Every Trick in the Book

by Lucy Arlington

  “You do?” He looked up, his eyes bright. “It wouldn’t get me or anyone else in trouble, would it?”

  I knew his unvoiced concern was for Iris. “I can’t imagine that it would. What if I hired one of your Dunston friends to go to Red Fox for a meditation session? I’d give him the money to pay for it, and he’d report back to us on what happens in there.” I could see the wheels turning in Trey’s mind as I spoke. “That way you could discover if it’s in keeping with your philosophies and if you’d still want to stay there. Or not,” I added quietly.

  “You mean he’d, like, go undercover?”

  “I guess you could say that.”

  He sat back in his chair. “It might work. But, Mom, those meditation sessions are pretty expensive. A couple of hundred bucks.” He looked up at the ceiling, as if answers were written there. “I bet Jeff would do it. You remember Jeff Morgan, right?”

  I did remember Jeff. He was one of the boys with whom Trey had gotten into trouble last spring for destroying school property. “Didn’t he go away to college?”

  “Nah. He said he decided not to go in the end, but I don’t think he got accepted anywhere. Anyway, his dad gave him a job at the car dealership and then Jeff moved out and now he’s living with his girlfriend.” He nodded vigorously. “Yeah, Jeff’d definitely do it. How much would you pay him?”

  “What would he expect?”

  “I bet he’d do it for a hundred bucks.” Trey looked at me with concern. “Can you afford three hundred dollars to do this, Mom?”

  “Trey, I’d do anything to help you. You know that, right?”

  He smiled sheepishly. “Yeah, I know.”

  “And it’s worth it if it helps you to figure your life out.”

  Trey looked at his watch and stood. “I gotta go. I have a delivery to make in Dunston. I’ll talk to Jeff while I’m there.”

  I walked him to the door and he turned to give me a big bear hug. “Thanks, Mom, for listening. And for having my back.”

  “You’re welcome, Trey.” I watched him as he headed for the lobby, feeling pride in how he was maturing. Abruptly, he stopped and turned.

  “I forgot to ask about that college admissions deferment—how long is it good for?”

  Despite my excitement over his question, I calmly replied, “Only until January. Are you thinking you might go after all?”

  “Just considering all my options.” He grinned and then was gone.

  THE NEXT MORNING I entered Espresso Yourself in better spirits than I’d been in for a while. Having slept soundly the previous night and knowing that Trey was reconsidering his future had me feeling cautiously optimistic.

  Makayla had just handed a coffee to a customer when she saw me. “Morning, girl. You’re looking chipper as a chipmunk today.”

  “I am feeling good. Good enough to have a cranberry orange scone with my latte.”

  She reached for a cup. “Take a seat. I’ll come and have breakfast with you.”

  When she brought our beverages and scones to the table, she handed me a copy of the Dunston Herald. “See this headline? Bad stuff happening in Dunston.”

  I unfolded the paper as she sat down. Local Author Murdered! screamed out from the front page. I felt as if my heart stopped beating for a second and I gaped at Makayla. “Do you know who?”

  She shook her head. “Read me what it says.”

  Yesterday morning, local author Tilly Smythe was found murdered in her home.

  My hands started to shake. “Makayla, I know her! I was at her house the other day.” Taking a deep breath, I continued reading:

  Her cleaning lady, Ms. Anna Clyde, arrived at the house at eleven A.M. and discovered Mrs. Smythe’s body in the kitchen. According to a preliminary report from the medical examiner’s office, the cause of death was strangulation. There was no sign of forced entry and no unknown persons were sighted in the neighborhood. Smythe, aged forty-four, was clutching a stuffed toy that might have been left behind by her assailant. Ms. Clyde did not recognize the teddy bear. “It doesn’t belong to either of the children,” she claimed emphatically.

  I couldn’t read any further. My eyes kept traveling over the words “clutching a stuffed toy.” It was impossible to ignore the similarity of this morbid detail to T. J. West’s proposal in which his victim had a teddy bear lying next to her. Nor could I ignore that Tilly had been seeing a man matching his description all over town. I myself had observed him at the bar in Dunston, and now his abrupt disappearance seemed especially suspicious. I suddenly found it difficult to breathe and dropped the newspaper. It fluttered to the table.

  “Honey, you’ve gone white as a fish belly,” Makayla said with concern. “Are you okay?”

  I could barely get the words out. “I…I think I know who killed her,” I croaked.

  Makayla’s eyes widened. “Who?”

  “A writer. A harmless murder mystery writer. Or so I thought.” I put my hands over my mouth as the horror of the situation hit me full force. Makayla wrapped her arm around my waist to steady me. “I was wrong,” I murmured, staring at the newspaper and its dire headline. “God help me, but my mistake may have cost Tilly Smythe her life.”

  Chapter 12

  FEELING SICK TO MY STOMACH, I GRABBED THE newspaper and left a stunned Makayla sitting at the café table while I raced upstairs to my office. Vicky said something to me as I rushed by, but I ignored her.

  There was a pounding in my head, like a rush of floodwaters, and it almost overpowered my ability to function. My whole body was trembling as I fell into my desk chair and dialed Sean’s number.

  “Please,” I prayed into the receiver. “Please pick up.”

  He did, but his first words were a curt “I can’t talk to you right now.”

  “You have to! It’s about Tilly’s murder,” was my abrupt response. Suddenly, I released all the anger I felt over my own blindness at Sean. “I think I know who killed her, but if you’re too busy to listen, let me speak to another officer!”

  I could hear an intake of breath on the other end and I tensed, expecting Sean to lash out at me. Instead, he softly said, “Excuse me for a moment,” to someone nearby and I realized that he hadn’t been alone. The sound of a door closing came through the speaker and then Sean spoke again. “I was just about to interview Tilly’s husband, Lila. I shouldn’t have answered my phone, but…well, now that I have, tell me what you know.”

  The image of Tilly’s husband, sitting grief-stricken and stunned beyond all reason in one of the department’s interview rooms, filled me with shame. What was I doing, picking a fight with the one man who’d go to the ends of the earth to see that justice was served?

  “I’m sorry,” I said. My apology was not just for behaving like a petulant child, but also for not mentioning T. J. West to Sean the night before last. I knew there was no hope for atonement, as the damage was already done, but I could at least give the police a solid lead. “Tilly mentioned seeing a man around town. He fits the description of a writer I met during a pitch session at the book festival. Sean, the guy’s manuscript contains details freakishly similar to Tilly’s murder. I only know what I read in the Dunston Herald, but it was enough to give me chills.”

  “What’s the writer’s name?” Sean asked, his tone professional and direct.

  “He only gave me his pseudonym, which is T. J. West. I have his email address and I’ll ask Vicky to look up his mailing address. West must have put one on his registration form or we wouldn’t have been able to send him materials for the book festival. Vicky probably has his credit card number or a copy of his check on file as well.”

  Sean sucked in a quick breath. “Can you email me this man’s book? Right away?”

  “I’ll do better than that. I’ll drive it to the station this minute. That way, I can show you the scene I mentioned without your having to hunt for it.”

  There was a pregnant pause and I feared that Sean didn’t want me around right now. I couldn’t begin to fathom what th
e last twenty-four hours had been like for him. I wondered when he’d first heard about Tilly’s murder and was both surprised and hurt that I’d had to learn of her death by reading about it in the newspaper. Why hadn’t he told me? How could he let me discover what happened to her like this? Did he care so little for me?

  “Okay,” he finally answered. “But I’m reluctant to have you come to Dunston. You’ve been through enough lately and I want to spare you any more pain.”

  I felt a rush of warmth. Sean hadn’t called because he’d been trying to protect me. He knew that Melissa’s death had taken its toll on me, but I was stronger than he realized and there was no chance of my standing aside. Not now. Not when I felt responsible for what happened to Tilly. “Sean, if I’d told you about West sooner, Tilly might be still alive. I deserve to feel pain. I’m coming in.”

  “You don’t know that. I’ve told you before that it’s dangerous to jump to conclusions.” He instilled his voice with tenderness. “And, Lila?”

  “Yes?”

  “I know you’re upset, so drive carefully,” he cautioned gently. “That Vespa should only go so fast over mountain roads.”

  After promising to arrive in one piece, I printed out T. J. West’s first three chapters, synopsis, and a copy of his original email. I then rushed out to Vicky’s desk and asked her to look up the writer’s address.

  “It’ll have to wait until I finish my current task. Ms. Burlington-Duke would like me to make a few phone calls for her.” Vicky gave a satisfied tug to her charcoal gray cardigan.

  Her self-possession rattled me. “Those phone calls can wait. This writer might be a murderer. He may very well have killed two women. Wives and mothers. So I need that address and I need it now.” I was practically snarling.

  Vicky studied me for a second, swiveled in her chair, and pulled open a file cabinet drawer. “His name?” Her tone was calm and even.

  “T. J. West.”

  Her nimble fingers raced over meticulously labeled manila folders. She withdrew one and, without opening it, handed it to me. “Thank you,” I said, shoving the folder into my laptop case. “And I’m sorry for how I spoke to you just now. I feel helpless and responsible and scared, like I have no control over anything.”

  Vicky gave me such a warm smile that the tears I’d been desperately trying to hold back nearly spilled onto my cheeks. “Don’t worry, dear. You just do what you need to do.” She hesitated and then reached into a desk drawer and drew forth a stainless steel flask. “I keep it for emergencies. Would you like a sip?”

  I gaped in astonishment. Puritan Vicky, who wore starched blouses and orthopedic shoes, who drank herbal tea and refused to eat complex carbs, who ran the agency with the efficiency of a drill sergeant, kept a flask in her desk! The revelation forever endeared her to me and I managed a weak smile before politely refusing her offer.

  “Everyone has secrets,” I mumbled as I jogged down the steps and outside to where my scooter was parked. I didn’t know the extent of T. J. West’s secrets, but I knew that if anyone could unearth them and expose them to the light, it was Officer Sean Griffiths.

  WHEN I ARRIVED at the police station, I had little sense of how long it had taken me to drive from Inspiration Valley to Dunston. My mind had been consumed with replaying the brief but pleasant moments I’d spent with Tilly. Over and over again, I pictured her face and the way her expression had vacillated between anxiety and then, upon seeing her children, joy.

  I was still caught up in reflections of that afternoon when the police officer manning the front desk gave me a sober greeting and then told a pretty female cop standing nearby to take me back to Sean. She led me through a warren of corridors and dropped me off in a small conference room. A computer and a mug of black coffee were the only objects on the surface of the table, and sitting in a corner on the floor was a cardboard file box. I had just taken a seat and dug Vicky’s file folder from my bag when Sean entered the room.

  He looked terrible. His hair was uncombed, his cheeks and chin were dark with stubble, and his uniform was wrinkled. I wondered if he’d slept in it until his eyes met mine and I saw how bloodshot they were. He probably hadn’t had a wink of sleep last night.

  Murder weighed heavily on this man. And he saw all angles of it from the bodies stretched out on a coroner’s slab, to the effect it had on loved ones, to the ripples it created in a community. He faced the ugliest parts of human nature without backing down. I was ashamed that I’d been feeling neglected because of Sean’s job. What choice did he have with killers on the loose?

  “Let me see what you’ve got,” he said, wasting no time on pleasantries.

  I showed him the address West had printed on his registration form, and Sean hurriedly examined the paper and then stuck his head into the hall and shouted, “Hastings! I need you to run an address for me!”

  The other cop took the sheet, gave me a curious glance, and then said, “You want me to bring this joker in?”

  Sean shook his head. “T. J. West isn’t his real name. Get me that first. And let’s see if he has any priors. I want an idea of what we’re dealing with here. There’s no telling if this is even our guy, so we’ll spend a few minutes on a background check before we kick his front door down.”

  “Got it,” Hastings said and hustled off.

  “Now.” Sean pointed at the short stack of papers I’d placed on the conference table. “Read me the murder scene.”

  I did as he asked, and while I read, he compared the details of T. J. West’s fictional killing with the photographs and written reports from Tilly’s real-life homicide.

  “We’ve got a dead mother and a teddy bear. It’s suspicious, but not enough to make me surround this guy’s house with a SWAT team,” Sean said when I was done. “West’s victim was struck on the head by a blunt object. Mrs. Smythe was strangled.”

  I grabbed the pages and clutched them tightly in my hand. “But Melissa was hit with a brick. This description might not be a perfect match for Tilly’s death, yet it fits Melissa’s. West has been around both women. And the teddy bear? That can’t be pure coincidence.”

  “We can’t assume that Melissa and Tilly were murdered by the same person, Lila, not without solid evidence, although it is certainly suspicious that two real-life murders as well as a fictional one involve a child’s toy. We’re going over to West’s place, don’t you worry. Still, I prefer not to charge in, guns blazing, without having all the facts first.” His tone was patient, yet tinged with a hint of reproof.

  But my guilt over possibly being complicit in Tilly’s murder only served to increase the urgency of the situation. My hands clenched into tight fists around West’s manuscript and I was on the verge of losing my composure and balling up each and every page. Luckily, Hastings burst into the room and waved a printout at Sean.

  “Guy’s real name is Thomas Jefferson Wipple and he’s in a town house by the movie theater. One moving violation. That’s it.”

  Sean raised his brows. “Thomas Jefferson Wipple? No wonder he used a pseudonym.” Turning to me, he said, “We’re going to pay Mr. Wipple a visit. Do you want to wait for me or go back to Inspiration Valley?”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I said. Sean dipped his chin in acknowledgment and strode out of the room.

  Left to my own devices, I spent the time rereading West’s first fifty pages. It certainly didn’t seem like the prose of a coldhearted killer. Even though my opinion on the author was completely tainted by this point, I still found his writing skillful, amusing, and entertaining. Could West really be capable of this kind of duplicity? It was hard to imagine that someone who could draw the character of the plucky widow with such sensitivity also harbored the ability to commit murder.

  When I’d finished reading, I helped myself to the desktop computer and did a Google search on Thomas Jefferson Wipple. There were very few results. One was from the white pages and displayed his age, address, and phone number. For an additional fee, I could acquire his em
ail address as well. I shook my head. There was no such thing as privacy anymore.

  Another page listed forty-nine-year-old Thomas Jefferson as an active member of the Dunston Rotary Club, and a third site showed a photo of him participating in a walkathon benefiting the Make-A-Wish Foundation along with a group of other Dunston General Hospital employees. This led me to a search of the hospital’s staff page, and I was able to locate Thomas Jefferson within a few clicks of the mouse. He was a registered nurse.

  I sat back in the chair, confounded. Could this male nurse who wrote cozy mysteries and worked to improve his community truly be a murderer? It seemed impossible, and yet I knew it wasn’t. Over the summer, I’d learned firsthand about the masks people wear and how there are those among us who are masters at the art of deception. Victor Hugo had once written, “Virtue has a veil, vice a mask,” and while we all try to conceal our faults behind a façade, West had adopted a public life that made him look like a saint. But behind the polished veneer, he could very well be a killer.

  A cop with a shock of red hair suddenly appeared in the threshold, thankfully keeping me from waxing philosophical any longer. “Griffiths here?” he asked.

  “No, and I’m not sure when he’ll be back,” I said.

  “I’m collecting cash for pizza. It’s almost lunchtime and I know he hasn’t eaten a thing since last night.”

  No wonder Sean looked so peaked. He’d had neither sleep nor food for far too long. Grabbing for my purse, I handed the redheaded officer a twenty. “Please get him a whole pie. And maybe a salad?”

  The cop’s mouth fell open in surprise, as if I’d ordered something utterly foreign. “A salad? Uh, yeah, I guess I can do that. Anything for you?”

  I gave him a wan smile. “No appetite right now, but thanks.”

  Sean returned before I could make additional headway in searching for tidbits on Thomas Jefferson Wipple. I found nothing to connect him to Melissa or to Tilly. Only Dunston united the three people.