Dean pressed his lips together, hesitating before speaking. “Amy and Julia had an argument right before the accident. My mom called last week and said that Amy was very upset.”
“Did she say what Amy was riled up about?” Gilmore asked.
Dean sucked in his breath. “What doesn’t Amy get riled up about?”
“Dean,” Celia chided gently.
“Well.” Dean adjusted the seed hat on his head. “We all know Amy. She gets a bee up her ass about every other day. She gets mad, she yells, throws a few things, runs off for a couple of days and then comes back like nothing happened.”
“Amy’s had a hard life,” Jack said in defense of Amy, and Celia stroked his arm sympathetically. Sarah bristled at the display of intimacy.
“Come on, Jack,” Dean said plaintively. “Everyone’s had hard times. We all care about Amy, but she can be a little out there sometimes.”
“What was the argument about?” Gilmore asked, getting the conversation back on track.
“You know my mom never said a bad word against anyone, but she said that Amy came over, started yelling at her about not getting what was due to her. Amy accused them of cheating Jack and her out of what was rightfully theirs.”
“Cheated us? Out of what?” Jack asked in confusion. He turned to Hal. “You’ve got to know I’ve never thought that. You always treated us like your own kids. I know what you and Julia sacrificed for me and Amy.”
“Why don’t we all drive over to my office and we’ll talk things through,” the sheriff suggested. “My deputies can handle the search here.”
“Can’t this wait?” Celia began, but Hal held up a hand.
“No, let’s do this. You’re right,” he said. “There’s no good time for this, so let’s get it over with. We’ll meet you at your office.”
Gilmore gave a nearby deputy a set of instructions, ordered him to call if he ran into any snags and dismissed him before climbing into his vehicle.
Sarah, Jack and Hal loaded into the rental car, and Dean and Celia followed behind them. They sat in silence as they drove, the air in the car thick with the weight of their sadness. In merely a few days, their entire world had been turned upside down. This should have been a time of reflection and fond remembrance, and instead Jack’s family was at the center of a murder investigation.
They drove through Penny Gate, past Saint Finnian’s, the church where Julia’s funeral was to be held, and past the cemetery. The town seemed to still be mostly asleep. A boy with a canvas delivery bag hanging over his shoulder was sleepily tossing rolled newspapers toward doorsteps, and an elderly couple walked their dog. For now they were oblivious to the murder investigation. Sarah sympathized with them—in just a few hours their quaint, small town would be shaken with the gossip that one of their own had been possibly brutally murdered.
Jack turned down a street lined with maple and oak trees emblazoned in full fall colors. When they finally arrived at the sheriff’s office, Sarah thought the modest two-leveled building looked more like a schoolhouse than a place where murder suspects were interrogated and booked. Jack pulled into a parking spot and Dean maneuvered his truck in the space next to him. Together they made their way through the main entrance.
Gilmore had arrived before any of them and was waiting by the front counter. Sarah looked around for Margaret Dooley, but she was nowhere to be seen. Instead, a young female deputy was sitting behind the counter, talking on the phone while jotting down notes.
Gilmore greeted them with a grim smile. “Help yourself to some coffee.” He pointed to a table where a coffeemaker bubbled and steamed.
“Is Amy here?” Jack asked. His hair, Sarah noticed, was sticking up at odd angles, and his shirt was rumpled and only partly tucked in. In fact, all of them looked half put together. Except for Celia, of course, who managed to make yoga pants and an oversize tunic look lovely.
Gilmore, on the other hand, was wide-awake and alert, his uniform starched and wrinkle-free. Sarah realized then that Gilmore knew exactly what he was doing. He had caught them all off guard, showing up at the house at the crack of dawn with his warrant, skillfully luring them away from the house and to his office where he could question them on his own terms.
“We’re still asking Amy a few questions,” Gilmore explained.
“She’s been here all night?” Celia asked incredulously. “Has she been able to get any sleep? Anything to eat? Has she been arrested?”
“Now don’t you worry about Amy. I promise we’re taking good care of her,” Gilmore said, then tapped his palms on the desk in a quick rhythm as if to punctuate the end of the conversation. “Now, why don’t we get down to business? Jack, let’s start with you?”
“Why Jack?” Sarah asked. “We weren’t even in town when Julia fell.” Sarah thought, naively, that they were only here for moral support. If either of them warranted questioning, she figured it would be her, since she was the one who was at Amy’s house when the bloodstained object was found.
“You might be surprised,” Gilmore said.
“This is insane,” Dean muttered as Jack and Gilmore disappeared down a hallway.
“Well, we might as well sit down and wait,” Celia said, reaching for a foam cup. “Hal, would you like some coffee?”
He shook his head and settled into one of the chairs. “We should be planning Julia’s funeral,” he fretted. “I haven’t even had a chance to go to the funeral home yet. I haven’t picked out a casket.”
“We’ll take care of all that when we’re finished here,” Celia soothed. “Drink this,” she pressed, handing him the coffee cup despite his protestations. “I can’t imagine we’ll be here for very long. I mean, we don’t know anything. None of us were even at the house when Julia fell. I’m sure the sheriff will come to the conclusion very quickly that if it wasn’t an accident, whoever killed Julia was a stranger. An intruder.”
“You keep telling yourself that, Celia,” said Dean, glowering from where he stood by the window. “But I guarantee Amy is the one who did this. And if by some miracle Gilmore lets her out of jail, I will strangle her with my bare hands.”
“Dean, just sit down and relax,” Celia ordered. “Let the sheriff do his job.” Despite the violent interaction Sarah had seen between Dean and Celia yesterday, Celia did not seem afraid of her husband.
Forty-five minutes later, Jack emerged from the sheriff’s office looking drawn and unnerved. “He asked for you next,” he said to Celia, and nervously, she rose to her feet.
For the first time all morning, Sarah noticed a crack in Celia’s unflappable veneer. Suddenly she seemed uneasy, and Dean took her in his arms. “You’ll be fine,” he soothed, then touched his lips to her forehead. Once again, Sarah found herself confused by the dynamic between the two of them. One minute they were grabbing and slapping each other and screaming, and the next they were the picture of a perfect marriage.
Sarah turned her attention to Jack. “What did he ask you?”
“I think I need some air,” he said, ignoring her question. “I’m going for a walk.” Jack rubbed a hand across his face where rough dark stubble had appeared overnight.
“Wait,” Sarah said, getting up and following him to the door. “Don’t run off. You don’t get to just run off.”
“I’m sorry,” Jack said, reaching for her hand. His fingers were ice-cold. “It was terrible. He kept asking me about what happened in Julia’s hospital room. It was like I was reliving it all over again.”
“Why would he want to know about that?” Sarah asked.
Jack shook his head. “I don’t know. I thought at first he wanted to know about how upset Amy was when Julia died, how she scratched that nurse, but he kept asking me about Julia. About what physically was happening. When she started having a seizure, how long it lasted? Who was in and out of the room and when.”
“What does who was in the room have to do with anything?” Sarah asked in confusion.
“That was what I wondered. But he kept asking.” Despite the ambivalence that she’d felt toward Jack since arriving in Penny Gate, she couldn’t help feeling sorry for him now. Seeing his aunt die was a terrible thing and she knew that it shook Jack to his core, but she couldn’t help wonder if there was more to Gilmore’s interrogation than what he was telling her.
“Go for a walk,” she urged. “We’ll be fine here for now.”
Together they moved toward where Dean and Hal were sitting. “I’m going to go out and get some air,” Jack said. “I’ll be back in a bit.”
“What was that all about?” Hal asked as they watched Jack leave, the door slamming behind him. “Do you think I should go after him?”
“Let him be,” Dean said before Sarah could explain. “Gilmore probably asked him a bunch of questions about Amy. I’m sure it was hard to admit to Gilmore just how screwed up she is.”
“I know Amy’s got problems, but why would she hurt Julia?” Sarah asked. “If there was one thing Jack has said about Amy, it’s how much she loved Julia.”
“Yeah, but what he didn’t tell you was that Amy, when she’s mad, can get pretty violent. A few years back she pushed a boyfriend into a busy street.”
“Dean,” Hal interjected. “You know there’s a lot more to the story than that.”
“Maybe so, but the guy ended up with a broken leg.”
“They were arguing...he grabbed her arm first,” Hal countered.
Dean took a breath. “My point is, when Amy feels threatened, she doesn’t just get mad, she gets furious.”
“The fellow didn’t press charges...”
“She pushed him in front of a moving car, Dad.” Dean’s voice rose sharply.
Fifteen minutes later the sheriff and Celia came into the lobby and, like Jack, Celia looked a bit shell-shocked. Her eyes were red-rimmed as if she had been crying. Sarah dreaded being called next. Though she knew nothing about Julia and didn’t have anything to hide, she hoped that the sheriff would pass her by and ask Dean or Hal to come back with him next.
“Sarah,” Gilmore said, looking down at her from beneath his heavy brows. Sarah released the breath she was holding, gathered her purse and followed Gilmore down a long corridor. She wondered where Amy was in the building. Was she in one of these rooms being questioned or was she locked away in a cell in the basement? She imagined Amy screaming and crying for help from behind bars, insisting on her innocence and begging to be released. The thought that she was all alone and yet within earshot of her own family was chilling.
Gilmore led Sarah to a partially opened door labeled with a placard that read Verne Gilmore, Sheriff. “Come on in,” Gilmore invited, and they stepped into a cluttered office that held a mismatch of furniture—a battered old oak desk, rows of metal-framed file cabinets and a bookshelf that ran the length of one wall.
Atop the bookshelf were three framed photos—a young Gilmore dressed in his deputy’s uniform standing next to a beautiful, dark-haired woman, and a family portrait showing Gilmore and the woman with two teenagers. His children, Sarah figured. The third photograph was of three toddlers all piled on Gilmore’s lap. A wide smile of joy spread across Gilmore’s face. “Cute kids,” Sarah observed.
“Thanks,” Gilmore said simply. “Please, take a seat.” Sarah sat down in a chair and Gilmore perched on the edge of the desk in front of her. Sarah wondered if he did this to tower over those he interviewed. A subtle but very effective intimidation strategy.
“So, Mrs. Quinlan, I’m hoping that Penny Gate has been treating you well.”
Sarah shifted in her seat. “Yes, it’s a nice town. Everyone has been very welcoming.”
“Good, good, glad to hear that. Shall we get right down to business?” he said, and Sarah nodded. “When did you first learn of Julia’s fall?”
“Early Monday morning. Jack and I flew here that same day. We got to the hospital around 7:00 p.m.”
“What did your husband tell you about what happened?”
“Julia fell down the stairs and her injuries were severe. Hal said that Amy was the one who found her and called 9-1-1.” Sarah watched as Gilmore scratched notes into his small, black notebook. “I’m not sure how Jack and I can help you with this. We weren’t even here.”
“Yes, but you both were in the room when Julia died,” Gilmore said matter-of-factly. “You both could be witnesses.”
“To what? A murder? While we were in that hospital room?” Sarah asked.
Gilmore ignored her question and moved on. “How did Hal react?”
“He was visibly upset. He had to watch his wife take her last breath. It was horrible.”
“Amy, too?”
“Yes, Amy, too. She was beside herself.” Sarah squirmed and crossed her legs, thinking back to when Amy had scratched the nurse. Was it out of anger? Sadness? A feeble attempt to get the nurse to turn the machines back on? She wondered if the others had mentioned Amy’s behavior in the hospital room. “Everyone was upset. It would have been strange if someone wasn’t.”
“It’s okay, Mrs. Quinlan,” Gilmore said mildly. “You don’t have to worry. I’ve already heard about Amy’s outburst at the hospital yesterday. One of the nurses told me.”
Sarah breathed a sigh of relief. She felt guilty enough as it was for calling 9-1-1 when she found Amy passed out on the couch. It was partly her fault that Amy was sitting in a jail cell, and the last thing she wanted was to make things worse by ratting on Amy for her behavior at the hospital.
Gilmore slid from the top of his desk and went to the large window, turning his back to her as he spoke. “I can understand you not wanting to get caught up in all this family drama, but it’s critical that I get all the information I can. Even the smallest detail can be very important.”
Sarah scanned Gilmore’s desktop. It was neatly arranged with a black leather desk blotter, a stapler, three-hole punch and a tape dispenser. On the corner of the desk sat two file-folder trays. One labeled In, the other Out. One stray folder sat on the edge of Gilmore’s otherwise organized desk.
“Now, what about Dean? How did he react?” Gilmore asked, turning back to face her. Sarah averted her eyes from the file baskets, hoping that Gilmore hadn’t caught her looking. She opened her mouth to insist once again that each person in the hospital room was crushed when Julia died, but paused. She sifted through the scene: Hal crying, Amy shouting, the vase crashing to the floor, Jack standing by helplessly and Dean—how did he react? She has a do not resuscitate order, he had said. What did he tell Amy when she begged for someone to try and save her? They can’t. She doesn’t want any heroic measures keeping her alive. He seemed calm, almost resigned to the fact that his mother was dying. But was that an unreasonable reaction?
Gilmore looked at Sarah, waiting for her response. “He was sad, too,” she finally said, looking down at the floor. Gilmore seemed skeptical but didn’t press her.
“Were you aware of any conflicts that anyone might have had with Julia? Did Jack mention any family disagreements?”
Dean had mentioned that Amy and Julia had an argument soon before the fall, but that was just hearsay. She didn’t know anything about it, and she certainly didn’t want to start trouble about something she knew nothing about. “No, nothing that I can speak to.”
“Tell me about yesterday. What time did you arrive at the hospital?” Gilmore returned to his spot on the edge of the desk.
“We got there pretty early. I’d say by nine o’clock. It was just a few minutes after we came in the room that Julia started having the seizure.”
“Who was in the room before you arrived?”
“When we came in?”
“Yes, was someone already in the room when you arrived yeste
rday?”
“Yes, Amy was in the room.”
“By herself?”
Sarah thought about this for a moment. “Yes. Amy was in the room when Celia and I walked in.”
“You don’t know if anyone but Amy had been in the room alone with Julia before then?”
Sarah shook her head. “I have no idea. But the night before, on Monday night, everyone took turns sitting with Julia. She was never alone.”
“You were in the room alone with Julia at some point?”
“No. I meant everyone in the immediate family.” Sarah felt her face grow hot. These are easy questions, she told herself. Why was she so nervous?
“Was Hal ever in the room alone with Julia?”
“Yes.” Sarah nodded. “Everyone, except me, spent some time alone with her.”
“Who was in the room first with Julia? Alone, I mean.”
Sarah tried to think back. Was it Amy? Maybe Celia? There was a small window of time when they were all out in the hallway. She was sure of that. “I can’t remember,” Sarah said, shaking her head. “Like I said, they all took turns.”
“Amy spent the night in Julia’s room. Is that correct?” Gilmore asked.
“As far as I know she did. She was there when we left and she was there when we came back the next morning. She said she was planning on spending the night.”
“Did you see Amy manipulating any of Julia’s medical equipment? Maybe doing something with her IV?” Gilmore asked.
“No, why?” Sarah asked. “Why are you so concerned about what happened in the hospital room?” Gilmore’s face gave away nothing. “Do you think Amy did something to her there?” Sarah asked. “If so, I didn’t see anything. Except for the seizure. I saw the seizure.” Sarah knew she was rambling.
Gilmore scratched his neck and stood. “I think that’ll be all. Thank you for coming in. I do appreciate your time.” Sarah stayed in her seat, taken back at how quickly the interview had ended.
Why was Gilmore so worried about who was in the hospital room alone with Julia? Did he think that whoever pushed her down the steps wanted to make sure they finished the job? Gilmore had his sights on Amy. Though she barely knew her sister-in-law, she wasn’t sure she could see her murdering Julia. She saw the way Amy was with her aunt; she heard the way Jack described their relationship. It just didn’t seem plausible. She thought about how roughly Dean had grabbed Celia’s arm. He seemed to be the more volatile one. Or maybe even Celia. The way she had reared back and struck out at Dean seemed so out of character for her.
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