Red, White, and Blue Murder

by Kathleen Suzette

  “What are you going to say to him?”

  “Congratulations. You are the latest winner of the Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes.”

  I turned to him, pressing my lips together. It was no use. I laughed. “You’re nuts.”

  “I have to be to put up with you.”

  “You’ve got a point.”

  How do you end up falling in love with someone that you know is perfect for you in every way, and yet, your first husband was also perfect for you in every way? I was still trying to sort this out, but in the meantime, I was just grateful I’d been given a second chance at love.

  ***

  Alec knocked on the Sommers’ front door and we waited. Julie’s poodle yipped from inside and two little girls played hopscotch on the sidewalk across the street in the warm evening sun. The neighborhood was otherwise quiet, and I hoped it would stay that way after Alec came to do what he needed to do. Would Bill come along quietly? Would he deny what we already knew was true?

  The door opened and Jack looked at us quizzically. “Hey, Allie. Alec.” He smiled to cover his surprise. “What brings the two of you here?” He looked past us and then returned his gaze to Alec.

  Alec smiled. He was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt and was wearing his running shoes. If Bill decided to make a run for it, he didn’t stand a chance.

  “Good evening, Jack. We hate to disturb you, but I’d like to speak with Bill for a moment, please.”

  Jack hesitated. “Bill? Well, we just sat down to eat dinner. Can it wait?”

  Alec paused. Waiting until after dinner would be the polite thing to do, and Alec was usually polite, but that would give Bill a chance to make a run for it. He wasn’t going to do that.

  “It will only take a moment. Can I speak to him?”

  Frankly, I was surprised that Bill was still in town. He had to know that the police were going to come for him at some point.

  Jack stood at the door, considering Alec for a moment. Then he nodded. “Sure. Let me go get him. I’ll be right back.” Jack closed the door. He didn’t leave it open a crack; he closed it firmly.

  Alec turned to me.

  “You don’t think he’s going to tell Bill to make a run for it out the back door, do you?” I whispered.

  He grinned and shook his head. “I doubt it. It’s just rude of us to stop by at dinner time though.”

  “You’re telling me,” I said.

  After what seemed like forever, the door opened slowly and Bill appeared, looking confused. “Yes? Jack said you wanted to see me?”

  Alec nodded and stepped back, pulling open the screen door without asking. “Can you step outside, Bill? I’ve got a few questions for you.”

  He hesitated, trying to decide if he was going to comply, but then suddenly nodded and stepped out onto the porch, closing the door behind himself. The memory of him and his wife arguing at the beach came to me. It was something about a flowered tank top he was wearing. He took it off and threw it to the ground in anger. If he had killed his wife and gotten blood on his bare chest or stomach, it would have been so easy to clean up in the ocean.

  Alec let the screen door close as we stepped away from the door.

  “What’s going on?” Bill asked, shoving his hands into his jeans pockets.

  “Bill, did Mike tell you that your wife was having an affair with Dave Jones the day you arrived in Sandy Harbor?” Alec asked. His stance was legs apart, ready to spring into action if need be.

  Bill sighed and glanced away, then turned back to him. “Yeah, he told me. What about it?”

  “What was your reaction to the news?” he asked him.

  Bill’s jaw twitched and his face turned pink. “I blew up. I argued with Anita about it. Told her she had to make a decision.”

  “And did she make that decision?” he asked.

  Bill shook his head. “No. She denied the affair.”

  “Did you point out that Mike knew about it?” I asked. “If Mike knew, then other people had to be aware of it.”

  He nodded. “She still denied it. We argued, and she agreed to go to counseling with me when we got home. We both knew there were issues in our marriage. I told you that I was looking into therapists.”

  I nodded. “You did tell me that. But she wouldn’t admit that she was having an affair?”

  “Nope. She never would admit to it.” He blew air out through his mouth and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, they were wet. “I decided to let it go. At least until we went to a therapist anyway. Arguing with her at someone else’s house isn’t terribly comfortable for anyone, as you can probably imagine.”

  I glanced at Alec. He was staring intently at Bill. “Bill, did you kill your wife?”

  Bill’s eyes went wide. “What? Did I kill my wife? Are you out of your mind? I could never hurt her, no matter what she might have done. Kill her? That’s preposterous.” He shook his head. “You think I did it?”

  “The two of you argued a lot,” Alec pointed out. “Sometimes arguments can blow up and someone might do something they later regret.”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t kill my wife. That’s the last thing I would do. Look, I’m not stupid. I know the truth. Of course, she was having an affair. And from what I can tell, it may have been going on for some time. She would get excited as her trip to Sandy Harbor approached each year. At first, I just thought it was a chance to see the hometown and see her cousin. But after a while, I realized she kept dropping Dave’s name. Talking about him coming for barbecues on the weekend, or he happened to be at the beach when they would all go. I might have been slow to catch on, but I did eventually. Before Mike confirmed it for me.”

  Alec studied him. I had to admit, it sounded like he was telling the truth. But what Mike had said sounded more truthful. That Bill had lost his temper and killed his wife.

  “Most people don’t play stupid when they suspect their significant other is having an affair,” Alec pointed out. “Why should I believe that you just didn’t understand what was really happening between your wife and Dave Jones?”

  Bill sighed. “Look, when you live with someone that’s on edge all the time, you tend to walk on eggshells. Anita was that kind of person. It was sometimes hard to tell if she was angry, or if she was just really focused on something. She had an intense personality. So until I knew for sure, it would have only caused trouble between us if I brought it up. Big trouble.”

  “Did you kill your wife?” Alec asked again. There was a tenseness in his voice and I could tell he was on edge, ready to jump at any moment. I took a step back.

  Bill’s eyes went wide. “I swear, I did not kill my wife. Ask Julie and Jack. I was sitting with them on their blanket that night. We watched the fireworks together.”

  I saw surprise flash across Alec’s eyes. “You were sitting on their blanket with them?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. Anita was in a foul mood that day. I had just had enough of her, so I got up and went and sat on their blanket with them. It will always be one of my biggest regrets. If I had just been sitting on the same blanket that she was, the killer probably wouldn’t have had the courage to kill her like that. It would have been too risky. But I was mad at her. I left her alone.” His voice cracked on the last word.

  Alec’s hands balled into fists. Not because he didn’t believe Bill, but because he had been wrong. We both had been.

  “They’ll vouch for you?” he asked Bill, nodding toward the house.

  Bill nodded. “Sure. Let’s go inside and talk to them. We were talking to one another while the fireworks were going off. No way would I have had time to do that.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  The sand was still warm as I walked along the beach. The weather had changed. When I woke up, the temperatures had dropped overnight, and the wind had kicked up. It had remained that way throughout the day. The temperature of the sand would catch up tomorrow.

  I wore a light windbreaker, my hands in the pockets. My eyes were d
rawn to the high waves that crashed along the shoreline. It was high tide and not many swimmers braved the churning waters. A young man on a surfboard tried repeatedly to ride the waves in, but his inexperience showed. He had better come in before the water got rougher, I thought.

  I looked out at the beach where tourists sunbathed, even though the sky was cloudy. The heat had been merciless these past weeks and even though it was only the middle of July; I was waiting impatiently for fall. I loved the warmer weather of summer, but this one had seen a heat wave that I would be glad to see leave. I hoped today marked the beginning of cooler weather.

  Fall would always be my very favorite time of year and this fall would be no different. For now, we would endure the rest of the summer and pray the heat wave wouldn’t return.

  Alec had been disappointed that he’d made a mistake about Bill the previous day. We’d made the mistake. Everything pointed to Bill, but he’d had an alibi. And while we talked to him, I had suddenly felt he was innocent.

  When I was parallel with the area where Anita had been when she’d died, I stopped and turned toward the water again. Then I turned back to look at the shore. It wouldn’t have been much of a sprint to get to the water to wash off the blood. But the beach had been packed and the killer would have had to run a zigzag pattern, a veritable human obstacle course.

  I began walking to the area I was fairly certain was the spot where she had died. There were a number of tourists on the beach, but that particular spot was vacant. When I got to it, I stopped and looked down. The wind had swept across the sand many times by now.

  Had she known? Had she known that would be her last night? Had she seen her killer, even just a glimpse, as they crept up on her? Maybe a glimpse so quick that she never had time to scream? How could the killer live with themselves? How could they go on with their life as if they’d done nothing wrong?

  As angry and hateful as Anita had been that day, at this point I was certain Mike hadn’t done it. He was far too caught up with hating himself because he hadn’t been there to save his mother. The anger he felt for her because of all the issues between them hadn’t broken the bond he had with her as her son. I had finally discounted any ideas that he may have killed her.

  I stood in the place where Anita Towers had died and looked around. A seagull flew overhead, crying for its mate, and a sandpiper hopped across the sand nearby. And then I saw him. Dave Jones, standing twenty feet away, watching me. He was wearing a tank top and shorts, his hair slicked back as if he had been in the water, except that his clothes were dry. We made eye contact, and he nodded and walked toward me.

  “Hey, Allie,” he said, glancing at the ground where I stood as if expecting to see something other than sand. “What brings you out here?”

  I forced myself to smile. I had rolled my pant legs up and slipped my shoes off. “I don’t know. I was driving down the street and suddenly wanted to take a walk, so I headed to the beach. What about you? Going swimming?”

  He smiled and looked out at the ocean waves. “Water’s a little rough for swimming. I’d hate to get stuck in the undertow.”

  “The tide is pretty high,” I agreed.

  He was quiet and kept his eyes on the ocean. Then he turned back to me. “It’s crazy how things seem ordinary and every day, and then suddenly they aren’t. And there’s nothing you can do to change it back to the way it used to be.”

  I gazed at him and then nodded. “Life has a way of doing that to you. Everything seems ordinary until it isn’t.” Thaddeus’ death had been that way. We’d gotten up and eaten breakfast together that morning, and then I dropped the kids off at school and ran some errands. Then the police showed up on my doorstep that afternoon, and life wasn’t ordinary anymore.

  He swallowed and water came to his eyes. “I loved her. I was never so happy as when I was with her.”

  I blinked. “What about your wife?”

  He sighed, shaking his head. “I love Lisa. I could never feel differently about her. But we’ve been together for so long. And things just aren’t like they once were. When Anita came into my life. Back into my life, I mean, it just felt right. I could talk to her about anything.”

  The angry woman I had seen at the beach didn’t seem like the sort of person you could tell anything to, but maybe she was just angry about the lie she was living. “And that was worth putting your marriage in jeopardy?”

  He looked at me, surprised. “I didn’t do it on purpose. When I first ran into Anita at Jack’s, I had no intention of starting anything. I never wanted to hurt Lisa. And I’m not going to. I’m not going to hurt her.” His jaw clenched.

  “She doesn’t know?”

  He shook his head. “No. She doesn’t know. And there’s no reason for her to know, now.”

  “Well I guess with Anita gone, there’s no decision for you to tell her about then, is there? No worries about someone showing up on your doorstep and revealing your secret or getting back at you for something. Some argument, perhaps.”

  His jaw clenched again. “Are you threatening me?”

  “What? No, I’m not threatening you. I wasn’t talking about me. I was talking about Anita. Maybe she was getting tired of living a double life and she wanted to be your one and only? Maybe she wanted more than you were willing to give her?”

  He chuckled, but there was no humor in it. “Are you crazy? Neither of us wanted to leave our spouses. We both agreed there was no reason to do that. Her husband made good money working in computers and they lived in a nice house in Omaha. There was no reason to tell anyone about our relationship.”

  I didn’t believe it. There was a reason the two of them had argued the day she was killed.

  “Then why did you argue with her?”

  His brow furrowed. “What are you talking about? We didn’t argue.”

  “There was a witness that night when she was found. He said she argued with a tall blond-haired man near the restrooms. Her husband is balding, so it wasn’t him. What did you argue about?”

  He looked away, shoving his hands into his pockets. “What are you talking about? We never argued. It was Anita. She had this way about her. She sounded like she was arguing, even when she wasn’t angry. She was very intense when she got excited about something. If you knew her, you’d know that. It was just the way she was.”

  “So what was she so intense about that night? What was the non-argument about?” I waited, placing my hands on my hips. No one was close enough to overhear our conversation, but the further it went, the angrier I got. He was making excuses. And the reason he was making excuses was because he needed one.

  He snorted and shook his head. “Like I said, she was just intense. Yeah, that was me that guy saw by the restrooms. So? We were having a conversation. What difference does it make?”

  “The difference it makes is that you lied to me. You said you never argued with her because you weren’t that close to her. And the only reason you would lie was that you had something to hide.” My phone was in my windbreaker pocket. I could sprint for help if he turned on me. There were other people on the beach. I had nothing to lose. Right?

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “I didn’t lie. You asked me if I had argued with her, but like I said, it was just her personality. We simply had a conversation. Just because someone thought we were arguing doesn’t mean it was an argument.”

  This guy was nuts. How had I not known this before now?

  “Seriously? You expected me to ask you the right question in just the right way? It didn’t occur to you when I was asking you about an argument that you could have mentioned there was a possibility the guy had made a mistake and it wasn’t an argument, but a discussion?”

  He breathed out heavily. “Look, you can think what you want, but it was nothing. Just a discussion.”

  I wasn’t buying it. “Was ramming a knife into her chest a discussion as well? Maybe you weren’t really angry, you were just expressing yourself.”

  His eyes got big. “What?�
�

  “You heard me. Answer me. Maybe Anita handled her discussions by angry words, but you handled your discussions with murder.”

  He grimaced. “You’re out of your mind.”

  “Am I?”

  His hands came out of his pockets and balled into fists at his side.

  “Why would I kill her? Aren’t killers supposed to have motives? There was no reason for me to kill someone that only came around a couple of times a year. She was going home with her husband.”

  He sounded smug when he said it. As far as I was concerned, that was a dead giveaway. Pardon the pun. “I think I just said it earlier. She wanted more. And that means she wanted to leave her husband and be with you, but you didn’t want that, did you? Maybe her non-anger was real anger, and you didn’t want to deal with it.”

  His face went red. “You aren’t going to let this go, are you? You’re going to keep on and on, regardless of what I say. I didn’t kill her.” He took two big steps toward me and stopped, realizing what he was doing.

  “How could you do it? Just plunge that knife into her chest like that? Did you have trouble running to the water to clean the blood off with all those tourists spread out on the beach? Or did the fireworks provide enough light to get there without running into anyone?”

  He strode toward me now. “You should have kept your mouth shut.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “What a beautiful night,” I said.

  “Agreed.”

  I glanced over at Alec. We were laying on the chaise lounges in my backyard, looking up at the summer sky. The clouds had finally cleared out and what looked like a billion stars twinkled in the night sky. It was still breezy out, but the wind had settled down considerably. This was summer at its best in Maine. The temperature was mild now, and the sky so beautiful and clear it made you want to float up and be a part of it.