“Like any other tarot reader who murdered someone in cold blood,” Alex said snidely.
I looked over toward her area and saw her most recent customer walk away after grabbing one of the pamphlets from her table. Gently elbowing Alex, I whispered, “I think that’s our cue.”
We began walking toward her booth, but I noticed that Craig hung back and didn’t join us. Alex turned around and waved him to us. He hurried to catch up with us wearing a smile that told me that damn Stephen had sidelined him the whole time they’d been partners. Well, not anymore. We three partners were in this case together, and that’s how it would be until it was solved.
Just before we reached her, Alex leaned in and said to Craig, “You’re in charge of watching her. If she tries to get away, stop her.”
I heard hesitation in Craig’s voice as he answered, “Okay. I won’t let her get away, Alex.”
Melody running away and having to be caught didn’t worry me as much as the possibility that she had some kind of magical ability to vanish or something like that. Alex may not have believed in witchcraft or the supernatural, but I did. While I’d never witnessed anything like someone vanishing into thin air firsthand, I didn’t discount the idea that it could be possible.
“Miss Chamberlain, I’m back to ask you a few more questions. Your alibi now says that you weren’t at The Colonnade seeing a movie during the time that Amy Perkins was murdered. Can you tell me where you were between the hours of eight and ten Thursday night?”
Alex stood in front of Melody’s booth with his pen and notepad in his hands waiting for her to answer, his body language relaying his confidence that he would find out the truth as he stood tall and straight, his focus zeroed in on her. I paid attention to her reaction to his succinct statement and saw how shaken she became by what he’d said.
Wearing those same necklaces as she had the last time we’d spoken to her, she tugged hard on them once again before standing up to answer his question. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, officer. I’m just a simple tarot card reader here to entertain people. As for where I was on Thursday night, I’ve already told you. I went to see a showing of An Affair to Remember at the movies.”
“The Colonnade?” I quickly asked, running through my knowledge of any other theaters in the area and coming up with none that showed older films like The Colonnade did.
She hesitated and pulled the necklaces tighter against her neck before saying, “Well, now that you ask, I’m not sure. I usually go there to see movies, but it might have been another theater.”
“Which one? Was it the one in Frederick? Or was it the one in Millville?” I asked, naming all the theaters in the area in rapid fire succession.
Melody attempted to stay calm, but by the way she was pulling on those necklaces, I knew not being able to come up with a solid lie was getting to her. I also worried that at any moment she’d decapitate herself.
“Now that you mention it, I think it was the one in Frederick. Yeah, that’s it. I’m sorry I got confused and said The Colonnade. I didn’t mean to mislead you.”
Before Alex could follow up on her statement, I stepped forward and shook my head. “I’m sorry, Melody, but that’s not possible. The theater in Frederick had been getting a complete refurbishment for the past two months, so it couldn’t have been there where you saw An Affair to Remember.”
She released the necklaces and threw her hands up in frustration. “Fine. Then it was the theater in Millville.”
“No, it wasn’t. The theater in Millville only shows first-run films during the week. On Saturday nights, as Officer Montero can attest to, they show a weekly monster movie, which I can promise you is nothing like An Affair to Remember. The only movie theater in the area that was showing that film on Thursday night was The Colonnade.”
“What does it matter where I saw the movie? I saw it and that means I couldn’t have killed Amy,” she said, her voice growing shrill by the time she said our victim’s name.
Now Alex spoke up to tighten the noose. “It matters because your alibi who works at The Colonnade, Richard Montanga, will testify that you were never there that night. You asked him to lie for you and say you were there, and he said yes because he’s your boyfriend. But while An Affair to Remember was playing, you were in the woods outside of Sunset Ridge killing Amy Perkins.”
“That’s a lie!” Melody cried out.
“No, it’s not, Morgan. That is your name, isn’t it? Morgan Tillerson? The game is over. We know all about your crimes as Morgan, and now as Melody, you can add murder. We have your fingerprint on a malachite stone found near Amy’s body and your alibi has fallen apart, so Morgan Tillerson/Melody Chamberlain, you have the right to remain silent.”
I saw her look to her left at the space that allowed her to leave her booth and knew what she planned to do. “Craig, don’t let her go!”
In a flash, she rushed out into the hall and ran toward the fire exit. Craig chased after her, but she reached the doors before he could grab her, and suddenly, the room filled with the piercing high-pitched sound of the fire alarm. Instinctively, I pressed my fingers into my ears, but Alex tugged on my arm.
“She can’t get away!” he yelled. “Come on!”
People rushed toward the front door and the fire exit door, creating a crowd at each one, so that by the time we got outside, neither Craig nor Melody were anywhere to be found. Alex pointed toward the street, so we hurried across it to get away from the earsplitting alarm that hadn’t been shut off yet.
Able to finally hear ourselves think, Alex pulled out his cell phone and called Craig. As he waited for him to answer, he scanned the area as I had a second earlier and found the same thing.
Nothing.
“Damnit! I told him not to let her escape. If he let her get away—”
Alex abruptly stopped talking and pointed down the street. I turned to see Craig holding Melody by the arm escorting her back to us. When they finally reached where we stood, I saw she had her hands behind her back because he had already placed the handcuffs on her wrists.
“Should I put her in the back of the cruiser?” Craig asked before letting out a huge sigh.
More than a little surprised, Alex nodded and handed him the keys. “Did you read her her rights?”
“Yep.”
“Okay, then. Yeah. Put her in and we’ll head back to the station. Good job, partner.”
Craig beamed a smile I was sure I’d never forget. No one in the history of law enforcement had ever been so happy to put someone in the back of a police car before. I looked at Alex and saw he was pretty happy too. Craig had been important to this case, and when the time came for him to spring into action, he did just that and caught our suspect before she got away and managed to change her name to yet something else.
“I guess all’s well that ends well?”
He smiled and shook his head. “Now comes the part that I have a feeling is going to be more than a little bizarre. Something tells me Melody or Morgan or whatever we’re supposed to call her isn’t going to be very helpful in helping us understand why she killed our victim.”
I looked into the back seat and wished she would just spill the beans. What made her commit that awful and final act of murder?
Through the window into the interrogation room, Derek and I watched Alex ask Melody that very question I’d wondered about as I got into the car in front of Jacob’s Hall. She insisted she had nothing to do with Amy’s death, despite the fact that her fingerprint was found on the malachite stone near the body and her alibi had fallen apart once her boyfriend told us the truth.
“There’s no point avoiding the reality that we know what happened. Fingerprints don’t lie. You were out in those woods, and I say it was the night that you killed Amy Perkins. What I want to know is why. Why kill Amy Perkins? Was it because she refused to call herself a witch? Was that what it was? She belittled your beliefs and you lashed out?”
Melody looked across the table at h
im, grimacing as she shook her head. “I’m not this Morgan person you claim I am, and I was at the movies that night. That’s all you’re going to get from me.”
Alex pushed a piece of paper across the table at her and tapped his finger on the top. “You and Morgan Tillerson have the same fingerprints. Interesting thing about fingerprints. They’re unique to each person. So there is no chance you and this person have identical fingerprints. Now that we’ve settled that, if you tell me what happened, maybe there were extenuating circumstances. Were you defending yourself?” he asked in a low voice, attempting to lead her to a confession.
Derek nudged my left arm and chuckled. “I never fail to enjoy watching him do this with suspects. Your boyfriend has the golden touch. He says things so directly, but the sound of his voice lulls them into wanting to tell him all their secrets.”
I smiled at his compliment on Alex’s interrogation style. He really did have a way of getting people to divulge what he wanted to know.
Melody pressed her lips together for a moment before she sighed and her entire body sagged in the chair. “Would it matter if I was defending myself?”
“It could. It would depend on the circumstances.”
I held my breath as I watched the scene unfolding in front of us. I could almost see the wheels begin to spin in her mind while she struggled to figure out how to explain how she’d been defending herself against Amy, a woman who was considerably smaller than she was in height and stature.
And the biggest problem with any self-defense claim would be the fact that Amy wasn’t killed by the dagger being buried in her chest. Alex hadn’t mentioned the real cause of death—smothering. The inescapable reality was smothering didn’t happen by accident and couldn’t truthfully be a method anyone could use to defend themselves. Smothering was a purely aggressive movement.
“He’s got her now. See how she’s thinking about what he just said about it being better for her if she was defending herself? Watch. She’s going to start talking now.”
As if right on cue, Melody began explaining that she and Amy had gone up into the woods to perform a cleansing ritual, but just after they started, Amy accused her of sleeping with her boyfriend. Melody played it up well and actually mustered up some tears to compliment her story.
“She was crazy. I was just standing there chanting and she began ranting and raving about that Kellen person. I didn’t know what to do. She lunged at me, and I guess I just grabbed the dagger we’d used in raising energy,” she sobbed.
I excitedly turned to my left and grabbed Derek’s arm as the lies poured out of Melody’s mouth. “That’s a complete fabrication! Amy was a Druid. What she believed never involved raising energy. Her friend told us all about it when we spoke to her. Amy just wouldn’t ever be a part of anything like this. She’s so lying!”
“Shhh. Just watch. Alex is letting her talk her way into a corner. She’s boxed herself in now.”
Alex wrote a few notes, carefully using his silence to control the pace of the interrogation. Melody fidgeted in her seat as the seconds ticked by and he still hadn’t looked up from his notepad. I loved watching him do this. There was something so skillful about it.
Finally, he lifted his head and looked across the table at her. “So you just grabbed the nearest thing to defend yourself, right? She was coming at you, not the other way around?”
She nodded her head up and down and pulled on those necklaces for the first time during their interview. “Yes. I was just defending myself. I swear.”
Very slowly, Alex put his pen down in the center of his notepad and leaned back in his chair. Folding his arms across his chest, he said, “See, here’s the problem with that story. Amy Perkins wasn’t murdered by a knife jammed into her chest. The cause of her death was smothering. You pushed something against her mouth and nose and tried to suffocate her. But you panicked when it didn’t happen fast enough and turned to a method you knew would work. You stabbed her in the chest. That’s how it happened, Melody. We know it, and you know it too.”
Stunned by Alex’s accurate description of what she’d really done that night out in the woods, Melody opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. She simply stared at him in disbelief before hanging her head.
“I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t let her go after she told me she found out about who I really was. I don’t know how she found out, but she did, and I knew she was the type of person who wouldn’t keep my secret. I wasn’t going to let her ruin everything. I’d started a new life, and I couldn’t let her take that away from me.”
Alex put his notepad and pen into his pocket and walked around the table to stand behind her. “Morgan Tillerson, you’re going away for a long time for the murder of Amy Perkins.”
After putting the handcuffs back on her wrists, he led her out of the interrogation room to start the process that I hoped would eventually lead to her spending the rest of her life behind bars. Turning to face Derek, I saw a smile on his face.
“How are you doing?”
His smile faded a little, and he shrugged. “I’m okay. The issue with Stephen worked itself out pretty well. I can’t say I’ll miss him much. I’m glad Alex decided to stay. You too.”
“Thanks. Craig is turning out to be a pretty good cop too, so don’t forget that,” I said, happy to build him up with his chief.
Derek leaned away from me like he couldn’t believe what I’d just said. “Really? I was going to ask Alex about how he did, but I’m glad to hear that you think he’s shaping up. I like him, you know? He’s a nice guy.”
“He is. I think with a decent partner he will end up being a good cop.”
Left unsaid was my concern that Derek would assign him permanently as Alex’s partner. While I genuinely liked Craig, I also liked being able to work with Alex one-on-one. But like always, the truth was I wasn’t a police officer. Craig was. So Derek had every right as the chief to place him with Alex, and I’d have no right to say a word about it.
“I think you’re right. Any suggestions on who would be a good partner for him?” Derek asked, smirking the entire time.
Looking back into the empty interrogation room, I shrugged. “Why ask me? I’m not on the force.”
We stood in silence until he said, “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. I’ve looked into it, and I can deputize anyone I want on any case. It’s basically what I’ve been doing the whole time you’ve been working with Alex, but from now on, I’m going to make it official. It’s only for the duration of each case, but it’s something I think I should do.”
My mouth dropped open at Derek’s news. Deputized? A real member of the police force?
“Oh my God! That’s so great! I don’t know what to say.”
Derek let out a hearty laugh at my surprise. “That’s a first. Poppy McGuire not knowing what to say.”
Actually, I did have one question.
“Do I get a badge?” I asked, hoping the answer would be yes.
He rolled his eyes and turned around to walk out. “I’ll think about it. In the meantime, it’s good to have you on the team, Poppy.”
Poppy McGuire, deputy of the Sunset Ridge police department. I loved that!
As I headed out of the viewing room to find Alex, I couldn’t wait to tell him. Tonight, we’d celebrate.
Alex sat behind his desk filling out forms on the Amy Perkins case when I walked in and sat down in my usual seat. I didn’t say anything until he looked over at me, but I was dying to share my news.
“You look like you’re going to explode, Poppy. What’s going on?”
“Derek just gave me the best news. He’s going to make me a deputy for each case we work on. I might even be getting a badge! How cool is that? Deputized!”
A smile slowly lifted the corners of his mouth. “I was wondering when he would give you the news. I knew you’d be happy, though. I’m glad he did it after all this time.”
“You knew? How long did you know he was planning to do
this?”
“We talked about it a few times, but he told me this morning after talking to the town council about it.”
I thought back to when he and Derek were meeting with the door closed. So that’s what they were discussing. I’d assumed it had been about the Amy Perkins case.
“Why were you guys talking about this behind closed doors for so long? Was there a problem?” I asked, suddenly unsure Alex really wanted me to be deputized on each of our cases.
“No. We talked about a few other things too. We weren’t just talking about you being deputized.”
Now I was intrigued. Why wasn’t he telling me what they talked about?
“Is there something going on that I should know about, Alex? Is something wrong?”
He shook his head and smiled. “I’ll tell you what we talked about over dinner. How does pizza sound? We can sit outside in the backyard since the heatwave is supposed to break tonight.”
“Pizza sounds great, but only if it cools down. If not, we’re going to have to take our dinner inside.”
“It’s a deal. I can’t have you melting on me now. That won’t do.”
Thrilled with how everything had turned out, I sat relaxed in my chair, happy to say we’d solved another case. “So in the end, Amy was killed because she was going to be an honest person and Melody couldn’t stand that.”
“Pretty much. It was never about witchcraft or her being a Druid. It wasn’t Amy’s secrets that did her in but Melody’s.”
It wouldn’t be any consolation to her family, but they could be proud that she was a good person who believed in the truth above everything else.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I came down the stairs to the delicious aroma of pizza with sausage and peppers, my favorite kind of fast food. Taking a deep breath in, I stopped next to the kitchen table and lifted the pizza box to see our dinner. It wasn’t fancy or elegant, but I had a feeling it would hit the spot.
Alex peeked his head in the back door and smiled. “How was your shower? Feeling better now?”
The Witching Hour Page 22