FATALITY IN F

by Alexia Gordon

  “That Frankie needn’t worry because she could clear his name.”

  “All right,” Niall said, “I’ll grant that plant people would decipher a flower code faster than a dumb guard. But how would the murderer know to go after Reston, specifically?”

  “Because I led them to her,” Gethsemane said. “Murderphile is a public website. You need an account to post messages but anyone can read the posts. I used Murderphile to lure a stalker into the open. The killer cyberstalked me on Murderphile to uncover a witness. Once they figured out which usernames to follow they would’ve known about the trap set at Our Lady. If they staked out the church and saw no one there but Frankie and gardaí, they could have made an educated guess that TheFlorist would come to me at Carrick Point. They hid out on the cliffs and waited for an opportunity to shoot. Damn.”

  “Don’t,” Niall said. “None of this is your fault. None of us had any reason to suspect the killer would head up to Carrick Point or that Reston would be in danger of anything other than being arrested. We thought Reston was the killer.”

  “Now that we know she didn’t kill anyone,” Gethsemane said, “we have to figure out who did.”

  “We?” Niall’s turn to raise an eyebrow.

  Gethsemane crossed her fingers behind her back. “I mean, Inspector Sutton has to figure out who did. Without interference from civilians.”

  “Uncross your fingers,” Niall said. “I’m not thick. I’ve known you long enough to know bloody well if I try to leave you out of it, you’ll start sleuthing as soon as my back’s turned. The past few hours drove that message home. I won’t make the same mistake twice. Not in one day at least.”

  Sleuthing. A step up from snooping. “To be fair, this time I didn’t go looking for trouble. It found me.”

  “You didn’t run from it when it showed up on your doorstep, though,” Frankie said. “And since you know she’ll—who am I kidding? I’m in this, too—we’ll stay in the midst of the investigation, you may as well help us, Niall.”

  “It’s Sutton’s case.”

  “Don’t tell him.”

  “I think he’ll notice if we close his case for him, Frankie.”

  “Let him take the credit,” Gethsemane said. “From his expression when he mentioned the Superintendent, I bet he’d appreciate a resolution handed to him wrapped up in a bow.”

  “He might, at that. The Superintendent’s a wank—never mind.” Niall rubbed his chin. “What were you thinking?”

  She looked around at the people coming and going through the waiting area, some slumped in chairs in listless resignation, some pacing with anxiety and fear etched on their faces. “I’m thinking Carraigfaire’s a better place to talk than a hospital waiting room.” She led the way to the door. “Let’s go.”

  Twenty

  A quick shower, a change of clothes, and a thank you to a hovering Eamon, and Gethsemane joined Niall and Frankie in the study. Outside, the moss-covered cliffs took on a green-gold hue in the setting sun. They gave no hint of the near tragedy that had played out on their rocks a few hours earlier.

  Frankie handed her a Waddell and Dobb. “The lady likes it neat.”

  “Thanks.” She set the bourbon on the roll top desk and rummaged for pen and paper.

  Eamon materialized next to her. “What’re you doing?”

  Frankie asked the same question.

  With her back to the living, she shot Eamon a “be quiet” look. She answered Frankie. “Doing what you tell your students to do when they’re stuck on a problem. Write down what you know, then work through each step of the problem until you arrive at a solution.”

  “A mathematical approach to crime solving,” Niall said.

  “Why not?” Gethsemane sat on the sofa, pen in one hand, bourbon in the other. “A puzzle’s a puzzle, whether you’re talking about numbers or suspects. Don’t law enforcement officers write what they know on whiteboards and tape up pictures and draw arrows connecting one thing to another?”

  Niall rolled his eyes.

  “Unless you’ve got another suggestion. And I’m not being snarky. The question wasn’t rhetorical.”

  “Get on with it, then. Start with the victims.” Niall sat next to her on the sofa.

  Frankie claimed the wing chair opposite. Eamon leaned against a bookcase.

  Frankie checked his watch. “About three-quarters of an hour until Sutton makes good on his promise to show up here.”

  Gethsemane wrote, “Roderick Jacobi” and “Murdoch Collins” at the top of a sheet of paper. She thought for a moment, then wrote “Reston Flynn” off to one side.

  “What do they have in common?” Niall asked.

  “Jacobi owned Avar Pharmaceuticals. Collins worked for him. Jacobi entered a rose in the rose show. Collins helped him with his rose growing.”

  “And Reston?” asked Frankie. “You’ve got her name written there.”

  “She saw someone murder Jacobi. Other than that, I don’t see a connection.”

  “Eyewitness to murder’s enough of a connection,” Niall said.

  “By the way,” Gethsemane said, “she is under garda protection, isn’t she? Whoever tried to kill her will find out she survived soon enough, the way news travels in this village.”

  “Of course,” Niall said. “Uniformed guards have been assigned to watch over her. Sutton wanted to assign some to you, as well, but I told him you’d have none of it.”

  “Gardaí to protect me or keep tabs on me?”

  “Both,” Niall said.

  “Tell him you don’t need some junior garda in his shiny uniform trotting after you like a lap dog,” Eamon said. “You’ve got your own ghost to keep you out of trouble. Or, at least, to get you out of trouble when you get into it.”

  Good thing Eamon couldn’t read minds. Her thoughts at that moment would have earned her an orb right in her ear. She ignored him. “Ellen Jacobi,” she wrote in the center of the page.

  “Jacobi’s widow,” Frankie said.

  “She stands to inherit Jacobi’s share of Avar, as well as rights to the rose patents. And she admitted she’d pay to have Jacobi killed. She hated him that much.”

  “Admitted to who?” Niall asked.

  Gethsemane doodled in the paper’s margin and avoided the rebuke she knew she’d see in his eyes. “Admitted to me.”

  “You didn’t think to share that information with law enforcement?”

  “Didn’t I mention it? I’m sure I must have.”

  “Gethsemane Brown—”

  Frankie rescued her. “Why would Ellen Jacobi kill Collins? Or pay someone to kill him?”

  “I don’t think Collins is thrilled with the idea of Ellen Jacobi being in charge of Avar. I overheard him talking to Karl Dietrich about control of the company. Arguing about it. Maybe Ellen decided a dead Chief Operating Officer was easier to negotiate with than a live one.”

  “You really think she’d have a man killed because she feared he’d do her out of a job?” Niall asked.

  “Have you met Ellen Jacobi? I’m not sure she wouldn’t have a man killed if he mussed her hair.” She doodled a flower on the paper. “I also overheard Collins and Dietrich arguing with Gerrit Byrnes about a ‘deal.’”

  “Gerrit Byrnes?”

  Frankie explained. “One of the Byrnes brothers. They own Belles Fleurs, the chief rivals to Ellen Jacobi’s plant supply company. She’s not the only plant supplier who’d kill someone they thought was trying to steal their plants.”

  “So,” Gethsemane said, “she had double reason to want Collins dead: control of Avar Pharmaceuticals and Roderick’s roses.”

  Niall stood. “Then we should go speak to the grieving widow. I’ll text Bill and tell him where we’re headed.”

  “We? You mean it this time?”

  “As I said, I’ve learned my lesson. You’r
e safer interviewing a murder suspect in the company of gardaí than you are up here on your own. If I left you behind you’d no doubt end up in a life and death battle with the killer at the top of Carrick Point Lighthouse before sunrise. Same goes for you, Frankie. You’ve been hanging around this one,” he jerked his head toward Gethsemane, “long enough for her knack for finding danger to rub off on you. You can both consider me your unofficial garda protection.”

  Niall’s phone played Gounod’s “Funeral March” as they walked to his car.

  “Alfred Hitchcock’s theme,” Frankie said. “A guard with a sense of humor.”

  Niall checked the message. “Sutton. He’s located Ellen Jacobi. She’s at the show grounds. He’ll meet us there.”

  “He’s cool with Frankie and me tagging along?”

  “Didn’t exactly tell him. He’ll find out soon enough. Why court trouble?”

  “A surprise attack’s always much better,” Frankie said.

  Gethsemane snort laughed as she climbed into Niall’s car.

  Eamon appeared at her window. “I’ll be waiting for you at the show grounds.” He vanished as quickly as he’d appeared.

  The evening’s first stars shone over the bay. Gethsemane leaned from the window and counted them. “Isn’t it late for Ellen to still be at the show grounds?”

  “Nah,” Frankie said from the backseat. “There’s always work to do behind the scenes at a flower show. Questions from the public, complaints from contestants, inquiries from the media, making sure displays stay fresh, making sure no one vandalizes the specimens, making sure speakers show up at the proper venue at the proper time, making sure celebrities get their photo ops and their green M&M’s or whatever perks they’ve demanded. Takes a lot of work to make a show seem effortless. Even if the festivities are canceled, there’s a lot of work to do. More work. Refunds to process, complaints, protests, press statements…”

  “Ellen’s a sponsor, not a show organizer,” Gethsemane said.

  “Well,” Frankie said, “that’s true. She’d still have work to do after the ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’ disaster, though. That was an expensive loss. She’s probably working triple time trying to minimize the financial losses. She’d also have to see to beefing up security to prevent any more roses from being destroyed.”

  “That’s what Jacobi was up to in your garden the day he was killed.”

  “What was?”

  “Reston said Jacobi brought the hedge shears. He must have found where you kept them and planned to use them to destroy the ‘Sandra Sechrest’.”

  “Wanker,” Frankie said. “Yowling gobshite. Even money whether his widow or I wanted him dead more.”

  “Watch it, Frankie.” Niall warned. “You’re not completely in the clear until the real killer’s in custody.”

  “If it’s Ellen, I’ll happily contribute to her legal defense fund.”

  No one spoke during the remainder of the drive into the village. Niall found his attention on the road, his tight grip on the wheel the only sign of tension. Frankie hunched in the backseat, arms crossed, brow creased in a deep frown. He radiated anger as tangible as one of Eamon’s blue auras. Gethsemane couldn’t tell whether the anger stemmed from the idea of being suspected of murder or the idea of the unlamented Roderick Jacobi using his own garden tool to destroy his prize rosebush. A glance in the rearview mirror told her this was not the time to ask. Besides, something nagged at her. She was overlooking something important, something someone told her. What was it?

  The moon had taken over the sun’s position by the time they pulled into the show ground parking lot. Niall maneuvered into a space next to a car he identified as Sutton’s. Sutton fiddled with a cigarette as he leaned against a tree a few feet away.

  “What’re they doing here?” he asked Niall when Gethsemane and Frankie approached.

  “Couldn’t leave them way up there on Carrick Point, unprotected,” Niall said. “Killer’s on the loose. Your words, remember?”

  Sutton grunted and aimed the cigarette at his lips. Gethsemane stared. He grunted again and ground it into the dirt beneath the tree. “Kids made me quit. Are making me quit.”

  Gethsemane pointed at the sponsors’ tent area. “Jacobi and Fortnum are set up over there, inside the big one.” Lights inside the tent illuminated it like a luminaria.

  “You two stay behind Niall and me.” Sutton led the way to the entrance.

  Eamon’s disembodied voice spoke in Gethsemane’s ear. “He’s just going to march through the front door? Full-on frontal assault? As much subtlety as an erupting volcano?”

  She hung back so she could whisper a response. “No one’s expecting us. Maybe he’s counting on the element of surprise. You know, like the Spanish Inquisition. No one expects the Spanish Inquisition.”

  “This is no time for Monty Python jokes,” Eamon said.

  “What’s that?” Frankie asked over his shoulder. He slowed his pace to match hers.

  “I was just wondering if someone—we—shouldn’t watch the back door to make sure Ellen doesn’t slip out.” Someone like a ghost with the power to blast people off of cliffs. “In case she sees Sutton and Niall coming in the front.”

  “Sutton did order us to stay behind them,” Frankie said. “Behind the tent is ‘behind’ them.”

  She hoped Eamon took hints as well as Frankie. “On my signal.”

  Music teacher and math teacher slowed until the distance between them and the gardaí widened to a few yards. Niall and Sutton veered left toward the tent’s main entrance. Gethsemane jerked her head toward the rear, where she’d seen Ellen and Glendon in a clinch. She and Frankie veered right. A whiff of leather and soap told her Eamon had, too.

  She and Frankie crouched in the darkness. The faint sounds of Niall and Sutton debating their entrance strategy drifted from the other side of the tent. The voices stopped. Seconds passed: five, ten, twenty. They felt like a million. Her knees ached. Hiding in bushes wasn’t a game for anyone over thirty.

  At last, Sutton announced at a decibel level that could be overheard in Cork, “Garda!”

  The sounds of a commotion arose in the tent. Something heavy—furniture?—hit the floor. Angry shouts increased the cacophony.

  Ellen’s irate voice reverberated above the others. “What the bloody hell do you think you’re bloody doing, you bloody wankers?”

  “Stop! Wait!” Niall and Sutton shouted simultaneously.

  Footsteps ran toward the back door. Another crash and Glendon Byrnes tumbled outside. He clutched his belt in one hand and his suit jacket in the other.

  “Stop!” Sutton’s voice sounded after him.

  “Stop!” Frankie yelled. He jumped from his hiding place and launched himself at the fleeing Byrnes brother.

  Glendon threw his jacket over Frankie’s head and pushed him backward into a potted shrub.

  Gethsemane tensed, ready to run, as Glendon neared her. Before she could move, Eamon materialized in a blaze of blue and hurled an orb at Glendon’s knee. Glendon howled in pain and clutched his patella. Eamon snapped a low-hanging branch at Glendon’s head. Glendon went down and stayed down.

  “Did you kill him?” Gethsemane peered down at the motionless form.

  A muffled, “You mean did he kill me?” came from under the suit jacket as Frankie fought to disentangle himself.

  “Nah,” Eamon said, “Just knocked him a good one.” A zap of energy to Glendon’s foot elicited a moan.

  Ellen, her hair loosed from its usual bun and her tailored blouse untucked and buttoned wrong, spilled out of the tent. Niall and Sutton stumbled out after her. Their hair awry and their ties askew gave them the appearance of having battled a round with a wildcat and lost.

  Ellen screamed when she saw her lover. “Glen!” she shouted. “What have you done to him?” She evaded the gardaí’s grasp and flew at Gethsemane. />
  Gethsemane flashed back to her days as a state champion high school softball player standing behind the plate with an opponent running straight at her. She held her ground until the last second before collision, then stepped aside. Ellen’s momentum carried her forward, past Gethsemane. Her heel caught on a vine that crossed her path with the aid of a finger wag from Eamon. She landed face-down a foot away from Gethsemane and the now-conscious Glendon.

  Sutton bellowed, “Enough!” He hoisted Ellen by an arm while Niall helped Glendon to his feet. “Inside.”

  Gethsemane and Frankie trooped into the tent after Sutton, Niall, and the two heads of plant supply empires. She and Frankie leaned against Ellen’s desk as Sutton and Niall righted chairs and pushed Ellen and Glendon into them.

  “You’ve no right—” Ellen began.

  “Shut it,” Sutton said. “This is a criminal investigation which gives me the right to ask questions. You have the right not to answer them but not answering won’t do you any favors. If you’ve got any sense, you’ll talk.”

  “Which is it, Inspector?” Glendon tugged at his shirt cuffs and swiped his silver hair back into place. Dignity somewhat restored, he straightened up tall in the chair and looked down his nose as best he could from a seated position. “Shut it or answer your questions? She can’t do both.”

  Sutton stepped forward. Niall put a hand on his arm. Gethsemane suspected Glendon Byrnes would have learned exactly what the Dunmullach Garda thought of smart-mouthed suspects if Sutton hadn’t had any witnesses. The smack in the face from Eamon’s tree branch would have felt like a love pat. Time for a distraction.

  She stepped in front of Ellen. “Why’d you kill your husband, Mrs. Jacobi? For control of the pharmaceutical company or control of the rose patents?” She looked back and forth between Ellen and Glendon. “Or for true love?”

  Ellen snorted. “Don’t be daft. You think I’d risk life in prison for him?” She gestured toward a wounded-looking Glendon. “For anyone? True love’s for suckers. Isn’t that right?” She turned to face Frankie. “How’s Yseult these days?”