by Elise Noble
I couldn’t stop and think right now. That would have to come later.
The letters came next. Following Ethan’s directions, I found the key to his desk in his pen holder and opened the second drawer on the pedestal. The top folder was labelled “Kooks.” Inside, the first sheet was pink and decorated with little hearts, drawn in felt-tip pen and coloured in red. The overall effect was childlike. The faint smell of cheap perfume still lingered on the paper, a residue of the person who wrote it.
But further investigation would have to wait. I shrugged off my slim backpack and slipped the folder inside, together with the keys. Time to hit the mother lode.
“The cops haven’t done much in the rest of the house,” Emmy said.
“Just some fingerprinting and a cursory search,” Ana agreed. “They might as well not have bothered. There was blood on the wall in the kitchen pantry they don’t even appear to have noticed.”
Good to know my tax dollars were hard at work. Which reminded me, how was Mack getting on outside with Officer Hapless? I switched channels on the radio for a second and heard him dictating a recipe for cinnamon rolls. Yup, hard at work.
Beside me, Emmy pushed open the door to the master bedroom. Even now, the metallic tang of blood still hung in the air, a grim reminder of the girl it had once given life to. Under that permeated the musky scent of the man who’d once slept inside. Two lives had been lost in this room, not one.
A fine layer of powder covered every hard surface. I only hoped none of us needed to sneeze. The sheets had been removed, but a vague outline of Christina still remained, stained into the mattress like a modern-day version of the Turin Shroud.
“Gloves and massage oil,” I muttered as I bent to look under the bed.
There was nothing there. Or indeed anywhere else in the room.
Ethan’s clothes hung neatly in his walk-in closet, rows of jeans and the world’s largest collection of hoodies. I opened a drawer, revealing a selection of masks.
Emmy picked one out and held it up to her face. “Does it suit me?”
Ana snatched it from her. “Not when you’re supposed to be using your eyes to search.”
She harrumphed and carried on looking, but it was pointless. Apart from a safe built into the floor that looked untouched, we found nothing of interest. I’d have to ask Ethan what was in that. There was no time to start safe-cracking tonight, and we’d need a specialist in any case.
“Are you sure Christina’s massage client was Ethan?” Emmy asked. “Could she have had two jobs lined up that evening?”
“She didn’t have enough time. The time stamp on the CCTV says she got to the club an hour after she left home, and we’ve checked the time stamp’s correct. There’s only half an hour missing, and no girl of her calibre would get a man off that quickly. Four thousand bucks, remember?”
“Well, it’s not here, and Mack’s probably gone hoarse by now.”
“I know. We should leave.”
Fuck it. I’d hoped to at least find the bottle of oil, which would have validated Stefanie’s story, but it wasn’t to be. What if Stefanie was lying? That was a possibility I needed to consider, but at least we had the letters.
Back in the car, we called off a bored-sounding Mack and started the drive back to Riverley.
“Find anything good?” Emmy asked.
“I got the letters and the house keys. But the house keys were next to another set of car keys, right in the hallway. Now I need to work out what keys Ethan used when he drove off and why.”
“The keys you found were hidden, yes?” Ana said.
“Yeah.”
“Then it’s simple. Ethan wasn’t the one driving the car.” She made it sound so straightforward.
“But he was found behind the wheel.”
Ana waved her hand dismissively. “That’s easy to do. All you have to do is park the car at the top of a slope and shove the victim in the driver’s seat, then take the handbrake off and jam their foot on the gas pedal. If you get lucky, the car explodes at the bottom.”
“That’s always the fun part,” Emmy chipped in. “I’ve only had one go up properly, but he was an arsonist. I thought someone up there was looking down on me.”
“The key is to make sure the tank is full and the engine is running,” Ana said. “That way it’s about fifty-fifty. Or if you have more time, you can rig the airbag igniter to blow.”
“Guys, enough talk about how to kill people.”
Ana swivelled around in her seat. “I thought you wanted to know how to kill people. Emmy said so. We’ve been discussing it.”
I sighed. “Yeah, I do, but only one. Christina. And if you figure someone else was driving the car, that must mean Ethan was in one of the other seats, or the trunk.”
“The trunk,” Emmy said. “If he wasn’t complicit in this, he must have been unconscious or tied up, and there were no rope burns on his wrists.”
“Unconscious, then.” And wasn’t there a smudge of Christina’s blood in the trunk? That could have been transferred as somebody hefted him inside. “But the medical report only reported one head injury, and that was consistent with him hitting his head on the steering wheel.”
“Did anyone screen him for drugs?” Emmy asked. “GHB? Rohypnol?”
I was sure they hadn’t, but it wouldn’t have made a difference anyway. “No, but he wasn’t found until a day later. Club drugs like those have a really short half-life. He’d have metabolised it out of his system by then. They screened Christina, though, and they found nothing.”
“How would it have got into his system, anyway?” Ana asked. “It didn’t happen while he was at the club, or he’d never have made it home.”
“There was a bottle of champagne in the photos,” Emmy said. “Maybe it was in there?”
If only it were that straightforward. “But Christina was drinking that as well. There was a half-empty glass with lipstick on the rim.”
“Was there any other food or drink in the room?”
I shook my head. “And if there was, there was no guarantee that Ethan was going to touch it.”
“Maybe Christina gave him something?”
She took both hands off the wheel and snapped her fingers. The car lurched to the side, and I grabbed at the door handle. Thank goodness I was wearing a seatbelt.
“Will you hold on to the damned wheel? Otherwise, someone’s gonna be investigating our car crash.”
“Stop being so nervous. Anyway, what about the oil? The bottle we conveniently can’t find? Maybe there was something in that? Stefanie said Christina wore gloves, which would have protected her from touching it.”
“I’m not sure that would work. GHB and Rohypnol aren’t absorbed through skin. He’d have had to drink the stuff.”
Emmy screwed her face up in the rear-view mirror. “Yuck. What if it wasn’t massage oil in the bottle? Could Christina have tipped something in his drink?”
“Not if she was an unwilling participant like Stefanie believes.”
“Okay, then what about something else in the oil? Another drug?” She tapped at her phone, and a dial tone filled the cabin. “I know just the person who can help us.”
And I knew exactly who that would be.
Three rings, and a woman picked up. “Yes?”
“Fia, got a question for you, honey.”
Fia Darke, Emmy’s ex-girlfriend and a walking, talking, breathing encyclopaedia of poisons and other deadly substances. Which was more than could be said for her victims. She’d just moved to Virginia with her new boyfriend after spending three months in the Cayman Islands.
“Shoot.”
“If you wanted to knock a guy out, what would you put in a bottle of massage oil to accomplish that?”
“Are we talking temporarily or permanently?”
“Temporarily. An hour or two.”
As she paused, I pictured the corner of Fia’s mouth twitching the way it always did when she was deep in thought.
“I’d
try scopolamine.”
“Scopolamine?”
“It’s absorbed through the skin, and in low doses, it’s used in patches to combat motion sickness. But in high doses? Night-night.”
“You’re certain that would work?”
“Well, I’ve never tried it.”
“Hmm…”
“Only one way to find out. We’ll need a willing volunteer.”
I leaned back and closed my eyes. This was so fucked up. But then again, what was new?
“How about Jed?” I suggested. “He’s a little taller, but close to Ethan in terms of build.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Emmy said. “Fia, you want to come watch? We can have dinner afterwards. Mrs. Fairfax has a new recipe for beef casserole.”
“I love her beef casserole.”
“It’s a date, then.”
CHAPTER 28
IF EMMY AND Ana were right, this case was even worse than I’d imagined. It hadn’t just been Ethan’s reputation that Christina’s murderer wanted to trash. If they’d pushed him off the edge of the road in his car, they’d been trying to kill him as well.
This whole mess was a contradiction from start to finish. The calculated planning, the red-hot anger of the stabbing, then the coolness as the killer walked away from the crash scene and disappeared. We were still missing something—we had to be—but I couldn’t quite grasp what it was.
I could only carry on pulling at loose threads until things began to unravel.
When I’d got back to Riverley last night, I’d started reading Lavinia’s letters. Ethan and Ronan were right. They weren’t horrible or threatening, more like the ramblings of a lonely woman who’d found some joy in watching a man from afar. I still wanted to track her down, just to be on the safe side, but I just couldn’t see her being involved in this plot.
Finding her shouldn’t be too difficult, at least. She’d signed one of her early letters with her full name, Lavinia Dixon, and in another, she’d mentioned her hometown, half an hour outside Richmond. I’d get Mack to cross-reference the two and find her address.
More interesting were the other letters in the bundle. Among Lavinia’s descriptions of the Ethan-shaped cookies she’d baked and the T-shirt she’d had screen-printed with his face on it, there were notes from someone else entirely. Two of them, both typed on plain white paper.
They’d arrived care of his record label, according to the envelopes, which were postmarked Norfolk. The first called the Ghost every name under the sun and vowed to put him out of business. The second threatened to wipe the mask off his face personally. They were hate on a page, pure vitriol. The kind of anger that could stab a woman forty-seven times.
There was no indication of the sender, and I needed to speak to Ethan about them. My next visit to Redding’s Gap was scheduled for the day after tomorrow, forty-eight long hours away, and the thought of waiting had me fidgeting at my desk. Should I bring it forward?
An email pinged on my screen, and I scrolled through it. Jed was free tomorrow, and if I promised to give him a massage, he’d help us out. Times like this, I was glad he was such a man-slut.
I replied in the affirmative, oddly nervous about what the outcome would be. Was it really possible that things had happened as we suspected?
Only twenty-four hours until I found out.
That still gave me today, and what better way to spend the afternoon than to visit my favourite music manager again? Apart from the mystery letter writer, Harold Styles was the person in this affair who raised my hackles the most.
Time to shake him up a bit and see what came loose.
Harold had bought a new suite of office furniture since I saw him last. The desk was bigger, the chairs were leather rather than fabric, and he’d treated himself to some fancy artwork to hang beside all his gold and platinum discs.
Once again, he held onto my hand too long. In the end, I pulled it away and wiped it on my jeans.
He was oblivious to the insult.
“How can I help you, little lady?”
I had a feeling “crawl into a hole and die” wasn’t the answer he was looking for, so I smiled sweetly. “I just wanted another chat about Ethan.”
“I’ll give you a friendly piece of advice. Let it go. There are plenty of other worthwhile causes you could be spending your time on. I’m organising a charity luncheon for next Thursday, and we’re looking for pretty girls to sell raffle tickets.”
“Sorry, I’m busy cleaning my gun that day.”
He stared at me for a second before forcing a laugh. “Oh, I do like a sense of humour. Just say the word if you want to help.”
“Yeah, sure. Anyway, about Ethan…”
He walked around his desk and put a hand on my back, gently pushing me towards the door. “Forget him. It’s the best thing for everyone, yourself included.”
Was that a veiled threat? Because that would only bump Harold up my suspect list. I decided to play along—who knew what he might let slip in future if he thought I was dumb?
“Maybe you’re right. I think I might go and get my nails done instead.”
He rewarded me with a flashy smile, and the light glinted off his gold tooth. “That’s more like it.”
I stomped over into Ronan’s office and slammed the door. “Asshole.”
He looked up from a pile of papers. “What did I do?”
“Not you. Harry.”
He sat back and sighed. “Yeah, he’s getting worse. Did you see the new furniture?”
I nodded.
“He bought it from some fancy designer in New York, and yesterday his new company car arrived. It’s a Rolls Royce.”
How much more of Ethan’s money had he spent? I didn’t know, but I wanted to find out. As Emmy said, most murders came down to sex, revenge, or money, and Harry certainly seemed fond of the latter. Ethan ending up in jail proved to be a nice little earner for him.
“A pretentious car for a pretentious driver. It’s a good match. Look, is there any chance you could get me a backup of Spectre’s accounting system? I’d like to see what else he’s been buying.”
“I’m not sure I’m allowed to give that kind of information out. Ethan—”
“Ethan’s not here.”
“Even so…”
“You want to sit around and watch Harry move into his company mansion with room for a company helicopter and company pony?”
He grimaced. “Not really.” A thin sigh escaped his lips. “Okay, I’ll get you the data. It might take me a couple of days, though.”
“I appreciate it.”
I was still seething about Harold when I walked out to my car. Well, Emmy’s car. The fact that he wanted Ethan to stay in jail made me even more determined to get him out.
And when I arrived at the office, I found Mack had another piece of information that might help me with that.
“Come and look at this.” She grabbed me as soon as I walked in, almost making me spill my coffee.
On her screen, she had a picture of two Mustangs. Ethan’s car after the crash on the left, and a shiny new version on the right.
“Watch this.”
A 3D avatar walked across the screen and sat behind the wheel of the good car, settling himself into the seat and stretching his legs out.
“What am I looking at?”
“The man is Ethan. I took his dimensions from the photos I have of him. And if the seat in his car was set in the position it was in when it met the tree, he’d have had to really stretch to reach the pedals. I peered more closely at reconstruction. Sure enough, there was an inch of air between the soles of Ethan’s feet and the gas. No way would Ethan drive his car like that every day. He’d move the seat forwards.
“Son of a bitch. Someone else was driving the car. Ana was right.”
“Ethan’s five feet ten, and I’d say your mystery person was at least three inches taller.”
“Mystery man. It’s got to be a man. A woman that size with enough strength to manhandle
an unconscious Ethan? I haven’t come across anyone in this case who fits that description.”
But Harold and Ty did. Ronan was too short, and I had no idea about DJ Steel. Yet.
Another piece had just been added to the puzzle, but it was still far from complete.
CHAPTER 29
AT ELEVEN THE next morning, Team Blackwood was ready to film a movie. Bradley had recreated Ethan’s bedroom in one of the spares at Riverley with a bed, nightstands, and a sofa in the same place. We had the set, we had the cast and crew, we even had a bottle of scopolamine-laced massage oil concocted by Fia. But what we didn’t have was a script.
Instead, we had three directors, who were currently having a heated discussion over the first scene.
“Can’t he just stay still?” Xav asked.
“No way,” Ana argued. “This has to be convincing. Unless we drug him properly, we don’t know if this will work. It’s all just a theory.”
Jed lay on the bed in a pair of boxer shorts, hands behind his head. “I’m not sure I want to be unconscious. What if Emmy shaves my eyebrows off again?”
“That was ages ago, and I only did that because you decided to host a naked pool party at my house.”
“It was fun. Besides, I invited you to join in.”
“I didn’t want to join in. It was three in the morning, and I wanted to sleep.”
“You need to lighten up.”
“Guys!” I interrupted. “Stop arguing. Jed, I promise I won’t let Emmy shave any part of you. And we’ve got the doctor here to monitor things.”
“Okay, then get on with it.”
Blackwood’s physician, Kira, sat on a stool in the corner, fiddling with her phone. I’m pretty sure she thought we were all insane, and that wasn’t far from the truth. Oliver was beside her with a legal pad and his fancy fountain pen, and Bay sat beside Mack, Fia, and Emmy on the sofa, ready to point out any inaccuracies in our reconstruction.
And now Emmy clapped her hands together. “Right, let’s go.”
Thanks to Bradley, I was wearing a dress similar to Christina’s, although she’d ended up naked by the end. We knew she’d had sex with Ethan because of the condom in the bin and the traces of semen inside her, but the condom showed no blood. The ME’s report said there was tearing in her vagina, so we worked on the assumption that either she and Ethan got rough afterwards and he disposed of the evidence, or the killer did it instead.