Grand Prize: Murder!

by Vivian Conroy

  “Yes, well, I was surprised when he wrote to us. Said he had tracked us via some old family tree he had drawn up. He is so interested in genealogy, you know, family ties? He seems to be related to the cousin of my husband’s grandmother. There are a lot of Joneses, you know.”

  “Yes, I suppose so.” Vicky was thinking of Bella’s suspect list again and the other items on it. She kept forgetting one.

  Oh, yeah, the pregnant model. It could be a trope for someone used and ditched, she supposed. If it was, who could it apply to?

  Bob came back in with the apples and got her other groceries. Vicky paid and left with the full bag balanced on her arm. She saw Michael down the street, with…

  Grace Dinks.

  Grace was leaning over confidentially and sharing something. Vicky could not see Michael’s face, but the recollection of Grace’s mention of a two-week dream time in Mexico made her stomach knot. Michael had acted like he hated Grace and had never liked her. He had conveniently forgotten to mention that they were…

  Old flames?

  Why did that seem to matter so much?

  She had to figure out if Sydney Haverton had known Bella Brookes before.

  And who had paid for her cruise.

  Somebody had.

  Chapter Fifteen

  When Vicky arrived at her cottage at night, she found a postcard in her mailbox. It was a picture of a sailboat on open water and the back read, “Got an afternoon off sometime to take a little trip?”

  There wasn’t a name on it but the foreign stamp betrayed who the sender was anyway.

  Far away in Denmark Michael had thought of her and sent her a card to ask her out on a sailing trip.

  She studied the card with a rueful smile. A week ago its arrival would have made her day. Since the solution to Celine’s disappearance, Michael had kept his distance from her and Vicky was eager to find out why. A boat trip would have provided the perfect opportunity for that.

  But now that the card with the invitation was in her hand, Vicky looked at it and didn’t know what to think. Michael’s behavior was incomprehensible. One moment he acted like he was concerned for her, even angry she hadn’t told him about the murder at the party. The next he didn’t want to help her with Grace.

  She had even seen him talking to Grace like they were still close. If Michael disliked Grace so much, then why did he even go near her? Why did he listen to her stories that he knew to be exaggerations or outright lies?

  Was he still somehow attached to her?

  Of course Vicky could have figured that Michael had met other women after he had left Glen Cove all those years ago to work through Celine’s disappearance. But she hadn’t expected to ever be confronted with such an ex-girlfriend of his.

  And such an unpleasant ex at that.

  It seemed like an extra slap in the face that Michael had succumbed to the charms of someone who was really a viper in disguise. Why did women who played a part always get the men they wanted?

  Thoughtfully holding the postcard, Vicky went down the driveway to her cottage and was surprised to see someone sitting on her porch waiting for her. It was Bella Brookes.

  Vicky jumped up the porch steps and grabbed her guest author’s hand. “You’ve been released. At last!”

  Bella smiled as if she wasn’t happy herself. “Yes, but not because they have given up their suspicions of me. Paul sent a heavy-duty lawyer to talk me out. I think Cash Rowland got sick and tired of listening to his complicated reasoning and only let me go to make the over-expensive airhead leave. But the sheriff still suspects me.

  “I wish Paul had left it alone. They should have fully cleared me, not released me like this. Look at me. I can’t even go to my apartment over your store, afraid people will fall all over me and want to know things. I can’t go to the resort either, because besides my team there is also this Grace Dinks reporter type hanging around. First she could not get to me by asking, now she can dig up anything she wants and acts like it’s her right. She got just what she wanted.”

  “I know. Have you ever crossed swords with her before? I mean, before she asked you to join your team? She seems so dead set on hurting your reputation.”

  “I guess I don’t remember. I meet a lot of people and…” Bella frowned. “I think I would have remembered her. But she could have dyed her hair, worn it longer. People change over time. I have no idea really.”

  She rubbed her forehead. “I just want to eat something and go to sleep in a real bed.”

  “Of course.” Vicky felt guilty she hadn’t offered this right away. Only just released and worried about the future, Bella was of course not keen on a discussion of the whole messy situation. “Come on in. You can take the guest room. I’m so happy you’re free again. No matter who arranged for it.”

  “You don’t like Paul,” Bella concluded as she followed Vicky into the house.

  “No, not really. Do you?”

  Bella sighed. “He was different once.”

  Vicky turned in surprise so that Bella almost bumped into her. “How different?”

  Bella shrugged. “We were both different, I guess.”

  She sat down on a kitchen chair and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Vicky wanted to say she hated smoke, especially stale smoke that lingered, but realized Bella had not been able to smoke in jail and was probably happy to indulge for a moment.

  Bella lit one and inhaled. “I know this is bad for me. I just need one to steady my nerves.” She held up her free hand that was shaking. “I felt so calm all the time I was in there and now… I feel like a wreck. Unable to control myself.”

  She gave a shrill laugh. “I haven’t cried in years, but now I feel like I could.”

  She pursed her lips. “Paul sent the lawyer because he thinks I am guilty. If he believed in my innocence, he would have…”

  She clenched a fist and banged it on the table. “Why can’t he believe in me?”

  Vicky didn’t want to crowd her guest by sitting down opposite her like she was observing her, so she decided to start dinner. She took cold, already cooked potatoes from the fridge, left over from the other day, and heated butter in a pan.

  Bella spoke thoughtfully, “You asked me before why Paul came out to be with the tour. I guess I was sentimental and believed he wanted to be with me. We used to be quite close.”

  Vicky spread the liquefying butter better over the bottom of the frying pan, then dumped in the potatoes. They hissed as they slid around in the hot butter. “How close?”

  “We planned to get married.” Bella sounded incredulous. “We even traveled to Vegas. But Paul got cold feet and left me standing at the altar. We were both so very young. Crazy in a way. I’m glad he chickened out. It would never have worked, and I hate to end a relationship in a sordid way. The way it happened was a clean break. I returned to my life, my crime novels that never did very well. Then I wrote my first cozy mystery and got my big break. Paul became famous working with authors all over the country, and they assigned him to me. It was trouble from the beginning. I hate the way he turned out, with his young models and his snobby attitude. He accuses me of being just as bad, in my way. We can never be in the same room together without fighting.”

  The truth dawned on Vicky at last. “You fought with him that night at the party.”

  “Yes, and he broke my fan.” Bella exhaled. “He wanted to hit me, and I stopped his hand with the fan. Paul has a dreadful temper.”

  “Enough to have killed that guard?”

  “When provoked, yes, definitely. And the marble statue was just perfect, the sort of impromptu weapon he’d grab for. I decided not to tell the police to protect him. I don’t want Paul in jail.”

  “Not even if he is guilty?”

  “He is not. He is just unhappy and he takes it out on me. He blames me, because I remind him of the way he used to be. He is an anxious man inside, afraid to lose his manhood, his attraction to women. That’s why he feels he has to grab at ever-younger models.”
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  “Did you know he kissed Lisa Coombs that night?”

  “Her? Why?”

  “I think she forced herself onto him.”

  “I would never have thought it of her.” Bella didn’t sound offended, just puzzled. “But then again he could boost her career. Maybe that was what she wanted?”

  Vicky turned to her. “Did somebody ever boost your career? The cruise…”

  Bella laughed. Cigarette smoke curled up from the forgotten cigarette between her fingers. “I got a job as a stewardess on that cruise. I told people it was a vacation, but it was really a job to make ends meet. I had to help old people play shuffleboard.”

  She was silent a moment. “Actually, I had a good time. They were all very nice to me, like I was their granddaughter or something. I felt at ease with them. Nothing to prove.”

  She looked up at Vicky. “Every day I tell myself I have arrived. I don’t need to be a brat anymore. But sometimes I just get up and feel desperate to be the rebel again. Retain my youth. But it’s over. I know that. Paul knows it too. He just fights it.”

  She stared down at her hands.

  “You still love him,” Vicky concluded softly. Her own chest clenched thinking of Michael and Grace Dinks in Mexico. It was so painful when you had somehow believed something could be, maybe in the future, after time, if you tried hard for it, and then something happened that changed your mind about it. Maybe her mother had been right all along, saying Michael was a drifter who couldn’t or wouldn’t commit?

  Bella shook her head. “What is love? I cling to the dream I once had that I would marry Paul and be happy. Have a family, no longer be alone. I feel I missed out on that. The real relationship, the togetherness, the belonging. It’s not Paul himself. We would just drive each other crazy.”

  She sat up, shaking the sadness from herself like water from an umbrella. “Now the potatoes are burning…”

  Vicky turned round in a rush and added water. She inhaled. “I think they might still be good. I’d better find some vegetables to go with them. I’ve got meatloaf. Want it cold or warm?”

  Ten minutes later they were eating together, sharing the meatloaf that fell apart a little but which was still spicy and the crust crunchy. Vicky had found some apple cider to toast with and drink to Bella’s release. She updated her on the scavenger hunt’s progress and revealed the cozy author was the killer. “Courtesy of the fake Lisa Coombs. I wonder why she hated you so much.”

  She had promised Grace not to tell anybody that she had played Lisa Coombs, and she intended to keep her word as long as Grace kept hers.

  Bella shrugged. “Maybe this Lisa impersonator sensed Paul and I had some chemistry left? If she was herself in love with him… You say you saw them together and they were kissing.”

  “Paul denied it, but also said something about stuff happening at parties that you have already forgotten about in the morning. He doesn’t seem to care at all.”

  “Maybe the Lisa impersonator intended to frame him? Hurt him?”

  Vicky considered the option with a frown. Lisa Coombs was really Grace Dinks. Had Grace once had an affair with Paul and had Paul dropped her? Was she here to get back at him and was Bella merely collateral damage?

  She focused on another point of interest. “Someone in town mentioned to me that the night of the party people were walking up and down the stairs. I noticed you had been given a tour upstairs as well. Was it just art like you said, or…”

  Bella laughed. “I think you had better ask Sydney Haverton about that. He told me it was a big secret, and I vowed not to tell.”

  Vicky hitched a brow. “A big secret? At the party? You mean, something some guests were privy to but the majority knew nothing about?”

  “I never break my given word.” Bella crossed her fingers playfully. “Let’s say his posh sister might not approve.”

  Now Vicky was really interested. “But it took place under her own roof. Does it have to do with women?”

  “Not really. It is all very decent. Just a little illegal.”

  Vicky sat up, pointing a finger at Bella. “The illegal gambler! Now it makes sense that you put that on your list. You’re saying something was going on up there? Like a card game with high stakes or something?”

  Bella put down her fork resolutely. “Fabulous meal. I could use a quick cup of coffee and then I’m off to bed. I long for a soft mattress and a duvet filled with goose feathers.”

  “Polystyrene is more like it,” Vicky said with a laugh. She got up and began to clear the table. Her mind worked fast. Sydney Haverton and illegal gambling, his sister’s frequent exclusive parties a cover for high-stakes card games…

  Considering their positions in life, the male guests would no doubt all have money to spend.

  And the guard finding out about it and threatening to tell. Sydney grabbing the marble pedestal.

  Why had he left so early the next morning? To avoid having to find the body or having to look Lilian in the eye as she ran for him, panicking because she had found it? Had Sydney believed it safer if he was away when it all happened?

  She had to talk to him and find out.

  Right away.

  Sydney Haverton was rather surprised to see her when he arrived at the gate to his sister’s mansion. Vicky had found out he was working late at Rowland Investment, his brother-in-law Deke’s firm, and had decided to wait for him outside. She could have gone in and sat with Lilian, but she wanted to talk to him without his sister present.

  Lilian obviously knew nothing of Sydney’s card games, and perhaps it was better if it stayed that way.

  Sydney got out of his car as he saw her and asked, “Is something wrong? Last time I found you in my sister’s house it was beside a dead body.”

  “I’m not sure,” Vicky said truthfully, studying his face. “I hope you can tell me.”

  Sydney waited for a further explanation. He was a very handsome man, but his face was marred by too much good living. She bet he wasn’t very fit either, which made it all the more unbelievable Sydney would have gone out early after a late-night party to exercise.

  She decided that a full-frontal attack might be the best approach. “The morning after the party you left the house early. For a walk, you claimed. I don’t think that was true.”

  Sydney blinked. “I don’t see what it has to do with you. Yes, my sister confided in you when she found a dead body, which suggests you are friends of some sort, but… That doesn’t mean my behavior or my choices are any of your business.”

  His tone was puzzled, sooner than aggressive. Vicky bet he’d had a hard day in the office, in a job that had been forced upon him, and was not eager for a long discussion.

  “Like you just said yourself: your sister came to me right after she had found the body. She believed I could help her. A murder has been committed and a friend of mine accused.”

  “A friend? More like a guest you know only superficially,” Sydney corrected quickly. “Besides, I heard Bella Brookes has been released. She has enough money to pay for the best lawyers. I doubt she’ll ever be convicted. Let alone of something as serious as murder.”

  Vicky inched her chin up in a challenging gesture. “Do you use that argument to ease your conscience? To convince yourself you don’t have to tell what really happened that night?”

  Sydney inched back at her attack, paling under his tan. “I did not kill that guard, if that is what you are thinking. If I had, I would have confessed to it. I would never let an innocent person take the fall for me.”

  Vicky wasn’t so sure. Types like Sydney had always been protected, by their parents, the big sister, the girlfriend who forgave them too many times. His unfinished studies, prematurely ended jobs suggested he couldn’t take responsibility for a single thing and complete it.

  She said tightly, “But you are hiding something and you do think it is fine to lie about that. To your sister and even to her brother-in-law, who is the sheriff in this town.”

  Sydn
ey sighed. “It has nothing to do with the murder. So why should I tell anything?”

  Vicky looked him over. His need for self-preservation wasn’t pretty, but also not uncommon. She had to entice him to tell her something and help her fill in some blanks to find answers. “Shall I suggest a scenario? Suppose there is a rich housewife who enjoys giving parties. Her female friends enjoy it too, especially when it is a masked ball or other dress-up party. The men don’t like it half as much. They prefer some action. Now one of them, the hostess’s own brother, a smart guy who loves an easy buck, thinks up something. Whenever there is a party at his sister’s home, he lets the men come up into a special room where they can play high-stakes poker. It’s illegal, but he will never be caught. Because nobody knows about it.”

  Sydney exhaled in an incredulous huff, but didn’t deny anything.

  Vicky pushed on, “Because he is a vain man, and he can’t resist a little risk, he lets a celebrity who visits his sister’s party have a peek at the action. She is exactly the sort of live-dangerously personality who would find something like that exciting and the man who organizes it intriguing. A real man.”

  “She blabbed about it,” Sydney said with obvious disappointment.

  “No.” Vicky shook her head emphatically. “Bella did not say a word. Not to Cash or to me. She protected your secret, because she gave her word that she would. She is like that. She would not even speak about it when Cash accused her of lying about things and hurting her own case. If she had been forthcoming with information, Cash might have released her sooner. But that was not on Bella’s mind. She wanted to keep her word to you.”

  And she had wanted to protect Paul with whom she had fought. “I only guessed it of my own accord.”

  Sydney leaned back with a faint smile. “I should have known it was dangerous to have the game go on with a woman as a guest who was some sort of sleuth. Lilian told me all about the Celine Dobbs case and how you managed to solve it after more than twenty years. Quite impressive. How did you guess my secret?”

  “I’m not sure. The people going up and down the stairs, the excitement in the air, Bella’s facial expression as she came down. For a moment I thought that…”