by Jeff Shelby
I nodded. I hadn’t spent much time with Sunny, either, but she’d struck me as a sweet, easygoing woman who truly did seem to care about Billie.
“Anyway,” Madeline said, standing up. “We should probably get back up to the house and see that son of ours.”
This took me by surprise. “You haven’t seen him yet?”
She shook her head. “No, he wasn’t out front. Laura said he was in the backyard listening to the band practice.” Her brow furrowed. “Such a shame that he didn’t have more time to prepare his music.”
My eyebrows shot to my hairline. “His music?”
“His drum lessons,” Madeline clarified. “It was so important to him, being able to do this for their wedding.” She winked. “I just hope he’ll be ready.”
Peter was already back at the front door and Madeline followed suit.
I tried to pick my jaw up off the floor as a few things occurred to me.
One, Peter and Madeline had no idea what had happened to Drew Solomon, and no idea that Connor was not, in fact, playing at the reception.
But the other, bigger thing that had me glued to my spot, watching as Madeline and Peter left the guesthouse and headed toward the house, was the fact that the person responsible for Drew Solomon’s death was looking more and more like it was my almost-son-in-law.
TWENTY SIX
I followed Madeline and Peter back to the house, but when they stopped in the backyard, I hurried past them and into the kitchen.
Gunnar was still there, now mixing together the filling for the lasagna. A large skillet of ground beef was already half-browned on the stove.
“I take it everyone is settled?” he asked, looking up from the mixture of ricotta and mozzarella cheese.
My new guests might have been settled but I most certainly was not.
“I need to talk to you,” I said, the words coming out in a rush.
He arched an eyebrow. “Okay…”
He waited.
“Not here.”
“What?”
“Not here,” I repeated.
Gunnar glanced at the pan of meat and then at the bowl in front of him. “Uh, aren’t we making lasagnas?”
I turned the burner off. “It can wait.”
I grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the door leading out into the backyard. I didn’t want to walk past Laura and try to explain where I was going, or why.
The band was still practicing, and Connor was engaged in conversation with his parents. With any luck, Gunnar and I could slip away mostly unnoticed.
But then Connor looked our direction.
“Something smells good,” he said.
“Lasagna,” I told him. “We’re getting it ready right now.”
His brow furrowed. “Out here? Do you have an outdoor oven or something?” His eyes flickered with interest.
“No, nothing like that. Uh, Gunnar and I just have to go and check on something really quick.”
Gunnar stared at me, his confusion obvious.
“Oh?” Connor started toward us, and his parents turned their attention to the band. “Do you need help?”
“No,” I said bluntly.
He looked a little taken aback.
The last thing I wanted was for Connor to follow us.
“Actually, yes.” I thought fast. “You could finish up assembling the lasagna, if you want.”
His expression brightened. “Oh, I can do that. Do you have fresh herbs in your garden? I also like to chop up a little eggplant and mix it in with the meat. Unless you want full-on vegetarian, of course.”
“It’s basically all ready to go,” I said. The last thing I wanted was Connor tinkering with the recipe. “Just need to finish browning the meat and then assemble it.”
“What kind of meat did you use? Lamb is really flavorful in lasagna.”
“Just ground beef.”
He looked a little disappointed.
“But there is some basil in the garden.” I pointed to my little fenced-off plot. “In the blue pot just outside the fence.”
That appeared to appease him because he nodded and straightened. “I’ll go get some now.”
I reached for Gunnar’s hand again and pulled him along, away from the house.
“Where exactly are we going?”
“Somewhere private.”
“Oh?” His eyes twinkled. “I like the sound of that.”
“To talk,” I said firmly.
He chuckled.
I was headed to the bungalow when I remembered that it was still roped off with bright yellow caution tape. I stopped walking and took in my surroundings. The guesthouse was out, since I didn’t know when Peter and Madeline would be making their way back there.
The barn.
I pivoted in that direction and Gunnar followed, trailing just a step behind me, our hands still locked together.
“Are you sure you just want to talk?” Gunnar asked. “I can think of a couple of other things we can do in here…”
I marched through the partially open barn door and dropped his hand. “Yes, I just want to talk.”
He looked disappointed.
The smell of hay and leather were permanent features of the mostly empty building, an olfactory testament to its years as a working barn, I supposed. Cobwebs shimmered in the corners, clinging to the wood rafters, and the sound of a mouse scurrying away as we approached had me scanning the rest of the floor to see if there were others nearby.
Gunnar shoved his hands in his pockets and waited.
I had no idea where to begin. It felt like so much had happened since the last time we’d talked.
Thankfully, he gave me an opening.
“I heard that the sheriff is now saying it was murder.”
“Who did you hear that from?”
“The sheriff.” When I frowned, he added, “He came by looking for you this morning.”
My eyes widened. “Did he talk to anyone else?” I had a hard time believing that I wouldn’t have heard about it, especially if Laura had any interaction with him.
Gunnar shook his head. “I got to him just as he got out of his car. I was fixing part of the fencing.” He pointed toward his property. “Saw him coming down the road and put two and two together pretty quickly.”
I managed a grateful smile and then asked, “What all did he tell you?”
Gunnar shrugged. “Not much. Just that Drew’s death was being considered a homicide.”
“He used those words?”
His lips twitched. “Those might be my words. Think he said something to the effect of, ‘that boy in Rainy’s bungalow was plum murdered.’”
I nodded. That sounded like the Sheriff Lewis I expected.
“Is this what you needed to talk about?” The smile broke through and he took a step toward me. “Because now that that’s out of the way, maybe we have time for something else…”
“Connor’s taking drum lessons,” I blurted out.
Gunnar cocked his head. “What?”
I shook my head and took a deep breath. I needed to start from the beginning.
“I know the sheriff thinks Drew was killed. The electrical cord around his neck.”
Gunnar’s eyebrows rose. Apparently the sheriff hadn’t gone into the details about the case.
“And I think I know who might have killed him.”
Gunnar’s look was skeptical. “I know you’re used to solving this kind of stuff, but you sort of have a wedding to help with, don’t you?”
“I also have the only law enforcement in town trying to pin a guy’s murder on one of my guests.” I swallowed. “Oh, who am I kidding? We know who he wants to pin it on. Me.”
“But you didn’t kill him,” Gunnar pointed out.
“Of course I didn’t.” I huffed out a breath. “But that doesn’t mean Sheriff Lewis believes that. Just look at everything he’s accused me of over the last year.”
Gunnar couldn’t argue with that.
“Besides, I’
m not actively looking or trying to solve this,” I said. I wasn’t. I wasn’t poking around, looking for leads. They were just sort of falling into my lap. “But I’ve heard some stuff that…that point to some suspects.”
“Which sounds like you’re actively looking…”
“I’m not.”
Gunnar looked at me. “What? You just randomly overheard conversations where people talked about killing Drew?”
I bit my lip. “Not exactly.”
“Just tell me what you know. What you’ve heard.” The emphasis on the word ‘heard’ was not hard to miss.
I hesitated.
Now that I had his attention and could spill everything I knew, I didn’t know where to begin.
His leg bounced, the hell of his work boot-clad foot tapping the dusty floor.
“You know Zoe?” I finally said.
Gunnar frowned. “Mabel’s granddaughter?”
I nodded. I figured she was as good of a place to start as any—mostly because I wasn’t sure she was even a suspect anymore and mentioning her could prove to Gunnar that I really had considered a lot of potential suspects. It showed I was being thorough, didn’t it?
“What does she have to do with any of this?” His tone was cautious.
I told him about her connection: wanting Mabel to perform and being upset that there was a DJ and then a band.
“So you think she offed the drummer just so her grandma could perform at the wedding?”
“Not just that,” I explained. “Drew was her ex-boyfriend, too.”
He didn’t look nearly as surprised as I’d expected him to.
“And she has a key to the church,” I added. “Or she did back during the holidays, anyway.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“The drums,” I said. “She could have been the one who vandalized them.”
Gunnar looked surprised. “The drums were vandalized?”
I nodded.
“How did I not know this?” He raked a hand through his hair. It was easy to see the confusion on his face. “I’m feeling a little out of the loop here.”
Guilt gnawed at me. I’d had so much going on that I’d done a terrible job at keeping him informed about much of anything. I gave him a quick rundown of the visit I’d paid to St. Simon’s with Connor.
“So Declan knows all this?” A muscle in Gunnar’s temple twitched. “About the drums and you suspecting Zoe?”
He didn’t ask it outright but the insinuation was there: was I involving Declan in all of this and not him?
The ironic thing was I hadn’t told Declan my suspicions. We’d talked about the drums, but not who might have been responsible, In fact, I hadn’t shared any of my thoughts on who the culprit might be.
I brushed all of this aside. I didn’t have time to think about it. Not now. Not with everything happening.
“Things have been hectic,” I reminded him. “And you haven’t been around.”
He said nothing.
“Anyway, there are those things that point to Zoe.” I paused. “But then I had this thought that it might be Luke.”
If I was going to tell him everything, I was going to tell him everything.
“Luke?” he repeated. “Your Luke?”
I filled him in on the reasons why I’d sort of suspected my son…and how I’d decided he probably wasn’t responsible.
Gunnar was quiet for a minute. “What about Thor?” he asked. “That’s the other guy’s name, right?”
I nodded.
“Maybe he was upset about Drew. Especially if he was as big of a jerk as it sounds like.”
“I don’t think it was Thor,” I said.
“So you think it was Zoe.”
“No, I don’t.”
He cocked his head. “You don’t?”
“Okay,” he said with a frown. “Then who do you think did it?”
I lowered my gaze and swallowed. “It’s probably the worst person possible.”
“Laura?”
I shook my head.
Silence filled the air.
Then, “You?”
My head whipped up. “Me? No!”
“Then who?”
I sighed. “Connor.”
TWENTY SEVEN
I could tell by the expression on Gunnar’s face that he was having a hard time believing what I’d just said.
“Connor?” he repeated. “Your future son-in-law?”
“Yes,” I said miserably.
His forehead furrowed. “And why do you think he would do that?”
“He was unhappy with pretty much everything related to the music for the wedding and reception,” I said. “And he apparently got really upset when Drew told him they wouldn’t be incorporating any of his requests into the set list.”
“He said that?”
I nodded. “And then I overheard him talking to someone on the phone this morning. He called Drew stupid, and he mentioned how close he was to pulling something off.”
“Pulling what off?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe he tried to make the murder look like a suicide?”
Gunnar didn’t look convinced.
“But then I found out something else, too. When I took his parents to the guesthouse, they mentioned something I didn’t know.”
He waited.
I took a deep breath. “Connor is apparently taking drum lessons.”
Gunnar just stared at me. “So?”
“So?” I put my hands on my hips. “Don’t you see? He wanted to provide the music for the reception—his mother even said as much!—and he apparently got so mad that he couldn’t that he went and killed the drummer!”
“Rainy.” His voice was calm. “Do you really believe that?”
“Yes!”
There was silence.
I squeezed my eyes shut and exhaled. “No. Oh, I don’t know.” I kicked at the dirt floor.
“Look, it definitely sounds like things aren’t adding up with Connor,” Gunnar conceded. “But maybe you should talk to him, see what he can tell you about his side of things. That might help clear all of this up.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Well, you won’t know unless you talk to him, right?”
I gave a slight nod.
“And it’s not like you have a lot of other options,” he pointed out. “Unless you want to call the sheriff and have him look into it.”
“No!”
“So then you need to do it.”
I sighed. “What if he really did do it? What if my daughter is about to marry a…a murderer?”
“Do you honestly think Connor would do something like that?”
I was quiet while I thought about this.
Did I think my future son-in-law was capable of killing another human being?
No. I didn’t. Connor was a good guy. I’d never seen him lose his temper; never even seen him raise his voice, really. And considering who he was engaged to—and how many times I’d lost it with Laura over the years—this was saying something.
But I was still hung up on what I’d overheard him say on the phone and what his own mother had revealed during our conversation.
Gunnar cleared his throat. “Do you want to know what I think?”
I eyed him. “Haven’t you already done that?”
He gave me a small smile. “Kind of.”
“Tell me,” I said. “Who do you think is responsible? Since Sheriff Lewis is convinced it’s someone staying in my house.”
“I don’t think that,” he said, shaking his head.
At least we were on the same page with that.
He glanced down at the floor. “If I had to guess…I’d put my money on Zoe.”
“Really?” I stood up a little taller. “So you think the connections I made were valid?”
His hands were in his pockets and he pulled something out of the left one. “Actually, I think this is a better connection.”
He held out his
hand, revealing a crumpled up piece of paper.
“What is that?”
“Just read it,” he said.
I grabbed the paper and unfolded it. My heart started jackhammering as I read the short note.
It was a note to Drew.
From Zoe.
Accusing him of ruining her life when he broke up with her.
And letting him know, in no uncertain terms, that she wasn’t going to let him ruin her grandma’s, too.
TWENTY EIGHT
“Where did you get this?” I demanded.
“It’s a long story.”
I waited, the piece of paper still clutched in my hands.
“The day Drew’s body was found…” Gunnar said. “Do you remember when Sheriff Lewis wanted to rope the bungalow off?”
“Yeah, after you talked him out of doing the whole property.”
He nodded. “Right. Well, he needed help with it. I don’t know where Teddy was, but he asked me if I could help out.”
Teddy was a Bueller County deputy, and I saw him about as frequently as I saw Luke. Actually, I was pretty sure I’d seen Luke more than I’d seen Teddy over the last six months.
But that was beside the point.
“We roped off the bungalow, and then he asked me to go inside and see if there was anything out of the ordinary.”
“He asked you to do it?”
“He was feeling a little faint. I guess from seeing the body?” Gunnar shook his head. “I don’t know. So I went in and poked around a little. And found that note on Drew’s air mattress.”
“Did you show it to the sheriff?”
“Of course.” Gunnar frowned. “It looked like evidence.”
“And what did he do?”
“He looked at it,” Gunnar said. “And then handed it back to me.”
I was dumbfounded. “He didn’t want to keep it? For evidence?”
He shook his head. “Apparently not.”
“Unbelievable,” I muttered.
It was almost as if he’d found the actual murder weapon and decided to toss it in the trash. The note from Zoe wasn’t as damning as that, of course, but it sure felt like a clue that should be investigated. Thoroughly.
