by K. J. Emrick
“Thanks, Ben. Can you show Stephanie where to go? Carly and I will just sit at one of the desks out here.”
“Sure, sure. Make yourselves at home.”
There are four desks just inside the door from the lobby, used by the officers to do their work, write reports, or sometimes kick their feet up and catch a nap when nothing’s going on. There are only seven cops in town now—my Kevin included—so it’s not like Carly and I would be in the way even if all of them were on duty at once. Which they aren’t, of course. Got to believe Kevin’s going to call all of them in now if he hasn’t already, but I saw two of them at the Inn before we left, and Kevin and Ben Isling are here, and that only leaves the three others. Might have to get help from the Federal cops if we can’t find the answer to this mystery straight off.
Watching Ben walk Stephanie down the hallway to the interview room, I tell myself we might have the answer right here in the form of a tall, statuesque blonde who was maybe having an affair with the victim. That’s exactly what all the clues so far seemed to be pointing to, least as far as I can see. Stephanie was obviously in love with Jackson. Between Thornton’s veiled hints and what Stephanie did—and didn’t—say, seems to me it might just be that simple. She loved him, he didn’t love her, and she overreacted. It’s the perfect recipe for murder.
A tingling at the back of my mind reminded me that nothing was ever that simple. Not in Lakeshore. Well. Just have to see what Kevin gets out of Stephanie, I suppose.
From the corner of my eye I can see Carly watching Ben and Stephanie disappearing into the interview room, too. Only, I can tell from her posture that she’s not watching our murder suspect.
Intentionally keeping a smile off my face, I ask her casually, “Ben’s grown up quite a bit, don’t you think?”
“Has he?” she mutters. “I really hadn’t noticed.”
I doubt that seriously, considering her eyes have measured the seat of his pants more than once now.
Hmm. Makes me wonder if my daughter had some other reason for wanting to come down to the police station with me. I mean, I’d like it if the whole reason was so she could spend some time with her dear old mom, but I understand that parents will take a backseat when it comes to things like cute guys. I’m oddly okay with that.
I didn’t know she had any interest in Ben, though. In anyone, really. I mean, she’s been back in town long enough to have renewed some friendships, but she hasn’t gone out of the Inn more than once or twice a week. I gave her space whenever she did because I didn’t want to smother her with motherly concern and scare her back behind a locked door again. Maybe my daughter’s been doing better with getting out and about than I thought she was.
For now, it’s just a matter of me and her sitting here and waiting for Kevin to get done with his interviews.
Waiting is not something I do so well.
By the time the minute hand on the clock up on the wall has moved forward ten minutes I’m already tapping my fingers against the desk and wondering if I should sneak out and grab some of those outdated magazines. I doubt Kevin would mind if I started ripping out the pages and using them to do origami. Then again, the only thing I know how to make by folding paper is a boat like the one the kid uses in that Stephen King horror film. The one with the clown and the balloons.
Carly, on the other hand, is just fine looking at her mobile the whole time. She’s scrolling through things on the internet one after the other, not really giving any of them much of a glance. That’s her generation, I guess. If you can’t condense the information into a pithy meme or a thirty-second video, they’ve already lost interest.
Before I can make my way back out to the lobby for that copy of Peppermint Magazine that I remembered seeing there, Ben’s coming out of the interview room and down to where we’re sitting. His expression is not heartening.
“She’s not talking much,” he says in answer to the unspoken question. “Thing is, she said she’d be more comfortable if she had you in there, Dell. Not exactly protocol. Do ya feel up to it?”
“Sure. That’s why I’m here. Are they waiting for me?”
“Yes. Just go on in. Carly, you mind waiting out here with me?”
My daughter’s face lights up when he asks that. Ben might not have noticed, but I saw the way Carly drooped her eyelids and shrugged like it was no matter to her. “Sure. Whatever.”
Oh, yes. I know that look. I guess it just remains to be seen if Ben can figure it out.
In the interview room my Kevin is sitting on one side of a metal table, and Stephanie is on the other. Kevin’s notebook is close to home. There’s just one other chair in the room, on Kevin’s side, one they must’ve brought in special for this. That’s all the furniture there is here. Except for the black bubble of the security camera up in the corner of the ceiling, that’s all there is in this whole room, really.
“Hey, Mom.” Kevin leans back in his chair, one arm hooked over the back. “We were just talking. Sort of. Mind having a seat with us?”
“Sure. As long as Stephanie doesn’t mind.”
“Dell, I know this is asking a lot,” Stephanie says to me, motioning helplessly with her hands. “I don’t know anyone in Lakeshore. Except Thornton, I suppose, but he and I weren’t friends before this happened. We’re less than that now, after the things he said back at your Inn. Kevin says he was pointing the finger at me during his interview, too. Honestly, I want nothing to do with that man anymore. I don’t know you very well but from what I’ve seen you’re well liked in this town, and I’d like to not be alone with the cops at the moment. No offense,” she adds with a nod to Kevin.
“None taken,” he says graciously.
“Actually, I don’t relish the idea of being treated like I was involved with any of this. Your son mentioned you’ve been through this before?”
“Once or twice,” I tell her. There’s more truth to that than I care to admit, I can tell you.
I sit down next to Kevin, wondering exactly what it was that Thornton said. No doubt he’d accused her of having an affair with Jackson. The same affair that I suspected her of, mind you. Had he felt more comfortable accusing Stephanie when she wasn’t around? Or was he just shifting blame off of himself?
“Thornton did say some things. I heard them, back at the Inn,” I point out. “If I remember correctly, he hinted at some rumors concerning you and Jackson Fillmore. He said something about how you showed Jackson… how’d he put it? Showed him more ‘respect’ than anyone else. What did he mean by that?”
“How should I know?” she says defensively. “Thornton’s just trying to point fingers and save his pathetic political career. You should look into his money situation, is what I say. He’s got plenty of skeletons to hide but there’s nothing at all to those rumors about me. None at all.”
“Are you sure?” I ask it sympathetically, but there’s no mistaking the thrust of that question. “On the ride over here, I got the impression that your feelings for Jackson are much more than professional.”
“Well, that’s not what I…”
When she trails off, unable to finish her lie, I lean forward on my elbows, closer to her. “You and I are both women, Stephanie. We both know how it can be with strong, dependable men. You grow to love them despite yourself. You loved Jackson Fillmore. I can hear it in your voice whenever you talk about him.”
There are tears brimming in the corners of her eyes now. For a moment her lips move, trying to form words that she doesn’t want to say.
“Stephanie?” Kevin asks, prodding her from her silence. “Did you love Jackson Fillmore?”
Finally, after a long shaky breath, she gives us the answer.
“I loved him, and I told him so a dozen times and more. Yes, I did. I loved him with more of my heart than I should’ve, maybe.” It was like admitting her feelings for Jackson had removed the cork she’d tried to keep on the truth, and now it was all flooding out. “I promised I would give up everything for him. I would quit my jo
b and dedicate my whole entire life to him. Just him. Only him.”
Kevin shifts just his eyes to look my way, and I nod my head. That was what I had suspected, and what I needed him to hear. Stephanie was deeply in love with her boss. She definitely felt his blood was worth bottling, and no doubt about that. Plus, she was the one who screamed and alerted everyone else that Jackson was dead. I was out of the hallway and in my rooms for twenty minutes, according to my watch, which left almost no time for someone else to commit that terrible crime. Further, she’d been in the dining room just before coming upstairs, and she could have brought the knife with her. All of the pieces were adding up against her.
All of that added up to means and opportunity. Which left the third element of any good murder mystery… motive.
“Stephanie,” I say, probing gently, “what happened after I went into my room. You and Thornton and Jackson were still in the hallway. Did Thornton leave the two of you alone? Did you try to talk to Jackson about your feelings again?”
Her lashes blink at her tears, and then she swipes at them with her fingertips. “I did. God help me, but I did. I thought, here we are in this out of the way, back of Bourke place. Nobody here we know. Nobody to say boo about anything we did here. Once Thornton stepped off to his own room, I tried to convince Jackson to let me into his. I figured when I got in, got him alone, I could make him see how good we could be together.”
Kevin and I wait for the rest of the story, but that was where Stephanie ran out of steam once again. No more words came out of her trembling lips. It would be up to us to draw the rest of it out of her, and maybe put this mystery to bed in record time.
“How’d he take your advances?” I ask her. “He didn’t invite you in, obviously. I’m guessing he didn’t return your affections. Stephanie, what happened?”
“What happened? I’ll tell you what happened.” There’s anger in her voice now, and the tears begin to fall down her cheeks in earnest. “I made a real blue, that’s what happened! He didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t want anything like that from me. Told me to leave him alone to change, give him space, and then he said to remember my place. My place! As if my place hasn’t been by his side all these years. That was it for me. That was all I could take.”
She’s shaking from the mix of emotions pouring out of her. She’s right on the edge of a confession now, and with maybe one more gentle shove she’ll tell us what she’s done. Kevin tries not to sound too eager as he prods, “You opened up to him, and he spurned you. That must have hurt. Must’ve really stung. I can only imagine what I would do if something like that happened to me. Stephanie? What happened? What did you do?”
Throwing her hands up in the air, Stephanie picks a spot on the far wall and glares straight through it, obviously lost in her memories of that moment. “What did I do? I’ll tell you exactly what I did. What else could I do?”
I’m on the edge of my seat, waiting on her next words. “Yes? It’s okay, Stephanie. You can tell us. Just tell us what you did.”
She nods, and whether it’s to me or to the image of Jackson Fillmore in her mind I can’t say. “I did the only thing I could do.”
“Yes?” Kevin says.
“I told him he was a lousy man, a horrible excuse of for human being, and that I wished he was dead, and I…”
“Yes?” I say.
“Then I…”
“Yes?” Kevin and I say at the same time.
Stephanie blinks, and focuses her eyes on me again. “Then I went back to my own room until I could calm down.” The tears haven’t stopped. This was the part of the story we needed, and she’s jumped right over it. “That’s all. When I could see my way to go back and apologize to him, it was too late. He was already dead.”
Disappointment mixes with disbelief inside of me. “Apologize? You went back to his room to apologize?”
“Of course. What else? I still loved the man even if he was being a flaming dipstick. I’d said awful, horrible things to him. I wanted to make it right between us. I let him know that I was still going to devote my life to his career as his personal secretary, even if he couldn’t see what he had in me as a woman.” She chokes back a sob, and whether she’s lying or not she’s not faking the pain in her words. “Now the last thing that I’ll ever say to him will always be that I hated him. He’ll never know how much I regret it all.”
I regret it, she said. I wished he was dead, she said. There’s the motive to go with the means and the opportunity except… she hasn’t really said anything. She didn’t actually say she killed him. Without that, can Kevin charge her with anything? Catching my son’s attention, I lift an eyebrow with a question.
Where does that leave us now?
My son’s never one to miss a trick, though. Clearing his throat, he pulls over the yellow notepad and pen that have been sitting idle on the desk next to him. He uncaps the pen. He writes a few notes. Then, he looks back up at Stephanie. “A minute ago, ya said that we should look into Thornton’s money situation. What’d that mean?”
With another swipe of her fingers, Stephanie’s tears end, and her eyes narrow with a vengeful grimace. “What I mean by that is just what I said. Thornton talks a big talk about losing his job and needing to find a new one but how’s a guy like him afford those designer Italian suits? I know what a government position like his pays, and it isn’t that much. What about those handcrafted shoes? Hmm? How’s that happen unless, you know, he’s got some other source of income?”
Well, now. That wasn’t exactly a subtle accusation, was it? “You think Thornton was on the take?” I ask her, not sure what the current slang for that particular criminal act would be. That’s what we called it back when I was younger.
“You’re saying he was taking bribes?” Kevin asked in turn, putting it as plainly as Uluru on a sunny day.
Now that we’re not talking about her Jackson, Stephanie seems like she’s collected herself together again. She’s almost happy to be pointing the finger at Thornton, just like he had with her. “Unless you’ve got another explanation, then yeah. I have suspicions. How can I not?”
Kevin jots several notes down on the notepad. His lips are pursed like he’s fascinated by this revelation but out of the corner of my eye, I can see that he’s writing the same thing on each line. “If what you know is who you are, then she’s everything,” which I recognize as a line from that Jet song that he likes so much. Actually, that sums it up pretty good.
Stephanie can’t see what he’s doing from where she is or else she’d know that he’s less interested in what she’s saying, than he is in why she’s saying it.
When he looks up again, his green eyes have the intensity of a laser beam. “Stephanie, do you think, maybe, that it was Thornton who killed Jackson?”
Definitely no tears this time, as she nods her head emphatically. “I’ve no doubt it was him. I mean, I didn’t see him do it, since I went to my room and all, but it had to be him. There was just me and Thornton, and Dell and her daughter, and Jackson up there on the top floor of her Inn, right? If I didn’t do it, then he must’ve.”
‘If,’ she says. Not a no. Just an if.
Interesting.
Kevin taps his pen on the pad, considering what she said. “You’re telling me how ya think Thornton killed Jackson, but also telling me ya don’t know for sure.”
“Right, because I was in my room crying my eyes out over what I’d said to Jackson.”
“And, in those few minutes, either someone came up the stairs to Jackson’s room, killed him, and then left going down the stairs again, or someone who was already on the top floor killed him.”
“Exactly,” Stephanie agrees. “Which means it had to be Thornton. I’m betting that Jackson found out about him skimming money, or whatever illegal activity he was up to, and threatened to go public with it. Thornton wouldn’t have found anyone to hire him after that.”
“He lost his job anyway,” I point out. “Killing Jackson or being exposed as a
thief, he still loses his job.”
“Right, but this way, he gets to keep his reputation and not go to jail. He can find another job. He’ll end up as some other politician’s right-hand donkey and go straight back to taking kickbacks, or selling insider information, or however it is he makes his illegal money.”
Stephanie’s words have a ring of sense about them. Just as much sense as my theory about her killing Jackson for an unrequited love. Thornton was also on the top floor with us when Jackson was killed, just like Stephanie was. He’d been in the dining room beforehand, just like Stephanie. He could have been the one who was alone with Jackson, instead of Stephanie. Only for a few minutes, but that’s more than enough time to stab a man in the back and walk away. A few minutes is an eternity when no one’s watching. Anything can happen.
And something definitely did.
Two suspects. Both with plausible motives to kill one of the rising politicians in the state. That was one thing in our favor, as far as solving this mystery goes. It was very doubtful that the Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development was murdered for anything to do with his job. The motive was almost certainly personal.
So which one of his assistants had the biggest personal reason to do him in?
I looked at Kevin. He’d interviewed both of them, and even though I hadn’t been in the interview with Thornton I could imagine it was more of the same stuff I heard here. Excuses, explanations, and blame being placed on each other. It would be up to my son to figure out which of them was the bad guy. Or if maybe both of them were… which for my money was still a possibility.
Stephanie was looking at Kevin, too, waiting to see if her story had done what she wanted it to. She actually looks at her watch, like she’s in a hurry to get out of here. “Well?” she asks him. “Is that all you needed, officer? Are we done here?”
“It’s Senior Sergeant, actually,” Kevin corrects her. “Senior Sergeant Kevin Powers. And I’m afraid there’s one more thing I need from ya.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
His smile is almost sympathetic. “I need ya to stand up and come with me. Stephanie Collette, you’re under arrest in connection with the murder of Jackson Fillmore. This way, please.”