“You take that back!”
“Freddie, it’s not a bad thing. In fact, now that I know what’s going on—”
“No,” he said with a snap and a point at my face. “I psychoanalyze you. Not the other way around. It’s a one-way street.”
“But Freddie, I think—”
He yelled—really loudly—making me freeze.
“This conversation is over.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but he snapped and pointed at me again.
“Look. I’ve said what I needed to say. I’ll apologize to Grady, and no more drinking on the job. Let’s move on. What’s the plan for today?”
I looked at him a moment longer before finally saying, “The hospital.”
“And then?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe we should go back and talk to Mrs. Masterson, or—”
“Okay, just stop. It was a rhetorical question. And I’m too hung over to wait for you to finish,” Freddie said, dumping a bunch of sugar into one of the mugs. “I’ve already got our next step all planned out.”
I scrunched my face in question.
“Two steps ahead, Erica.” He tapped the side of his head.
A moment of silence passed as Freddie handed me my coffee.
“Well, are you going to tell me?”
He shook his head. “Not yet. Right now, I want you to tell me about what happened with Matthew last night.”
I rubbed my face. “He doesn’t know if his mother’s guilty or not.”
“And what about him?”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Does he know if he’s guilty?”
I sighed and took a long sip from my mug. “He’s not the murderer, Freddie. I now know for sure.”
“And how exactly do you now know for sure?”
“Because the universe just wouldn’t make it that easy for me.”
* * *
We tried to get in to see Kit Kat, but the nurse informed us that she wasn’t allowed visitors, and seeing as I wasn’t officially family, she wouldn’t even give me an update.
I waited until we got back to the parking lot before asking, “So now will you tell me where we’re going?”
“We’re following up on a lead.”
“What lead?” I asked getting into Freddie’s old GMC, Jimmy. It was the same one he’d had back in high school. He was a little sentimental about it.
“Well, remember how Marg said we just had to ask anyone in town over fifty what the deal was with Mrs. Masterson’s father, Mr. Ramsbottom?”
“You can stop saying it like that,” I said. “I get it. It’s a weird name. Ramsbottom.”
“See? You can’t resist it either.”
I half smiled. “Before you continue, I forgot to tell you. Matthew told me last night that there was something going on between his dad and Marg.”
“No way!” Freddie shouted, hitting the wheel with his palm. “Shut up!”
“For years.”
“Well, I guess that explains why she hates Tweety,” Freddie said, tapping his finger in the air. “Okay, but anyway, I called Ms. Robinson last night—”
“That late?” I asked. “Do you often call librarians in the wee hours of the morning?”
“Stop trying make something weird of me and Ms. Robinson.”
I almost fully smiled this time, but my face couldn’t quite remember how to go all the way.
“And while she didn’t know what the whole story was,” he said, turning down a small dirt road, “she pointed me in the direction of someone who would.”
“Who?” I asked as Freddie pulled into the parking lot of a building tucked away in the trees. I read the sign. DOGWOOD GLEN. “Isn’t this a nursing home?”
“Yup.”
Something in the tone of his voice made me look at him.
“Nursing homes kind of make me nervous,” he said, taking a deep breath. “But Mr. Carver lives here now.”
“The old librarian?” I asked from a memory I didn’t know existed.
“He’s over a hundred and apparently knows everything that has ever happened in Otter Lake.”
Freddie and I walked up to the locked front doors and pressed the button underneath a keypad. I guess they didn’t want any residents wandering.
I peered through the glass to see if anyone was coming. “So why are you nervous? I thought you were all about the seniors these days.”
“Spritely active seniors. This is different.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “It’s fine.”
“Then why are you picking at the skin around your thumbnail?”
“I am not—” I started to answer before I realized I totally was. I dropped my hands. “Okay, fine. I’m a little uncomfortable. But that’s normal, right? I mean, it’s kind of hard not to confront your own mortality in nursing homes. It doesn’t make us bad people.”
“It doesn’t make us good people either,” Freddie replied matter-of-factly.
I spotted a woman in scrubs walking down the hall toward us. She opened the door.
“Hello,” Freddie and I said in unison.
“Hi,” the nurse replied with a quizzical look on her face. “Can I help you?”
“We’re here to visit our grandf—”
I elbowed Freddie in the side and gave him a What are you doing? face before turning back to the nurse. “Sorry. We’re here to visit with Mr. Carver if we could?”
“Of course. Come in,” she said, holding the door open. “He said he might be having visitors. I’ll take you to him. He’s in the sunroom.”
Freddie and I followed the nurse down the brightly lit hallway.
“Hey,” he whispered, a moment later, leaning toward me. “I’m not sure what I was expecting, but”—he stopped to inhale deeply through his nose—“it kind of smells like banana bread in here.”
“I know.” I looked around the hallways. It was a sort of cheerful place. I heard a TV cooking show playing in the distance and what sounded like a piano accompanied sing-along from a far-off room.
“Here you are,” the nurse said, gesturing us into a room filled with tables. “He’s over there by the windows.”
“Thanks. I recognize him.” Freddie led the way toward a man in a wheelchair with a blanket on his knees.
“Mr. Carver, I don’t know if you remember me, but—”
“Of course, Freddie,” he replied. “How could I forget? Please sit down. You too, Erica.”
We made ourselves comfortable around the little table.
“Renata told me you might be coming by.”
“Renata? Oh, Ms. Robinson,” I said answering my own question. “Sorry.”
“It’s quite all right. What can I help you with?”
“Mr. Carver,” I began, “we wanted to ask you a few questions about something that happened at the Fall Festival years ago.”
He nodded. “You mean the death of Mr. Ramsbottom. Renata filled me in.”
“I do.”
“What can I tell you, my dear?”
“Everything,” I said with a sigh. “I’m not sure what might help.”
He smiled, eyes curving in sympathy. “You’re trying to help Katherine and Twyla, of course.”
“We are.”
“Well, before I begin the story,” Mr. Carver said, turning his head, “there’s something you need to understand. About one person in particular.”
“Okay,” I said slowly.
“Olivia Ramsbottom.”
Freddie clapped his hands a little and whispered, “I think I’m going to like this story.”
My heart thudded in my chest. “Mrs. Masterson,” I said for clarity’s sake.
Mr. Carver nodded and folded his hands on the table. “You see, Olivia Ramsbottom was always the type of girl who knew exactly what she wanted, but…”
“But what?”
“Well, unfortunately for everyone involved, she was also the type of girl who would stop at nothing to get it.”
Chapter Thirty-one
“Would you all like some tea or coffee?”
Freddie and I jolted.
“God, yes,” he replied to the woman standing behind us. “But make mine decaffeinated.”
Mr. Carver and I declined. We waited for the woman to leave before we resumed our huddle.
“Now, as far as I’m aware, there was never trouble between Olivia Ramsbottom and the twins before Mick came to town.” Mr. Carver tapped the table with a shaky finger. “Everybody knew he was trouble. Worked at the mill for Olivia’s father. Good looking. Had all the girls in a tizzy.”
Freddie turned and gave me an excited shrug.
“But Twyla, your Tweety, was the only one who could keep him on his toes,” he said, looking back and forth between us. “Mick was shameless in his pursuit of her. Mainly, I think, because she wanted nothing to do with him at first. But that didn’t stop him. Oh no. He’d be yanking flowers from people’s gardens to give her. Reciting terrible poetry in the town square. Flashy stuff. More about him than her if you ask me.”
“But he won her over, though, right? We were told they were engaged.”
“Oh yes, they got engaged. Too quickly in my opinion. He had only been in town a couple of months.” Mr. Carver dabbed at his nose again with his hankie.
“So what happened?”
“Olivia Ramsbottom happened,” he said, leaning to tuck his hankie back into his pocket. “She saw herself as the lady of that house her daddy built … and in that vision, she saw Mick at her side.”
“But Mick wanted Tweety.”
He nodded. “They both wanted the person they couldn’t really have,” he said, shaking his head. “You see, ever since she was a little girl, Olivia Ramsbottom could charm the pants off a snake. People were just bedazzled by the idea of this perfect little girl sitting on her big pile of money. And I swear … butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Never an unkind word. Never a misstep. So everyone just did things for her. Gave her anything she wanted … except for Mick. He was just so blinded by Twyla’s vigor that he never gave Olivia a second look.”
“So,” Freddie said, leaning in closer. “What did Olivia do?”
Mr. Carver shrugged. “Nobody knows. One minute Mick was head over heels for Twyla, the next he was engaged to Olivia. Didn’t seem overly happy about it, though. Lost his zest. A man like that doesn’t appreciate a woman who’s willing to fawn all over him, and Olivia did that. Although he did seem to enjoy driving that fancy convertible around town.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I said, closing my eyes and waving my hands out in front of me. “You think he dumped Tweety for a car?”
“Well, maybe not just the car. The lifestyle.” Mr. Carver moved his head side-to-side as though weighing all the possibilities. “Certainly didn’t have to work in the textiles mill after he took up with her.”
“Wow,” I said under my breath. “Poor Tweety. She must have been ticked! I mean, not ticked enough to murder him fifty years later, but, you know what I mean.”
Mr. Carver nodded. “Well, again, everybody in town tried to warn her what kind of man he was. Katherine—Kit Kat—hated him. That woman couldn’t hide an emotion if her life depended on it.”
“Okay,” I said, straightening up. “So I get what happened with Tweety and Mr. Masterson, but—” I stopped to take a breath. I didn’t even want to say the words. “Marg Johnson implied that Kit Kat and Mr. Ramsbottom had—” I stopped, searching for the right words. “That there was something going on between the two of them.”
“Marg Johnson is a nasty busybody of the highest order. She wanted to be Olivia Ramsbottom so badly, she didn’t know what to do with herself … other than lick that woman’s boots every chance she got.”
“That’s not the only thing she licked of Olivia’s,” Freddie muttered under his breath.
I slapped his arm then asked, “So there was nothing going on between Kit Kat and Mr. Ramsbottom, Olivia’s father?”
“Well, no. I didn’t say that.”
I ran a hand over my face. “Really?”
“Well, now, I don’t know the truth,” Mr. Carver said, waving a hand of deniability at us. “But there were rumors. In the man’s defense, his wife was long dead.”
“What kind of rumors?” Freddie asked.
Mr. Carver looked at us both in turn. “A few people claimed to have spotted them having private meetings.” He sighed. “Couldn’t quite see it myself. Although Mr. Ramsbottom was not a bad-looking man, and, of course, there was the obvious attraction.”
“You can’t mean the money,” I said already shaking my head. “Kit Kat’s not like that.”
“I tend to agree with you, but she never did give a good explanation for what she was doing with Mr. Ramsbottom in that tent right before he died.”
“She was with him? Right before he died?”
He nodded.
Freddie cleared his throat and shot me a nervous glance before he said, “Marg also insinuated that at the time, people suspected Mr. Ramsbottom didn’t die of natural causes, and that maybe Kit Kat had something to do with…” Freddie’s sentence withered under my glare.
“A few people did,” Mr. Carver said, nodding. “But Mr. Ramsbottom was not a young man, or a thin one for that matter. Most people just figured the simplest explanation was a heart attack.”
“And the others who didn’t?” I asked more sharply than I intended.
“It wasn’t just the fact that Kit Kat wasn’t talking that made her look so suspicious.”
“Okay.”
“It was the speculation about her motive.”
“What motive?” I couldn’t stop myself from cringing a little. “Lovers’ spat?”
“Nope.” Mr. Carver frowned, face nearly disappearing into the folds of his wrinkles. “Not exactly.”
“Then what?”
He scratched his chin for a moment considering me. “There was another rumor going around. It was a little crazy, though. The scandal would have been terrible.”
“What?”
“Well, rumor had it, Mr. Ramsbottom was intending to marry Kit Kat, and he was none too pleased with his daughter’s infatuation with Mick, so some say he called his lawyer in.”
“Lawyer?” I asked trying to sort it all through. “Why?”
“To change his will.”
Freddie gasped. “You don’t mean…?”
“He was planning to leave everything—Hemlock Estate and all the money—to Kit Kat.”
Chapter Thirty-two
“Shut up!” Freddie clutched his head. “Oh my God! Kit Kat? The Lady of Hemlock Estate! Come on!”
“But obviously that was just rumor, right?” I said, trying to control my own reaction. “Because Kit Kat did not inherit Hemlock Estate when Mr. Ramsbottom died.”
“Well,” Mr. Carver said, frowning a little, “that’s where things get a little bit sketchy.”
“That’s where things get a little bit sketchy!” Freddie shouted, half getting up out of his chair before dropping back down. “That’s where—you’re blowing my mind today, Mr. Carver. Like seriously, mind blown.” Freddie made an explosion gesture with his fingers.
I grabbed Freddie’s arm to quiet him down, maybe a little too tightly by the ow sound he made. “What do you mean, Mr. Carver?”
“The lawyer’s secretary claimed that Mr. Ramsbottom sent her boss a letter about changing his will, and, well, this next part, it’s almost too ridiculous to even say,” he said.
“Please say it,” Freddie moaned.
“First, I need to explain—and this part is absolutely true—Mr. Ramsbottom wanted to be buried on the property of Hemlock Estate.” He straightened up in his wheelchair. “But the town had an issue with that. They didn’t want everyone to think they could start burying their dead on their own properties. So they denied the application.”
“Okay,” I said. “I don’t see what this—”
“You will,” Mr. Carver said with enough warning that Freddie was practically
squirming in his seat. “So Olivia decided the next best thing was to fill the coffin she had picked out with memorabilia of her father and bury it on the estate at the clearing on that peak overlooking the water.”
“I know the one,” I said, feeling my stomach roll as Peter Clarke’s body flashed through my mind.
He nodded. “I’m told she put up a little plaque and a bench,” he continued. I couldn’t remember seeing the plaque, but then again it had probably been under the body. “But none of that matters. The important part is that the lawyer’s secretary claimed that her boss took that letter to the memorial.”
“No,” Freddie gasped.
“Yes,” Mr. Carver replied. “And, well, a few people say that, after the service was over, the lawyer and Olivia had a conversation up on that peak.” Mr. Carver stopped to take a breath. “That she was pretty upset. Crying. Some say they embraced.”
Freddie and I both leaned forward. “And then?”
Mr. Carver leaned in too. “He dropped the letter into the coffin.”
“No!”
“Closed it up. Then tossed the first shovel of dirt himself.”
Chapter Thirty-three
“Erica? Slow down,” Freddie called out, jogging to keep up with me as I made a beeline for his Jimmy.
I wasn’t sure why I was walking so quickly. It might have been to get away from all that Mr. Carver had told us … but I suspected it had a little more to do with trying to get away from what I was thinking we needed to do next.
“Erica!”
I stopped in the middle of an empty parking space, waiting for Freddie to catch up.
He stopped beside me, his hands on his belly. “Wow. Okay,” he said. “That back there? My ears are still ringing.”
I didn’t answer.
“But seriously, we need to talk about what all this means before we even consider thinking about our next move.”
I still didn’t answer.
“All that stuff he said about some mysterious letter to a lawyer being hidden in some grave?” Freddie chuckled. “It’s a pretty crazy story, right? I mean, no sane person would think there’s any truth to that.”
I turned and looked at him.
“No, no, no!” Freddie shouted. “I know that look. That there is Crazy Erica! She’s way worse than Happy Erica!”
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