by K. J. Emrick
“But it didn’t work?” Miranda pressed. “You didn’t want to stay with the family and live in luxury forevermore?”
“No, it didn’t work. Paul is a nice man, a really nice man, but he lacks something that I could never quite put my finger on. You know, his confidence is almost non-existent. It was easier to seduce him because of that. I used that. Used it to make him love me.”
“And it didn’t go well?”
“I never loved him, Miranda. But I did like him.”
“So, you decided that you had to get out?” Kyle nudged. “Get out and take his money with you?”
“Yes. I could see how Natasha controlled him. At first I thought she was just an overprotective mother.” Maisie stared off into the distance almost as if she was looking back down through the years. “Natasha was always so kind to me, even if the way she used Paul as a little puppet annoyed me. I just felt safe with Natasha, you know? She’s so competent and responsible and those were things that I didn’t have growing up.”
“So, you hatched your plan to relieve Paul of as much money as possible,” Kyle said, his voice critical again. “I suppose you didn’t really need a firm motherly influence once you had all that money.”
“Well, that was the plan.” She began to float slowly up and down the bathroom, as if she was pacing, lost in her own thoughts. “Actually, it all sort of backfired on me. I have no self-control whatsoever when it comes to money. Not having any when I was younger didn’t prepare me for how fast it could disappear. I didn’t save anything for later. I just… spent it all.”
She turned, facing Miranda and Kyle, and her eyes got bigger as a part of her memory fell into place.
“That’s why I first got back in touch with Paul.”
“You got back in touch with Paul?” Miranda echoed, surprised by that. Although, with what she was now thinking, it made sense.
“I… was going to ask him for more money, you see. I started writing to him last month. He answered me just like that.” There were blue, crystalline tears shimmering in her eyes. “Oh. Oh, I see it now. You were right. Both of you were right about me. From the very beginning, this was always going to happen, wasn’t it? If I hadn’t targeted Paul as an easy touch, a man who could be seduced and lied to and stolen from, then I would still be alive.”
“It’s not your fault,” Miranda repeated, just as she’d said earlier.
“No. Nobody had a right to kill me, to be sure, but I can recognize now that it was my own actions that brought me to this. My own choices. If I’d stayed away from him instead of wiggling my way back into his life recently, even, I’d still be alive.”
“Yes,” Kyle said, in measured tones of sympathy and reproach. “You’d be poor, but you’d be alive.”
“I can admit that now, thanks to you,” she said to Kyle. “All right. That’s really all I know, Miranda. More than I knew a few minutes ago, even. Thank you for showing me the error of my… oh, my.”
Maisie’s voice seemed suddenly to be coming from a great distance away. Her form began to shimmer and lose definition. She went from a translucent blue shade to a murky blue haze as Miranda watched.
Just like she’d expected.
“What’s happening?” Maisie asked them, looking from Miranda to Kyle and back again. “I don’t understand. What’s going on?”
“I think,” Kyle said in a gentler tone, “that it’s time for you to move on. You’ve worked past what was keeping you here. You’ve admitted that you were selfish in this life, and that you treated Paul horribly, and that your own actions brought this terrible thing down on you. I think in clinical terms you’ve had a catharsis.”
“That’s a bit heavy,” Miranda pointed out. “Even for you.”
“What? I learned a few things when they made me a spirit guide. There’s a class and everything.”
“But I can’t,” Maisie argued. “I can’t go now. I haven’t learned who killed me and I don’t know if Paul will be all right, and… and… I don’t want to leave!”
Kyle went to her, and held her hands loosely in his. “There are always maybes in this plane of existence, Maisie. The place that you’re going to is full of certainty. There is no doubt. There is no worry. There is only peace.”
“Are you… are you sure?” she asked him, searching his eyes as she became less and less distinct.
“I am.”
It was the shortest speech Miranda had ever heard her friend make. It was also the most profound.
“Maisie,” Miranda promised her, “after you’re gone I’m going to find your killer, and make sure they get brought to justice. You need to let go now. You need to move on.”
Maisie’s eyes were still on Kyle. “Can I trust her?”
“Oh, yes. Miranda is the truest of friends. She’s also a fine detective in her own right. She’s never let a murderer get away with it yet.”
“Maisie, the only thing keeping you here now, is you.” Miranda felt tears inexplicably prick at her eyes. Now that Maisie had given up her selfishness, and let the truth shine through, Miranda found that she could actually feel sorry for the woman, where she couldn’t before. “It is time for you to let go, Maisie. It’s time for you to move on to something better.”
Squeezing her eyes tightly, Maisie nodded her head. Then she opened her lips to say one last thing…
And she was gone.
Kyle reached over and put a hand on Miranda’s shoulder, and Miranda could actually feel the scant weight of it. “You did good. Of course, you had your trusty spirit guide to help you and without me you simply couldn’t have done it by yourself, now could you?”
“Of course not, Kyle,” she said, managing to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. “Where would I ever be without my trusty spirit guide? Sometimes, I just wish I had more answers. I have this amazing gift, this thing that is sometimes a curse, but I still have to work at finding people a way to leave once they’ve died. Shouldn’t it be easier?”
He looked surprised. “You’re asking me?”
“Of course. After all, you’re the spirit guide.”
His expression brightened as she said it, and she knew that she’d just fed his already overinflated ego. Still, he deserved it. He really had been an immense help to her this time, as always.
“I don’t know what answers I have to give you,” he told her. “I mean, do I know more now than I did before I passed on? Certainly. The problem is, Miranda, that sooner or later we are all in Maisie’s position. It’s an inevitable part of life and there are some answers that we have to find for ourselves. And when we get to that point, the only way to find those answers is to let go and listen.”
“That’s your big advice? Listen to your heart?”
“Yeah. I’m thinking of getting it trademarked.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure someone beat you to it, oh great Spirit Guide, but it’s good advice just the same. Come on. Let’s go meet Jack in the sitting room. If all of the players are there again, I think we have what we need to solve this mystery.”
“Really?” Kyle asked, his confusion evident. “What did Maisie say that tipped you off?”
“Just wait,” she told him. “You’ll see.”
Chapter 16
When she walked into the sitting room, with Kyle floating right over her shoulder, she did a quick head count. There was Natasha, sitting on the couch next to her son Paul. Ashton Perry was standing behind the couch. Jack was standing in front of them all, explaining the need to be patient.
“Everything’s going to become clear in a moment,” he said to Natasha. “I promise.”
“Oh?” she snarked. “And does everything becoming clear have anything to do with her being here?”
Miranda smiled at the matriarch of the Wells family, not insulted by the comment in the least. This was all going to be over soon. “It does, as a matter of fact, because I know who killed Maisie Fraser and Leah Robinson-Wells.”
Natasha turned a sickly shade of white. Ashton looked li
ke he was about to storm angrily from the room. Paul, for his part, dropped his head into his hands.
“Well,” Kyle muttered to her, “that was a little dramatic. I’m just saying, Agatha Christie would have done it better.”
“I thought,” Natasha said archly, “that this investigation was being handled by the police. Are you in charge here, Detective Travis, or are you going to let just anyone blunder through my house and make accusations?”
“What I am going to do,” Jack said to her, “is listen to someone I would trust with my life.”
Natasha sat up straighter, her face pinched. “Oh, so you two do know each other? Have you been working together this whole time?”
“Mother!” Paul snapped. He bolted to his feet and rounded on her with the veins at the side of his neck bulging. “Will you shut up for once in your life? My wife is dead, my ex-wife is dead, and one of you two did it!”
He pointed at her, and then he pointed at Ashton. Their reactions were shockingly similar.
As they began to argue with him, to plead with him that they would never do something like that, Miranda stepped forward. She wasn’t happy that she had to say these next words, but they were necessary.
“Actually, Paul, the one responsible for these murders… is your mother.”
Paul’s legs gave out on him. As he folded himself into the couch again, his mother bounced up to her feet.
“Explain yourself this minute, young woman!” Natasha Wells seemed almost to be scolding Miranda. No doubt she was so used to bullying people into doing what she wanted that she thought it would work on Miranda, too. “How dare you suggest that I have killed anybody? And how stupid of you when it must be patently clear that it was Ashton Perry!”
“It was not!” Ashton said, pointlessly defending himself.
“Of course it was you,” Natasha went on, smiling like she was about to reveal some trap that she had backed Ashton into. “What you don’t know, Miss Wylder, is that Ashton Perry is in love with my son. Yes, that’s right, he thinks by hanging out with us year after endless year that he will eventually win my son’s heart. He must have killed these women to get them out of the way. You see? There are things going on in this house that only a mother could know.”
“Actually, Mrs. Wells, I knew all about that.” Miranda had finally put all the clues together. Everything fit where it should. “More than that, your son knew about it as well.”
Ashton gasped. He stared hard at Paul, who nodded helplessly. “I knew, my old friend. I just never had the courage to say anything about it.”
They reached out for each other, their hands bare inches apart, and then they dropped them again. Their faces turned to stone as they both pretended that they weren’t both thinking the same thoughts.
Beside Miranda, Kyle snorted. “Men.”
“At any rate,” she said as much to Kyle as to the rest of the room, “the killer is you, Mrs. Wells.”
“Preposterous,” she blurted. “I have no motive, and you have no proof.”
“Your motive is a little warped, I have to admit, but it’s there. I realized what it was when I finally began to understand just how badly you needed to keep your son all to yourself. You’ve smothered him all your life, and the only women you’ve allowed to be anywhere near him are ones who would further your control of him.”
“What on Earth are you talking about?” Natasha tried to keep her voice even, but she had begun nervously playing with the edges of her dress. “I won’t sit still for this nonsense. Detective Travis, I want this woman removed from my home.”
“I imagine,” Jack told her, “that will happen soon enough. For now we’re going to hear her out. She was about to tell us the lengths you went to, in order to keep Paul under your thumb.”
“Exactly so,” Miranda said. “Starting when you hired Maisie Fraser to work at the accounting firm that handles your family’s accounts. You must have chosen her very carefully, knowing that you’d found someone who would do anything to get her hands on a small fortune. Someone who came from nothing, and wanted everything.”
“What… how did you find that out?” Natasha asked her. “You can’t know that I had Maisie hired there. Those records are confidential and—”
She stopped talking, realizing that she had just unintentionally confirmed what Miranda was saying.
Her guess had paid off. Now, for the rest of it. “More than that, you encouraged Maisie to be with your son. You pushed them together.”
Paul looked at his mother. “Is that true? You… you interfered with my love life even then? Why?”
“Simple,” Miranda said. “Because she wanted you ruined, financially. She wanted you to lose everything because if you did, that would make you even more dependent on her. I have no doubt that she secretly rejoiced when the two of you divorced and you had to come running to her just to have a place to stay.”
The pained look in Paul’s eyes was hard to see. “Mother. How could you?”
“It was for your own good,” Natasha muttered, feebly trying to defend what she had done. “That does not mean I killed the girl.”
Miranda shook her head. “Not on its own. However, you were the one who invited Maisie here last night. You were the only one who even knew she was coming. You found out that she had started communicating with your son again, and you did not want to risk them renewing their relationship. You were afraid he might find real love, and finally leave you.”
“I was married,” Paul protested, “to Leah. Maisie wasn’t trying to get back with me. She wanted more money. Funds I didn’t have to give.”
Natasha’s jaw dropped. “She only wanted… your money?”
“You didn’t know that, did you?” Miranda questioned her. “You really thought she wanted to love your son, and you couldn’t have that. The irony of it is that Maisie was just as devious and selfish as you in a lot of ways, and she was only coming back again to get into Paul’s pockets.”
“Right,” Kyle added. “Not to get into his pants.”
Miranda shot him a look, and he shrugged. “Well. It’s true.”
Ignoring him, she faced Natasha again, and pressed her final point. “Where are your gloves, Natasha?”
“What? Right here,” she stated, holding her hands up to display the spotless velvet gloves that Miranda remembered from earlier. They were blue, and very feminine.
They were also not the gloves that Miranda remembered her wearing at the beginning of the evening. This was what she had noticed at the scene of Leah’s murder. The small detail had nagged at her until she realized what she had seen.
“When we started dinner tonight,” Miranda explained, “you were wearing your beige gloves. The same ones you had on yesterday. Now, you have on those lovely crushed blue velvet ones. They’re very pretty, but I have to wonder why you changed your gloves in the middle of the evening. Right after Leah was murdered,” she added for emphasis.
“I… I didn’t,” Natasha stuttered, and everyone could see the beads of perspiration that suddenly appeared on her forehead. With the back of those velvet gloves, she mopped them away. “You must be mistaken. These are the same gloves I’ve had on for days.”
Paul jumped off the couch again, away from his mother, pointing an accusing finger. “No, they aren’t! You know they aren’t! Why on Earth are you lying, Mother? What did you do? What did you do!”
“Nothing!” Natasha snapped back, standing now herself and backing away from her son, from Miranda and Jack, from everyone. “I did nothing and you can’t prove a thing! Can you? No, you can’t! If you think I changed my gloves then why don’t you go and find the others, hmm? What would that prove, anyway? Nothing. Not a thing!’
“It might prove quite a bit,” Jack said calmly, “if those gloves had evidence of the murder on them.”
He gave a signal to the officer at the door, who produced an evidence bag from the hallway, and handed over to Jack. It was a clear plastic bag, with red sealing tape at the top.
Jack took the bag when it was handed to him, and held it up so the rumpled gloves could be seen by everyone. “I believe, Mrs. Wells, that when we run these through forensics that we’ll find your fingerprints on the inside, and that the blood will be a match to Leah’s. I also believe we’ll have a statement from Miranda here that these are the gloves she saw you wearing earlier this evening, before the murder.”
“I’ll add my testimony to that as well,” Ashton declared, obviously glad to finally be off the hook completely.
Paul’s hands were shaking badly, but his voice didn’t waver at all as he turned away from his mother. “I’ll testify to that, too,” he said. “I can’t believe this. My own mother. I can’t believe this. You killed Leah. And Maisie too!”
Where the color had drained from Natasha’s face before, now it slowly turned red, starting from her neckline.
“Admit it, Mother. For once in your life do something right!”
The angry red color rose up. Up, up, up.
“You killed them both! You ruined my life! I hate you! Do you hear me? I hate you!”
It was like watching a volcano about to explode.
Until everything came spewing forth.
“I had to do it, don’t you understand!” Natasha screamed. “That woman, that dreadful woman Maisie Fraser was going to start robbing you blind again! I had to save you from that! I had to!”
“Except,” Miranda pointed out calmly, “you were the one that set them up in the first place, exactly so Maisie could make your son poor and dependent on you.”
“Yeah, lady!” Kyle snapped at her, floating closer and snapping his fingers in front of her face.
She flinched, not really knowing why.
“Is that what it was, Mother?” Paul had apparently found his long-buried dignity. He was facing his mother without backing down for what Miranda could only assume was the first time in his life. “Were you really trying to keep her away from me because of the money, or because you thought I might fall in love again and finally leave you?”
