I turned and saw Emerald in a heated conversation with Crystal.
“How could you say something like that?” Emerald asked, hands on her hips, looking very much like Lizzie in that moment. “How could positive energy lead to someone getting murdered so Brianna could inherit? That’s just awful, Crystal.”
“It’s not like that,” Crystal muttered, flicking a glance toward me. “Merry is trying to get me in trouble. Can’t you see that?”
“It has nothing to do with Merry; it’s what you said,” Emerald declared. “I’ve been ignoring a lot of crap, Crystal, but I’m going to have to think things over.”
I stepped forward. “Em, I think you need to know some stuff about Crystal and her true connection—or lack of connection—to Consciousness Calling. Have you been giving her money to put toward her franchise?”
Emerald nodded.
“Well, she hasn’t been paying anything to them. Nothing. She has absolutely no connection to CC; I know, because I’ve talked to them. So she’s been pocketing every cent you gave her. Come out to the castle and we’ll talk. Will you do that for me?” She looked uncertain, but as she glanced over at Crystal then back to me, she nodded.
Chapter Twenty-one
I invited my favorite people to come out to the castle the next day for kind of a postmortem on the fallout from Minnie’s murder and Brianna and Logan’s arrest. And Crystal’s arrest. Apparently, federal prosecutors, who had been reviewing information submitted by me, with supporting documentation from Aimee and the CC connection in San Diego, and through more digging of their own, had enough dirt to charge Crystal with all kinds of fraud.
She had been accepting fees from trusting locals, which wasn’t a crime. If people are willing to hand you money because you made them believe they should, I suppose it’s on them. But there was much more; besides using the Consciousness Calling brand without a franchise or permission, Crystal had also developed a number of online personas and was running both a fortune-telling enterprise and some mail frauds, using a post office box that was cleared when everything was moved out of the post office in the wake of Minnie’s murder. That’s where she was sneaking out to most mornings, including the morning of Minnie’s murder; she was making some calls to do with her separate enterprises and using Emerald’s car to go to Ridley Ridge, to her more recent post office box there.
And then there was the little matter of attempted murder. Dewayne and Virgil had tracked down, with Ford Hayes’s help, the guy who was doing body work on Emerald’s car. Crystal had indeed used it to try to run me off the road. I didn’t think it was a serious murder attempt, just something to keep me off balance and preoccupied enough that I wouldn’t interfere in her little scheme until she had milked Emerald and Autumn Vale dry. But if Virgil, who was coldly furious at her crime against me, wanted to charge her with attempted murder, I wouldn’t protest.
So Crystal was under arrest, but Lizzie, the morning after the drama, was still not willing to move home. Determined to reunite her with Emerald and see if they could resolve their differences, I had Lizzie take the day off school. Gogi was picking her up and bringing her to the castle.
As I baked scones and muffins in the kitchen in advance of my guests arriving, the phone rang. It was Shilo. They were in South Carolina, and she was delirious at seeing her grandmother, sisters, nieces, and nephews, getting to know the little ones. She hadn’t seen her father yet, and didn’t know if she would. I caught her up to date with everything that had happened in Autumn Vale.
“I can’t believe I missed the fun!” she said. “Why didn’t that Crystal woman try to reel me in? I’m the perfect mark.”
I laughed. “Shilo, honey, you would have seen through her in two seconds. She has a fake kind of pretend charisma used on the unwary, but you have more spirituality in your little fingernail than she has or ever will have.” I waited a beat. “So have you taken a pregnancy test yet?”
“Nuh-uh. I’m scared. What if I’m not?”
“Then you won’t have lost anything by finding out for sure.”
“I’m . . . Oh, this will sound silly! Merry, I’m afraid of so much happiness. I’m gonna talk to Granny about it today.”
“She’ll sort you out, Shi. Just don’t wait too long. And start taking the right vitamins—folic acid!”
Pish, carrying a sheaf of papers and looking elegant in a smoking jacket—honestly, he can carry it off!—entered the kitchen as I hung up. I told him about Shilo. He then took a seat at the table and donned his reading glasses as I finished my baked goods.
“So, the party.”
“Yes, the party,” I said.
“October first, a fall celebration, everyone invited. Janice tells me that the Brotherhood of the Falcon has what they call a hillbilly band? And they play a washboard, a jug, and a bass made out of a washtub.” He looked up over his glasses. “Is that even possible?”
I hugged him, being careful not to get my floury hands on his elegant satin, then went back to work. “What a sheltered life you lead, Pish,” I said over my shoulder. “While you’re relaxing with Bartok and Dvorak, many others are enjoying country music and bluegrass. Not that that has anything to do with a hillbilly band, but it is all part of American folk music tradition.”
“If you say so.”
“There’s more to American music than Copland. Aren’t you going a bit far with this harvest theme, though? A hillbilly band? Really?”
Doubt heavy in his voice, he said, “Janice seems to think it will endear us to the people of Autumn Vale to include the Brotherhood.”
I let him go on, and saw a theme emerge that went beyond his harvest idea. It was all about Autumn Vale, the people, the groups, the interests of those we knew, and those we didn’t know. But he wasn’t shying away from his interests, either.
“I’ve decided not to make the others do Much Ado About Nothing, the opera,” he said, with a regretful sigh. “Roma and I will do the duet from it at the open house, and I’ll have her sing ‘Sola, Perdutta, Abandonatta.’ But she is actually a very good vocalist for jazz as well, so I’m brushing up on some Sarah Vaughan.” He was silent for a moment, and then said, “She’s afraid to come down and speak to you, you know. She thinks you hate her.”
Emotional manipulation—the woman couldn’t help herself. “I don’t hate her, Pish, though I don’t like her much. But she’s got nothing to be afraid of from me.”
“Her agent called. She has received some offers from the video being online and will be heading back to New York after the party.”
“Excellent.”
I heard the heavy thud of the knocker on the oak door, and soon the kitchen was full of my friends, chattering, laughing, and talking. Gogi had brought Lizzie along, as I’d asked. Binny, Emerald, Gordy, and Zeke (both took the morning off) rode together—leaving Patricia to take care of the bakery—Janice, as a kindness, had insisted Isadore come on her only day free from the coffee shop, and Hannah’s parents dropped her off, though they didn’t want to stay. Instead they headed off to visit Mrs. Moore’s mother, who was in a nursing home in Ridley Ridge. They were going to stay there and have lunch, then come and pick Hannah up midafternoon.
Dewayne arrived and was greeted with enthusiastic claps on the back and hugs from the ladies. Everyone had heard of his swift action in grabbing Logan at the meeting, related with breathless inaccuracy by Zeke and Gordy. Virgil, extremely handsome in his uniform, arrived, but there was so much bustle I couldn’t do much but get a hasty kiss, which was watched and whooped over by the less mature members of our group. Lizzie. And Hannah, too. I could feel my cheeks blaze with color, and I don’t normally blush.
“Come into the breakfast room, everyone,” I said. “I thought it would be easier to dissect the outcome with everyone, rather than using the gossip chain, which, in Autumn Vale, is notoriously unreliable.”
Lizzie and Hannah b
oth wanted to sit with Dewayne, intent on quizzing him about being a private detective, so I placed him between them at the big, round table and served coffee, tea, and all kinds of goodies, kind of a midmorning brunch. I had made individual quiches, because real men do eat quiche. Isadore silently filled a plate and listened in, but many of the others peppered me with questions and comments.
“Hold on!” I said, hands up. “Listen to Gogi for a minute.”
Gogi related a spare accounting of Minnie’s murder. My thoughts organized, I then said, “Worried that this was going to affect my household, I knew we needed the murder solved quickly.”
Virgil chuckled, and I shot him a look. “It’s not that I didn’t trust the FBI, but I know this town: they don’t. We actually covered much of the same ground. I considered several people as suspects.” Glancing over at Emerald, I said, “I had to consider Crystal as a possibility. She was absent at the right times, and there was real animosity between her and Minnie. Also, Em, she had taken your car the evening I was run off the road, and it then disappeared afterward for suspiciously timed engine troubles.”
Lizzie snorted, spraying quiche crust crumbs across the table. Emerald censured her with a look, and Lizzie rolled her eyes. Pretty normal teenager-parent exchange—an encouraging sign. Better than frigid silence.
I looked over to Pish. “I seriously considered Roma as a suspect.” Roma was still up in her room, consulting with her agent on the phone. “She, too, had an open hostility toward Minnie, and had even publicly attacked her. She also had access to a car, which was then dinged in the right spot, and was absent at the correct times.”
“My darling, I don’t mean to interrupt,” Pish said. “But I can assure you, Roma is not a good enough driver to make the maneuvers you described happening to you. I have been in a car with her driving and it is a terrifying experience. Not because of anything she purposely does, simply because she seems to have no awareness of where her car ends and others begin.”
“We know now what she was up to,” I said, without elaborating. Enough said on that topic. I was not going to expose her to the censure of Autumn Vale folks by revealing her plot to discredit Minnie. I gathered the others in my gaze. “One of the mistakes I made was tying in being run off the road with my investigation into who killed Minnie. I mistook correlation for causation. They weren’t the same person.”
“Who did do it, then?” Hannah asked.
I turned to Dewayne. “Your turn to explain.”
“When I was asked to look into it I took lots of samples. I even snuck around town a bit taking samples from any car with a dinged-in front bumper. Like yours, Gordy.”
Gordy looked wide-eyed and fearful. “I’d never . . . I mean, I didn’t—”
“We knew that,” I assured Gordy. “But I established that Karl had access to your keys, and when I was thinking of suspects, Karl was definitely in the mix, from what Zeke told me.”
Zeke hunched one shoulder. “I told Gordy about Karl not being on the couch the morning Minnie was killed. I guess he really was out on the fire escape smoking.”
“I eliminated all those cars,” Dewayne continued. “Then Merry told me about Emerald’s car being in the shop. We discovered it was not with her normal mechanic. That was certainly suspicious.”
Emerald was red-faced and her eyes watery. I reached over and patted her arm. “You couldn’t know what she was up to, Em.”
“I should have.”
“Ford Hayes knows every single person who works on car for a five-county surround. With his help I tracked Emerald’s car to a back-road body shop guy, one who does work under the table. He was cooperative enough,” Dewayne said, one corner of his mouth quirking up in a tight smile. “And I took paint samples. It was a match.”
“So the person who ran me off the road was, indeed, Crystal.”
“I knew she was a crook from the beginning!” Lizzie said.
“But she wasn’t a murderer,” I said. “I think she was trying to distract and rattle me. She wanted me to forget about her and worry about some crazy killer on the loose, trying to get me.”
“But she wasn’t home that morning Ms. Urquhart was killed,” Lizzie said. “And she lied about it, pretending to be me in a text message!”
Pish said, “Good con artists know to stick to the truth as often as possible; less to remember, fewer things to trip you up.”
“She isn’t a good one,” I said. “Crystal’s instinct is to lie at the slightest hint of suspicion. She’ll lie even when the truth won’t hurt her. The FBI had already established that the morning of the murder she was seen in Ridley Ridge, clearing her post office box. She had begun diverting her mail to it, since Minnie was getting snoopy and suspicious. It was just a matter of time before Minnie, who was angry at Crystal for ‘brainwashing’ Brianna, as she thought of it, looked into it and figured out the fraud Crystal was perpetrating.”
“What is it with this town and fraud?” Binny asked plaintively. Her father had become accidentally entangled the year before, and the repercussions were still affecting the bank and Isadore.
“But one thing I kept coming back to was the fight that got Karl kicked out of the house. It seemed so convenient that only Brianna and Logan were in the house, and then Minnie was murdered the very next morning.” I went over, briefly, the clues that led me to the pair, and then said, “Ultimately, what tripped Brianna up was her senseless lies about what went on with Minnie in private, her claim that Minnie had never told her she was her grandmother. Logan didn’t know much but that Brianna was going to inherit what they thought of as a lot of money. I have a feeling Brianna intended, in the end, to cut him out of her windfall. We had that tape, though, the one I played at the meeting.” I explained briefly, about Minnie being on the phone with a man who she thought was a new love interest, but who was actually an actor (hired by Roma, though I didn’t exactly say that) catfishing her. “You all heard; Minnie said her grandchild was trying to milk her for money for drugs. We were able to prove Brianna lied.”
“I’m sorry for Minnie,” Dewayne said. “I can’t speak to the other fake romance, but she would have been hurt if she’d discovered my deception.”
“However, you were hired by a police force to investigate a possible crime, which you did uncover,” I said to Dewayne. “Thanks to your information, and the further investigation of the FBI and the Postal Inspection Service, we now know that Minnie was using the post office as her own personal shopping mall while blaming losses on thieves further back in the system. Her postal outlet had more complaints than average, and would have been busted sooner or later. I don’t know how she thought she’d get away with it.”
“I’ve been agitating for change for some time, and Virgil was helping move ahead with proof,” Gogi said.
“She didn’t deserve to die,” Dewayne said softly. “I feel bad for her. And to die at the hands of someone she wanted to help, too!”
“It’s like she arranged it herself, in a sense,” I mused. “She offered Brianna a vision of life with some money, or at least a house and life insurance, and then threatened to take it all away if the girl couldn’t kick her addictions.”
“I don’t think Brianna was a serious addict,” Gogi said. “I know how to spot them. She was a casual user, and I’ll say that in court if she tries to use addiction in an insanity defense.”
“I overheard her making fun of Minnie once,” Janice said, dusting brownie crumbs from her jutting bosom. “I told her she was a crappy little ingrate. She called me something I won’t repeat. That girl was trouble.”
“Minnie created a toxic environment, a recipe for disaster,” I said. “Based on what I’ve learned about how good she was to her nieces and nephews, I believe Minnie truly cared about her granddaughter and wanted to make up for the tough knocks the kid had in life. But you can’t assume that because you care for someone, they care for yo
u the same way.”
Virgil spoke up for the first time. “Don’t waste any sympathy on Brianna, Merry. Tough knocks? Hah! The girl’s birth mother did die, but the rest of her tale of woe is a lie. She was adopted almost immediately and grew up with three also adoptive siblings who are all just fine. Despite everything, her adoptive parents are sticking by her, claiming that she must have been duped by Logan Katsaros, who doesn’t have any protective parents to help him out. He’ll probably end up taking the fall for the whole thing.”
That was a surprise, and changed the complexion of the case for me. I hoped Brianna got what was coming to her. When she and Logan showed up at the back of the postal station that morning Minnie had probably let them in, thinking nothing of it. The young woman and man cold-bloodedly murdered her with a butcher knife they’d brought from Minnie’s own kitchen, and then proceeded to stage the scene with the letter opener that the postal employee had taken from Wynter Castle after her confrontation with our resident opera singer. They were hoping to pin the killing on Roma, since Minnie had raved and complained about the opera diva to her boarders.
We all talked of other things, and eventually discussed the party for my one-year anniversary at Wynter Castle. Pish told Hannah and Janice that they would not be forced to sing Much Ado About Nothing: The Opera. Hannah, Lizzie, and Alcina, her friend, would reprise their piece from Die Zauberflöte. “Look East” was the high point of that evening.
Janice trilled a bit of her favorite pieces from The King and I, and Pish told her he would be happy to accompany her on piano, if she would like to perform. She was thrilled, and forgave him for his bringing that disruptive force Roma Toscano into their midst.
Finally, everyone began to drift away to resume their lives after the drama of the last couple of weeks. Binny was going to take the boys back to town, and then Gordy was driving Zeke to Ridley Ridge to work at the police station, while he headed to his uncle’s farm. Janice took Isadore away; she was paying her to help with some organization of stuff at her junk warehouse, I understood. Dewayne was heading out to visit Ford Hayes; something about an old Charger Dewayne was buying to fix up.
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