“Okay, it’s settled then.”
Detective Molino had a deputy take each of us separately to our rooms to collect necessities for the night, each item carefully examined to be sure it wasn’t on the search warrant list. Pam went outside and called for Phreddie again, but we finally had to leave without him.
So there we were. Eight of us. Pam and me up front, three couples in the back of the limo. Seven innocent people, one murderer.
Unless this was a couple's conspiracy. Two murderous Hubbards. Two killer Forsythes. Two slayer Steffans.
The cell phones were running hot on the drive. Beside me, Pam had hers clamped to her ear. In the back, Stan Steffan barked into his. Cindy hunched down with hers, a hand shielding phone and mouth. Even Phyllis was in on the action.
We all clustered around the desk at the inn a few minutes later. “Yes, four rooms, that’s what I asked for when I called,” Pam said to the clerk. “You don’t mind sharing with me, do you, Andi?”
“Fine with me.”
I was surprised to see Mike come in through the double doors. So at least I knew who Pam had been talking to. That alive glow momentarily lit up Pam’s face when their eyes met, then, as if she’d drawn strength from the touch, she was briskly back to business.
“Are the rooms ready?”
“Actually,” a little voice piped up on the other side of me, “we’ll need one more room. There’s another guest.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Sterling is coming,” Joe said. “We called him earlier. When Phyllis talked to him just now, he said he’d be getting in at Sea-Tac at 10:20 tonight.”
“Did you tell him—” Pam broke off as she apparently realized she didn’t want to ask in front of everyone whether Sterling knew about his relationship with Michelle.
“We just thought, under the circumstances, he should be here for the service.” Considering her earlier near-hysteria, Phyllis spoke with surprising self-control. Her voice was back in the whispery range now.
“This means I should go pick him up?” I asked.
Pam started to say something, but Phyllis interrupted. “Could you? We wouldn’t want him trying to find transportation on his own in the middle of the night.”
“That’s my job.”
“We’ll come along so you won’t be driving alone,” Phyllis added. “We want to meet him at the airport anyway.”
Of course. Brilliant, talented, twenty-nine-year-old Sterling mustn’t be left to wander all alone around the great big airport. Then I mentally whacked myself for such a disparaging attitude. I still worried about my daughter Sarah, and she was almost forty.
Pam turned back to the desk to arrange for another room, plus tickets to the dinner buffet for everyone. The rest of us trooped up to the rooms we’d been assigned. The group didn’t plan to go en masse to the buffet, but I arranged to meet Phyllis and Joe in the lobby later for the drive to Sea-Tac.
In the room, before Pam arrived, I called Fitz on my cell. He was busy fixing spaghetti for dinner, but we talked while he worked, laughter and chatter from guests on the boat bubbling in the background. I’d eaten Fitz’s great spaghetti. I could almost smell the garlic, and I knew about his secret ingredient, a smidgen of cinnamon. I wished I were there, not here knowing I must be rubbing elbows with a double-murderer. I told him about Shirley.
“I don’t like this,” Fitz said. “I’d rather you’d get out of there. Now.”
“I don’t think it’s officially a murder yet—”
“Get out, Andi. Go home. I don’t want anything happening to you.”
“If there is a double murderer running around, maybe he or she would come after me at home. Although I can’t see any reason I’d be a target.”
Silence while Fitz gave that some thought and then reluctantly said, “I suppose you’re as safe there at the inn as anywhere.”
“Detective Molino isn’t saying anything about whether there were any wounds on the body, but I don’t think the killer used that extra knife. The hot tub was the murder weapon.”
“A killer can always find a weapon of some kind. They make do with what’s available.”
“We’re hoping Detective Molino finds that second knife in their search of the house. At least you don’t have to be concerned that I’ll be looking for it now.”
“I'm grateful for small favors,” he muttered.
We talked a little longer about doings on the boat, then said goodnight when Pam and Mike came in the room.
“I miss you,” Fitz said before he hung up, as he usually does.
“I miss you too.”
I wasn’t sure if our exchanges would ever escalate to I-love-you’s. Or whether I wanted such an escalation. But still there was something in I miss you that made warm fuzzies in my heart.
Watching Pam and Mike together, I wondered how she felt about the return of her ex-fiancé, Sterling. Then I wondered about Sterling. Did he have in mind trying to patch things up with Pam? Or was this trip only about his inheritance? I couldn’t see him getting all sentimental and rushing up here for Michelle’s service even if he’d found out about their mother-son connection.
The buffet was fantastic, all the crack-it-yourself fresh crab you could eat. Messy but delicious. Getting away from the house where murder had happened encouraged the appetite, I realized a bit guiltily.
It was almost dark when I met Joe and Phyllis in the lobby for the trip to Sea-Tac. I thought they’d be friendly and chatty, but they closed the partition and I never heard a peep out of them. I couldn’t tell if Sterling was on his cell phone during the drive back from Sea-Tac to Vigland this time, but he had it in his hand when he got in the limo and it was still there when he got out.
When we were a few miles from the inn, I called Pam to let her know we were arriving. “In case you want to roll out the red carpet for Sterling,” I told her.
“I would, but it’s at the cleaner's.”
I dropped my three passengers at the door and drove around back to park the limo for the night.
By the time I got back to the lobby, they’d all vanished. I thought Pam and Mike might still be talking, but when I got up to the room Pam was alone. She had papers that had come from the safe spread across both beds.
“Mike didn’t stick around?”
“He’ll be out for an early breakfast before work in the morning.”
“Did he and Sterling meet?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Big fireworks?”
“A duel over the fair maiden with drawn cell phones? Andi, you flatter me.”
“You don’t think Sterling has ideas about getting back together, then?”
“Whatever ideas Sterling has, they don’t include me. Thankfully.”
“Do you think Joe and Phyllis told him about the inheritance, and that’s why he’s here?”
“I don’t know.” And she didn’t seem all that interested. She picked up a sheaf of papers covered with fine print. “Andi, could you look at this and tell me if it means what I think it means?”
A knock on the door interrupted. Pam dropped the papers back on the bed, looked through the peephole, then released the chain.
“Sterling,” she said. She sounded neither pleased nor dismayed. Just surprised on a ho-hum level, as if it was the Fed-Ex man and she was expecting UPS.
“I thought we should talk for a minute.”
“Come on in. Andi is sharing the room.” Pam motioned a hand toward me.
He came in but didn’t take the chair I scooted toward him. Probably because he didn’t even notice my existence. Were Joe and Phyllis positive their son wasn’t related to Stan Stefan? The two certainly shared an arrogance gene.
“This information about the relationship between Michelle and me no doubt came as a considerable surprise to you,” Sterling said.
“That’s putting it mildly. But not a surprise to you?”
Which was my thought too, from his detached, unsurprised sounding statement.
&nb
sp; “Michelle told me several years ago, although my parents didn’t know that. I let them tell me on the phone without letting on I already knew.”
Reluctantly I gave Sterling points for that smidgen of sensitivity.
“How do you feel about her?”
“I can’t say it was any big surprise when she told me. My parents are good people, but we have practically no characteristics in common, and she’d always seemed unusually interested in me. As for what I feel about her . . .” He shrugged.
“Did you ever ask her about your father?”
“Some jerk back in Kansas, she said.”
Okay, so Stan Steffan was definitely not in the picture. I was still disappointed that my brilliant theorizing about a relationship there was totally off base.
“You also knew you stood to inherit everything?”
“No!” The denial was surprisingly vehement, given Sterling’s usual demeanor, which had all the sparkle of a concrete block. “Michelle never told me that. So I had no reason to kill her, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“So why are you here now?” Pam asked bluntly.
“I need to talk to the lawyer. I’d like to know the approximate size of the estate, and how soon I can reasonably expect settlement. I want to leave the company and start my own research firm. This may, depending on the size of the estate, enable me to do that. So I need her lawyer’s name and contact information.”
One thing to be said for Sterling, he didn’t try to manufacture emotion or sentimentality where none existed. Which, I realized reluctantly, pushed him way down on my suspect list. If he’d killed Michelle, I figured he’d have tried harder to sound all broken up about her death. Although his parents were still on my list.
Pam looked at one of the papers on the bed, scribbled the information about the lawyer on a scrap of paper, and handed it to him.
“I’d like a copy of the will too.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t have an extra. But I’m sure the lawyer can provide that. He must have the original.”
“You haven’t talked to this lawyer yet yourself?” he asked.
“No. I had an appointment for this morning, but Shirley’s death last night changed things. I don’t know if you met her, but she was the housekeeper and cook at the house.”
“Was her death connected with Michelle’s murder?”
“The police aren’t saying much yet, but it seems likely.”
“That should erase whatever doubts you might have about me, then. Obviously, I couldn’t have killed her.”
“Sterling, no one has accused you of anything. Although you have to admit, you are the one who benefits most from Michelle’s death. That's always a strong motive for murder.”
“Especially in those inane murder mysteries you find so fascinating.” With that parting crack, Sterling departed. He had not, obviously, come to spread any charm around. Not that he had any to spare.
Pam stared after him for a moment, then shook her head. Probably bewildered by the fact that only a few days ago she’d been ready to marry this guy. She turned back to the paper she’d started to hand to me. I took it and struggled through the fine print.
And in two minutes I’d forgotten all about Sterling Forsythe’s or his parents' possible connection to Michelle’s murder. Because two other discarded suspects suddenly rocketed way ahead of all others.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“It is what I think it is, isn’t it?” Pam said when she saw my shock. “And there’s more. Look at this.”
I set the insurance papers aside and skimmed through the partnership agreement. I had no expertise in deciphering legalese, but buried within the whereases and wherefores were a couple of startling facts.
The partnership agreement was set up so that if something happened, such as the death or mental incapacity of one of the partners, full ownership went to those remaining.
Michelle’s death meant that Uri and Cindy owned Change Your World.
Personal insurance was set up and paid for by the partnership. Not an unusual situation for key persons in a corporation or partnership, but ominously meaningful in this instance. Each partner was insured for a million dollars, that amount to be paid to the partnership in event of death so as to insure smooth and continuous operation of the business.
Michelle’s death meant Uri and Cindy collected a million bucks.
No wonder they weren’t worried about the grand opening or keeping the fitness center going. And whatever it took to buy Michelle’s BMW, and call it a business expense? A pittance.
And, unlike Sterling, who probably hadn’t known in advance that he stood to inherit Michelle’s estate, the Hubbards knew exactly how they’d benefit from her death.
Another thought hit me, maybe far out, maybe not. The partnership and insurance set-up seemed very generous on Michelle’s part. Pam thought Michelle had murdered before. Did she have in mind doing it again, getting rid of troublesome wife Cindy and acquiring Uri, Change Your World, and a million bucks for herself?
But Cindy had beaten her to it?
“How does all this work with Michelle’s will leaving everything to Sterling?” Pam asked.
“I’m no lawyer, obviously, but I don’t think the will has any effect on any of this. It’s all outside the will.”
Had Cindy also been searching for these papers in Michelle’s office? Yet surely they had copies. Or did they think removing Michelle’s copies, like getting rid of that incriminating original design for the exercise machine, would lessen chances for “complications”?
Because this spelled Motive for Murder in brighter lights than that lightning bolt sign at Change Your World. Had Uri wielded the knife? Or Cindy? Uri was bigger and stronger. He was also a thief, I was reasonably certain, on the exercise machine design. With Michelle’s death, he came out ahead on fitness center ownership and insurance money. But could he cold-bloodedly kill a lover?
Cindy had one more motive than her husband. She not only got ownership of Change Your World and the million bucks, she got rid of a rival.
But why Shirley? Why did they need to get rid of her too?
As if I’d asked the question aloud, Pam answered it. “Shirley must have found something incriminating about them in Michelle’s things. They were watching and knew she’d found it.”
“But what?”
“I don’t know, but Michelle liked to hoard information she thought might prove useful.” Pam made a strange little sound, half rueful laugh, half choked gurgle. “Once when I was a kid she caught me cutting her out of a picture of Dad and her and me. I was so young and dumb. I guess I hoped cutting her out of the picture would cut her out of our lives too.”
“Probably not an unnatural hope.”
“She grabbed the pieces and said if I didn’t stop making trouble for her she’d show them to my dad. And fix it so I’d never come home from school even on summers.”
Nice lady, this Michelle. What information had she tucked away about Uri and Cindy? Maybe something incriminating about Uri back in Germany? Or did Cindy have some ugly tidbit in her past?
“I’m thinking we should suggest to Detective Molino that he search the Hubbards’ cottage as well as the house,” I said. “The knife may be there.”
“They’ve probably disposed of it.”
“You never know. Criminals make mistakes.”
***
I was vaguely aware when Pam slipped out of our room early for breakfast with Mike the next morning. It was at least an hour later when I crossed over to the buffet in the casino building. By then Fitz had already called, making sure I’d made it safely through the night and telling me if everyone moved back to the house today that I shouldn’t go with them. His concern was sweet, but I wondered if it could become overbearing.
Pam and Mike were just leaving when I reached the buffet. Uri and Cindy came in wearing running shorts, their faces flushed with all-American glows of health and vitality. Mrs. Steffan breakfasted with Joe and Phyll
is, neither Sterling or the Stan Man in sight. I dodged them all and ate alone.
Back upstairs I studied the insurance and partnership papers again. When Pam came in, I asked if she planned to see Michelle’s lawyer today.
“No, I’ll let Sterling get the ball rolling there. I need to go by the funeral home and finalize things for tomorrow. But first I want to go back to the house and look for Phreddie. I should have brought the Bug last night, but I didn’t. Can you drive me?”
“Of course. What about the other guests?”
Pam wasn’t feeling very hostess-y this morning. In a let-them-eat-cake tone, she muttered, “They can figure out their own transportation.”
At the house, the electronic gate stood wide open. Crime-scene tape encircled the entire house now. One sheriff’s department car was still on the scene, but I didn’t know if it was Detective Molino’s. Whoever belonged with it was apparently inside the house.
“Do you want to see if they’ll let you look through the house for Phreddie?”
“With all the strange people and activity in there, I’m sure he’s scared to death and has run off to hide by now. You look east of the house, and I’ll go west, okay? And look up because he likes to climb trees.”
I parked the limo in its usual place in the graveled lane leading around the house and started plowing through the underbrush. Hard going. Blackberry bushes, viney green stuff, other stickery stuff, drooping fir and cedar branches. Snakes? Spiders?
“Here, Phreddie, Phreddie,” I called every few steps. Alternating with a more generic, “Here, kitty, kitty.” I’ve never been convinced cats know their names no matter how positive their proud owners are.
A couple of times things rustled in the underbrush, but they weren’t Phreddie. No Phreddie in the trees, either.
My half of the wooded acreage was a big territory to cover looking for one small kitty. I crisscrossed it several times. On what I’d decided was my last trip I came out at the cottage where Uri and Cindy were staying. You’d think there’d be a trail between cottage and big house, but I hadn’t stumbled across one. I could see the gate for a separate entrance.
Here Comes the Ride Page 24
