Mael considered Willow’s new idea, his face brightening a little before disappearing back into gloom. “How would I do that?”
“Well,” Harmony said, leading them out of the sheriff’s office and into the crisp, midday air, “what were you doing after eight that night? Perhaps we should start there.”
“I was here,” Mael said in disgust, waving his hand across the town square.
“Walk us through it, then.” Harmony stepped up beside him and gave him a quick touch on the shoulder. “Start with when you threw eggs at Mr. Randall’s car and finish with when you got home.”
Mael moved them to the edge of the square, Reg nodding in recognition as they reached the place he’d caught on camera.
“Roger’s car was over there,” Mael said pointing, then frowned. “Well, it still is there.”
The egg white wash had set into a crackle glaze on the black sedan still parked out on the street in front of Roger’s office.
“What time did you have on the camera around then?” Willow asked Reg, who peered at the screen for so long that Harmony ripped it out of his hands with a tut.
“That was just after seven-thirty.”
“I sat on the bench opposite the building for a while after.”
As they crossed over the road, Willow asked, “Weren’t you afraid the police would be called? I think I would have run away.”
“I never expected to get away with it,” Mael said, pointing to the CCTV cameras mounted on each corner of the square. “I don’t have the know-how to dismantle those, so I just assumed a day or two would pass at most before the police came knocking on my door.” He shrugged. “The point was to let Mr. Randall know how angry I was, not to get away with it.”
“Do you mind if I ask you something delicate?” Willow was thinking back to the rude clerk in the drugstore and her loose lips.
Mael shrugged. “Go ahead. If it helps get my mom out, I don’t mind.”
“Did you believe Roger Randall was your father?”
Chapter Thirteen
The look of horror that passed over Mael’s face told Willow the answer more effectively than his stuttered denials.
“I’m sorry,” she said, backing up a step with her hands up. “I’ve just heard from a few different places that your mom and he might have been having a dalliance.”
“The guy was a complete jerk!” Mael slammed his fist into his palm. “Do you know he reduced mom’s pay six months ago? He put her down to minimum wage after twenty years of working there because he said his expenses were growing out of hand.”
“Was his business in trouble?” Harmony asked Willow, who shook her head.
“I have no idea. I’ve never talked about business with the man, except for when he purchased my reverse mortgage, and that was mostly done through solicitors.”
“Of course, he wasn’t in trouble,” Mael spat out in a fury. “His business posted a larger profit this year than last year. That didn’t stop him.”
“Why did your mother accept that?” Harmony asked. “If that were me, I would have walked out and found something else!”
“I told her to, but money was already tight. My dad—my actual dad,” Mael added with a furious scowl in Willow’s direction “—hasn’t kept up with his support payments, and mom doesn’t want to take him to court. She’s too soft. When she told Mr. Randall that she wouldn’t accept the pay cut, he told her the alternative was that he fire her and hire some young intern fresh out of university to work for free!”
“Ouch.”
Willow ducked her head down, feeling the impact of Roger’s ruthlessness as a physical blow. She knew about Jimmy and his grudge—everyone in town did—but for some reason she’d put aside that knowledge when she was with Roger. He was charming to her, courteous, gentle, lovely in fact. Even though she knew in the back of her mind there was another side to him, this revelation of how harsh that side was came as a shock.
The group reached the bench, only to find a man already sitting there, a disconsolate look on his face. His elbows were on his thighs, hands dangling uselessly between his legs. He stared at the building opposite as though it had sucked out all his hopes and dreams.
Even though she’d seen him most days in the past few years, it took Willow a couple of seconds to recognize Jimmy. Without his sandwich boards, he was difficult to place.
“What are you doing here, Jimmy?” Willow asked him kindly. “Shouldn’t you be home, starting a new project?”
As the group took a seat beside him, Jimmy shuffled farther along the bench. His large feet trampled a dandelion, struggling against the odds to grow in a crack in the pavement.
“I don’t know what to do, anymore,” Jimmy mumbled. “I spent so much time tramping up and down outside Randall’s business that I never gave a thought to how I’d occupy myself if it all came right.”
Willow winced at the phrase. How could someone think murder was ‘everything coming out right?’
“Don’t you have any hobbies?”
Jimmy just waved his hand at the road opposite. “That was my hobby. Once Roger swindled me out of my home, that protest was all I had left. I lost my business ‘cause I couldn’t afford the outlay, my wife left me, and I live in a one-bedroom apartment I’m pretty sure the council should have condemned years ago. I didn’t have anything but my protest.”
“Go to the library,” Harmony said. That was her form response to anybody at a loose end, but Willow conceded, in this case, it might be the answer.
Jimmy just shrugged. “Maybe I’ll try that. I’ll move on and let you folks sit, anyhow.”
Although they immediately reassured him he didn’t need to, Jimmy walked off, tucking his large hands into his pockets.
As she watched him walk away, pieces of evidence began to click together in Willow’s mind. She turned to Reg. “Could you take a few photos of Jimmy for me?” A note of urgency in her voice caused him to spring into immediate action. “Make sure you get a few good shots of his feet.”
The walk back into the sheriff’s office was made with even more determination than the previous visit. Willow strode up to the counter and banged her fist down, making Mary-Jo jump.
“I want to see Sheriff Wender, and I want to see him right now.”
Whether it was her tone of voice, her confidence, or merely a convenient gap in the sheriff’s schedule, Mary-Jo buzzed through to Jacob, and he appeared within seconds.
“I hope this isn’t a wind-up,” he said, shooting a quick glance over his shoulder at Detective Jones. He lowered his voice and ushered the group toward his desk. “I would really appreciate something good right now. Some of the people working this case don’t seem to listen to reason.”
“We have photographic evidence that clears Trisha Layton of any wrongdoing.” Willow turned to Reg, making a hurry-up gesture as he struggled with his pockets. When he finally pulled the camera free and placed it on the desk in front of Sheriff Wender, she felt like saying, “Ta-da!”
“What am I looking at?”
“That’s a picture of Jimmy Niko that Reg took just now,” Willow said, pointing at the smudge of an image on the camera.
After a second of the sheriff frowning in puzzlement at the shot, Harmony leaned forward, gave an exasperated sigh, and flicked through to the correct picture.
The sheriff’s face didn’t look any more illuminated.
“Look at his shoes,” Willow insisted, pointing where she thought they might be. The sheriff gently moved her hand away from the frame.
“I don’t get it. Jimmy has very plain, brown shoes. So what?”
“Now look at the image that Reg took of him on the night Roger was murdered.”
Willow nodded to Harmony, who did the honors. “See the difference?”
“He swapped shoes.” Sheriff Wender looked at Willow, his fingers drumming out an impatient beat on the table.
“Look at the size of them,” Willow insisted. “Jimmy must wear a size twelve or more. Thos
e aren’t just different shoes. They’re different feet!”
It took a scroll through the CCTV feed from three different days before the sheriff was convinced. The five of them crowded into the booth with the tiny screen, even though Harmony pointed out at least two of them couldn’t see it.
Willow didn’t need to see the images clearly to know what they’d show, however. The man tramping up and down in front of Roger’s building while the man was being murdered wasn’t Jimmy.
“He kept his head down the whole time,” Harmony noted. “Look at this.” She pointed to the tiny screen. “No one walking by would ever have seen his face. That could be anyone in a wig.”
“It’s not anyone,” the sheriff said with a note of satisfaction. “That’s Billy no-name from down at the city mission. He’d do anything for drinking money.”
When the group emerged outside the sheriff’s office, it was with the addition of Trisha Layton, who still couldn’t believe her luck.
“I thought they were going to keep me banged up forever.”
Willow gave the woman’s arm a squeeze. Their shared bond of a television show made her feel like Trisha was now a long-lost friend. A college roommate or similar.
Surprisingly, Mael had a more difficult time with his mother’s release.
“I can’t believe you thought I killed your boss,” he said over and over, shaking his head.
“Considering that you vandalized his car,” Reg eventually interceded to say, “I think you should give your poor mother a break. Besides, at least now you know if you do want to commit murder, you won’t go down for it.”
“Reg!” five voices said with a combination of shock and laughter.
“It’s true,” he said. “Not that I’m encouraging that behavior, young man.”
They hung around the sheriff’s office so long, congratulating each other on their accomplishments, and narrow escapes, they were still outside when Jimmy was brought along in cuffs. While Sheriff Wender fumbled with the station door, Jimmy turned to the group.
“I’m sorry that you lost your boyfriend,” he told Willow with a shake of his head. “But I can’t apologize for what I did, even though I’m now ready to admit to his killing. That man needed to find out what it feels to have your life destroyed.”
Willow was so filled with outrage at the cold-hearted speech that, for a while, she couldn’t answer. Her cheeks flushed red with heat and her hands curled into fists.
“Why did you do it now?” she finally asked. The question frustrated her when there were so many more she wanted an answer for, but it was the one she alighted on first.
“Billy no-name came along, looking for money,” Jimmy said with a shrug. “I usually just move him along, but he said he’d carry the sign and walk up and down all day in return for a bottle of spirits. He said no one would ever know it wasn’t me. It just got the wheels turning in my head.”
“And what?” Tears filled Willow’s eyes as she stared at the blank face of a man she’d never really known. “You thought this is the perfect opportunity to murder someone in cold blood?”
Sheriff Wender made a move as if to escort the prisoner inside, but Reg stepped forward and held up a hand. “Let him give her an answer, hey? You might be saving all of us a lot of sleepless nights spent wondering.”
“Roger took all the best parts of my life and used them to fund his weekend golfing.” Jimmy’s face twisted with rage. “I would’ve killed him years ago, but I was scared to spend my life in prison. When Billy made the offer, I realized I don’t have a life. Not anymore. Roger stripped it all away from me.”
“I nearly spent those years in prison for you,” Trisha said, stepping forward. She poked a finger into Jimmy’s chest and the sheriff grabbed her hand and moved it away with a stern expression. “And if it hadn’t been me, it might’ve been my boy!”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t have let that happen.” Jimmy straightened up his shoulders. “I’m not an evil man, just a bad one. Perhaps, if I’d been a better man, I might’ve been able to move on instead of dwelling on everything I’d lost.”
“You never even tried. Out front with your billboard every day.” Trisha’s lip curled. “You could have been out getting a job and putting your life back together. Roger did more harm to me and I never even thought of doing what you did. You made the choice to look backward instead of forward. You chose to seeth and wreak revenge on somebody who was just doing a job.”
“My life wasn’t a business deal!” The flash of hatred in Jimmy’s face was so strong Willow fell back a step, curling her hand up against her chest. “I was a real person, not just some number on a spreadsheet. I mattered!”
“So did Roger!” Willow felt the tears fall but didn’t bother to wipe them away. She’d suppressed them for long enough. “He was a kind man and a humorous one, and I loved him. How dare you take him away from me?”
Jimmy stared at her, his own face crumbling into disarray until, finally, he couldn’t look her in the eye any longer and stared down at the floor. “What’s done is done.”
Sheriff Wender jerked Jimmy forward and pushed through into the office to lead the man down to the cells. Reg put an arm around Willow’s shoulders and she leaned against him, grateful for the support.
“I suppose if I take your advice, Trisha, and look forward instead of backward, I should be glad the real killer has been brought to justice,” Willow said. “I know Roger had a very different influence on your lives, but I’m grateful for the time I got to know him.”
She thought of the Roger she’d grown close to, the man who would drop by at night with a surprise gift and a twinkle in his eye. “I’m also happy I no longer need to watch my back for a killer.”
“Amen to that,” Trisha said with a smile. “And yes, despite all his numerous flaws, I think deep down, Roger could be a good man.”
“Very, very, very deep down,” Mael grumbled, causing his mom to laugh again.
“I think we should do something to celebrate,” Harmony said. “What do you think?”
“I think,” Willow said, hooking her arm through Reg’s and Harmony’s, “you should all come back to mine for a nice cup of herbal tea.”
It would give her great pleasure to see the tape being taken down from her precious garden and life going back to some semblance of normal. No matter what regrets she wept over in the small hours of the night.
Chapter Fourteen
Willow pressed down the lid on the cardboard box and held it in place with her elbow while she wrestled with the masking tape. After having filled up a half-dozen boxes already, she was now something of an expert at packing.
She was also tuckered out.
The kettle whistled its cheery tune to say it was ready and waiting. Willow maneuvered the last box into the hallway alongside its brothers, all ready and waiting for the St. Vincent van to drop by and collect them.
Eschewing her usual mid-morning mint tea for a second cup of coffee, Willow walked to the kitchen door and opened it to peer out at the view beyond. With the memories of the terrible sight that had greeted her one morning too strong to stand, she’d dug up the path from the garden to the shed.
There was now a new route, sown with a trail of brightly colored pebbles instead of old concrete tiles. The spot where Roger had been discovered was now bare earth.
Although it wouldn’t be fit for planting until the spring, Willow had turned over the soil in that patch and mulched in lots of fertilizer, readying it in preparation for the seasons ahead. As soon as the weather grew warmer, Willow planned to sow lots of daisies into the ground there.
That would be a much better reminder of Roger than the haunting memory her mind threw at her currently. A row of the flowers he both loved to see, smell, and drink when brewed up in a nice pot of chamomile tea.
In the years to come, Willow also hoped her memories would recede into the bittersweet pangs of what might have been instead of the sharp needle of loss she felt now.
“An
ybody home?” Harmony called out from the side of the house. She held up a pail of manure as a present—and the reason she hadn’t let herself into the front of the house.
“Thank you so much,” Willow said, taking it out of her friend’s hands and placing it around the back, by the shed door. “My garden will love you for this all next year.”
“My neighbor said you’re welcome to as much of their horse droppings as you can stand to collect,” Harmony said, giving Willow a fragrant hug. “Although I must say, he looked shocked when I first asked him.”
“I can imagine,” Willow said with a laugh, shaking her head as she ushered Harmony indoors. “It’s not every day someone offers to clean up after your animal and pay you for the privilege.”
“He wouldn’t take the money,” Harmony said, pulling some crumpled notes out of her pocket. She held them out for Willow, who shook her head. “Your door-to-door service is worth it. Hold tight, and I’ll get you a brew.”
Harmony’s tastes changed like her interests, stopping in one port for a few weeks before sailing forth to another. For the past month, it had stopped on rosehip, and Willow was eager to find out where her friend’s taste buds would lead her next.
“I swear, this tea is good enough to sell,” Harmony said, taking a seat in the lounge and waving at Mavis, who was sunning herself inside her new home. “You should packet it up and try the Sunday markets. I’m sure you’d make a killing.”
“Actually,” Willow said, choosing her words carefully because the idea behind them was so tender, “I had been thinking about something along those lines. The solicitor handling Roger’s estate contacted me to say he’s lodged probate and in another six months—barring any unforeseen appeals from long lost family members—I should receive his bequest in my account.”
“That’ll be a relief, I’m sure,” Harmony said.
Willow nodded at her friend, taking another sip from her cup to forestall the words she wasn’t sure she was ready to say aloud.
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