“You said Zoey needs me?” I asked Paul.
His self-satisfied smirky smile was back. “Yeah, she’s got news.”
Chapter 33
“Theodore Lucas Monroe,” Zoey said in reference to the guy’s face filling the huge center screen above her. She gave the guy sitting next to her a nudge. “Chris, let Kylie have the chair.”
His eyes bugged out. “You know my name?”
Zoey stared at him like he’d lost his mind. “I also know the love letter you wrote your first grade teacher—when you were sixteen.”
Chris jumped out of the chair with the same speed as someone who had sat on a thumbtack. “Right. Kylie, here ya go.” He positioned it to make it all the more convenient for me to take his place. I sat, and he eagerly continued on with his need to supplicate himself by asking, “Can I get you anything? Something to drink? A pillow? Oh,” he dug into his front pocket then pulled out his offering, “a butterscotch?”
“Chris,” Zoey said.
He jumped. “Yes?”
“Go.”
“Right.”
He left.
Zoey flashed me a sweet smile. “Isn’t he cute? I’m thinking of asking him out to dinner once this is all over. That letter was hot.”
“Ewww,” I whined.
“Which part? The letter or asking him out?”
I craned my head to get a better look at the guy. He was parked next to the cardboard and duct tape archway currently being used as the tent’s new entryway. He had a perpetual newness about him similar to Justin Bieber.
I squinted and resisted holding my fingers up to isolate the sight of him as if through a camera lens.
“He is cute,” I conceded. Cute wasn’t really the word I wanted to use. I wanted to say pretty. With a different pair of glasses, half a jar of product in his hair and a dump truck load of swagger, he could have been a runway model. I’d totally missed it, but Zoey hadn’t.
It was odd the things you could overlook when your eyes are telling you there’s no need to see beyond the basics.
Turning back around, I slouched down in the chair, rested my head against its back top edge, and laced my fingers to rest my hands over my stomach. I stared up at the centermost monitor, the one with Lucas’s image plastered across it. We’d been seeing him almost from the time we’d arrived at the B&B. While I’d thought it was odd, that he was ever anything other than a general fix-it guy had never even crossed my mind. Not for one second.
I’d seen him, and then I’d stopped “seeing” him. What did that say about me?
“What’d you say his name was?” I asked.
“Theodore Lucas Monroe, he’s a PI registered out of Oregon.”
“Long way from home. Know who hired him?” I asked.
Zoey shook her head. “Best we can figure, he was paid with cryptocurrency.”
“You can’t trace it?”
“Oh, we can, but his payment was made through a purchasing hub that interrupts the ability to trace the payment’s origin. It would take….” Her voice trailed off, then she called over her shoulder. “Henry, how long would the scrape take?”
“Three months, two days, and nineteen hours,” came the hollered reply.
Zoey sat forward again. “Three months, two days and nineteen hours,” she repeated.
“Oh wow…”
“Yeah,” she said.
“What about the warrants? He said he had some out against him.”
Zoey toggled her head from side to side. “Mmm, more like extradition orders.”
“Extradition?” My eyes flew wide. “By who?”
“Three different countries. But it doesn’t feel right.”
“How do you mean?”
“None of the charges make any sense. Nothing’s related. It feels like he was working black ops for someone who didn’t step up to clear his name when things went sideways.”
“Okay, I’m officially confused. Is this guy a good guy or a bad guy?”
“I don’t know,” Zoey said. “It’s looking like he would have been able to kill Dougie Dan if he’d wanted to.”
“But he said he didn’t because he hadn’t been hired to,” I said.
“Mmhmm, but what was he hired to do?”
We were back to square one. All of Zoey’s effort had been a waste of time. Knowing Lucas’s real name wasn’t helping us figure out who had killed Dougie Dan. We weren’t getting anywhere. We needed something tangible. We needed to be able to wrap our hands around a piece of evidence so that I could hold it up and shake it triumphantly in front of Sheriff Palke’s face.
I leaned over and whispered my idea to Zoey.
“What?” she asked in a non-whisper voice without leaning toward me.
I leaned a little closer and said it again, exaggerating my lip movement for each word while speaking even softer than before.
Zoey frowned and knitted her brows together. Then the light dawned in her eyes. “Oh! You wanna break in!” she exclaimed. “Where we breaking into?” she asked in a deafening stage whisper.
I groaned and rolled my eyes, then glanced around.
All eyes were on us. Everyone had heard.
Chapter 34
“Shoo… Shoo,” I said to the small herd of geek squad guys following us. I’d managed to drag Zoey out of the tent, but everyone in the tent had simply followed. They’d even picked up a couple more along the way. “Zoey,” I lamented, “make them go away.”
She stopped, turned, narrowed her Cleopatra eyes at them, and flipped her wrist without even raising it from her arm from her side. The group looked from Zoey to Gaunt-Faced Paul. In answer to Zoey’s silent dismissal, he planted his feet wide and crossed his spindly arms over his chest.
The guy was either an idiot or brave. I wasn’t sure which.
“Paul,” Zoey said in a voice that dripped saccharin sweetness, the kind laced with arsenic. “What are you doing?”
The guys standing around Paul shuffled a few inches backward. Paul gulped but stood his ground. “We want to help,” he announced.
Zoey glanced at me. I fervently shook my head and mouthed the word, “No.” I was sure the guys meant well, but this had always been the Kylie and Zoey show. One of them was bound to trip us up, get us caught, or, you know, fall off the roof.
I didn’t want to be responsible for them. I didn’t want to be responsible for what might happen to them.
“Okay,” Zoey said. “You can help.”
Bells and whistles of warning went off inside my head. “Zoey,” I hissed. But it didn’t matter. She wasn’t listening.
“Kylie and I’ll go upstairs,” Zoey said. “You guys all hang out outside and downstairs. Anyone tries to come upstairs while we’re…” Her voice trailed off, and she looked at me. “What’re we doing?”
I stifled a groan. “Searching Rita and Michael’s rooms.” All plausible deniability was out the window for these poor schlubs. If Zoey and I got caught, they’d now catch some of the heat. With Zoey’s entrance into their lives, they’d gone from a group focused on the honorable pursuit of justice to hacking “secure” government sites and aiding and abetting.
“Right,” Zoey said to the group. “Distract anyone from coming upstairs until Kylie and I come down.”
Zoey’s minions nodded their heads in unison. Then Paul took up his lieutenant’s role and instructed his guys on where each should go.
I grabbed Zoey’s arm and got us walking while the rest of the group was distracted. I was worried that a few stragglers would follow us upstairs like little puppies. But out of sight, hopefully out of mind.
We entered the house through the mudroom door, then wove our way through the various rooms to the stairs. I’d climbed them enough times by now, but something about this time felt ominous and eerie.
We got to the second floor without mishap. There, we passed the giggling newlyweds’ door, rounded a bend in the hallway, and reached its end with a door on either side.
“Which is Michae
l’s and which is Rita’s?” I asked.
Zoey shrugged.
I tried both handles. They were locked.
“Think Mama Hendrix has spare keys somewhere?” I asked.
“No need. I got this,” Zoey replied. She pulled out her cell phone and peeled away a thin metal plate from its back. It looked to be part of the case and not a part of the phone itself. She then slid the plate between one of the doors and its frame. She seesawed it back and forth, pushing down at different angles. Suddenly, the plate slipped a good inch lower.
“Try the door,” Zoey said.
I did. The handle still wouldn’t turn.
“Just pull,” she instructed.
I gave a little tug and the door opened right up. Zoey then flipped the door’s inside latch to unlocked.
She returned the metal plate to the back of her phone. It snapped into place as if magnetized. “Everything should have multi-functionality,” she said with a wink.
“Swiss-Army cell phone cover. I like.”
Inside, the room was nice. There was a tall bed, huge airy windows, a dresser, and attached bathroom. There was nothing to make it stand out as either Michael’s or Rita’s room except for the men’s shirt strewn over the back of a deep cushioned chair next to the bed.
“Michael’s room,” I whispered.
“What are we looking for?”
I shrugged. “A lead? Anything, really. It’s just, something’s not right. If Rita killed Dougie Dan, then it makes sense that Michael is the one who hit her on the head. But if he did that, why would he leave her to die? Why would Lucas have to intervene to save her life? Why wouldn’t Michael have done something to try to save her?”
“Maybe he didn’t realize how hard he’d hit her?”
“Maybe…” I said, though it still didn’t sound right. “Lucas said he’d followed Rita into the woods. He found her near the spring house and carried her all the way back to the house. If Michael hit her in the head to make look less guilty, then why leave her out there knocked out cold to probably die of exposure. It just doesn’t add up.”
“She could have still been awake when Michael left her. The concussion that knocked her out could have kicked in after he left,” Zoey said.
“I guess,” I said, though I still didn’t like the idea.
We started searching. I checked the closet while Zoey went through the chest of drawers and bedside stand. The closet was empty, and the chest of drawers contained mostly extra towels, blankets, and pillows.
I got on my hands and knees and checked under the bed. The front of his suitcase peeked back at me. My heart fluttered hopefully as soon as I put my hand on it and gave it a tug. Its resisting weight told me it wasn’t empty.
I hauled the thing out and flopped it on top of the bed. Zoey left her search of the bathroom to join me.
“Find anything?” she asked.
“About to find out,” I said, unzipping the navy-blue softshell case and flopping the top open. We stared down at the contents. “Socks.”
“Plus jeans and shirts,” Zoey offered.
My heart sank. Michael’s room was turning into a dead end.
“Help me search it,” I said, pulling out the contents.
We stacked the layered garments to one side, then I stood back as Zoey ran her hands over the suitcase’s lining with what I assumed was an expert touch. She checked every nook and cranny and every pocket. She even checked the lining’s stitching in a few places to see if it had been cut loose and then sewn back together.
“Nothing,” she finally said, standing up straight.
“Maybe we’ll have more luck in Rita’s room,” I said.
Zoey’s picked up the stack of shirts and I gathered the stack of jeans in my hands.
Something crinkled.
I froze. “Was that you?”
“Don’t think so.” Zoey patted at the shirts she’d already put in the suitcase. They didn’t make a peep.
I shifted my grip on the stack of jeans and allowed them to flex.
“There it is again!” I whispered.
I plopped the stack of jeans back on the bed and leafed through them. The pants took up their vow of silence once more. There were only three, and there was nothing stuck between them that could have made the crinkling sound we’d heard.
“Why’d he pack so much stuff?” Zoey asked.
I glanced down at my own attire. I’d managed to burn through my entire wardrobe of clean clothes in under two days and had moved on to wearing Joel’s clothes. If Michael had nefarious plans in mind from the outset, it was actually excellent foresight on his part to pack extra. He’d have something clean to put on after a rugged outing of killing.
I glanced at the stack of shirts. “Are any of those the same?”
Zoey flipped through them. There were two sets of matching shirts.
“He’d have been able to get dirty and then change clothes without anyone realizing he was wearing something new,” I said.
“Clever.”
I glanced around the room.
“What’re you looking for?” Zoey asked.
“Dirty clothes. Have you seen any? Any in the bathroom?”
Zoey shook her head.
No dirty clothes…. In contrast, I had a small pile mounded up in the corner of my and Joel’s room.
“Maybe he washed them,” I said, thinking of a possible explanation.
“Or maybe he ditched them. I know I wouldn’t want killer clothes lying around in my room. One hair, one drop of blood, fibers under Dougie Dan’s nails—it’d be too risky.”
Zoey had a point.
I lifted the stack of jeans to put them in the suitcase, then stopped with my hands and the pants held mid-air. It had been faint, almost like the thought of a crinkle rather than a crinkle itself.
“Did you hear anything?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
I dropped the pants on the bed, then picked the first one off the stack and shook it out. Zoey did the same with the second.
“There!” I exclaimed, pointing at the folded piece of paper that had slipped out of the leg of Zoey’s chosen jeans. It was folded by thirds as if ready to slip into an envelope.
I retrieved it from the floor, unfolded it, and held it so that both Zoey and I could read the cursive scrawled letters scratched across its front.
Chapter 35
“Rita, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry,” the letter began. “I couldn’t stand by and do nothing after what he did. He tried to destroy us. He’s evil. I knew I might get caught, but I had to do it. Please forgive me.”
“Oh my gosh,” I said. “It’s a confession. Michael killed Dougie Dan!”
The letter continued on from there, giving Rita instructions on what to do, who to call, and even recommendations on how to move forward with their own orchard without him. It was heartbreaking.
Zoey was frowning.
“What?” I asked.
“He doesn’t come out and actually say he did anything. He didn’t even sign it.”
That was true. The letter never mentioned Dougie Dan or anything about killing anyone. It was vague, but it was written by hand. A writing specialist would be able to tie him to the letter, if it had actually been Michael who had written it.
I shrugged. “He probably didn’t want to give the police and lawyers extra ammunition to use against him. It’s like he wrote this just in case he got caught, without any plans to give it to Rita if he didn’t get caught.”
But even as I said the words, I wasn’t entirely convinced. It wasn’t a real confession. Michael could’ve been technically talking about anyone.
“What now?” Zoey asked. “We broke in here. We can’t just call in the cops and say look what we found.”
“Oh yeah…” I bit my lip. Zoey was holding the confession letter with her bare hands. I’d done the same. We’d tampered with evidence. “Someone might even say we planted it.”
“Let’s go,” she said, tucking the let
ter back inside the jeans it’d fallen out of. We did our best to recreate the original layout of the clothes within the suitcase, closed it and slid it back under the bed.
“We can tell Brad we overheard Michael talking on his phone about the note,” I said.
“Weak, but I like it.”
Zoey locked the door before closing it behind us. She headed for the stairs. I stayed put.
“What’re you doing?” Zoey asked, keeping her voice low.
I was looking between her and Rita’s door. It was right there. So close. She’d been engaged to Dougie Dan. She’d acted weird that first night at the dinner table. Then she got hit on the head and left for dead. She was right smack dab at the center of all of this.
“We’ve got to search Rita’s room, too,” I said.
Zoey gave me a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding look followed by a who-cares shrug and headed for Rita’s door. She got it open faster than she had Michael’s door.
Voices filtering up from the bottom of the stairs had us dashing inside the room and gently closing the door behind us. It sounded as though a couple of the guys from the geek squad had intercepted whoever had started up, but there was no time to waste.
Rita’s room was much like her dad’s, and Zoey and I took up the same search pattern that we’d adopted for his. That’s not to say the search got far. It ended abruptly when Zoey found a small pile of soggy clothes discarded in the corner of Rita’s shower. It looked like a cotton knit shirt overtop of a pair of jeans.
She and I both stared at it, afraid to touch it, but I decided that leaving it alone wasn’t good enough. Right now it was just a pile of clothes. If we were going to learn anything new, we’d have to delve deeper.
I retrieved a coat hanger from the closet to lift the damp shirt. I couldn’t spot anything amiss with it, but Zoey’s keen eyes did.
“Threads are sticking out—there.” She pointed at the spot with a short yet perfectly manicured nail.
I adjusted how the shirt was hanging and a torn hole appeared. It wasn’t a clean cut. The threads were broken, and the hole was jagged.
A Berry Horrible Holiday Page 19
