Death on the Rocks--A Short Read

by K. J. Emrick

  “To answer the door. Didn’t you hear the knock?”

  “No, I’m afraid not,” Miranda said, with a smile that was lost on its recipient.

  Faith seemed distracted, her eyes continually on the door to the sitting room, as if waiting for Olivia to come back. Of course, Miranda knew fine and well who had been at the door. It was Jack Travis.

  Taking advantage of Faith’s obvious lack of desire for conversation, Miranda let her gaze turn to Kyle and Alice, and raised her eyebrows to ask a silent question.

  “I used to date Faith,” Alice explained, her expression sad.

  Miranda tried to keep her reaction to herself. That was… unexpected.

  “She dumped me,” Alice went on quickly, “when she found out about Terence and me. I cheated on her, oh, I remember it all now. I’d forgotten what a horrible person I was. How could I forget that?”

  “It’s complicated,” Kyle said, trying to help. “I know there’s parts of my life that I’ve forgotten, and some of it comes back in flashes just to disappear again…”

  “Oh yeah?” Alice snapped, wiping away ghostly tears from her eyes. “Did you forget an entire relationship? Or how you ruined it by letting an old man take you to his bed and—”

  “Okay,” Miranda said, cutting through the argument that was starting between those two. Faith glanced her way with an arched eyebrow. “Um…”

  Thankfully she was saved from having to come up with yet another crazy excuse for her weird behavior when Olivia swept back into the sitting room, with Jack Travis following in her wake.

  “And what might you be doing here, Miss Wylder?” Jack asked her. Was that a smile she saw at the corner of his mouth?

  “The dog!” she blurted out. Then, a little more calmly, she added, “I came to return Butter. They don’t seem to want him here and I might have to keep him.”

  “Well, that wouldn’t be so bad. He seems like good dog.” He was definitely smiling now.

  And he was a dog person.

  Oh, Miranda knew she was in trouble with this one.

  “Well,” he said, his demeanor becoming professional again. “This is an active investigation, Miss Wylder, and you’re a key witness. I’m sure you’ll understand when I say you shouldn’t be here?”

  Miranda knew he was right, but she could not help but feel a little crestfallen by the brush off he was giving her, even if he was being polite about it.

  “I’m so sorry, I didn’t think. You see,” she tried to excuse her presence here, “when you said that Butter ought to go to the family, I thought you meant immediately. I didn’t realize that there would be any sort of police investigation right here. I really am very sorry.”

  He didn’t say anything at first. Everyone in the room was watching her, and Miranda felt her cheeks heating. Kyle and Alice floated to her side but only she could see them supporting her.

  “Well,” Jack finally said. “Let me walk you out. Olivia, I’ll be right back.”

  Miranda rose to her feet and meekly made her way out of the sitting room, Jack following her. She grew angrier with each step, until they were in the entryway of the mansion and alone and Travis was about to say something to her when Miranda cut him off.

  “Look, I’ve already apologized, but I really do have something important to tell you.”

  He blew out a breath, and then shrugged. “All right, I’m game. What do you want to say?”

  “I think,” Miranda told him, “that I have a fairly good idea who killed Alice.”

  Chapter 5

  “Let’s walk, shall we?” Jack Travis said, lightly taking Miranda’s elbow. In truth, she didn’t entirely mind.

  He waited until they were outside this time. Over in her car, Miranda saw Butter jump up against the partly-open window, panting and pawing at the glass for her attention. She wandered over to her car, Jack following her, to give the dog’s fur a good ruffling. “I won’t be much longer Butter, I promise.” She felt Jack watching her intently.

  After a moment, he seemed to come back to himself. “Miss Wylder, you really should not be snooping around in a murder case. Do you want the investigation tainted? Do you want the guilty party to get away, Miss Wylder?”

  “No, I don’t. Say… can you do me a favor?”

  He looked surprised at the question. “You mean, other than not arresting you for tampering with a police investigation?”

  “Yes, other than that. I really was only here to offer my condolences and deliver the dog.”

  He snorted, telling her how much he did not believe her. “Fine. What’s the favor, Miss Wylder?”

  “Can you call me Miranda?”

  He blinked, and then chuckled. “Sure. Miranda it is, if you’ll call me Jack.”

  With that settled, Miranda told Jack everything from the moment she had arrived at the house. She told him everything that Eleanor had said about her estranged husband and his relationship with Alice, including the idea that Alice had seduced him in order to be named in the will. When she told Jack about the intimate moment she had caught Eleanor in with Joel Stephens, the attorney, his eyebrows rose comically high.

  Good, she thought. Maybe next time he wouldn’t dismiss her as just some red-headed ninny poking around where she shouldn’t.

  “And,” she continued, “I’ve also found some evidence. You see, I was trying to find my way back to the sitting room and I ended up taking all the wrong turns. I found Terence Crenshaw’s bedroom, and there’s a drawer full of paperwork in there, and I think you should see it. Everything about it points to Eleanor Crenshaw being the murderer.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t be the first time an abandoned wife had killed the mistress, now would it?” Jack said, interested now in Miranda’s take on things. “Except, I can’t just go walking through someone’s house and rifling through their drawers for incriminating evidence. I’m a police officer.”

  “You can,” she smiled at him, “if you happen to get lost along your way back to the sitting room, and take the exact same wrong turns that I did, and if the drawer just happens to be open when you look in the room. Am I right?”

  He nodded to her with something close to respect. “Yes. That’s true. Of course, I’d have to be sure I got lost in just the right way.”

  “Lucky for you, I’m an expert at getting lost.” Giving Butter a last pat she said, “Come on.”

  As they walked through several corridors, Miranda began to mentally run through each and every piece of paperwork she had seen. She knew which ones they should look at, and she was ordering them by which ones she thought were most important. Eventually they reached the master bedroom. The door was closed. Funny, she thought. Hadn’t she left it open? She reached for the doorknob.

  It was locked.

  “You sure this is the right room?” Jack said, looking up and down the short hallway. “Lots of doors here.”

  “Yes, I’m certain… this should be open.” She tried to give the door handle another turn while pushing on it, to the same effect. It remained shut and locked.

  “On a scale of one to ten,” he asked her quietly, “one being completely unsure and ten being swear-on-a-stack-of-Bibles sure, just how sure are you.”

  “I’m sure!” she snapped back at him. “This was the door.”

  Kyle’s head and shoulders materialized through the door and Miranda jumped back a step from him. “You’re right. This is Terence’s old bedroom. Alice says she’s spent a lot of nights in here doing—”

  Miranda lifted a hand up to him, really not wanting him to finish that sentence. Then realizing how silly she looked holding her hand up like that she carried on and ran her fingers through her hair.

  Sighing heavily, Jack reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a little cloth case. He grinned at her, and winked, as he withdrew two long and thin pieces of metal from the case. Then he bent over and fit them into the lock.

  “You’re picking the lock?” she exclaimed.

  “I suppose you could say tha
t.”

  Well, well. “Isn’t that an unusual sort of skill for a police officer to have learned?”

  “Oh, well, occasionally I lose my house keys, and I find that this is cheaper than replacing windows.”

  Miranda didn’t believe him for a second. Still, she liked the way his backside flexed with him crouched over like that, working the metal tools in the keyhole…

  “Got it,” he declared, startling Miranda. She’d been rather focused on the curve of his rump.

  Jack smiled triumphantly as he rose to his feet and turned the handle, pushing the door inwards. As the pair of them walked in, Miranda gasped. There, laying in the centre of the floor, was the very definitely dead body of Eleanor Crenshaw.

  “Oh,” Kyle said with an apologetic sort of frown. “Did I forget to mention that part?”

  Chapter 6

  In no time at all, the house was swarming with police officers. In truth there was only four of them, five if she counted Jack, but they went rushing in and out so quickly that there seemed to be ten times that many.

  Considering how small Moonlight Bay was, this could be the entire police force, Miranda thought to herself. It wasn’t like dealing with the Police in Melbourne, that was for certain.

  She had been told to wait outside the bedroom door, and with nothing to do but wait she made use of her time by eavesdropping.

  “I’m just saying, Jack,” one of the other officers was saying, “that this Miranda Wylder of yours has now been the first person at the scene of two homicides in as many days. You don’t think that’s suspicious? Maybe she has something to do with it all.”

  “I doubt it,” Jack said, without any further explanation.

  “Then tell me this. If the door was locked, where is the key?”

  “I have no idea where the key is. I picked the lock.”

  “You picked it?” the officer hissed in surprise, making it very hard for Miranda to listen in on what he was saying. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

  “Yes, I picked it. Get over it,” Jack said, with a sigh. “And get over the idea, the very simplistic idea I might add, that Miranda Wylder has anything to do with it. Really, why would such a smart woman lead a police detective to a dead body if she was the one who did the killing? Seriously, think about what you’re saying.”

  “Ooh,” Kyle suddenly said at her elbow. “I really like this guy. Mmm, if I was still alive you’d have competition for him!”

  “Shh,” Miranda held a finger up to her lips in the age-old sign to be quiet. “This isn’t about… I don’t like him in that way,” she said quietly.

  Kyle’s smile widened, and even Alice gave her a mischievous look. Miranda rolled her eyes. “Just forget about that for now. I need you two to keep snooping about. I’m sure Eleanor killed you, Alice, but I’m missing something because who killed Eleanor?”

  She clamped her lips tight as another uniformed officer hurried past her and into the bedroom to confer with Jack.

  Alice shook her head. “I don’t understand why I’m still here. It’s obvious that Eleanor killed me, so why am I not moving on? I don’t care who killed Eleanor. She killed me over this inheritance thing, and now that you found the proof Miranda I want to go on to whatever is next. I don’t want to be this way anymore.”

  Kyle put his arm around her shoulders, the blue haziness of their images mixing together at the edges. “Miranda will figure this out,” he promised. “In the meantime you’ve got me here with you. It’s not so bad, is it?”

  Alice seemed less than convinced, but she didn’t try to move away from Kyle, either.

  Ghosts, Miranda thought to herself sarcastically. Which reminded her… she peered sneakily into the bedroom, wondering if there would be any sign of Eleanor’s ghost. Seeing nothing except the officers going about their business, she wondered where the woman’s spirit could be. Perhaps she had already moved on? Perhaps not every ghost in Australia would end up living with her in Ragged Rest after all.

  “Jack, there’s a syringe here,” she heard one of the officers say. They’d been searching the room for nearly twenty minutes now and apparently they’d found something.

  “Well, leave it just where it is,” Jack directed. “I don’t want you accidentally pricking yourself with it, understood? We’ve logged this pile of paperwork on the bed, haven’t we?”

  “Yeah,” a younger officer said, flipping pages in his notebook. “Erm, there’s a will. Then there’s some sort of medical paperwork, something about a transplant. Kidney, by the looks of it.”

  Miranda was surprised to hear that everything she had put back in the drawer was now laid out prominently upon the bed. Had the killer gone through that paperwork as well?

  As Miranda kept watching, she saw Alice suddenly appear at the side of Eleanor’s body. The young woman looked down at her and sighed sadly.

  “I know she was a mean old bat, but she didn’t deserve this,” Alice said, surprising Miranda with her sympathy. “All of this is my fault. All of it. There’s more I need to tell you.”

  Miranda stepped away from the door, realizing she’d been pressing her luck anyway. Soon enough one of the officers was going to come along and forcibly remove her if she kept spying on them. Back in the hallway she took a dozen or so steps down the hall and waited for Alice and Kyle to fade through the wall next to her.

  When she did, the young woman’s ghostly expression was fuzzier than usual. “I didn’t cheat on Faith because I was in love with Terence. I only did it to get at the family fortune and I was playing the trophy girlfriend. But you see, that wasn’t enough for me. I couldn’t guarantee that Terence would change his will for me. In fact, he didn’t right away.” Alice looked down at the floor again. “Joel did.”

  “Joel?” Kyle said, his tone carrying everything that was running through Miranda’s mind. “Joel Stephens? The Crenshaw’s attorney?”

  Alice began to rub at her forehead as if the memories were popping in her mind one at a time. “Yes. I seduced him too, you see. It didn’t take much. He’s a bit of a letch, to be honest, and he forged a new will in no time. Anyway, in the end, Terence changed his will anyway. He loved me, and still I could not help myself. I wanted more. I had a copy of the forged will, and even though I no longer needed it, I sent a letter to Joel, blackmailing him. I threatened to show everybody the forgery if he didn’t start sending me money.” She faded in and out of focus, obviously upset by her confession. “Maybe that’s why I can’t move on? Maybe I’m just too evil and too greedy?”

  Kyle patted her arm encouragingly. “Just keep going, Alice. We need to get to the end of this. There’s no sense in going into the rights and wrongs of it all now.”

  Miranda wasn’t sure she entirely agreed with that, but she let it go.

  With a sad smile, Alice continued. “In a minute those cops are going to try to get into that safe in the living room. It has kind of a dead man’s switch. I asked Terence to put it in as a sort of safeguard. I started receiving death threats. In fact, I was receiving them almost from the moment I started seeing Terence.”

  “What’s the combination for the safe?” Kyle asked.

  “I’m not sure. I don’t know if I’ve forgotten it, or if Terence came up with the combination and I never knew it, or what. He was as keen as I was to have it put in, so maybe the combination is lost forever with his death.”

  Miranda turned, hearing footsteps in the corridor. Faith and Olivia were making their way to her, with Joel Stephens wandering along behind. Jack, obviously hearing them approach, made his way out of the bedroom.

  “Sorry, folks, we can’t have you all up here.”

  “I want to go in and see her,” Olivia insisted in a strident and demanding tone.

  “No, I don’t think that’s a good idea. I don’t think you should see her this way.”

  Miranda admired the firm but considerate way that Jack spoke to Olivia. She wasn’t sure she would be able to be that steadfast in the face of this rampaging, sp
oiled girl.

  “But I’m family.” Olivia wasn’t giving up. “Don’t you need me to identify her, or something?”

  Funny, Miranda thought. Just one hour ago Olivia had insisted that Eleanor was no relation of hers. Next to her, Faith stared down at the floor. She was obviously nervous. The poor woman was sweating and clinging to her friend’s arm.

  “Oh, dear me,” Joel Stephens said from behind the two girls. “There’s just no provision for this. Eleanor hadn’t made her will yet, and since she will have inherited everything on the passing of Alice Gill, now the inheritance will switch to the next living relative. That would be Olivia, officer. I’m afraid she owns this entire estate.”

  Jack’s smile was thin. “You mean, she will own it. After the estate goes through probate. If she wants to order me around after that, well, we can have a conversation about it then. For right now, this is my crime scene, and if I ask the three of you to step off, I’d suggest that you get to stepping.”

  “He’s really impressive,” Kyle whispered meaningfully into Miranda’s ear. “Don’t you think?”

  Yes, she did, but that wasn’t the point. She was about to wave him away when suddenly, she had a flash of inspiration. Quite where it come from, she had no idea, but she didn’t want to waste it. Turning her back to everyone so they wouldn’t see what she was doing, she whispered to Alice as quietly she could.

  “When did you first meet Terence? I mean, what was the date?”

  As soon as Alice gave her answer, Miranda called for Jack to come over, asking if he could help her for a moment.

  He walked down to where she was standing, but he didn’t look happy about it. “Miranda, I’m in the middle of something. Whatever new insight or discovery you think you’ve made is going to have to wait.”

  “Just listen to me, okay? I know where the most important clue is. I have the combination to that safe in the sitting room. It’s booby trapped. If you try to open it without the combination then you’ll just set everything inside on fire.”