“In North Dakota it apparently happens with a notarized signature from your parents. Faked in Dean’s case.”
“Uh-oh. What happened? Well, there’s a silly question. But what did happen?”
Instead of replying directly, Elysia said, “I think Sarah Ray might have been the girl.”
“Sarah Ray? Our Sarah Ray? How did you deduce that?”
“It’s obvious, to me at any rate, that they knew each other before.”
“Did you ask Dean about Sarah?”
“Not directly. I keep hoping that he’ll volunteer the information.”
“Maybe there isn’t anything to volunteer. Maybe he just . . .” Liked Sarah? A lot? From the first there had been some kind of connection between Sarah and Dean.
A.J. blinked over the sudden, unbidden thought and decided it would be better to let it go. Elysia, too, seemed willing to drop the subject.
When they at last pulled into the Channel 3 parking lot so A.J. could retrieve her car, Elysia said, “Tomorrow we’ll put our heads together and suss out how to get Mrs. Goode to confess.”
A.J. dropped her keys. She found them on the floor of the Land Rover and sat up.
“When did you work out that Oriel Goode was the murderer?”
“As the Bard says, ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’”
“I know for a fact it wasn’t the Bard who said that. It was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.”
“Actually, it was Sherlock Holmes, pet, but that’s beside the point. We’ve eliminated everyone else in the case. The only remaining possibility is Mrs. Goode. Our first and best suspect.”
“You’re going to have to show me your math on this one, because I don’t get how you’ve decided we’ve eliminated all the other suspects.”
“It’s perfectly obvious. We have to rule Sarah out. Much as it grieves me. She has an alibi. Michaela Ritchie has no motive.”
“According to her. And we don’t know that her husband wasn’t aware of the affair.”
“A man would not use a pen as a murder weapon. Certainly not a man like Leo Ritchie.”
“How do you figure that?”
“I’ve met Leo Ritchie. He built the add-on sunroom at Starlight Farm. He’s a big macho bruiser. A bloke like that would punch Goode in the face or he’d use a real weapon. The pen was a weapon of impulse. Ritchie’s impulse would be to smash Goode’s face in.”
“Interesting psychological profiling, but okay.”
“It goes without saying you don’t believe Mocha is involved, so that takes care of the Ritchies. I personally don’t believe the Jersey Devil is a serious contender.”
“I agree. There must be a connection there, but I don’t know what it is.”
“That leaves Mrs. Goode.”
“Whoa. Goode had a number of affairs. All those women are possible suspects. Plus, aren’t you forgetting your favorite theory? That the killer was someone out of Maxwell Powell’s past?”
“There doesn’t seem to be anyone. The only person who comes even close to knowing about Maxwell Powell was Oriel Goode. She knew him during what must have been his transition stage from Powell to Goode.”
“Hmm.” A.J. jingled her keys absently.
“Which leads us full circle. Who is the most likely suspect in any homicide? The significant other. In this case, the wife. Mrs. Goode had several motives that I can think of off the top of my head.”
“Go on.”
“Money. New Dawn Church has been fund-raising steadily since the day the Goodes arrived. Now all that money is Oriel’s.”
“True.”
“Secondly, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Oriel was tired of the endless affairs.”
“I would be, that’s for sure.”
“Any woman with a speck of pride would be. Which leads us to the final and most compelling reason to my thinking. Mrs. Goode knew her husband was eventually going to try and get rid of her—one way or the other—and she simply made a preemptive strike.”
“The problem with that is, I don’t think she did know about his past. And even if she lied about that, she has an alibi for the time of the murder. An unshakable alibi, by all accounts.”
Elysia waved an indifferent hand. “Alibis were made to be broken. In any case, Lily’s hired gun dug up the solution—and yet another motive. Oriel Goode had a lover. He killed her husband for her.”
A.J. shook her head. “It makes sense up to a point, but I just don’t buy the illicit lover angle. I think Oriel genuinely loved her husband. I think she did know about the affairs. You’re right about that. She’d have to be oblivious not to know. But I don’t think she was aware of Goode’s past. You should have seen her when Jake gave her the news. She was stricken.”
“Stricken that you’d discovered the truth.”
“I don’t think so.”
Elysia made an exasperated sound. “Next you’re going to tell me the woman couldn’t have done it because she practices yoga.”
“Weeelll . . . No. Of course not. But I can’t see any justification for believing she was having an affair. Who would she have an affair with?”
“We’ve already been over this. With her husband’s assistant.”
“He also has an alibi.”
“Alibi schmalibi.”
“Huh?”
“That alibi is made of tissue paper.”
“The police don’t seem to think so. Dally’s house isn’t in walking distance of the center where Goode was killed—”
Elysia interrupted, “And as for Oriel being the only one who knew Goode’s history, Dally is a journalist. It’s possible he came across the truth while he was working for New Dawn Church.”
“And killed Goode? What sense would that make? Why wouldn’t he go to the police? It would be a huge scoop for him.”
“Because he was having an affair with Oriel.”
“So what? In fact, all the more reason for him to go to the police. Then he could have his scoop, have the woman he loved, and not take the risk of getting arrested for murder.”
“The murder was obviously an impulse. No one sets out to commit murder using a ballpoint pen for a weapon.”
“Unless he or she was deliberately trying to frame Lily.”
“No. I don’t think that’s it.”
A.J. laughed. “Well, I can’t see any cause for believing Oriel was having a relationship with Dally other than Lily’s defense team wants to believe she was having an affair with someone, and Dally seems like the only remotely possible candidate. Too remote, if you ask me. There’s not a shred of proof against them. Lily admitted that. And given the fact that Dally is a respected journalist, it seems even more far-fetched.”
“He was undercover.”
“But there’s a limit to things he could do undercover and not damage his own credibility.”
“That’s it. That’s the motive.”
“Plus, he could be married for all we know.”
“So was she. Besides, he isn’t. My team checked that. He’s married to his work according to everyone who knows him. Well, there is a girlfriend, but I doubt if that means anything.”
A.J. looked at her with disbelief. “That doesn’t sound like someone about to engage in a career-damaging affair—let alone someone who’s going to decide to commit murder for his lover. What would his motive be?”
“Le grand passion.”
“Mother . . . have you seen Oriel Goode? She’s not that type. She’s a nice, ordinary, middle-aged woman. A little on the matronly side. She looks like she should be running the PTA or all those church committees that she does, in fact, run. She isn’t the kind of woman who inspires le grand passion. Which, by the way, sounds like an oversized fruit smoothie.”
“Now you’re simply being obstructionist, Anna.”
“But I’m not. I see that it would be beautifully convenient if Oriel and Lance had got together and knocked David Goode off, but going by my
observations so far, I can’t believe that they were having an affair. They aren’t either of them the type.”
“Then we must find proof of the affair.”
A.J. groaned. “This is where my day began. Maybe Lily should hire you.”
“I don’t work for filthy lucre, pumpkin. I see a wrong and I strive to right it. Just as Lucy Bannon does on Golden Gumshoes.”
A.J. rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry, Lily doesn’t actually pay. It’s all pro bono.”
Elysia said with unexpected and uncharacteristic sentimentality, “I don’t need to tell you, Anna, that Di would be very proud of the way you’ve rushed to Lily’s defense.”
A.J. sighed. “I don’t know about rushed. She had to call me. Anyway, Lily has her faults, but I don’t believe she’s capable of murder.”
“Murder? No. I must agree.”
A.J. glanced at the clock on the dashboard. “I’ve got to go. It’s getting late.”
Elysia protested, “We need to plan the next phase of our investigation. Somehow we must find the proof we need.”
A.J. yawned so widely, her jaw cracked. “Not tonight, Mom. You’ve got guests leaving and I’ve got a dog that probably fears I’ve given him up for adoption. I haven’t had more than four hours of sleep the last three nights. We’re going to have to table this for now.”
“‘Delays have dangerous ends.’ ”
A.J. leaned over and gave her mother’s cheek a peck. “So you and the Bard have said many a time. But tonight I’ll take the risk.”
Twenty-one
A.J. was curled up on the sofa in the front room drinking a cup of chamomile tea and reading Isherwood’s My Guru and His Disciple, when she heard Jake’s key in the lock.
She put the teacup and book aside, going to the front door to meet him, Monster padding at her heels.
“Hi! You didn’t call.”
“I know. I was on my way back from Blairstown. I figured I could be here in the time it would take to call.” He hesitated. “I just assumed—”
A.J. said quickly, “Of course! You’re just lucky I felt too lazy to slap a mudpack on my face.”
“I can live with a little mud.” Jake kissed her hello.
A.J. kissed Jake hello.
Jake kissed her hello again.
Monster grew bored with the proceedings and lay down on the floor with a groan.
Jake laughed against A.J.’s mouth and released her.
“Are you hungry?” A.J. asked. “I made a really tasty veggie manicotti for dinner, if I do say so myself.”
“That sounds great. I didn’t have time for lunch today.”
Jake followed A.J. into the kitchen, leaning against the doorframe as she set about reheating the manicotti. “I heard you paid Michaela Ritchie a visit this afternoon.”
A.J. threw him a guilty look. “I was just about to tell you about that.”
“Mm-hm. You could have saved yourself some time and trouble.” Jake bent to scratch Monster beneath his chin. Monster panted up at him. “We already knew about Michaela Ritchie, and she did break off the relationship with Goode before he was killed.”
“It was worth a try. Does she have an alibi?”
“Everybody in this case, with the exception of Lily, has an alibi.”
“Did you want a glass of wine with your dinner?”
“I’ll get it.” Jake retrieved the corkscrew from the drawer near the wine rack. “We got the information we were hoping for on Goode. Don’t quote me, but whoever took that guy out may have done the world a favor.”
A.J. automatically handed him two wineglasses from the cupboard. “Then you do think his death was the result of something in his history?”
“Not to get too philosophical, but everything that happens to us is the result of something in our history, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes. You know what I mean.” A.J. swallowed hard. “Was he killed by someone out of his past?”
“I don’t know. That was a guy with a lot of past.”
“Tell me.”
“David Goode started life as Raymond Grafton. He was a Canadian national, as we suspected.”
“That explains the lack of a Social Security number.”
Jake nodded. “He popped up on a FBI CJIS record request.” He grimaced. “FFE. Foreign Fingerprint Exchange. When he was nineteen Grafton moved in with Marie Cloutier, a French Canadian woman fourteen years his senior. Cloutier and Grafton loved to go on long bike rides. One day she rode her bike right off a mountain and left Grafton an insurance policy in the neighborhood of half a million. Her family contested the will and it was eventually thrown out. Grafton disappeared.”
The microwave pinged. A.J. opened it and removed the plate of manicotti. She grabbed silverware from the drawer and carried plate and flatware to the table. Jake washed his hands at the sink and pulled out a chair.
“The next time Grafton surfaced was in Washington. The state. He was teaching French at the School of Languages in Seattle. One of his students there was an older woman by the name of Terry Dan. Terry was a biophysicist whose husband had died in an industrial accident, leaving her the beneficiary of a life insurance policy worth a whopping three million dollars.”
“What happened to him?”
“You don’t want to know. And I don’t want to think about it when I’m eating.”
“Yikes.”
“You’re not kidding. Anyway Dan and Grafton move in together and all goes well for nearly eighteen months, and then Dan discovers, among other things, Grafton isn’t a former instructor of the Lutece Langue in Paris. In fact, he’s never been to France.”
A.J.’s jaw dropped. “He was pretending to be French?”
Jake laughed. “Yeah. Can you believe it? And he got away with it for two years in Seattle, eighteen months of which he spent living with this poor woman.”
“What happened when Dan found out he was lying?”
“She confronted him and he shoved her down a marble staircase. She was in a body brace for nearly a year. Grafton, meanwhile, disappeared again, taking all the cash he could liquidate from their joint accounts.”
“But he didn’t kill her. And the Cloutier woman’s accident could have been just that. An accident.” A.J. sipped her wine and lowered the glass.
“Correct.”
“Didn’t anybody check his references?”
“Sure they did. They checked all the forged documents he gave them. He looked great on paper. Nobody bothered to call the Lutece Langue.”
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes. After that Grafton drops out of sight. We don’t know what he did during that period he’s off the radar, but in 2001 his fingerprints pop up again, only now they belong to Maxwell Powell, the prime suspect in the murder of his wife of a few months.”
“How did the LAPD not make the connection?”
“They checked school, military, and the California criminal records databases. He didn’t come up clean—he didn’t come up at all. Grafton didn’t drive while he was living in Seattle and the language school was an adult school, so his fingerprints didn’t pop up in the normal places you’d expect them to. The possibility that he might be Canadian apparently never entered anyone’s minds until a few days ago.”
“Jill Smithy-Powell must have discovered his glamorous background was faked.”
“We’re never going to know for sure what happened. I’m no psychiatrist—psychologist—whatever, but it seems pretty clear to me that Goode had problems anytime he was forced to confront his deception.”
“As though he bought into his own cover story?”
“Right. And when he was confronted with the truth, unmasked, he snapped.”
“Because he couldn’t deal with the destruction of his fantasy persona?”
Jake shook his head. “It’s possible. We could have fun playing guessing games all night, but the only person who knows for sure is dead.”
“And that can’t be a coincidence.”
“Sure it
could.” Jake paused long enough to take another bite of his manicotti. “This is great, by the way.”
“Thank you.” A.J. rubbed her forehead. “Why didn’t he just leave? Why did he have to kill her? Jill, I mean.”
“I know you don’t want to hear this, but Smithy-Powell’s murder is still technically unsolved.”
“Jake!”
Jake shook his head. “I know, but there’s no proof that Powell killed her. We can draw some logical conclusions, but that’s not proof. If Goode did kill Smithy-Powell, the answer to your question is pretty obvious. He’s not—wasn’t—right in the head. Why create these grandiose backgrounds for himself that almost guaranteed he’d be found out sooner or later? Think about how much he had to hide, and yet he courted the limelight as David Goode. Whatever was going on with him wasn’t just about conning women out of their money. It went deeper than that.”
“What if Oriel was lying? What if she did discover that Goode’s background was a complete fabrication?”
“It’s not Oriel’s homicide we’re investigating, it’s Goode’s.”
A.J. finished her wine. “Right, but as terrible as this sounds, I can see why someone who discovered all these lies might want to kill him. Especially if she believed she was going to end up as one of his victims.”
“But Oriel Goode didn’t know. We interviewed her again today. In law enforcement we’re trained to spot deception. Hell, we’re trained to be deceptive ourselves when and where necessary in a criminal investigation. We had investigators in from Blairstown to observe, and we’re all agreed, she had no idea who—or what—her husband really was.”
“Apparently neither did he.”
Jake gave a short laugh.
“Mother thinks Oriel was having an affair with Lance Dally.”
Jake barely paused to swallow. “No way. I could more easily believe she knocked her husband off in rage over one of his affairs than that she and Dally were fooling around. Neither is the type.”
“Is it possible Dally knew Goode’s history? As a journalist he’d have done some background digging. Maybe he uncovered something.”
“Not if his chagrin at hearing the truth today is anything to go by.”
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