by Amy Vansant
“Why?”
“He was very private.” Mina paused and then added, “And he didn’t like kids very much.”
“Did you ask her why she was up there?”
Mina looked away as if thinking. “At the time she told me she’d gone to see the puppies. Today, on the phone she said Kimber had asked her to come see him.”
“Why?”
“She wouldn’t say.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. She said it might make things worse for her.”
“Hm. Okay. Go on.”
Mina wiped her nose and took another deep breath. “I told Lyndsey to go. We started talking about how people might think she’d killed him and about her DNA being on the puppies—”
“Her DNA on the puppies?”
Mina closed her eyes. “It seems silly now. We were panicking. We just thought everything would be easier if it was clear he’d fallen while alone. She wasn’t supposed to be up there, and I didn’t think the police would miss the puppies. So I just told her to take them.”
“You told her to take them?”
Mina nodded, looking more miserable from one moment to the next. “It was stupid. It didn’t hit me then that the dogs disappearing would make everything look even more like a crime than it already did. I didn’t think about the girls letting it slip about them to the police. We could have just said he fell getting out of bed and left her out of it. They wouldn’t have started to test the dogs fur for DNA.”
“Probably not.”
“We watch too many of those shows. The crime shows. The girls love them.” Mina sighed. “Well, they used too. They’re too old now. All they think about now are boys and their phones.”
“So Lyndsey took the puppies and left?”
“Yes. That’s when I heard Kimber groan.”
“He was alive?”
“Yes. I ran to the front window and tried to call out to Lyndsey that he was alive, but she was probably already gone. I ran downstairs to find my phone so I could call nine-one-one. That’s where I ran into the girls. I told them not to worry. Gemma went back to her room and I got to talking to Payne, found my phone, and then headed back upstairs. By the time I got back up there, Kimber was dead, but—” Mina’s hand rose to cover her mouth.
“But what?”
“There was a lot more blood. I figured he’d moved and started bleeding, but then Sheriff Carter found the rabbit.”
Charlotte blinked at Mina. “The rabbit?”
“Kimber’s rabbit doorstop. It was at the top of the servant’s stairwell.”
“That’s different from the main stairs?”
Mina nodded. “It climbs from the kitchen to across the hall from Kimber’s room. They found the iron rabbit in there, covered with Kimber’s blood and my fingerprints.” Mina practically yelped the last two words and grabbed for more tissues.
“Was it always in the stairwell?”
“No. That’s just it. It’s a doorstop, so it sat in front of his door.”
“Do you know how your fingerprints got on it?”
“Yes. I’ve moved it every day for the last twenty years. My fingerprints should be all over it.”
“So they think someone hit him with the rabbit?”
“Yes. Twice.”
“They said twice?”
“The autopsy apparently says he fell, and then someone hit him with the rabbit. They think it could have been me. They think I saw my chance to finish him off and then hid the rabbit in the stairwell until I could get rid of it later, I guess.”
“But you never did get rid of it.”
Mina’s eyes bulged. “I didn’t know it was there. I didn’t do it!”
“No, I’m sorry. I understand that. I mean, if your plan had been to get rid of it, you never did. They found the rabbit a day later.”
Mina nodded, looking hopeful. “You’re right. I see what you’re saying. If I wanted to hide it, why would I have left it there for Carter to find? That’s a good point.”
“Exactly.”
Mina’s countenance crashed once more. “But that means someone else did it and the girls were the only other people in the house. Lyndsey had left.”
“And they only found your fingerprints.”
Mina nodded. “But not on the ears.”
“What’s that mean?”
“The ears were clean.”
“Do you ever pick it up by the ears when you move it?”
Mina nodded. “Sure. Probably most of the time.”
“So someone cleaned their own prints off the ears.”
Mina sucked in a breath and put her hand on Charlotte’s. “Another good point. You’re really good at this.”
Charlotte tried not to smile. “And you’re sure the damage from the rabbit wasn’t already there when you checked on him the first time?”
Mina winced, her voice dropping to a whisper. “It really looked worse when I went back upstairs. There was new splatter on the wall. I didn’t really think about it at the time but…I do think something happened after.”
“And you’re worried that means the girls might have done it?”
“Yes. But…they can be brats but they’d never kill someone.” Mina sobbed and wiped at her nose with the wad of tissue clenched in her fist. “I don’t want to go to jail to protect them. Does that make me a terrible person?”
“No. I know you can’t believe they’d do it, but can you think of any reason the girls might want to kill Mr. Miller?”
Mina shrugged. “He was a very difficult man. Cold. Distant. He wasn’t much of a father to any of the girls, but we’d all reached a sort of living arrangement—” Mina’s face began to redden and Charlotte could see she was choking up. She blew her nose. “I’m sorry. This is all just so awful.”
There was a clank and Charlotte looked up to see the deputy there, his key in the jail lock.
“You’re free to go,” he said.
Mina looked up. “Me?”
“You and the girls. The sheriff actually had one of the other deputies take them home a while ago. He’s decided not to hold you either, pending further investigation, but I wouldn’t go leaving the country.”
Mina frowned. “Where would I go?”
The deputy opened the door and shrugged. “I dunno. Mexico?”
Charlotte blinked at the guard. Did he give all the prisoners ideas where to run?
Mina looked at Charlotte.
“Can you give me a ride home?”
Chapter Nineteen
“No one’s here.”
Mina opened the door and stepped out of Charlotte’s Volvo. The cars Charlotte usually saw parked in the large stone driveway were missing.
“Who owns which cars?” asked Charlotte.
“The estate owns the older black Jeep. We all use it. Lyndsey has an old Miata she keeps over by the barn. The Toyota is mine. The girls borrow it sometimes.”
“What about other people on the farm?”
“There are landscapers who come a couple times a week.”
“Were they here the day you found Mr. Miller?”
Mina paused as she mounted the stairs to the porch and squinched her forehead until a little ball of flesh appeared between her puffy eyes. “No. They have a pretty big truck and I would have seen it when I called out for Lyndsey.”
“Anyone else?”
“There’s the stable boy.”
“I thought Lyndsey took care of the horses?”
“She does, but he comes to pick out the stalls and does the dirtier work. He might have been here. He might be here now. He comes on a bike and parks it in the garage.”
“Bike or motorcycle?”
“Regular bike. He’s eighteen. He’s a neighbor’s kid from down the road. He’s been working here since he was a kid. His name is Todd. Todd Schafer.”
Charlotte pulled her phone from her pocket as they entered the kitchen and opened her notes app. “And the name of the landscaping company?”
�
�EarthShavers.”
Charlotte looked up. “EarthShavers? Are you sure?”
Mina waved her hand in the air next to her head. “EarthShapers. Sorry. Shavers doesn’t make much sense, does it. I’m losing my mind.” They walked into the kitchen and Mina sat at the kitchen table. “I need to get a shower. I have prison all over me.”
“You have jail all over you. Very different thing,” mumbled Charlotte.
Mina gasped a sudden sob and Charlotte realized what she’d said. “I’m sorry, Mina. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“What if I go to prison?”
“Did you do it?”
“No.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about.”
“But I tried to cover it up to help Lyndsey. It makes me an accessories after that.”
Charlotte opened her mouth to correct Mina and then shut it. Accessories after that did sound less scary than accessory after the fact. Mina’s version made it sound like, if found guilty, she’d have to wear an ugly scarf for a year.
“Can you show me Mr. Miller’s room?” she asked instead.
Mina nodded and headed for the stairs. Charlotte followed her to the landing, flanked by a large window overlooking the back yard. She was about to mount the second half of the stairs when motion outside the window caught her eye. It was her own warped and wavy reflection on a shiny piece of flashing on the edge of the roof line outside. She waved to confirm it was in fact her, and noticed a camera mounted on the roof near the window.
“What does this camera see?” she asked.
Mina stopped and peered down at her from the stairs. “The back yard, little bit of the barn.”
“And Lyndsey lives over the barn, doesn’t she?”
Mina nodded.
“Does this camera keep a history somewhere?”
“There’s an app for it. It’s on my phone.”
“Can I see it? Or did the police take it?”
She frowned. “The police took my phone.” She paused and then raised her index finger to her cheek. “Oh, but the app’s on Kimber’s phone too. You can check that one.”
They climbed the remaining stairs.
“This is the door to the servant stairs,” said Mina, opening a door in the hall. Charlotte looked inside and saw nothing but a very narrow staircase heading into darkness below.
“Where does that come out?”
“In the hall off the kitchen between the girls’ rooms.”
“And the girls have access?”
“Yes. And Sheriff Carter found the rabbit right here on the first step.” Mina pointed down. There was black dust on the step where the crime techs had come back and dusted the area while Mina was incarcerated.
Mina left the door open and crossed the hall to open another door.
“This is the whelping room where I found Lyndsey with the puppies.”
Charlotte could tell by the sink and toilet that the room was really a spare bathroom, but a nest of soft dog beds had been built in the corner and the rest of the floor was lined with newspaper. The odor of dog poop hit her nostrils.
“I haven’t had a chance to clean,” said Mina.
“Where’s the mother dog?” she asked.
A sadness passed over Mina’s expression. “Miller’s Lady Crossing. She actually died birthing her last litter. Kimber was devastated. He loved that dog. She was a champion, you know.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Who fed the puppies?”
“I did.”
“Who walked the mother?”
Mina sighed. “I did.”
“Did Kimber ever leave this second floor?”
“No. It was getting difficult for him to get out of bed. His mind was slipping as fast as his body.”
“So it isn’t out of the realm of possibility that he did fall, as Lyndsey mentioned.”
“He fell all the time. That’s why I helped her. She was in such a panic and I didn’t want her to get in trouble for something I knew wasn’t her fault.”
“Can you show me his room?”
Mina walked to the next door down the hall and opened it. Inside, there was a bedroom decorated in browns and peaches and lined with outdated furniture. It looked as if it hadn’t been touched since the nineteen-nineties.
Blood stained the carpet near the bed and dark splatter covered the wall.
“How old was he?”
“Seventy-two.”
“And you’re his sister? You don’t look a day over—” Charlotte realized she was playing a dangerous game.
“I’m fifty-three. I was an oops if ever there was one.” Mina smiled. “People think it’s strange that I’d signed up to be his housekeeper, but they forget we were so far apart in age, it wasn’t like we ever even knew each other as brother as sister.” She walked inside and opened the top right drawer of the bureau to retrieve a phone. She handed it to Charlotte. “He loved me in his own way, though. He took care of me and I took care of him.”
Charlotte took the phone and found it unlocked. “Do you mind if I look through the camera files?”
Mina shrugged. “Go ahead. He didn’t really use that phone for anything except apps that turned on and off the lights.” She took a deep breath as if she’d needed a moment to find strength. “He’d make the smart bulbs downstairs blink when he needed me sometimes.”
“I’ll take this downstairs if you don’t mind.”
“Do you mind if I get a quick shower while you do that?” asked Mina.
“No, go ahead, of course.”
Charlotte returned to the kitchen, which she found outdated as well. Miller might have been a millionaire, but he didn’t care much for decorating.
She sat on a worn, vinyl-padded kitchen seat and clicked through Miller’s phone. Mina hadn’t been lying. There were very few apps installed, so it only took her a moment to identify the one that operated the camera. She scrolled through the daily log of motion sensor activity and found the day Miller died. There were nearly fifty entries.
The first shot only lasted about thirty seconds. Charlotte searched the yard for movement but saw nothing.
Must have been triggered by a bird. Whatever had moved past the lens had disappeared before the camera had time to register.
The next clip was the same, as was the next.
All birds?
Charlotte returned to the first and played it again. Something in Charlotte’s peripheral vision caught her attention.
What is that?
It took her a moment to realize what she was looking at was the reflection on the flashing she’d noticed earlier. She could tell by the overall shape of the warped image that it was the reflected movement of Mina climbing the stairs.
She played the second clip again and saw the same thing. This time it looked like Mina heading downstairs.
She played a few more clips. Mina up, Mina down. Horse being led by a boy walking across the yard. Mina up. One of the girls out in the yard leading her horse, presumably to the riding ring. Mina down.
Hold on.
As she grew close to the time of death she spotted a new figure in the flashing.
Lyndsey.
That’s Lyndsey going up the forbidden stairs.
Twenty minutes later Lyndsey went back down the stairs holding something large.
A container of puppies, no doubt.
A few minutes later, a Mina-shape came rushing down the stairs.
Fifteen minutes after that, Mina went up the stairs and shortly after that the stairs were swarming with EMTs and police.
Charlotte lowered the phone to her lap and stared at the ancient stove across from her as its red digital clock turned from one second to the next.
Everything fits Mina’s story.
Lyndsey went upstairs, summoned, according to her, by Miller himself—
Wait. He was bed-bound. How did he reach her?
She closed the camera app and checked the call log.
There it is.
Miller had called
Lyndsey shortly before she was caught on camera heading upstairs.
Lyndsey’s telling the truth, too.
Lyndsey came back down, with the puppies, and then Mina went down to get her phone and call for help. No one went up the main staircase between the time Mina last saw him alive and when she returned to find him dead.
So if someone went upstairs to finish him off, they had to have gone up the servant stairs.
Unless that person was Mina.
Charlotte walked to the hall at the back of the kitchen. Finding it empty, she tried the door on the left that logically should have led to the servant stairs. She guessed right, and found herself staring up the steep steps to the upstairs hallway, the upper door having been left open by Mina.
Fifteen minutes.
The person who went up those stairs and killed Miller with an iron rabbit only had fifteen minutes to sneak up there. They had to know Mina was downstairs and that Miller was still alive.
Very opportunistic. Very small window.
Charlotte scowled.
Very unlikely.
“Charlotte?”
Charlotte heard her name called from the kitchen and walked back down the hall.
Mina had returned in a pair of tights and a long shirt that hung to her knees. Her hair was wet and loosely towel-dried.
“I was looking at the stairway,” she explained.
Mina ruffled her hair with her fingers. “Sorry for the way I look. I figured you’d rather see me wet than wait until I put on my face and did my hair.”
“Who knew Mr. Miller wasn’t dead?”
“What?”
“Who could have known that he was down but not dead?”
“Just me, I guess—”
“And the girls. You said you talked to them here?”
“Oh, yes. Well, I told them he’d fallen and that I was calling an ambulance, so they knew he was alive.”
“And you said you called it out to Lyndsey?”
“Yes, but she was gone.”
“But you did scream it outside? What did you say exactly?”
“I said, he’s alive.”
“So anyone on the grounds could have heard that?”
Mina frowned. “I suppose so.”
Charlotte nodded. “I’m going to go see if the stable boy is here.”
