by Jessica Beck
“Pat, maybe we shouldn’t have given her time to come up with answers we’d swallow,” Annie said gruffly.
“What choice did we have? Honestly though, I have a feeling she’s worked out her answers well before we confronted her.”
“So what good is all of this questioning going to do?”
“How do I know? I’m hoping that if she does lie to us, we’ll be able to detect it, if not now, then at some point later. It’s the best we can do, given the scope of our power here.”
“Which is minimal at best,” Annie said as she opened her car door. “Well, here goes nothing.”
“I am willing to admit that I was, at one point, sleeping with Mitchell Wells,” Harriet confessed as soon as she began talking. “We might as well get that out into the open from the beginning. You didn’t know Mitchell all that well. He could be charming when it suited his purposes, and evidently claiming me as a conquest mattered to him for some reason. I succumbed to his lies, but as soon as I found out that he was going to propose to Betty, I broke it off, not him. The scoundrel actually had the temerity to suggest that his marriage vows were no reason to end our affair, if that tells you anything about him. I laughed in his face when he made the offer, and believe me, he wasn’t used to that, nor did he like it one little bit. If I had died that day instead of him, he would have been the number-one suspect in my murder. As for Albert Yeats, somehow he found out about the affair, and he threatened to ruin me politically if I didn’t confess it myself. It was clear the man was striking out blindly. I’ll admit that he had me rattled when he said that he’d make sure the electorate knew what type of person they’d elected, but there was nothing I could do about it, so I decided to let him do his worst. That’s it, I’m afraid. I had no reason to kill either man, nor did I commit the crimes you’re implying that I did.”
“Why should we believe you?” Annie asked her bluntly.
Harriet grinned slightly. “My, don’t you both have sharp teeth. I don’t suppose there’s any reason for you to, except for the fact that it’s true.”
“Were you really following Sally around the night of the murder when you both ducked out of my class?” Annie asked her. My twin sister sounded a little hurt even saying it now.
“I was. I believed with all my heart that she killed Albert, just as she murdered Mitchell a decade earlier.”
“Why would she kill Mitchell? To your knowledge, was Sally sleeping with him, too?” I asked her. We knew it to be true, but did Harriet?
The question stung her, but she kept her promise. “I didn’t believe it at the time, though I’d heard my share of rumors. Over time, I’ve grown to realize that it was true. No one could act that distraught over the violent death of someone she hadn’t loved. The woman was nearly inconsolable at the time, and it went on for many months.”
That wasn’t the way we’d heard it. “I’ve been led to believe by one of our witnesses that you were the one who was shattered by Mitchell’s death, not Sally.”
Harriet looked at me crossly, and then she nodded knowingly. “You’ve been speaking with Betty Murphy, haven’t you?”
“Is it true?” I asked, avoiding confirming her suspicion. “I have another question. Did Mitchell extort money from your father to buy Betty’s wedding ring?” I believed it myself. It was a pattern of Mitchell’s behavior. Hadn’t he tried to do the same thing, without success, with Edith? “She said that you tried to pry it off her finger at the funeral.” So much for keeping my source anonymous, but to be fair, she’d already guessed Betty’s identity.
“I wanted the ring back, but not for jealous spite. I was going to sell it and give the money back to my father once Mitchell was dead, not that it would have mattered at that point. He was a broken man from then on out.”
“That sounds like a motive for murder to me,” Annie said, something that I’d been thinking myself.
“Think what you will. I’m telling the truth. Is that all?”
I couldn’t think of anything else, but Annie could. “Where were you when Mitchell was murdered?”
“I was with my father at home, trying to bring him out of his depression,” she said. “Can I prove it? I cannot, since my father passed away six months later. Is it true nonetheless? It is.”
I had another question of my own. “Have you been snooping around the Iron lately? And did you follow Annie and me out here two nights ago?”
She looked genuinely puzzled by my questions. “I’m afraid that I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I didn’t know if she was lying or not. Maybe she was telling the truth, or maybe she’d mastered the art of the convincing lie after all her years in politics, even if it was just at the local level.
“Are we finished now? I really do need to go.”
Annie and I looked at each other and shrugged. “That’s it. Thank you for being so candid.”
Harriet nodded. “I expect you both to keep your word.”
“We will,” Annie and I said in perfect unison.
Harriet shook her head slightly, got into her car, and drove away.
“Do you believe her?” I asked Annie after she was gone.
“She’s convincing, isn’t she?”
“That’s not what I asked you.”
“Pat, I don’t know. In a weird way, it all makes sense, but what it boils down to is that we still can’t prove any part of her story. She spins a rather dramatic web of events, but I have no idea whether any of it is the truth or not. It’s all plausible, though; I’ll have to give her that. We need to go talk with Sally Tremont.”
“I agree, but first, let’s check something else while we’re here.”
“We already got Albert’s notes from the tree,” Annie reminded me.
“Some of them, at any rate. What if he’d hidden that packet earlier, and there’s more to be found there? It was dark, and besides, that hollow part of the tree was over my head. I need to make sure we got everything while we’re here.”
“Is this another one of your famous hunches?” Annie asked me.
“I don’t know. I’ll tell you in five minutes.”
CHAPTER 21: ANNIE
My twin brother and I got to the tree in question, and he stood on tiptoes to probe the opening once again. Had he missed something earlier, or were we about to find a clue to break these two cases wide open?
“Well? Is there anything else up there?” I asked him. While he was standing there trying his best to probe the opening without being able to see, I looked at the ground around the base of the tree. There were scuff marks in the fallen debris, and what’s more, they looked fresh. Had Pat just made them, or had someone else?
“Hang on a second,” he said with a grunt. “I’m not sure. Wait a minute. What is that?” I watched as he pulled out a second packet, quite a bit smaller than the first one had been. “I can’t believe I missed that before. It must have fallen in deeper when I pulled the other one out.”
“Let’s open it and see what it says,” I urged him.
“Look at the wrapping first,” he insisted. “Does that look at all odd to you?”
I could see what he meant instantly. “It’s nothing like the other packet.” This one was wrapped in a plastic grocery bag, and there was no tape sealing it at all. “Maybe Albert was in a hurry the second time.”
“I don’t know. Maybe,” he said. Opening the bag consisted of untying the knot in the top. Inside, printed in block letters, the single message read,
“Ollie Wilson killed Mitchell Wells.”
“I don’t get it,” Pat said. “Something’s fishy about this entire thing.”
“It’s clearly a plant,” I said.
“No, I’m pretty sure it’s a tree,” Pat said as he looked up at the hollow tree in front of us.
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it. Someone wanted us to find this second note and assume that it was real.”
“Who even knew that Albert used this as a hiding place?” Pat aske
d me.
“Someone followed us out here, remember? They must have figured out what we were up to when we pulled out the first packet, and they hoped that we’d come back and discover this. What did they have to lose if we never came back? It was insurance, a way to get our suspicion off of the real killer.” I pointed to the base of the tree. “I’m pretty sure that this was scuffed up when we got here,” I said. “Whoever did this had to really stretch to get the note inside.”
“Well, Ollie’s taller than I am, but neither Sally nor Harriet are. If either woman did it, they would have had to practically shimmy up the tree to do it.”
“Does that mean that Ollie’s in the clear?” I asked my brother.
“Unless he’s trying to throw us off his scent by leaving this clue implicating him,” Pat said.
“That seems a little too subtle for Ollie, don’t you think?”
My brother pivoted his head around, as though he were trying to loosen the muscles in his neck. “Right now, I don’t know what to think.”
“But if I’d asked you before we found this if Ollie would be capable of something like this on his best day, what would you have said?”
Pat didn’t even have to think about it. “That there was no way the man was clever enough to come up with that kind of plan. I’d never admit that to his face, but when you think of it that way, he’s just not smart enough.”
“Don’t apologize. It could easily remove his name from our suspect list.”
“Where does that leave us? Was it Sally, or was it Harriet?”
“I still want to talk to Ollie,” Pat said. “Who knows? Even if one of the women wrote it, they still might be right. The accusation could be exactly what it looks like, someone trying to lead us to the real killer.”
“It’s enough to make your head ache, isn’t it? Just when I think we take a step forward, I find that we’re standing in the exact same place where we were before.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll figure this out.”
“I certainly hope so,” I said. “In the meantime, what do we do with that?”
“Do we have any choice? We have to take it to Kathleen, only I don’t think we have to make a copy of it first. Whoever did it was clearly not Albert Yeats.”
Kathleen was impressed by our discovery, even after we explained our reasoning why it really hadn’t told us anything at all. “You two aren’t looking at this properly. You’ve clearly managed to spook the real killer if they’re willing to risk going to that tree to try to throw you off. I’d say this is a good sign, if anything.”
“But it doesn’t help,” I protested.
“Not directly, but you never know.” She tapped it lightly inside its plastic sheaf. Our big sister had dusted it for fingerprints, but to no one’s surprise, it had come up clean. Still, she’d taken the precaution to preserve it in plastic, just in case. “Tell you what. Why don’t you both take another run at Ollie and Sally? It has to be unofficial, of course, but it might be time to rattle their cages again.”
“I just wish we had more to goad them with,” Pat said.
“I’m surprised you’re so willing to aggravate them,” Kathleen said.
“How else are we going to get them worried enough to slip up again?” I asked, coming to my brother’s defense.
“Just be careful,” Kathleen said, “and call me if you get into trouble.”
“Don’t we always?” I asked her with a smile.
“That remains to be seen,” she said.
We found Ollie at his place, sitting out front on the porch, reading a book. As we approached, I tried to see the title, but all I knew for sure was that it was an ancient paperback with a cracked spine, destroyed so badly that the author and title were both illegible. Either it was a beloved book, or he’d dug it out of a dumpster somewhere.
“Do you have a second, Ollie?” Pat asked him.
Ollie dog-eared the page, hitting me like fingernails scratching down a blackboard. It was a pet peeve of mine, but it didn’t make him a killer. Then again, it didn’t make me feel any kinder toward him, either. “What can I do for you both?”
“You didn’t come in for breakfast today,” I said lightly. “I was worried about you.”
“Annie, I don’t eat there every day,” he said defensively. “I felt like cereal, that’s all.”
“Okay, if you say so,” I said. “We’d like to clear a few things up with you.”
“What’s that?”
It wasn’t the most welcome invitation to chat, but I didn’t care. “We know about both of your motives to kill Mitchell Wells,” I said bluntly.
“I didn’t kill him!” Ollie said, flashing that newly discovered temper of his again.
Pat stepped protectively between us. “Take it easy. We didn’t accuse you of anything. Just because you had a motive doesn’t mean that you actually followed through and killed him.”
Ollie managed to get his temper in check before he spoke again. “What do you two think you know?”
“The inheritance you felt cheated out of, for one thing,” I said.
Pat shot me a warning glance that told me to take it easy, but I was past that.
“What about it?”
“It’s only natural that you’d want to make Mitchell pay for what he did to you,” I said.
“I didn’t like it, and everybody knew what he did was wrong, but I wouldn’t kill the man because of money. No way, no how.”
“If not for the inheritance, then what about for love?” Pat asked.
It was the second body blow we’d given him in a short period of time. “What about it?” he said menacingly. It was Pat’s turn to back off a little, but I wasn’t sure that he’d be any more capable of doing it than I had been.
“We know all about you and Sally,” I said, causing him to shift his focus back on me. My brother and I were becoming adept at keeping our suspects off balance, at least most of the time.
“Leave her out of this,” he said forcefully.
“What’s wrong? Do you still carry a torch for her?” Pat asked.
“That’s it! Get off my land! Both of you!”
He was shouting now. I’d believed that Pat had embellished the altercation between Albert Yeats and Ollie before, but I could see the fire he’d talked about now. This man had a temper that I hadn’t been aware of, and I’d known him for years.
I wondered if we could push him any more than we had, but my twin brother tugged at my arm. “Come on, Annie. Let’s go.”
I reluctantly let him lead me away.
When we got back to his car, I said, “We didn’t even ask him about the note we found.”
“Do you honestly think that he was in any mood to answer another question?”
“No, probably not,” I said. “Man, he’s got a temper, doesn’t he?”
“Maybe enough to make him commit murder,” Pat said.
“We’re not making any friends here, are we?”
“That’s not the point of the exercise, is it? If we can get all three of them angry enough, maybe one of them will slip up.”
“Or maybe they’ll just come after us in our sleep,” I said, halfway joking.
“You’re right about that much. Annie, I really wish you’d stay over at my place tonight.”
Pat had made the request before, and I’d denied it every time. “I’m not about to let a killer drive me away from my home.”
“You sound pretty sure of it.”
“I am,” I said firmly.
“Then I guess I don’t have any choice. Is your couch open for me to sleep on?”
That was something. I knew how much my brother loved his moments of freedom from me and the Iron. If he was willing to sacrifice staying in his own apartment just to look out for me, that was saying something more telling than any words he could have used. “Okay.”
“Good. Then it’s settled. After we find Sally, I’ll pack a bag and join you at the cabin.”
“No, that’s not what I w
as agreeing to.”
“Annie, do you really want to fight me on this? I’m not giving in this time.”
I looked at my brother and shrugged. “I know that. That’s why I’m going to bunk with you, Pat. Only I get the bed, and you’re still stuck sleeping on the couch.”
“I can happily live with that,” he said.
“Then let’s go see if we can find Sally Tremont and make her just as angry with us as everyone else is,” I said with the hint of a smile.
It was not to be, though, at least that part of it. Sally wasn’t at home, and even after we drove around town trying to track her down, she was missing in action. I could think of three possibilities. Either she was hiding from us, hiding from the killer, or the murderer had already gotten her.
None of the prospects appealed to me, but for her sake, I hoped that she was ducking us.
Pat drove me out to the cabin to get some clothes, but we found two surprises waiting for me on the front porch before I even had a chance to go inside.
CHAPTER 22: PAT
“Is Timothy already sending you flowers?” I asked Annie. “Wow, that must have been some date you two had last night.”
“Didn’t you send Jenna any?” she asked me as we approached the cabin. “Pat, look at that.”
I looked where she was pointing, but I couldn’t see anything at first.
Then, as I got closer, I spotted what had alarmed Annie so much.
Someone had driven a knife into her front door, and from the look of it, it matched the one that had killed Albert Yeats.
I got out my cellphone as Annie asked me, “Who are you calling?”
“Kathleen,” I said. “She needs to see that.”
“Okay. You call her. I’m going to get in touch with the florist.”