by Lila K Bell
“Even if one of them killed Amelia?”
“You don’t think that,” he scoffed.
My frustration for his sake was only outweighed by my frustration for my own progress, and it stripped away my last layer of gentleness. “She died that night at City Hall. If it wasn’t you, someone else had to have been there. I’ve confirmed at least two potential suspects, and they don’t have nearly the discretion for you that you’re willing to show for them.”
He jerked back as though I’d slapped him, and I hoped the wake-up call would be enough to get him talking. If he thought his silence was admirable or honourable, he had to realize it would get him nothing but a life sentence.
“Now, do you remember seeing Robert Carlson there that night or what time he left?” I asked.
“I — I honestly can’t remember seeing him. I recall wishing him a good night, but I don’t know what time it was.”
“And what about the argument Veronica overheard?” I pressed. “She confirmed it was you when I asked her. She said she recognized your argyle socks.”
Just like that, the man dissolved before my eyes. His shoulders slumped and he buried his face in his hands. Had the tell-tale heart grown too loud for him? I worried I’d just pushed the man into confessing to the crime.
“Mr. Kingslake,” I said, softening my tone again. “I’m sorry. I know this is dredging up some horrible memories, but I don’t want you to have to suffer the rest of your life with people thinking you hurt Amelia. I spoke with Irene. She doesn’t believe you did it, but how is she supposed to keep faith in you when you won’t argue your case? You have people who have your back and want to get you out of this — but in order to do that, we need to know what really happened.”
He sniffled and raised his red-lined eyes to meet mine. “I know,” he said. “The truth is Amelia and I did argue that night. I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want to remember it. I hate that the last time I saw her we were fighting. And over something so incredibly stupid.” He wiped his eyes and sat up straight, doing what he could to compose himself, though his lip still trembled. “She wanted to move up the wedding and have the plans be part of the campaign. I wanted to wait. I told her my reason was so I could focus solely on her and our marriage without bringing politics into it, but she felt it as a slight, that it meant the campaign was more important to me than she was.”
His voice hitched and he scrubbed his fingers over the scruff growing on his upper lip.
“If I’d just agreed with her. If I’d left the decision about what she wanted up to her. All I wanted was to marry her. Yes, I wanted to win the election, but not at the cost of being with her. But because I was so stubborn, so determined… We were supposed to go to dinner that night, but because of that argument, I left without her.”
He bowed his head, and his shoulders shook with silent sobs.
I sat and watched, unable to do anything to comfort him, not only because of the bars between us but also the fact that I barely knew the man. Gramps would have known what to say and how to react, but I felt useless.
A moment passed, which I did nothing to interrupt, and then John cleared his throat and sat up again. “But I will tell you, Miss Gates,” he said, and his voice was strained with emotion but firm, “that argument did not happen in the courtyard and it was never anything more extreme than raised voices. We would never have conducted our personal affairs in a place that would draw an audience. We were in my office, and if we’d known anyone was nearby, we would have taken our conversation elsewhere. Whoever Veronica believes she heard in the courtyard with Amelia, it wasn’t me.”
I believed him.
Maybe I was naive, blinded by my grandfather’s bias, but I did not believe this man would have dragged his personal laundry into public view. The courtyard behind City Hall was closed in by hedges and low walls, but by no means private. Anyone walking down the street on the other side might have heard them. A man aiming to get reelected wouldn’t have taken such a chance.
So what happened if I took John off the table for that argument?
It could have been Carlson, but he claims to have left earlier in the evening.
Veronica could have made her story up, using the argument she’d overheard earlier to cover her own crime.
There was always the third option. The one I’d tried to avoid but now had to address if only to rule it out.
“Mr. Kingslake, what was your relationship like with Amelia’s father?”
His grief evaporated under his surprise at my question. “Victor? Well, he — I — I confess there was tension. But why do you ask?”
“It was something Irene mentioned. She doesn’t know where he was that night, and she suspects he went to City Hall.”
I didn’t want to voice the extent of her suspicions. If Victor didn’t do it, there was no reason for too many people to know that all these years she’d worried her husband had murdered her daughter.
“He was,” John said, and my heart stopped. He couldn’t be serious. All this time and Irene might have been right? “He came to see me.”
Confusion interrupted my horror. “You?”
“He’d been drinking. Something that, at the time, was only starting to become a regular habit. He waited for me outside and caught me in the parking lot. Told me to stay away from his daughter. I was too old for her, not good enough, just a sleazy politician. Everything he’d said before, but never in such colourful ways.” He rubbed his cheek. “He punched me — the first time I’d ever seen him violent — and, the rumours are true, gave me a pretty impressive black eye. After Amelia went missing, the police questioned me about it, but I said nothing about Victor. I think I told them I’d gotten into a fight with a voter. Whatever my story, they believed it at the time because they had no reason not to, but of course it’s one of the points that came up against me after they found…”
He trailed off with a shrug, his throat working as he fought back another wave of tears. Again, I gave him a moment. The man was finally talking, finally giving me the information I needed to know. The last thing I wanted to do was stop his flow of honesty.
Drag ‘em through the dirt, John. That’s what it’s going to take to save you.
“I think the shock of hitting me sobered him up a bit. He backed off and got into his truck. When I drove away, he was just sitting there, bawling like a child. The reason I never mentioned him is because the last thing I wanted to do was risk his reputation. His daughter had just gone missing, he was clearly dealing with his own issues. And when he died so soon after…” He shook his head. “What does it matter now?”
“It probably doesn’t,” I said. “Do you remember what time that was?”
John rubbed his eyebrow. “It had to have been about nine o’clock. I was home before the nine-thirty news.”
According to Irene, John had come home around ten, which suggested he’d hung around for a little while after John left. Long enough to have gone back inside? It was cutting it close.
I didn’t see it, though. By the sounds of it — if John was telling the truth — the altercation had broken him. I couldn’t see him pulling himself together just to go in and murder his daughter.
I hoped it was enough to put Victor in the clear, but John had just blown Carlson’s alibi out of the water.
15
I offered to drop Sybil off at home on my way out, but Sam’s shift was over, so I left brother and sister together and headed off on my own.
Surely I imagined the tension in the corners of Sam’s eyes when he wished me a good afternoon, and hopefully the apology in Sybil’s expression was my own projected guilt.
Whether it was in my head or not, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d been found out, that Sam had warned Sybil to stay away from me, that my snooping days were numbered.
If that were the case, I had to get moving. John had possibly cleared one of my suspects, but he hadn’t exactly helped me narrow in on any of the others.
Carlson was my next logical step. I could ask him about the fender bender to confirm the time of the accident. That would go a long way to proving John’s story and ruling out Victor.
But the thought of talking to that man again without a real purpose… There was only so long I could pretend I’d vote for him.
For a while I drove aimlessly, giving myself time to make up my mind, and eventually I found myself pulling into the parking lot of Wise Words Nursing Home. Apparently my subconscious had decided it was better to chat with Irene than parse through more lies and sound bites.
What the heck. If it made her feel better to know how unlikely it looked that Victor had killed Amelia, then I would have done my good deed for the day.
I went up to her room hoping to find her awake and was surprised to see her not only out of bed but rooting through a keepsake box at her vanity.
“Mrs. Wright?” I called, not wanting to scare her into a heart attack. The woman had lived to eighty-nine in spite of all her tragedy. I really didn’t want to be the one to end her streak.
She looked up at me with narrowed eyes, and it took a moment for recognition to hit and a smile to light up her face.
“Hello, dear. I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.”
“Fiona.”
“Yes, that’s right, Fiona Gates. Come in, come in. So nice of you to come back. Apologies for the mess. I have to say our conversation the other day sparked a trip down memory lane and I’ve been going through all these boxes again.”
She held out a faded photograph. A family shot of Victor and Amelia. She looked to be about six years old wearing a bright blue bathing suit, and her face was split into a laugh as her father tickled her belly. A sprinkler rained down from behind them and a dog jumped at their side.
A picture of pure innocent joy. All stripped away now.
Yet when Irene took the photo back, there was no sadness in her eyes, just the crinkle of happiness. “Those two were always so close. And that dog. My goodness. Dopey, she named him, and my oh my, was he indeed. Such a good heart, but stupid.”
I chuckled and she set the photo on the table.
“What can I help you with today?” she asked, sliding on her chair to face me.
“I spoke with John again,” I said. “He told me something I think you should know.”
Slowly, carefully, watching her closely for any sign that what I said was upsetting her, I shared John’s story about what happened that night. A flicker of anger passed through her eyes, followed by shame and regret, and finally relief.
“I never thought I would have an answer,” she said. “Part of me still wonders — worries — doesn’t want to hope that’s the end of it, but it makes sense. Victor would have gone to John before speaking with Amelia. He would have expected him to do the honourable thing. The hypocrisy of it, I know, but the man wasn’t always a fool.”
Her gaze touched on the photo in front of her, then she shook her head and looked at me again with such a warm smile that I could only be glad I’d come back. “Thank you for telling me, Fiona. It does my heart good to know that, in all likelihood, at least I only have to be ashamed of my husband’s behaviour.”
I crossed my fingers that’s all it was. She didn’t need to have any more regrets.
“It does leave one last question, though,” I said.
Her wrinkled brow furrowed. “What’s that?”
“The accident. The timelines don’t match up. Robert Carlson claims he left at seven, but John says he didn’t leave until nine. If Victor left shortly after John, how could he and Carlson have hit each other?”
“As it happens, I found something that might clear it all up,” Irene said, and she dug once more through her box. “Oh, where are you, you sneaky thing. I just had you in my hand.” She rifled through the papers, going through each one slowly so she could read it, until her brow smoothed with satisfaction. “There you are. I knew I kept it. I always wondered if it would be useful somehow.”
She handed me the paper and there, in front of me, was the insurance report.
“Victor always insisted on filing everything with his insurance. He told me later that Carlson was peeved by the delay, but he’d put his foot down.”
I scanned it over.
Carlson had told me he’d left early for a hockey tournament around seven o’clock, but according to this, he’d been at City Hall around quarter after nine.
How had no one known he was still at work?
And what had he been doing with those two extra hours?
Memories from twenty-five years ago were scattered and vague. I doubted anyone would be able to pinpoint the exact times they’d done anything.
But a two-hour gap from someone who’d been so certain about his evening? I’d say that was definitely worth a follow up with Mr. Would-be-Mayor.
***
With Irene’s permission, I took the insurance papers with a promise to return them when I was done.
“I have no more need of them, dear,” she said. “As long as they serve the purpose I hoped they would, that’s enough use for me.”
So, armed with the evidence of Carlson’s lie and the brochure he’d given me that I hadn’t even glanced at, I drove to his campaign headquarters.
It was late afternoon, but the office still milled with eager volunteers, most of them young — no doubt students or recent graduates looking to put their freshly honed skills to work.
I wished for their sakes they’d chosen to back a different candidate. Whether Carlson was guilty or not, if his name got dragged into this murder investigation — by whom? Me? No, never — his chances of winning plummeted.
Or, at least, they should. Knowing the twisted thinking of most Brookside residents, his close proximity to murder would only heighten his odds depending on how he handled himself.
I made my way through the office, but a bright-tailed, bushy-eyed volunteer stepped in front of me.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Can I help you?”
Her smile was way too wide for this late in the day, and it had a touch of madness about it, as though she were entirely fueled by caffeine.
“Yes, I was hoping to speak with Mr. Carlson.”
“He’s busy right now. Can I take a message?” A blink but no waver in her smile. Was she human? Was she an automaton programmed to sound like a voicemail message?
I wanted to poke her to find out, but reined myself in.
“This will only take a minute. I swung by here yesterday to discuss his campaign platform. I read through his brochure and have some follow-up questions.”
“Ah, Miss Gates, you’ve returned!” Carlson’s booming voice reached me from the doorway to his office.
I had to give him credit for remembering my name. Did he plan to pull that party trick with all his constituents?
Ms. Creepy Smile stepped aside — not once did her expression change; really, it was terrifying — and I passed through to greet Carlson.
“Much busier today,” I said.
“Yep.” He gave an approving nod to his staff. “I’m a lucky man with a great team. The team that’s going to win us the election.”
A cheer broke out through the office in one choral melody.
“Your enthusiasm is inspiring. It’s certainly won me over.” If every other person on the ballot is suddenly struck down in a freak lightning storm.
“Come on in,” he said. “I overheard you have more questions for me?”
I followed him into his office and closed the door.
Busy as he was, I doubted he’d give me much time to lead him down the garden path of obscure but relevant-to-me questions, but to come at him directly would be to shrug off my shroud of indifference to what had happened to Amelia. It would make my position official.
Vigilante crime solver.
Again.
I’d worked so hard to keep my real motivations secret from anyone except a small number of trusted people, and I wasn’t ready to reveal myself to the r
est of the world yet.
Maybe there was still a way…
“I confess, I’m not really here because of anything to do with your brochure,” I said, and set it down on his desk as I took a seat. “You see, Mr. Carlson, I prefer the people leading my community to have clean bills of health, as it were, and it came to my attention yesterday — a rumour, it’s true, but an interesting one — that I wanted to clear up before I make my final decisions.”
His eyebrows climbed high on his forehead, and I worried he’d lose them in his hairline. “Oh?”
“We talked the other day about Amelia Wright and the tragedy that’s come from all this. You told me you left early that night, but someone remembers you getting into a car accident. Much later than you claimed you left City Hall. If you were mixed up in a murder, Mr. Carlson, I’m sure you understand that I can’t vote for you.”
I had no idea if my strategy would work, but I could at least see whether he was the sort of man to hold on to a lie when confronted.
“Well, of all the…” He shifted in his seat, a mask of offense written into the groove around his mouth. “I was not expecting this kind of paltry attack, Miss Gates, and I’m not particularly inclined to answer you.”
“Why not?” I asked. “If you’re not involved, it shouldn’t be that much of an effort to explain what you were doing that night.”
“Of course I’m not involved. What sort of a man do you take me for?”
Okay, so he was definitely the kind of person to double down, which was good to know. Even if he hadn’t killed Amelia, I wouldn’t trust him to make decisions for Brookside. Accountability was a great trait in anyone, but especially someone in a position of power. Lies — secrets — cover-ups? They were too cliché to run a township.
“If you’re the sort of person to be ruled by rumour, you’re always going to believe the worst in people,” he said.
I reached into my purse and pulled out the insurance papers. “What about when rumour is backed up with documentation?”
