,” he said, putting his hand on Amelia’s shoulder. “We’ll go talk to him together.”
Eleanor was sobbing. “You can’t force me to endure this,” she said to Steve. “I don’t believe Amelia, but the police will. She thinks she’s telling the truth, but she isn’t. I know my daughter, and she isn’t capable of killing anybody.”
“I agree, Mom, but we have to do the right thing here. A lawyer can get a psychiatric evaluation of her and sort the truth from the delusions.”
“But what if the police arrest her, and she gets convicted?”
“We’ll have to deal with what happens next. We have to have faith in the legal system that she won’t be convicted.”
Michelle muttered that she would go fetch the priest, and the rest of us waited in silence. A short time later, the two of them returned. “What is going on?” the priest asked us, his voice gentle.
Eleanor hesitated.
“Mom,” Steve said. “You’re talking to a man of the cloth. Tell the truth.”
“I need you to talk to my daughters separately,” Eleanor said, as if agonized. “Amelia’s intent on making a false confession. If she does, Michelle seems prepared to follow suit. This is the worst day of my entire life.”
Chapter 32
Audrey and the wedding party went ahead to the rehearsal dinner, which was too late to cancel, with the instructions that they were to explain that we were unavoidably detained, and that Steve and I would get there as soon as we could. From that point forward, where I was concerned at least, it was a matter of prayerful, private waiting.
On a ten-point scale of spirituality, I’m probably a six. I am one-hundred percent certain that God exists, and that he has gifted us with this amazingly beautiful world, so rich with possibilities. In my opinion, however, far too often, religion and spiritual practices mutate into divisiveness, instead of a loving, supportive, and enlightened spiritual community. Personally, I’d take an atheist any day over a deeply devout worshiper who believes his hateful actions are heaven sent; Hitler, after all, considered himself a good Christian.
The pastor had asked Eleanor to leave, and so she, George, Steve, and I maintained a small vigil in the worship space, sitting in the last pew closest to the office hallway. As an hour dragged by with the priest still in private confere
nce with Steve’s sisters, I was praying all but continuously. Steve and Eleanor were praying as well, although George struck me as having been so overwhelmed by these circumstances that he had a glazed look to his features, as if he’d tuned out.
Finally, Michelle and Amelia appeared, Michelle with her arm around Amelia’s shoulders. They gave us identical wan smiles, the similarity in their attractive features more apparent to me now than ever.
George stood up, but said nothing. We anxiously watched them approach. “Amelia and I have agreed to wait until after the wedding, then to speak to lawyers,” Michelle announced. “Amelia realizes that she did not kill anyone.”
“No,” Amelia said. “I just agreed not to tell the police anything I don’t know for absolute certain is the truth. And I realize that my memory is fuzzy.”
“Thank God,” Steve said. He gave his sisters a three-way hug.
“We need to get to the restaurant,” Michelle said. “We should already be there.”
“Everything’s all right,” Eleanor told her. “Audrey and the wedding party have volunteered to take charge and fill in for us. We’re only going to be a few minutes late.”
I realized then how numb I felt. It was as if my brain had been frozen and only the surface was registering my surroundings. “The rehearsal dinner just recently started?” I asked.
“Fifteen minutes ago,” Eleanor said.
Steve’s and my gazes met. He looked as weary as I felt. He forced a smile and gave me a little nod. We were going to have our dinner. And put on our smiles.
Eleanor grabbed George’s arm. “We’re all made of stern stuff. Let’s go and have a good time.”
Steve put his arm around me, and we started to follow his parents.
“Oh, and I invited Aunt Bea last night,” Eleanor added, “and dutifully apologized for losing her invitation.”
Steve’s arm muscles tensed.
Steve and I pulled into the restaurant parking lot right behind George and the Sullivan women. Steve was being stoic, and our conversation so far had been limited to reassuring each other that all would be well. This was clearly not the time to discuss the guilt or innocence of Amelia or Michelle. There was also no need to discuss how strongly we both hoped that they were innocent, and that somehow Lucas Leblanc had managed both murders despite his solid alibis. Steve took a deep breath after shutting off the engine.