by Cindy Kline
She got up, went and over to the window and watched the sunset. The horizon was painted pink and blue, a few clouds scattered around to break up the colors. She turned around and looked at Henry. “I think this all has to do with Patrick’s death. I know, it was five years ago, so why now?” She stopped. “That’s a good question. Why now?” She thought for a few seconds. “It has to be the addendum. Something in that second file has to be the answer.” She looked at Henry, then began to pace.
“I’m sure you think I’m crazy, but it is the file that was in your safe. You know, the one you asked me to destroy? Well, when I went to do so, it was missing. Yes, you heard me—missing. It turns out Megan had a key to your desk drawer. My guess is she looked at the file, read how the private investigator thought it was Imogen and tried to blackmail her. No, not for money, but something else.” She stopped and held on to the metal bar surrounding his bed. “Megan loved you. I think she wanted Imogen to give you a divorce so she could have you. I don’t understand why two reasonably sane women could love you so much. You clearly don’t deserve it.”
Molly sat in the chair again, suddenly tired. “So, what is Craig’s story?” He apparently grew up best friends with Patrick. Like you, he made some poor decisions, and Ronan picked up the pieces. Unlike you, though, you learned your lesson. Well, mostly, but did Craig?” Again, something was trying to get to the forefront of her mind. What was it?
“Maybe that’s it. You cleaned up your act, married Imogen and gave Ronan a grandson. I had assumed Ronan changed his mind and gave you the company because you were his son-in-law. Craig told me how he was in an accident a while ago and got hooked on opiates and how Ronan gave the company to you until he straightened himself out. But I didn’t quite believe him. I don’t think Ronan would do that. What if he gave it to you because Craig had done something awful? Something bad enough to be disinherited? Something so horrible that Ronan didn’t find out about until recently? Her eyes grew wide as she looked at him. “Like who killed Patrick.” Molly thought back to all the things she’d come across. “Henry, that has to be it! The Halloween photos of Craig dressed as a woman, the fire in the fireplace supposedly built for Imogen, but she wasn’t there. She was here with you. And Megan, he showed up to give her a ride to work, but she didn’t need one. So why was Craig there?” She thought for a minute. He said he was at the gym. You go to the gym, you work out, you take a shower, get dressed— That’s it! “Henry, his hair wasn’t wet. Henry, I figured it out!”
“Would you please be quiet? I’m trying to sleep.”
Molly’s mouth flew open. “Henry? Did you just talk to me, or am I having delusions because of my head injury?” She stood up and leaned over the bed. Henry’s eyes were open, well, kind of.
Molly found the call button and pressed it, alerting the nurses’ station. A few seconds later, a nurse in light-blue scrubs came in, a stethoscope hanging around her neck. Molly had seen her the last time she’d been to visit Henry.
“You’re Joni, right?” Molly sat back down as a wave of dizziness hit her.
“Ms. McGuire, they’re looking all over for you. You shouldn’t have snuck down here.”
“But he’s awake! Look!” She pointed to him. His eyes were closed again. “He really was awake, I swear. He told me to be quiet.”
“You stay right there. I’ll be right back.” She turned around and left the room.
Molly stood back up, holding onto the bedrail for support. “Henry Pierce, don’t you make a liar out of me. You open your eyes this instant!”
His eyes fluttered open. “Don’t you ever shut up?”
Molly smiled. “I will if you promise to show the nurse those emerald green eyes when she gets back in here. How are you feeling?”
“Headache mostly. What happened?”
Before she could explain, the nurse came in with a wheelchair, a person right behind her. Molly smiled, looking down at the patient. “Henry, there’s someone else here to see you.”
Joni pointed to the wheelchair, and Molly sat down. She looked at Imogen and grinned. “He’s awake!”
Imogen immediately came to the bedside and took his hand, then leaned in to kiss him. She looked at Molly, who could see tears in her eyes. At least this time, they were tears of happiness.
“Come on, Ms. McGuire, back to your room.”
Molly listened to the nurse lecture her on leaving her room without permission all the way back to her room, but she didn’t care. She had figured out who killed Megan and tried to kill Henry. And she was right. It had everything to do with Patrick’s death five years ago. But she needed to check out one more thing.
Molly went back to her room and found her cell phone. Someone had stuck it in a drawer. Thankfully, the battery had a minor charge left in it. She quickly called Callum to find out if he’d gone to visit Caleb Crabtree and if what she’d figured out was, in fact, true.
He answered on the first ring.
“I’m good, thanks. Hey, I need a favor.… Oh, not that again. Okay, yes, I’ll now owe you seven beers. However, when you find out what I’m calling about, you might just cancel that debit. Did you go to see Caleb Crabtree?”
“And what did he say?”
“That’s what I figured. Get to the hospital as soon as possible. I think someone is about to try to kill Henry Pierce.” He said something else, but the phone beeped three times and went dead.
She glanced around for something to use as a weapon. There was her hairbrush or the plants and flowers people had left for her. Since those were too big to take with her, she settled on the hairbrush, putting it in her pocket.
She was just about to leave the room when the nurse came in. “There you are. We were about to put an APB out on you, young lady.”
“An all-points-bulletin? Why on earth for? I just went for a walk.”
“Well, you need to let us know when you decide to do that, so we know where you are.”
“Oh, okay. I’m about to go on another one, so if you’ll excuse me…”
“I don’t think so. You need to lie down and rest.” She fluffed Molly’s pillows and straightened her blankets, then pointed to the bed.
Molly felt like she had no choice, so she obediently went toward the bed, took off her robe and got into bed. The nurse pulled the blanket up over her, then smiled. “I’m about to bring you your dinner, then if you want to go for a walk afterward, that would be fine.”
Molly just smiled. “Okay, thank you.” She watched as the nurse left her room, then jumped back out of bed and grabbed her robe. She was just slipping her arms into it when someone walked in the door. She swallowed as she backed up, her heart racing, then took a deep breath, trying not to let it show.
“What can I do for you?”
“I heard you talking to Henry, Molly.”
Molly’s head was spinning, so she sat down on the bed. “It was you. Why did you do it?”
“It was an accident, I swear. I just looked down for a second, and suddenly, he was there on the road, and I hit him.” He looked up, and there were tears in his eyes. “I really didn’t mean to.”
Molly rolled her eyes. “Except that’s a lie, isn’t it?” She didn’t wait for him to say anything or to even look at her. “There’s a witness who saw you sitting in a car for hours waiting for Patrick to come out of the house. It wasn’t an accident. What did Patrick have on you?”
He pulled out a gun. Why does everyone always have a gun? And she brought a hairbrush to a gunfight. Great. When will she learn to shut her mouth?
Chapter Twenty-Five
Craig remained there, holding the gun on her. She could see perspiration on his brow, which reminded her of something else. What was it?
“Okay, I’ll tell you what I do know then. You tried to kill Henry because he realized you killed Patrick. It wasn’t Imogen in the car that night. It was you dressed up for Halloween with a black wig. You liked to dress up like women every year for the holiday, and that year was no exception.” Th
e thought came back to her when she remembered something Keith said. “Or is it you just like to dress up like a woman?” She looked at Craig. You’re gay, aren’t you? This isn’t about drugs. We know Ronan would have helped you if it were drugs. This is because you’re gay, isn’t it? Ronan no longer would have had anything to do with you if you were gay.” Molly’s head spun with this new information. “So, Patrick found out about it. But he was your friend. He wouldn’t have cared—unless…” she looked at him, but his eyes were downcast, “unless Patrick had his father’s view about homosexuals.” She shook her head, “I don’t believe that, though. From what I’ve learned about Patrick, that wouldn’t be it.” She looked closer at him. “You weren’t ever in love with Imogen, were you? You were in love with Patrick.”
Craig closed his eyes, and his hand continued to shake. Molly moved off the bed and sat down beside him. “The killing needs to stop, Craig.”
All of the air went out of Craig at that moment. He sat in the chair to her left and hung his head. The gun was still in his hand. She slowly disengaged his fingers, and holding it with two fingers, made sure the safety was on and stuck it in her pocket.
“Craig, that’s what all of this is about, isn’t it?”
He nodded.
“The addendum from the private investigator showed it wasn’t Imogen in the car. She was too short. Ronan put two-and-two together and figured out it was you. You told him the story about the drugs, and he sent you to rehab, but you didn’t have a drug problem. Maybe years ago, but no longer. Then Ronan died, left Henry the company and the file went to him. He figured out the same thing as Ronan, that you killed Patrick, so he had to die too.”
Molly’s head was pounding. All of this because a man was a bigot and would ruin a life because of something they had no control over. She took a deep breath and let it out. “Then you had to kill Megan because she got hold of the file.” Molly thought about it.
He put his head in his hands as Molly continued. “You destroyed the file in the fireplace at the Pierce house. To what? Frame either Imogen or Shannon? Regardless, you thought that was the end. Then I mentioned to you we’d found the private investigator, and he was sending another copy, so you tried to kill me.”
Tears were rolling down his face as he nodded. “I’m so tired of it all. I didn’t want to kill any of them, especially not Patrick, but he laughed at me! Laughed!” He looked in her eyes, but she could see him back in time, five years ago. “Then he said he couldn’t wait to tell his father, how they’d have a great time laughing about it, too. I couldn’t have Ronan find out. I loved him like a father! He was everything to me.”
A few minutes later, Callum came running in the door, but Molly held up her hand and shook her head. She laid her hand on Craig’s shoulder, “Craig, this nice officer is going to take you to the police station, okay? Then you can take a nice long nap.”
He looked up as Callum came and led him away. Molly sat in her chair and massaged her temples when Liam came in a few minutes later. He tapped her on the shoulder, and she looked up and smiled. She stood up, and he took her in his arms.
“At least you didn’t get shot this time.” Liam smiled.
Molly pulled out of his arms, dug in her pocket and pulled out the gun. “Here is Craig’s gun.” She held it in her hand.
“Wait, you had a gun in the pocket of your robe?” He shook his head.
“I put the safety on. Look.” She held the gun toward the window and pulled the trigger.
BANG!
“Oops,” she grinned as she handed him the gun.
# # #
Two days later, Molly was sitting on the couch of Rose Cottage, admiring the beautiful job Gran, Noah and Keith had done on the tree. She watched the multi-colored lights flicker, then dance, then chase one another before Reanna came and sat next to her.
“You hate being sidelined, don’t you?” She smiled.
“Yes. This is driving me crazy. There is so much to do,” she flung her arms in the air, dropping them on her lap. “There are twenty people arriving in,” she looked at her watch,” in thirty minutes, and Gran has banished me to the couch.”
Reanna put her arm around her friend, and Molly laid her head on her shoulder. “Your gran, all of us, actually, want you to get well, and the doctor only allowed you to leave the hospital if you rested. Since you don’t seem to know what that means, Gran’s being overly cautious.”
Molly perked up when she saw Dillon walk toward them with two glasses of wine. “One of those had better be for me, big brother.” She sat up straight, and Reanna dropped her arm.
He smiled. “Aye. Gran sent me in here with the beverage, figuring it might help calm you down.”
Molly took it gratefully, “This will help, thank you,” and took a sip. “However, if there are any appetizers ready, I could use some sustenance too.” She smiled.
Reanna looked at him with a grin. “Oh, me too.”
Dillon rolled his eyes and went to the kitchen as they both chuckled.
Molly looked at her friend. “So, how’s it going with your mother and Henry now that everyone knows the truth?”
“Okay, I guess. Henry has told Imogen, who took it well. I’d actually already met her. She’s a great customer of mine. I didn’t know she was Henry’s wife, though, until he introduced me to her. She seems very nice.”
“And your ma?”
She took a sip of her wine. “We’ve talked. I tried to put myself in her shoes. It devastated her when Henry left, and then to find out she was pregnant. I can understand why she didn’t tell him. Maybe it would have been different had I not had a great father growing up. Who knows? We’re just trying to move on.” She turned to Molly, “So where is Liam?”
Molly smiled and told her, “He should be here any minute.”
Just then, the door chimes rang. Dillon had just set a plate of appetizers in front of them when he turned. “I’ll get it.” Luna followed him as he swung open the door. It was Liam and another gentleman. This man had dark skin, a close shaved head and piercing blue eyes. He opened the door wide and said, “Come in. Join the party.”
Molly stood up and yelled, “Keith, it’s for you!” and walked into Liam’s arm, who leaned down and kissed her.
She heard footsteps and Keith murmuring, “What do you mean, it’s for me? I don’t know anyone— Lloyd?”
Keith’s face lit up, and the two embraced.
“What on earth are you doing here? How did you get here? There weren’t any seats available when I called.”
Molly, currently tucked under Liam’s arm, said, “No seats going from here to the U.S., but that doesn’t mean there weren’t seats available from the U.S. to here.” She smiled.
“You did this?” Keith asked her.
She nodded. “Merry Christmas.”
Keith came over to her and said to Liam, “May I?”
Liam let her go, and Keith enveloped her into a hug. “Thank you!”
Lloyd, who was still standing there, said, “And I have a surprise for you, Molly.”
Molly’s eyebrows raised, “For me?” She looked from Liam to Keith, to Lloyd.
Lloyd opened his suit coat, pulled out some papers and handed them to her. Molly looked at them, and then at Liam. “Are these what I think they are?” She showed them to Keith.
“This calls for a celebration!” Molly said, putting her arms around Keith and giving him a kiss on the cheek.
“Aren’t we already celebrating?” Liam asked.
“Yes, but now we have an extra reason to celebrate,” she answered as they all walked into the living room, and Liam pulled her down onto the couch. However, it didn’t last long, as over the next twenty minutes, the door chimes never stopped, and everyone wanted to give her a hug, so she stayed standing. By the time almost everyone had arrived, the party encompassed the entire living room, dining room and kitchen.
Molly smiled at Gary Wright, another in the Garda, who she’d become friends with when she a
rrived six months ago. Other than Fiona, her entire family was in attendance, and the Pierce family, including Shannon, who was out on bail, and Henry, who had been released from the hospital that morning, were milling about. Dillon and Aiden made themselves the unofficial bartenders, and Gran had outdone herself with the appetizers and puddings.
“Where’s Fiona?” Molly asked her mum.
“She’s supposed to be here.” Molly felt a wave of sadness. It had been at least a week and a half since she’d seen her sister or even spoken to her other than the short time at their parents’ house. When the door chimed again, Molly ran to it, expecting her sister. She swung the door open wide, and her smile disappeared.
“DI Elliott. How have you been?” She waved him in and was about to close the door when she heard a voice yell, “Wait, don’t close the door!”
Molly smiled at the voice of her sister. She ignored the cold, going outside and onto the porch to engulf her sister in an enormous hug. Her eyes went wide when she saw who was behind her.
“Callum?”
He held up a brown paper bag, “I brought beer!”
Molly looked from one to the other. “Are you two?”
“You’re not mad, are you?” Fiona said, her hands over her mouth and nose.
“Mad? Why on earth would I be mad?” She smiled. “This is great! One of my best friends and my sister! I’m so happy for you two.” She hugged her again, then held her at arm’s length. “Wait, is this why you’ve been avoiding me?”
Fiona nodded.
Molly just shook her head. “Come on in, you two. We’re celebrating!”
Shannon Moore was sitting next to Gran, and they were whispering into each other’s ears. Whether it was a secret or because they couldn’t hear each other, Molly didn’t know. Shannon was out on bail, waiting for her day in court. Her solicitor had told her she’d probably get off with a light sentence, so they were hopeful. Reanna was giving Rory a hug, happy to learn she had another brother to torture, and she smiled at Liam across the room.