by Mona Marple
**
“They’re all fine with bacon fat,” Connie said, after running the pointless errand.
“Really? How odd,” Grace said. “Maybe it’s one of the girls’ friends who doesn’t eat it. People have so many fads nowadays, don’t they?”
“Like veganism?”
Grace’s face blanched. “Well, Rose has always had a very strong mind. And her arguments make sense, I guess. I don’t have her dedication to the cause, but a meat free meal once a week probably isn’t a bad idea.”
“Probably not,” Connie said. She had the sense that Grace was living life right on the surface, focusing all of her attention on meal creation and bacon fat and ignoring anything more substantial. “You know it wasn’t suicide, right? Lottie’s death.”
Grace was so stunned by the heavy subject entering her attention span that she dropped the knife. It landed on the kitchen floor with a clang, and Grace dived to grab it, then carried on chopping without even giving it a wash.
“She was killed,” Connie continued. She refused to allow Grace to dodge the subject.
“You might have to excuse me,” Grace said, finally. “I feel a little faint.”
“Here,” Connie grabbed one of the high stools and used it as a barricade. She suspected that Grace wanted to leave the room, leave the conversation completely, and Connie wasn’t going to let that happen. With a sense of resignation, Grace lowered herself into the chair and closed her eyes. She reminded Connie of a child playing hide and seek - if Grace couldn’t see Connie, perhaps she wasn’t there any more. “It’s a shock, right?”
“Is that what the paramedics said?”
Connie considered the question. The paramedics hadn’t said it, but Dr Dottie had. “It’s been confirmed by a medic, yes.”
Grace took a shaky breath. “I can’t see that being true.”
“It is,” Connie said. “And it seems like there are a few people who would want Lottie dead.”
Grace furrowed her brows. “Really? Because they all argue? Connie, you don’t understand this family. Being in this family is like an endurance challenge.”
“Lottie lost the challenge, then.”
“Her thing with Zeb would have ran out of steam at some point,” Grace said. “We were all waiting for it. In fact, I told Bobby just the other day that Lottie didn’t seem as interested.”
“What made you say that?”
“I had coffee with her a week or so ago, to exchange Christmas presents. Her phone was buzzing non-stop and she’d set up a special noise for when it was Zeb, so I knew it was him messaging her.”
“And?”
“And she ignored him. She rolled her eyes at one point, because of course she knew I knew who it was. That affair was the worst kept secret in the family.”
“It was unusual for her to ignore him?”
“Oh, sure,” Grace said. “Usually she was like a giggling school girl when he messaged, straight on her phone hitting reply.”
“Maybe they’d had a fight?”
“Lottie wasn’t the fighting type,” Grace said. She pursed her lips. “I think it was all that yoga. It’s not healthy for a person to be so centred all the time. No, she was bored of him. I said it then and I’ll say it now. She’d just had enough of him.”
“Who exactly knew about the affair?”
“Eliza didn’t,” Grace said. “Bobby wanted to tell her, because she values marriage so much and Christopher and Zeb were both there with these marriages that were lies!”
“Why would he want her to know that?”
Grace gave a lazy shrug. “He’s the best son she’s got. No offence to Taylor, but he changed his birth name for goodness sake! What an insult to her! And he’s never around. Bobby’s there, keeping that business going, looking after her, running her to all kinds of appointments. He’s the best son, and maybe he wanted her to remember it for a moment.”
“Who else didn’t know?” Connie asked. “Or, specifically, did Dottie know?”
“Of course she did!” Grace exclaimed. “She’s been turning the other cheek for his affairs for years. Pretends she doesn’t care, but how could that be true? This one made her look like a fool. That’s the prime suspect right there, if she really was killed - which I still don’t believe, by the way. Show me a post-mortem and I’ll think about it.”
Dottie as the prime suspect made sense. Connie knew it. She was the only one who would want to not only kill Lottie, but also out her affair. Christopher wouldn’t want to publicise the betrayal, but a furious Dottie would.
Connie looked at Grace. The colour seemed to be returning to her cheeks. “Are you feeling better now?”
“Much better!” Grace said. She stood up and returned to the chopping board, gave the knife a wash and continued preparing breakfast.
“I just need to go and do something.”
“Fine, leave me to do all of the work as usual,” Grace muttered under her breath, already returning to the shallow persona she worked so hard on maintaining. Connie gritted her teeth and left the kitchen, paced across to the hallway and prepared to confront Dr Dottie.
She hammered a knock on the door of the makeshift office and waited for Dottie to call her in. Sure, Connie was going to solve a murder, but she wanted to respect patient confidentiality while she did it! She wasn’t an animal!
Silence.
Connie knocked again, called out, “Dottie? I need to talk to you.”
“Hey,” Zeb’s herky-jerky voice came from the side of her. “If she’s working, you’d be better leaving her. She hates interruptions.”
“Well I need to talk to her,” Connie said. “It can’t wait.”
“Please,” Zeb pleaded. “Don’t go in there.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Connie asked as Zeb tried to pull her away from the door.
“What’s going on, Zeb? Take your hands off her,” Taylor ordered. Zeb released his grip.
“I just don’t want her disturbing Dottie’s work.”
“Since when did you care about upsetting your wife?” Christopher called out.
Connie rolled her eyes. “Everyone can go back in there. I just want to talk to Dottie.”
And with that, she opened the door, walked in the room and let out a scream.
19
Dottie’s body was slumped over the roll top desk, blood pooled beneath her, and trailing down to the carpet. The blade - long, thin - protruded from her back. Connie resisted the urge to vomit while Taylor dashed in and checked for a pulse.
“Everyone out of here, now!” He ordered, and the family complied. “Connie, you too. I’m going to get the paramedics back out here. You follow the others and see how people are reacting.”
“She’s… dead?” Connie asked. She couldn’t explain why she asked the question. It was obvious. Nobody could lose that much blood. And yet, she needed to hear it confirmed.
Taylor nodded his head.
She left him to it and followed the others back into the lounge.
“Dead, mother,” Christopher shouted across to Eliza, who was surely exaggerating her deafness to make him keep repeating the terrible news. “Dottie, she’s dead.”
“I thought Lottie was,” Eliza said.
“Her too,” Rose called. “I’ve often wondered how I survive family get togethers, turns out none of us might live through this one.”
“Who’s dead?” Eliza asked. Connie flinched. The old woman was as mentally agile as anyone else in the room. She was enjoying the awful news.
“Lottie was killed last night,” Connie said, her voice firm and her eyes set hard. “Someone made it look like a suicide, but it was a murder. And now Dottie has been killed too.”
“Well, well,” Eliza said. “Zebediah’s gone from two women to none?”
“He probably has some spares,” Christopher spat.
“I do not!” Zeb protested.
Taylor entered the room, gave a grim nod towards Connie. “I’ve called for an ambulance.”
“I’m going to question people one at a time,” Connie said. “Everyone else can stay in here with Taylor. Christoper, you’re first.”
**
Christopher refused her suggestion that he take a seat at the dining table.
“If I was going to kill someone, it would have been Zeb,” he said.
“Perhaps,” Connie said. “Although, this way, you punish him and get to see him suffer.”
“I’d like to see him suffer with a knife shoved into him!” Christopher raged. “What loss is this to him? He didn’t love Dottie. He’s free and single now.”
“And so are you,” Connie said.
“No,” Christopher argued. “I’m widowed. I loved my wife and lost her in a tragic… tragic episode. You can’t compare me and him.”
“Where were you when Dottie was killed?”
“I was in the living room,” Christopher said.
“With others?”
“I was watching mother. Trying to work out why she brought us all here. I wondered if she’d killed Lottie, but she wouldn’t be physically capable. She’s up to something, though.”
“Do you have any ideas?”
“You can’t predict anything the woman does,” Christopher said. “I gave up trying years ago. But something isn’t right. She invites us all here. She pays for us all to come here? And now people are being killed? Something’s not right.”
Christopher, it appeared, was very good at stating the obvious. Connie wondered how many years of law school it had taken for him to make the obvious sound like an insightful revelation.
“Maybe Zeb’s next,” Connie said.
“Huh?”
“You said you’d kill Zeb.”
“If I was going to kill someone!” Christopher said. “Which I’m not going to do. I’m a lawyer, we fight with words.”
“I’ve already witnessed you fighting with more than words,” Connie reminded him. He had the decency to blush at least.
“I couldn’t kill,” he said. “I’d have forgiven Lottie in a heartbeat and I had nothing against Dottie. She was the victim of it all, just like me.”
“Okay,” Connie said. “That’s all for now.”
**
Zeb also refused the offer to sit down, and Connie wondered if there had been a time when the brothers had got on better and realised they weren’t quite as different as they imagined.
“Who do you think killed your wife?” Connie asked.
“It was Christopher,” Zeb said. “Isn’t that obvious? He thinks if he can’t have a wife, neither can I.”
“She was divorcing you,” Connie said. “Did you know?”
“What?”
“I was trying to figure out whether she really didn’t care about your affairs or if she was putting on an act. The truth is, she’d already given up on your marriage.”
Zeb smiled. “I don’t know if that’s meant to upset me, Connie, but if it’s true, it’s no more than I deserve.”
“I know that,” Connie said. “I also know that you’ll only inherit if you’re married.”
“And?”
“That right there would be your motive to kill Dottie before she files for divorce.”
“I could remarry,” Zeb said with a shrug. “If I was that bothered about money. Which, you might have noticed, I’m not.”
“You’re a journalist, right?”
He nodded.
“Not a great industry to be in right now,” she said. “Newspapers are shutting down all the time. I can’t imagine you earn much.”
“I don’t need much,” he said. He crossed his arms in front of his chest.
“Not with a doctor for a wife,” Connie said.
Zeb’s posture stiffened. “What are you suggesting?”
“I’m suggesting that you’re the son who needs money the most, because you can’t earn enough yourself. Isn’t that why you’re such good friends with Luke? For the handouts?”
“How dare you?” Zeb snapped. “I was playing guitar before Luke Holland was even born! We have a lot in common. I liked the guy before he had money and I’ll still like him if he loses it all.”
“Did Dottie cramp your style?” Connie asked. “You’re having affairs with young women, hanging out with the country star… your life’s going to look a lot different without Dottie hanging around disapproving.”
“I’m not going to sit here and act heartbroken,” Zeb said.
“You’re right! You seemed more upset when Lottie died.”
“I was,” he admitted. His strong facade slipped a little. “God, I loved her. She made me feel alive. I’ve been going through the motions for so long, trying to stay faithful to a woman who I know isn’t the one for me. Trying to put her first and be a good husband. And man, that is soul destroying. Lottie came along and just switched me on again, brought me back to life.”
“But you didn’t keep her interest, did you?”
He met her gaze even as his expression changed. He looked crestfallen. “No. I didn’t.”
“You couldn’t handle her moving on, could you?”
“I was angry with her,” he said.
“You went upstairs last night, said you were looking for your book. But you went to see Lottie, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “She was in bed on her phone.”
“You mean she didn’t have a migraine?”
“Of course she didn’t!” He exclaimed. “She used those as excuses to get away from the family. She told me that, once. I wanted to check on her, in case it was a real one - she did get real migraines at times. Christopher wasn’t concerned, was he? So I went up, and there she was, on her phone. I’d messaged her before I went upstairs, and she’d ignored me.”
“You must have been angry,” Connie said.
“I wasn’t angry about that,” he said. “I was scared. I know the signs of someone losing interest, except normally it’s me in the other position, the one backing away, trying to break a heart as gently as I can.”
“What happened?”
Zeb slumped into a chair finally. “I confronted her about the message she was ignoring, and it opened the floodgates. She told me that maybe it had ran its course, we should think about the rest of the family. But it made no sense. We’d never thought of them before, why should we have started then?”
“You knew the affair would hurt a lot of people.”
“Of course I did! We both did. I’m not a monster, I wouldn’t have destroyed my family for a meaningless dalliance. I loved her, and I was prepared to take whatever heartache came for us to be together.”
“But she didn’t want you,” Connie said. “What were you to her? Entertainment while she was bored?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “You could be right, but I’d like to think I meant something. Her conscience caught up with her. She had a lot more to lose than I did, of course. The children would never have accepted it.”
“You didn’t manage to talk her around?”
“She let me kiss her,” he said. His voice broke. “It felt like goodbye.”
“And she was alive when you left her?”
“She was back on her phone before I left the room,” he said.
20
Connie remained in the dining room after escorting Zeb back to the lounge. She told the family she had some thoughts to gather, and when nobody was looking, she reached into the pocket of Eliza’s jacket that was hanging in the hall. She found a pair of men’s glasses and carried them into the dining room, closed the door behind her.
“I call out with warmth and mean you no harm. Ivan Thompson, if you can hear me, please show yourself,” she said. Her voice cracked as she spoke. It had been too long since she’d made contact with the spirits.
Back home in Mystic Springs her daily life was filled with spirits who turned up too often and usually made too much noise. But to actually sit and call a specific spirit was something she hadn’t done in months.
She braced herself,
but nothing happened.
“Ivan Thompson, it’s safe for you to show yourself. It’s just me here and I mean you no harm.”
The temperature in the room dropped immediately and Connie saw a swirl of mist by the fireplace take shape.
The man before her was younger than she’d imagined. Of course, he had died many years before, and had preserved his relative youth. He wore dungarees stained with something that could have been oil or grape jelly, and he was missing a front tooth.
“Coulda told me sooner the others weren’t around!” He exclaimed. He floated across to Connie and held out a hand, then doubled over laughing when instinct made her copy the gesture. “This your first rodeo, lass? Can’t touch me! How’d you get messed up with this lot, anyways?”
“I’m with Taylor,” Connie said, then remembered his birth name added, “Charles.”
“Ah,” Ivan said. “He were my favourite til he went off the deep end. Wanting to join the police!”
“He’s a Sheriff now,” Connie said, but that announcement didn’t seem to please Ivan.
“How’s my business doing?”
“You haven’t been keeping an eye on it?” Connie asked. “Bobby’s running it.”
“Lord help us all,” Ivan shook his head. “You some type of medium?”
“I was,” Connie said. “Haven’t done it for a while.”
“Well, why now? Just wanted to meet me, like?” He waggled his eyebrows in a suggestive way and Connie realised where Zeb had found his ladies-man habits.
“Don’t you know what’s happened here this weekend?”
“Ain’t got the foggiest, love, and if it involves them lot I probably don’t want to.”
“Two of your daughters-in-law have been killed,” Connie said. That got his attention.
“Which ones?” He asked.
“Lottie and Dottie,” Connie said.
“Phew,” he said. “For a minute I thought you were gonna say Hannah.”
“Hannah?”
“Bobby’s first wife,” Ivan said with a wink. “Grace likes to pretend she never happened, but boy, she happened. Lovely, she were. We all had a soft spot for her.”
