Love Is Murder

by Allison Brennan

“And how does that benefit Beth?”

  “I don’t know that it does, but we don’t know how much money was in the accounts in the first place.”

  “If she’s guilty, we can’t ask her.”

  “No, but we can find the books.”

  “Lucy—”

  “I know what to look for. Beth has her room off the kitchen. I’ll get Angie to keep her occupied.”

  “You trust Angie?”

  “Yes, but I’m not going to tell her why.”

  “I’ll do it.” Patrick tried to stand, but fell right to his knees. His skin paled.

  “Or not,” Lucy said and helped him back into bed. “Patrick, you stay here. My plan is contingent on the killer thinking that you’re too sick to investigate and we’re just waiting for the sheriff to come for Vanessa’s body.”

  “Lucy—you need to be careful.”

  “I promise.”

  “Why would Beth drug Steve?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe to distract him—or Grace—from her embezzlement.” She frowned.

  “Okay, spit it out.”

  “I don’t know. It’s Grace, too. She was really angry about the spilled juice.”

  “When Kyle fell?”

  “Yes. It seemed … over the top.”

  “It was a stressful time,” Patrick pointed out. “A dead guest, her sick stepson, then another guest fainting.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “But Luce—trust your instincts. Please. Don’t trust anyone. My gun is in my truck. I didn’t think I’d need it, but I want you to get it. If it’s safe to go for it.”

  “Where? Under the seat?”

  “Yes. I have a holster strapped to the underside. It’s loaded. Extra bullets are in the glove compartment. It’s a forty-five, are you comfortable with that?”

  She smiled. “Jack taught me everything I know about guns.”

  Patrick rolled his eyes. “I thought I gave you some good lessons.”

  “You did. But you know Jack. Repetition.”

  “Yeah, don’t I?”

  Lucy wanted to check out Grace and Steve’s rooms as well. They were in the cottage, and that was on the way to Patrick’s truck.

  “What?” Patrick snapped. “You’re thinking about doing something you know I won’t like.”

  “You’re right.”

  He paused. “Well?”

  “You won’t like it.” She stood. “Stay here and be sick. If anyone comes, moan. If anyone offers you food, don’t eat it. I’ll be back as soon as possible.”

  “Lucy, wait—” He sat up, but became immediately queasy and laid back down.

  “Trust me,” she said and left.

  #

  Beth had just put out a small breakfast buffet. She looked like she hadn’t gotten any sleep. “How are you doing?” Lucy asked.

  “I’m worried about Grace. This has been so hard on her. And Steve—the poor kid. I don’t know how to make it better, and it’s killing me.”

  “My brother woke up sick this morning.”

  “Sick? Like a cold?”

  “Like puking his guts out sick. I cleaned up after him, but I was hoping to get some ice and a little juice or something.”

  “Of course.”

  Lucy followed Beth into the kitchen. Angie was there, as Lucy had prearranged. “Oh, good,” she said to Beth. “I was hoping you could help me with Trevor. He went up to the extra room, but he’s hungover and distraught and I don’t know what to do. Kyle is no help, he doesn’t know what to say, and you were so good with Trevor last night.”

  Beth said, “I have the perfect hangover remedy.” She started gathering supplies, then turned to Lucy. “Oh, let’s take care of Patrick first.”

  “I can do it. You talk to Trevor. I’ll bring juice for my brother. Maybe some chicken broth?”

  “In the pantry. I can prepare something for you.”

  “No, really, it’s okay. I need something to do anyway, I’m going stir-crazy.”

  Less than two minutes later, Angie and Beth left with a tray for Trevor. As soon as Lucy heard them on the stairs, she slipped into Beth’s bedroom.

  It was a suite, with two rooms and its own bath. Beth was tidy—her bed was made, her dirty clothes in a hamper, her furniture arranged just so. Careful to leave everything exactly as she’d found it, Lucy quickly searched Beth’s room for anything that would connect her to embezzlement or drugging Steve. Beth didn’t have a computer in her bedroom, which meant that the books were either kept on the office computer or in the cottage.

  She did find a box of letters to Beth from a man named Andrew Simon, Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army. They were all sent from an APO address in Afghanistan. Ten letters, written in the months she’d been living here. She had a P.O. box in Kit Carson, which Lucy recognized was the same address that the lodge used. Would she use the same address if she was hiding something? Or would she have opened her own post office box?

  Lucy opened the most recent letter, dated three weeks ago.

  Dearest Beth,

  Our last letters must have crossed in the air, now I understand better why you need to help your sister. Of course family is the most important thing, and I’m so happy that you’ve become so close to your sister after everything that happened when you were kids. I love you more for your devotion. It was my selfishness to want you closer so during my rare leaves, we can be together.

  The Delarosa sounds like exactly what I need when I get out of the army in August. I had planned on reenlisting, but knowing you are waiting for me, three years for my country is enough. I can’t tell you how I feel when I get a letter from you. I am counting the days, and will write when I have my final discharge papers. I wish we could email like we did before you moved to your sister’s, but I reread your letters every night. Keep them coming, love.

  I’m so sorry the lodge finances are in such dire straits. If anyone can turn it around, it’s you. Steve sounds like a smart, determined young man, I look forward to meeting him.

  I hope you can convince your sister not to sell, at least before I can spend a week or ten making love to you in paradise.

  The picture is me and my squad before we went out on recon two weeks ago. Buddy didn’t make it back. He’s the one in the Jeep. He was a damn good man.

  Love you, Beth, with everything I am.

  Andy

  Lucy looked at the picture, and first found Buddy in the Jeep. Her dad was working on base by the time she was born, and her oldest brother Jack had enlisted when she was still a toddler. She knew what these men went through.

  Was the fact that Beth was dating a soldier clouding her judgment? Lucy hoped not, but she hadn’t found anything in Beth’s room to indicate that she was embezzling money.

  Lucy carefully put the letter back exactly as she’d found it and the box on its shelf, next to a framed photo of a man in uniform that must be Andy. Lucy went thought the bottom drawer of her desk and found bank statements. Up until last April, she’d had deposits of a little over five thousand dollars a month. Since April, she’d made small deposits monthly of fifteen hundred dollars. Unemployment? Rent checks? Did her sister pay her a salary?

  Beth hadn’t withdrawn much money, either—she had a balance of just over nine thousand in her checking account, about the same in her savings, and two CDs of ten thousand dollars each, maturing at different times, both purchased before she’d moved here.

  Suddenly, Lucy felt guilty for poring over Beth’s finances. There was nothing here to show that Beth had been stealing. She put everything back and would have left, but someone was in the kitchen.

  Steve and Grace.

  Heart thudding, she eavesdropped.

  “Please, Steve, don’t do this. Your health is more important to me than anything.”

  “I need to. On Monday I’m going to Jackson and getting a mortgage. I need you to sign with me.”

  “You’ll be in debt for the rest of your life. You’ll put yourself in an early grave. I can’t go
through that again. Not what I went through with your father. Him dying in my arms because we couldn’t get him to the hospital fast enough.”

  “Please, don’t—”

  “We can sell. That will solve all our financial problems.”

  “I’m not selling!”

  “Beth, tell Steve that a mortgage isn’t the solution.”

  Beth must have stepped into the kitchen, or had been silent at first. “Actually, I’ve been thinking it might be a good option. Not a large mortgage, but ten percent would be more than enough to replenish the emergency funds. I’ll stay here, at least another year, and work out a budget and growth plan. It’s my forte.”

  “But it’s not about the lodge, it’s about Steve!” Grace said. “His health.”

  “You need to go to the doctor, Steve,” said Beth. “I’ll help you with the mortgage papers—we’ll go to my old boss, he’ll find us a good program. But then you have to promise to go in for the tests.”

  “All right,” Steve agreed.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea,” Grace said.

  “It’s a win-win,” Beth said. “Steve gets what he wants, you get what you want. Steve, can you help me clean up the guest rooms?”

  “Sure. Thanks, Beth.”

  “You’ve grown on me. I want you happy and I want you healthy. Okay?”

  Lucy didn’t know if Grace had left, and she couldn’t open the door to check. Though she wasn’t dressed for the weather, she went out the side door and walked around the porch to the front door. The snow was still falling, but didn’t seem as severe as earlier this morning. Drifts had accumulated against the porch, and she couldn’t even see the stairs. She shivered and tried the front door, but it was locked.

  Dammit, that wasn’t a smart idea. She knocked, getting colder by the second. She knocked again and the door swung open.

  Grace said, “What are you doing outside dressed like that?”

  “I stepped out to get fresh air and must have locked the door or someone else did. I was only out here for a few minutes.”

  She shook off in the foyer, feeling like a wet dog, her long hair already damp against her cheeks. She tucked it behind her ears. “Thanks,” she added when Grace didn’t say anything.

  “Beth said your brother was sick.”

  “Stomach flu, I guess. I don’t know but he’s finally sleeping again. I think I’ll go check on him.”

  She walked upstairs, feeling Grace’s eyes on her back.

  VIII.

  Fifteen minutes later, Lucy was bundled in ski clothes. She knocked on Angie and Kyle’s door. Kyle opened it. He was disheveled. Angie leapt off the bed and headed for the bathroom; Lucy noted she was naked.

  She blushed. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to, well—”

  “It’s okay. Is Patrick better?”

  “Yes, but still queasy. Can I come in?”

  “Sure.”

  He closed the door behind her. Angie emerged from the bathroom in a robe. “I need your help,” she said.

  “Like when you asked me to talk to Beth about Trevor?” Angie asked.

  “Right. I need to go to Patrick’s truck, but I don’t want anyone coming with me. At least, anyone but one of you.”

  “I don’t get it,” Kyle said.

  “I have to trust someone, and I don’t have anyone else. Alan and Heather are probably fine, but Patrick thinks you’re on the up-and-up.”

  “What’s going on?” Kyle asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said, not willing to give up the fact that Vanessa was murdered. “But something is weird around here, and I think Patrick figured it out but then he was drugged. He’s not sick—he was intentionally drugged. And he doesn’t remember what he did last night.” That wasn’t a total lie.

  “Was Vanessa drugged, too?” Angie asked, wide-eyed.

  “I honestly don’t know. But I talked to the sheriff, and he’s working on getting deputies here by the end of today, but there’s no guarantee.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Kyle said. “What do you need?”

  “Well, I need a lookout because I’m going to search the barn. And Patrick’s gun is in his truck. And then—I need to get into the cottage.”

  “You’re going to break into Grace and Steve’s house?”

  “No, not exactly. I have a key.” She’d taken it from the office where everything was neatly labeled, even the extra key to the cottage. Considering Beth’s immaculate room, Lucy wondered if Beth had reorganized when she came over the summer.

  “I’ll be downstairs in five minutes,” Kyle said.

  Lucy turned to leave. Then she asked, “Yesterday, when you were dizzy, what had you been drinking?”

  “Orange juice, why?” Then he shook his head. “You think there was something in the juice? Is that what Patrick drank?”

  “No, but Steve has been dizzy and I saw him drinking orange juice last night.” She asked Angie, “Did you have some?”

  “No, and I told Kyle he should have asked.”

  “I just wanted some juice. Beth said to help myself between meals.”

  “That was your third glass.”

  “It was good.”

  What could have had that fast of an effect? Or was it simply the quantity? And what would have caused light-headedness or fainting?

  “I’ll see you downstairs.”

  *

  Leaving was much easier than Lucy had thought. She and Kyle traversed the fifty or so yards to the barn. She’d already verified that Grace and Steve were both in the main lodge. Beth was cooking soup in the kitchen for lunch. Lucy couldn’t count on the cottage remaining vacant, but she would have to take her chances.

  The wind had died down, but the snow still fell. It was almost picturesque, except that she could barely see the barn. She had never seen such odd light before, almost everything appeared black or white through the thickly falling snow. Everything white, except shadows and trees and buildings that were black and gray. It was both eerie and beautiful.

  And silent.

  Because there was no wind, it only took a couple minutes of plodding through the snow to reach the barn. Lucy went in through the regular door, which was unlocked; the main doors were braced from the inside to keep them from breaking off in the heavy winds from the night before and this morning. The barn was dark, and she didn’t want to turn on the lights and attract attention. Angie had been instructed to tell anyone who asked that Kyle had walked Lucy to the garage to get something for Patrick, but why encourage followers?

  She went straight to Patrick’s car and retrieved his gun.

  “What are you doing?” Kyle asked.

  “This is just a precaution.”

  He looked skeptical. “I don’t like this. Someone’s going to get hurt.”

  “Kyle, I trusted you, I need you to trust me.”

  He was torn. “I don’t like guns. I don’t like what’s going on here. Tell me the truth.”

  “Vanessa was murdered.”

  He paled. “How can you be sure?”

  “We can’t until an autopsy, which is why Patrick secured the body in the root cellar. The only people who were in the house during the time of death were Trevor, Beth, Grace, and possibly Steve. Alan and Heather returned from town at four, which is on the tail end of the window, and you and Angie were on a walk. Unless you lied and conspired to kill a woman you’d never met before this weekend.”

  “We were on a walk! I didn’t kill anyone.” He was too stunned at her comment to be insulted or angry.

  “I also suspect that she was drugged before she was killed. Again, I can’t prove it. But we have a lot of circumstantial evidence to back it up.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s the million-dollar question.” Why indeed? Lucy was still missing a few pieces to the puzzle. She hoped to find them in the cottage.

  She threaded the holster through her belt and tucked the gun inside her thick ski pants. It wasn’t visible with the bulky clothing, but there wa
s no way she’d be able to hide this .45 on her person once inside, even if she wore an oversized sweater. She’d have to think of something.

  She walked around the barn, looking for anything that didn’t belong. There were a lot of tools, Steve’s truck, a Jeep Cherokee, and a classic Mustang.

  She looked in the glove compartment of the Jeep first. It belonged to Beth—Elizabeth Ann Holbrook. It was registered in San Rafael, California, and Lucy wrote down the address. Beth’s car, like her room, was immaculate. Service records were folded neatly into the pocket on the front of her car manual. The Jeep had been serviced at the same place she’d bought it four years ago. She found a business card holder. Beth had been a manager at a national bank in San Rafael.

  She had the knowledge to embezzle, but what was her motive? Jealous of her sister? Needed the money? Nothing in her bank statements seemed to indicate a need of funds, but Lucy knew she could have hidden accounts, could be in debt, could be involved with something nefarious.

  Nothing else in the car gave Lucy more information. She next went to the Mustang.

  “What can I do?” Kyle asked.

  “Look for anything that seems out of place—something that doesn’t belong in a barn or garage.”

  In the Mustang’s glove box was the registration. Grace Delarosa, at the lodge. Behind it was an older registration. Grace Anderson, Orlando, Florida. She was about to put it back when she saw there were three other papers.

  Grace Ann Summers, Chantilly, Virginia. Grace Brooke Jackson, Monterey, California. The last, Grace Marie Holbrook, with a Phoenix, Arizona, address. That registration had expired nine years ago.

  Phoenix. Vanessa was from Phoenix.

  Heart racing, Lucy wrote down all the names, addresses, and dates and put them back in the glove compartment. She looked the car, but couldn’t get into the trunk, which needed a key because the classic model didn’t have a trunk release.

  “Kyle,” she called.

  “It’s hard to look for something you don’t know what you’re looking for,” he said.

  “I know. I found what I need.”

  “What?”

  “Let’s steer clear of Grace for a while.”

  “You don’t think—”

  “I’m thinking nothing right now except I need more information, and I’d rather not talk to her first.” She also needed to call the sheriff again and give him Grace’s aliases and tell him that she’d lived in the same town as the deceased. Phoenix was a big place, but it was too much of a coincidence.