by Glen Ebisch
Clarissa stood up and gave her a comforting smile. “Try not to worry too much; I don’t think things are as bad as they might appear. You never saw David again after that day in the hospital, did you?”
“Oh, no.”
“Then I’m pretty sure the police will just take a statement and not make any more of it.” Clarissa wasn’t absolutely sure about that, but she saw no point in needlessly worrying the woman.
Sharon also stood and took Clarissa’s right hand in both of hers. “Thanks for your advice,” she said. “I did a stupid thing, but I’ve been really confused about all of this.”
Clarissa nodded. “That makes two of us.”
***
As Clarissa drove back to the church office, she mulled over the fact that David had left all his money to Sharon. He’d apparently cared about only two people in the world: Jack Spurlock, whom he was going to have take over his blackmail scheme, and Sharon Meissner, who would receive what he had already managed to extort.
She could understand Sharon’s reluctance to accept money gotten illegally. Clarissa didn’t have enough knowledge of the law to know whether Sharon could legally keep the money, but if she did, Clarissa would advise her to give it to charity.
When she arrived at the office, it was well after one o’clock. She was surprised to find that Ashley was still there.
“I thought you’d be gone by now,” she remarked.
“Don’t worry, I’m keeping track of my hours, and Mrs. Gunn is keeping track of you,” Ashley said. “She was over here at noon, all in a tizzy because you hadn’t shown up for lunch. I told her you were doing hospital visits and probably got tied up in some emergency.”
“I should have called her to let her know I wouldn’t be back for lunch,” Clarissa groaned.
“Did you get some good information from the nurse?” Ashley asked.
“Let me take it in order. Vera Sanford went to high school with Elise Llewellyn, so she was able to fill me in about that time in her life.” Clarissa went on to tell Ashley about Elise going away to a private school and having a nervous breakdown.
Ashley looked disappointed. “Darn, I got the same information from my aunt, and I wanted to surprise you,” she said. “But you’re right—according to some people my aunt knows, Elise hasn’t been right in the head ever since the death of her father.”
Clarissa paused and looked thoughtful. “You know, I’ve been wondering if the problem started earlier than that.”
“What do you mean?”
“What if hearing about her father’s cheating from David Ames tripped something in her, and she went over the edge?”
“You mean over the edge as in shooting her father?” Ashley asked in surprise.
“They were very close,” Clarissa said. “Maybe she shot her father on the doorstep that night, and that’s the real reason why she’s never recovered.”
Ashley nodded. “I suppose kids kill their parents every day in the world, and I imagine that Royce Llewellyn was a difficult guy to have as a father. So do you think Ames was lurking outside the house, maybe getting ready to attack Llewellyn himself, and he saw her do it?”
“That’s what I figure.”
“And he’s been blackmailing Elise ever since.”
Clarissa frowned. “Her mother probably controls the family money. I doubt that Elise has anything more than a small allowance, given her condition. I think Doris Llewellyn is the one who conducted business with David Ames for the last forty-five years.”
“But she couldn’t have killed him,” Ashley protested. “Even in his weakened condition, we know she couldn’t have suffocated him or rushed out of the hospital afterwards. Could Elise have done it?”
“She looked like a strong woman and seems healthy enough.”
Ashley frowned. “But you said Vera told you that she’s like a zombie. Now, I know zombies supposedly kill people, but they aren’t exactly subtle about it. They don’t sneak into hospital rooms and suffocate folks. They sort of stomp down the hall and take a bite out of you.”
Clarissa smiled at Ashley’s vivid description. “Maybe Vera was exaggerating a bit. It would help if we knew where Elise was at the time David was murdered.”
“Maybe I can help you with that,” Ashley said. “My aunt told me that neither Elise nor her mother drives. Agnes Coleman, a friend of my aunt’s, takes them wherever they have to go. Let me get my aunt to check with her to find out if she was driving them anywhere on the day Ames was killed. If Elise was somewhere else, then we’ll have to come up with a new suspect. So, what did you find out from the nurse? Wanda, was it?”
“She still can’t tell us any more about the person who slipped out of David’s room around the time he died,” Clarissa said. “But she did tell me that David’s girlfriend was there to see him a couple of days before, and they had an argument.” Clarissa filled Ashley in on her conversation with Sharon. She also explained about David’s wish that Sharon stay away from the hospital, and about the terms of his will.
“So Sharon stands to inherit a cool fifty thousand,” Ashley said with an eyebrow raised. “Some people have all the luck. All my relatives ever leave me are knickknacks. Maybe the money motivated her to come back a few days later and speed Dave on his way.”
“But she didn’t know about the terms of the will until after David’s death.”
“According to her. We don’t know if she’s telling the truth.”
Clarissa nodded. “I believed her, but the police might suspect her of lying just as you do. She certainly had motive, and there’s no reason she couldn’t have come in that night wearing a hoodie and done the job. But there’s something about that hypothesis that bothers me.”
“What?”
“It strikes me as a tremendous coincidence that she would kill David hours before he was going to reveal his blackmail scheme to Jack Spurlock,” said Clarissa. “I think the blackmail and the murder have to be connected.”
“And that would seem to leave Sharon in the clear and direct suspicion back on Elise Llewellyn and her mom,” Ashley said.
“Right. I hope for Sharon’s sake that Detective Baker sees it the same way.”
Ashley frowned. “And we’d better hope that Elise Llewellyn was free to go into the hospital that afternoon and murder David Ames. Otherwise we’re out of suspects.”
“Maybe, but maybe not,” Clarissa said. “When you talk to your aunt, maybe you can have her ask around to find out if Royce Llewellyn had any family other than his wife and daughter. Vera believed Royce had a brother.”
“You think there might be other family members involved. Clever,” Ashley said with a grin.
“That’s why I’m the boss,” Clarissa replied with a wink.
Chapter Twenty-Four
After Ashley had left for the day, Clarissa went back to the parsonage and ate the chicken salad sandwich that Mrs. Gunn had left for her. While eating, she reviewed in her mind how the investigation had progressed so far.
Clarissa started out with the idea that the Llewellyns had been David Ames’ blackmail victims, and as such, they had a strong motive to see that David did not pass on his information to Jack Spurlock. She could also imagine that, after killing David, they might have wondered if Jack already knew more than they thought, so to protect themselves, they staged his accident. So far, Clarissa thought, that seemed plausible. The problem with the theory was that Doris Llewellyn wasn’t fit enough to murder the two men, and her daughter, according to all reports, was not in any mental shape to do so.
Clarissa sat at the table, slowly chewing her sandwich and wondering if she could have gotten off on the completely wrong track. Could the killer be Maggie Preston, Harry Blanchard, or Ron Hazelton? Maggie might have shot Royce Llewellyn herself if he dropped her after his daughter found out about their relationship. David Ames could have seen her do it, and been blackmailing her ever since. Although Blanchard and Hazelton were too young to have killed Royce Llewellyn, their grandfathers were of the right ag
e and had motive, so the grandsons could have been the victims of Ames’ blackmail and decided to finally put a stop to it. But how would any of the three have known that David Ames planned to pass along his information?
And, for that matter, how did the Llewellyns know? Unless David had managed to make a last-minute phone call to threaten one of them, it seemed impossible that anyone would have known that it was essential to silence him before he met with Jack Spurlock.
Exhausted after half an hour of going over and over the evidence in her mind without coming up with any new insights, Clarissa decided to return to her office and work on her sermon. At least there, she had a pretty good idea of how it was going to end.
An hour later, she had a completed outline of her sermon, with all the Biblical citations checked. She was about to start putting it in a more polished form when the phone rang.
“Hi, this is Tyler,” an exuberant voice said when she answered. “Are you having a good day?”
“Pretty good, Tyler,” she replied, trying to sound cautiously friendly. “How about yourself?”
“Very good. Look, I know it’s kind of late notice, but would you like to go out to dinner on Wednesday night? I remember how you don’t like to go out on Saturday nights because of preaching the next day, so I thought Wednesday would be a good alternative.”
Clarissa didn’t have to consult her calendar to know that she was going out to dinner with Andrew that day. This attempt to date two guys was already getting awkward.
“Thank you for remembering that I don’t usually go out on Saturday nights,” she said. “That’s very considerate. Unfortunately, I have another commitment this Wednesday.”
“Church business?”
It would have been so easy to grunt an ambiguous affirmative, but she wasn’t going to lie. “No, actually I have a dinner date.”
“I see,” Tyler said, his voice suddenly frosty. “So I guess you did have a good reason for keeping our relationship non-committed.”
“I did warn you,” she said in a studiously calm voice.
“That you did. Well, I’ll give you a call towards the end of the week, if that’s okay. Maybe you can fit me into your social calendar for next week.”
Clarissa suppressed a sigh at his hurt tone. “That will be fine,” she said. “I’ll look forward to it.”
Hanging up the phone, she stared at the mahogany walls of the study. She’d actually grown to find them rather soothing over the last few weeks, and soothing was exactly what she needed at the moment.
Tyler had suddenly and without warning launched himself back into her world, and now expected everything to be as it had been before. But Clarissa was starting to realize that in the three months they’d been apart, she’d moved on. That it had happened so quickly seemed to indicate that their relationship hadn’t been all that solid even before their disagreement over careers. Looking back, she could easily recall a significant number of times when Tyler had expected her to be the one to compromise on matters both small and large, and she could remember very few times that he had been willing to make a sacrifice, except occasionally over what to order at a Chinese restaurant.
Yes, she warned herself, she might have to give some serious thought as to whether attempting to get back together, even in a tentative way, was really a good idea. There was no point—in fact, it was cruel—to encourage Tyler in his dream if it wasn’t one that she could realistically see herself sharing.
The phone rang again. For a moment, Clarissa considered letting the answering machine pick up in case it was Tyler again, either apologizing or attempting to guilt-trip her again. Deciding that she wasn’t going to be a captive in her own office, she answered.
“Hi, Pastor, it’s Josh Baker here,” came the reply.
“How are you, detective?” she asked, breathing a sigh of relief that this wasn’t going to be a painfully personal conversation.
“Oh, you know, fighting the good fight,” he said good-naturedly. “I just wanted to thank you for urging Sharon Meissner to come in to see us. It’s helpful to know that Ames had a pile of money stashed away. That makes it more likely he was involved in a blackmail scheme, like you suspected.”
“Glad it helped. Is Sharon going to be charged with anything?”
“Probably not, unless we find a lot more evidence incriminating her. She should have told us about going to see Ames in the hospital, but I guess that was innocent enough,” Baker said. “I can understand that she cared for him and didn’t want to desert him in his time of need. Of course, the inheritance gives her a motive for wanting him dead, but I spoke to the lawyer who wrote the will, and apparently Ames made it clear that he had every intention of keeping it a secret from her. He didn’t want her to know about it until after his death. I guess he thought about it as a pleasant surprise from beyond the grave.”
“So she didn’t know she was going to inherit, and would have had no motive to murder him.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, I’ve been following up on the blackmail angle,” Clarissa said, and proceeded to summarize her conversations with Maggie Preston, Harry Blanchard, and Ron Hazelton.
“That’s interesting,” Detective Baker said slowly, “but I wish you would have included me in your investigation. Or at least you could have informed me right after they took place.”
“Sorry,” Clarissa apologized. “I would have, but they didn’t really seem to lead anywhere. I think Maggie genuinely loved Royce Llewellyn, and still does, in fact. I don’t think she killed Royce, so she wasn’t being blackmailed. And I have doubts about Harry Blanchard or Ron Hazelton murdering two people just to hide a family secret.”
“No one likes it to be known that they had a murderer in the family,” Baker pointed out.
“Still, that seems extreme. It’s not like Harry or Ron personally killed Llewellyn. At worst, it would be a long-dead father or grandfather who committed the crime. Maybe you wouldn’t want the gossip spread around town, but it would essentially be ancient history. There’d be no trial to give it publicity.”
“Yeah, it would be a much bigger deal if the killer were still alive.”
There was a long silence on the phone.
“You still there, Pastor?” Baker asked.
“Yes, sorry, Josh,” Clarissa replied. “I’m thinking about what you just said. That definitely leads me to my other two suspects.”
“Who are they?”
“Royce’s wife and daughter. If one of them killed Royce, she’d definitely go to jail. So they have something important to hide.”
“Okay, but I assume we agree that Doris is too old to have killed Ames and Spurlock. That leaves Elise,” Baker said doubtfully.
“I know she has mental problems, but disturbed people sometimes kill,” Clarissa pointed out.
“Usually in an outburst, not after careful plotting. Plus, I’ve met her a few times, and she seems awfully fragile.”
“I’m not going to write her off as a suspect until I find out that she couldn’t possibly have done it. Ashley’s aunt knows Agnes Coleman, the woman who drives the Llewellyns everywhere. Ashley’s going to find out if Elise was out of town at the time Ames was killed. If she wasn’t, I think you should question her,” Clarissa said.
“I’d like a bit more evidence implicating her in the crime, beyond mere supposition, before I drag a mentally ill woman down to the station for questioning—especially a mentally ill woman whose mother still has considerable influence in the community.”
“Couldn’t you take Elise’s fingerprints and check them against those you found in David’s hospital room?” Clarissa asked.
“I could. But forcing Elise to be fingerprinted would also rattle her mother’s cage,” Baker explained. “Let me start by showing her picture around the hospital to see if anyone recognizes her. If anyone thinks they saw her there the night of Ames’ death, I’ll bring her in. Rudinski doesn’t have much to do this afternoon; I’ll send him right over to the hospital.�
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“Sounds great,” Clarissa said, feeling encouraged. “Maybe you can help me with something else related to the case.”
“What is it?”
“When the Llewellyn murder took place, were there any other family members in the area other than Royce’s wife and daughter?” Clarissa asked. “It’s a long shot, but I was just wondering if someone else in the family might have harbored ill will toward Royce. He doesn’t seem to have been an easy guy to get along with.”
“Let me check. I’ve got the file here somewhere.”
Clarissa heard some shuffling around, and after a few moments, Baker came back on the line.
“Let me see,” he said. “It looks like his only other relative was a younger brother living in Philadelphia. One of the investigators interviewed him when he came to Shore Side for the funeral. Apparently, he hadn’t kept in close touch with Royce and had no idea who would want to murder him. That looks like a dead end to me.”
“What about Doris Llewellyn’s side of the family?”
“Nobody at all there.”
Clarissa sighed. “Well, thanks anyway, and let me know what Officer Rudinski finds at the hospital. That may be our last chance of solving this thing.”
“I’ll call you first thing in the morning,” Baker promised her.
Clarissa thanked him and hung up. Then she sat and wondered what the odds were that Elise would have attacked David while not wearing gloves. Anyone who watched television—heck, anyone who didn’t live in a cave—knew about fingerprints and would be careful not to leave any. And as far as anyone spotting Elise slipping into the hospital wearing a hoodie went, well, that seemed like a pretty slim chance, too.
Deciding that she was only depressing herself, Clarissa returned to her sermon and, after a few minutes, was lost in the subject. Two hours later, she decided that it was in an acceptable form. She’d practice delivering it later in the week, but she was pretty sure that it would flow just fine.
Before leaving the office, she glanced at the list of two people she was scheduled to visit tomorrow afternoon. She hoped that her visits would be a pleasant distraction from this dead-end investigation.
