Love Is Murder

by Allison Brennan

  She shivered. Don’t be such a conspiracy nut! Where would he hide while it was a gazillion degrees below zero and a blizzard raged outside? And poisoning or faking a suicide attempt was hardly the standard method of a jealous or vengeful ex-husband.

  A chill ran over her skin, raising the hairs on the back of her neck. At first she thought it was only her, but she noticed that Angie pulled her bathrobe tighter around her neck. Trevor’s snores halted momentarily, before the annoying noise returned.

  Lucy grabbed a book without looking at the title and said good night to Angie. She entered the foyer and saw a wet spot on the hardwood floor, right inside the main door.

  She stared. She’d watched Grace Delarosa dry the floor after Patrick and the others came back from securing Vanessa’s body. Grace and Steve had gone to their house via the door in the kitchen, which was closest to their cottage.

  Someone had gone in and out. Or out, then back in.

  Who? And why?

  Lucy ran up the stairs, taking two at a time. She knocked on Patrick’s door. There was no answer.

  Her heart pounded in her chest. She had the extra key to Patrick’s room and used it to unlock his door.

  “Patrick?” she called into the dark.

  He moaned from his bed.

  She turned on the lights. He was lying in his bed, the covers kicked off, his bare chest bathed in sweat. His face was flushed. She rushed to his side and felt his head. He was warm.

  “Patrick, what happened? What’s wrong?”

  “Hey, sis.”

  His words were slurred. He grinned.

  “Patrick, what is wrong? Are you sick?”

  “I’m fine. Really, I can drive. Nope, well, Carina is the designated driver again.”

  She frowned. Carina was their sister. She and Patrick were thirteen months apart in age and had been very close growing up. The last time either she or Patrick had seen Carina was over Christmas, two months ago.

  Thirty minutes ago she’d woken him up and he was fine. Groggy, but normal. Now he was hallucinating.

  Someone had drugged him. How?

  She looked around the room. Thirty minutes … there were lots of drugs that had a thirty minute or less reaction time. Maybe after Lucy had woken him up, Patrick had drank something.

  She saw nothing on his nightstand. In his bathroom there was a water bottle, half full.

  She ran back to Patrick. “Did you drink the water in the bathroom?” She picked up his arm and let it go. It flopped back to the bed. He tried to raise it, but couldn’t.

  Patrick looked at her. “I’m so glad you’re here. But why did you do it?”

  “What?”

  “If you’d just told me, I would have fixed everything.”

  Lucy didn’t know if he thought she was someone else, or what he was thinking, but his comments and physical symptoms told her he’d been slipped a sedative that suppressed his central nervous system. A date rape drug, like Rohyphnol or ketamine or a Mickey Finn—but why on earth would Patrick be drugged? Had someone tried to kill him to prevent his investigation of Vanessa’s murder?

  That meant Patrick had already learned something that that the killer feared would expose him.

  Lucy and he had been together the entire time. Except when Patrick had gone out to stow Vanessa’s body, and when she’d gone up to bed he’d been talking to Steve in the office.

  “Patrick, please.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

  Then he moaned and Lucy knew what was next.

  She turned him to his side and he vomited.

  VI.

  Lucy could not trust anyone.

  She’d stayed awake most of the night watching over Patrick. After he vomited, she cleaned up and helped him stagger across the hall to her bedroom. She gave him water from the tap, not the bottle left in her bathroom. He was still hallucinating, but mostly he slept.

  She was angry beyond measure—Patrick had been in a coma for nearly two years. Any drugs that depressed his central nervous system could potentially put him back into that coma. The doctors didn’t know why he’d reacted in the first place—he’d been conscious prior to his brain surgery after an explosion had injured him, causing swelling in his brain. The surgery saved his life. One doctor believed that the coma was a direct result of the brain surgery—that after fixing the damage, he’d simply gone to sleep for two years. Another doctor believed that Patrick had an adverse reaction to the anesthesia, based on his medical history. When he was nine, his appendix had burst and he’d underwent emergency surgery. He’d been in a coma for two weeks then.

  Whatever it was, any sedatives were incredibly dangerous for Patrick.

  Lucy watched him sleep deeply as the digital clock turned from 5:59 to 6:00. She’d woken him up every hour just to make sure he could be woken up. He’d mumble something unintelligible, then quickly fall back to sleep.

  Lucy wished she could ask someone to watch her brother, but she was going to have to leave him. It was time to talk to the sheriff herself.

  She crept from her room back to Patrick’s. Though she had cleaned up after him, his room smelled foul. She went through his notes and found the sheriff’s name and number that Steve had given him. She paused. Would Steve have passed along the information if he were the killer? She didn’t know.

  The house was still silent. She walked downstairs and peered into the library. Trevor was still on the couch, no longer snoring, but bundled under a blanket. Angie must have put it back on last night.

  Lucy closed the library door and padded silently to the lodge’s office. She picked up the phone and was relieved to hear a dial tone. Outside, the wind still blew like an angry god, dawn barely visible in the white that rained down around them.

  “Alpine County Sheriff’s Department.”

  “Sheriff Mackey please.”

  “He’s not in right now. This is the dispatcher, how many I assist you?”

  “This is Lucy Kincaid at the Delarosa Retreat. Sheriff Mackey spoke with Steve Delarosa yesterday about an unattended death. We have a serious problem up here, and I need to talk to the sheriff immediately.”

  “One moment.”

  She was put on hold. Lucy didn’t know what the dispatcher was doing. She waited impatiently.

  A small stack of papers was tucked under the desk calendar, making it lopsided. She vaguely remembered that Steve had been reading something when she’d walked in last night.

  She pulled out the papers and unfolded them. The top pages were a handwritten letter in bold, confident block letters dated over two years ago from Leo Delarosa to his son, Steve. The bottom pages were a formal Last Will and Testament.

  She read the letter first.

  Son,

  Today is your eighteenth birthday. I hope to be here to watch you drink your first beer (legally!) and get married (you’ll find the right girl, just be patient) and have a child of your own.

  But my heart attack last year was a wake-up call for both of us. I don’t know how long I’ll be here, whether I’ll live to see my grandchild or not. Because God sometimes has ideas about things that we don’t understand, and because I’m not too good in talking about my feelings and all that crap, I decided to write this letter.

  My words don’t always come out right. They sound like criticism (like when I told you that you were too smart to get a C in Algebra). What I should have said was, “Son, you’re a smart boy. I’m proud of you and proud of your grades. I’m disappointed in the C because I know you can do better. But I’m not disappointed in you.”

  I’ve never been disappointed in you, Steve.

  You were the best thing that happened to your mom and me. We didn’t think we could have kids—hell, we tried often enough! And then you came. She loved you the minute she found out you were growing inside her belly.

  Your mom would be proud of you today. God took her home way too soon, and I cursed Him for it. You needed your mom. I wanted you to have her in your life
more than the ten years you had her. I needed her.

  Damn, I’m going to cry now. I just want you to know that I’m proud of you, and I’m proud that you want to keep the Delarosa growing in the spirit that your mom and me always wanted. I won’t blame you if you decide you want something else, because I know a bit about wanderlust. I was in the navy for three years because I needed to get off the mountain. But the mountain called me home.

  I have taken care of you and Grace. Grace means well, and she wants to please me, but she doesn’t love the Delarosa like we do. That’s why I changed my will to reflect that you and Grace need to agree to sell, and not until you’re twenty-one.

  Steven John, you are a smarter young man than I was. If you sell, you sell free and clear. There is no debt, thanks to your grandfather. You remind me a lot of my dad. I was proud of him, too, but more than that I admired him.

  I admire you even more.

  You’ll do the right thing for you, for Grace, and for the mountain.

  Until then, I’ve still been contributing to the nest egg, as your mom liked to call it. Sometimes a little less than I wanted, but always at least a token, every month since the day I married your mom. We joked about how we’d travel to Hawaii and Tahiti and Bora-Bora. Always someplace warm. Hell, I never wanted to go any of those places (except Hawaii, I’ll admit) but that nest egg will keep the Delarosa running during the lean years.

  I hope you never have to read this letter. I’m going to tear it up when you’re twenty-one and write a new one. But in case I’m too stubborn or stupid to remember to say it, I want you to know, son, I love you.

  Dad.

  Lucy read the letter twice, tears in her eyes. No wonder Steve was so heartbroken over the debt …

  Would Leo have told his son in a letter that wouldn’t be read until his death that the mountain was debt free and there was a nest egg to run the place “during the lean years”?

  Did that sound like a man who had been running in the red for years?

  Someone had lied.

  Either Leo Delarosa lied about the nest egg—though Lucy couldn’t imagine why he’d do it in a letter that wouldn’t be read until he was dead—or the nest egg had been stolen.

  Or it was hidden somewhere.

  She scanned Leo Delarosa’s will. It appeared standard, and showed the amendment where Steve and Grace would have to agree to sell.

  There was also another clause. The right of survivorship.

  If Grace dies, Steve gets the mountain. If Steve dies, Grace gets everything.

  Yet right now, there didn’t appear to be anything left to have.

  “Ms. Kincaid?”

  Lucy had forgotten she was on hold with the sheriff’s department.

  “Yes, Sheriff Mackey.”

  “Sorry to keep you waiting. I’ve been out in this godforsaken blizzard half the night. What can I do for you?”

  “Did you speak to Steve Delarosa last night?”

  “Yes, he told me one of the guests had died at the lodge. That you all thought she might have killed herself, or had an accident or something.”

  “My brother Patrick was a San Diego detective. Vanessa Russell-Marsh was murdered.”

  “That’s a one-eighty from Steve’s call.”

  “Patrick didn’t want to alert the killer, but I work for the coroner’s office in Washington, DC, and I’m pretty certain that Mrs. Marsh was injected with something in her neck. And last night, my brother was drugged.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “He will be. But he’s out for the rest of the day, and I don’t know who drugged him or who killed Vanessa. We’re in trouble here and need you.”

  “I wish I could help, but there’s no way I can get up to the lodge. The roads are all closed, we can’t even reopen until the snow stops.”

  “What about cross-country skis? Snowmobiles? Something?”

  “It’s treacherous from here, but—I have two deputies who know this county better than even Leo Delarosa.”

  “You knew Steve’s dad?”

  “Hell yeah, we went to school together. He was older than me, but we played on the same football team. Good man.”

  “And Grace?”

  “Well, I met her at their wedding. Pretty lady.”

  “You don’t know anything else about her?”

  “No, can’t say that I do. After Leo’s heart attack, he didn’t come into town as much.”

  “Could you run her and her sister for me?”

  “You know what you’re asking for?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “What’s her sister’s name?”

  “Beth Holbrook. Beth is probably short for Elizabeth.”

  “Right—Steve mentioned Grace’s half-sister came to help at the lodge. Keeping the books, I think he said. She used to be a bank manager or something.”

  Beth kept the books? That made sense—she knew that the lodge had been running in the red, and she seemed to have specific knowledge when she mentioned the problems to Lucy.

  The sheriff continued. “Why would either of them want to kill a guest? It doesn’t make sense.”

  It may not make sense to them now, but it would when they solved the crime. She simply said, “Someone killed her.”

  Lucy had a couple of theories that made perfect sense.

  VII.

  Lucy checked on Patrick. He was still lethargic, but was no longer hallucinating. “What happened?” he asked.

  “Someone drugged you. I think it was in the water bottle. Don’t eat or drink anything I don’t hand you personally.”

  He tried to sit up, but groaned. “Why am I in your room?”

  “Don’t you remember? You puked all over yours. I cleaned it up. You can thank me later.” She spoke lightly, but she was hugely relieved that Patrick was better.

  She gave Patrick water from the tap. “Only tap water. I’m going to grab some food from the pantry.”

  “I can’t eat.”

  “You need to eat something. I’m going to look for chicken broth. In a can.”

  “What have you learned?”

  “First, I need to know who you spoke with when we weren’t together yesterday. You tipped someone off. That’s why they drugged your water.”

  “I used to be a damn good cop, Lucy. I didn’t tip anyone off.”

  “You act like a cop investigating a murder. Wouldn’t that be tip-off enough for the killer?”

  Patrick still looked ill, and Lucy wanted him to rest. “I spoke to the sheriff,” she said. “The blizzard won’t be letting up soon. He can’t get the coroner here, but he’s working on sending two deputies. There’s no guarantee they’ll be here today.”

  “So Steve did talk to the sheriff. Good.” He sipped some of the water Lucy had given him. “I spoke to Kyle and Alan after we moved Vanessa’s body to the root cellar. They were both a little unnerved. Neither seemed to be hiding anything. Kyle was very worried about his wife.”

  “She was sitting up with Trevor most of the night in the library. She said she couldn’t sleep.” Lucy remembered the water by the door. “There was a puddle of water on the floor after I woke you up. In fact—it was after I went to the library. I was in there about fifteen minutes.”

  “If it was my water that was drugged, they would have had to have done it before that. I took a leak and drank half the bottle after you woke me.”

  “Where did you get the bottle?”

  “It was in the bathroom when I—” He hesitated. “I’m not sure. I don’t remember it being there when we checked in Thursday night, but it was there last night when I went to bed. I didn’t think about it.”

  “When were you out of your room yesterday?”

  “All day. We left about nine-thirty to go skiing, came back at four, found Vanessa at five-thirty—I went to my room to change after we moved her body, between seven and seven ten or so. Then back at eleven.”

  “Can you remember if the bottle was there when you changed?”

  Patr
ick closed his eyes, thinking. “No, it wasn’t there.”

  “You’re certain.”

  “Yes. I brushed my teeth and used a glass for water. When I came back at night and brushed again before bed, the glass was gone.”

  “Mom would be so proud of you.”

  “What for?”

  “You probably flossed, too.”

  Patrick threw a pillow at her, then groaned. “I feel like I’ve just been beaten up.”

  She sat on the edge of the bed. “You’ll be fine.” Thank God. “We were together most of the evening, except when you went to talk to Steve.”

  “Steve and I were talking about how his great-grandfather bought this land and built and lived in the cottage. The kid was really upset, but I felt it had less to do with Marsh’s death and more to do with his physical health.”

  “Did you see either Grace or Beth?”

  “I didn’t see Grace after Kyle collapsed in the kitchen. Beth was talking to Trevor and Angie later in the evening, but I didn’t talk to her alone.”

  Lucy straightened her back as something occurred to her. “Kyle said he was dizzy.”

  “Yes. Altitude sickness.”

  “I doubt it. He broke a glass, remember? It was juice. Steve was drinking orange juice from a carton yesterday.”

  “You think the juice went bad? Or—” Realization dawned on Patrick. “You think they were drugged.”

  “I read a letter Steve’s father left him in his will. It was written two years ago, when Steve was eighteen, and Leo said there was plenty of money to support this property, even during the lean years. That was his exact quote. I think Steve believes his dad lied to him.”

  “In a will?”

  “Exactly, I don’t believe he lied. I think there was money. Beth was a bank manager before she came here, and she’s the one who mentioned that Leo had spent all the emergency funds.”

  “You think she stole the money? Why?”

  “This property is worth a small fortune, at least I’m guessing it is. It’s close to the ski resort, it’s in its own little valley, and has its own road. With no mortgage, it’s owned free and clear. But if there’s no money to keep it going or expand—which according to Steve was his father’s dream—then they would have to sell.”