Murder Before Marriage

by Raven Snow

  “No,” Rowen said quickly. “I just… Is Gaby going somewhere?”

  Miranda glanced over her shoulder again, looking toward the bed and the suitcase sitting atop it. “Yeah, I guess. I don’t know. She asked me to pack things up for her while she’s out. I’m supposed to wash some of these. You don’t know where the nearest laundromat is, do you? Looking it up online wasn’t particularly helpful.”

  So Gaby was leaving town. Rowen wasn’t sure what to make of that. Was she leaving Desmond? Did he know about it?

  “Hey?” Miranda waved a hand in front of Rowen’s face, snapping her back to what was going on around her. “Did you hear me? Know a good laundromat? I need to hurry up and get this done so I can move on to the next thing down the list.”

  “Yeah, sure. Is Desmond leaving with Gaby?”

  Rowen expected Miranda to complain about her changing the topic. Instead she took another furtive look around. “I don’t think he is,” she said, lowering her voice. She took a step back from the doorway so that Rowen could join her in the hotel room. “That’s your dad, right? No offense, but I think he might be having an affair.”

  Rowen moved into the room, letting Miranda shut the door behind her. “I think he is too.”

  “With your mother?” There was a hungry look on Miranda’s face. She was biting her bottom lip in an effort not to smile. This was all fun drama for her. She had no real investment in what happened to Gaby or anyone else involved in the matter. “Your mom is Tiffany Greensmith, right? I think I have all this figured out, but I’m not a hundred percent yet.”

  Rowen nodded. “Yeah,” she said. Then to clarify, “She’s my mother… and I think she might be having an affair with Desmond.” Rowen shook her head. The idea wasn’t new to her, but she hated saying the words out loud. It made the whole thing more real somehow. Like if she had kept the thought to herself it wouldn’t have been true.

  “I knew it.” Miranda went back to the bed where she resumed her folding. “Ms. May has always had the worst taste in men.”

  “What do you mean?” Rowen took a few more steps into the room. It seemed Miranda had decided it was harmless to have her hang around for a little while.

  “I mean she has bad taste in men.” Miranda shot Rowen an incredulous look. “Or maybe she just has bad luck with men. I don’t know. Either way, she’s never been married and it’s not hard to see why.”

  “What do you mean?” Rowen moved even closer to the bed where Miranda was working.

  “I mean what I said. All the guys she’s ever been with have been… I dunno. All kinds of messed up, I guess.”

  “How many men have there been?”

  “I don’t know,” Miranda said reflexively. She finished folding the blouse she was holding and paused to consider the question a little more thoroughly. Evidently, Rowen asking had piqued her own curiosity. “Geez, I’m not sure that I would know. I haven’t worked for her for more than a few years. She’s a lot older than me, and she has other employees that work for her more often than me. It was them I heard this stuff from. Sometimes they mention it over those video calls, you know?” Rowen nodded when Miranda glanced up, willing her to hurry her story along. Miranda continued, “I’ve only heard about three guys. All three of them were from before my time with her, mind you. The most recent one was, like, five years ago, I think. His name was Jacob Steiner.” The way Miranda said the name made it sound like Rowen should instantly know who she was talking about.

  Rowen shook her head. For all the mystery solving she did, she really didn’t follow the violent crimes scene outside of Lainswich. She wasn’t overly fond of reading about violence and death if she could help it.

  Miranda frowned. Clearly, she had expected the name to hit hard. “Jacob Steiner,” she repeated, like maybe Rowen just hadn’t heard her. When Rowen still didn’t show any outward signs of recognition she shrugged and turned back to her work. “Ah, well. My parents tell me I watch the news too much. Anyway, the dude was a murderer. He was a big shot at a law firm. Killed his secretary, if you can believe it.”

  “While Gaby was dating him?”

  Miranda nodded. She stopped folding again and focused in on Rowen. “Yep.” There was excitement in her voice. She liked having an audience who hadn’t heard these stories already. It was obviously the highlight of her work day. “Well, worse than that actually. It happened while they were engaged… At least, I think they were engaged. Marriage was on the table anyway.”

  “Why did he murder his secretary?” You didn’t hear about too many notable lawyers up and killing their secretaries out of the blue.

  “Well, it turned out…” Miranda paused as if for emphasis. She lowered her voice. “She was pregnant.”

  That was awful. It also brought more questions to the forefront of Rowen’s mind. “Did he have any kind of violent history? Was this an isolated event or what?” Normally, with something like that, people saw it coming, didn’t they? There was usually something in a person’s history that would indicate they were capable of something so heinous. At least, Rowen liked to think there was. In truth, her past work should have taught her that wasn’t always the case. There was a first time for everything. Even murderers had to start somewhere.

  “All his coworkers were stunned. Everyone was stunned. A couple of his ex-girlfriends came forward, though. Turns out he had a drinking problem. Plus, he was a violent drunk. Both ex-girlfriends said they broke things off when he got physical with them.”

  “And the police didn’t have a record of that?”

  “They settled things out of court. Jacob was a big shot lawyer, remember? Rich folks do stuff like that. It’s like the laws we mere mortals abide by don’t apply to them.”

  Rowen thought of Eric. He had come from money. “I think it has more to do with what kind of person you are.”

  “Well, whatever. He was the kind of person who killed his secretary and beat two of his ex-girlfriends.”

  Rowen had to concede that that didn’t sound like a good person in the least. “Did he confess?”

  “To the murder? No way.”

  “And did Gaby believe him?”

  “No clue. She doesn’t talk to me about stuff like that, and I’m definitely not going to bring it up. The person who told me about it said Jacob seemed nice enough. Of course, she didn’t meet him often. Apparently, he was only violent when he got drunk.”

  “And he was drunk when he murdered his secretary?”

  “Oh yeah. He was so drunk he had to pull over and try to sleep it off while he was getting rid of the body. That’s how they caught him, if you can believe it. Some cops found him sleeping in the back of a shopping center parking lot. They took him in because he was wasted and searched the car. She was in the trunk.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “Right? He was serving life last I checked.” The morbid smile was returning to Miranda’s face. She bit her lip again before continuing. “And that’s just one of the guys I know about.”

  Rowen recalled suddenly that Miranda had mentioned she knew about three people. “What about the other two?” Obviously, Miranda wanted her to ask by that point. She was enjoying a bit of gossip to spice up her day.

  “One killed himself,” Miranda said that like it was boring, a disappointment somehow. “The other guy killed himself too, but he took several other people with him when he did.”

  “What?”

  “What I said. He had an ex-wife and daughter. The guy basically kidnapped them and tied them up in the garage. It was a small space. He closed the door and left the engine running and, well, you get the picture.”

  Rowen wished she hadn’t gotten the picture. She shook her head, trying to make the image in her mind a little less vivid. “That’s horrible.”

  “No kidding. Honestly, all things considered, if cheating is the only thing your dad does, this might be one of the better relationships she’s ever had.”

  “Yeah,” Rowen said, but she wasn’t agreeing
with her. Not really. It was more a general statement, something to fill the silence while she considered her next move. “Do you know the names of the other two guys? The ones besides Jacob Steiner?”

  “Um, no. I don’t think so.”

  “Can you get it?” Rowen stood.

  “Like I said, it was coworkers who told me this stuff and it was a while back. I don’t want to bother them with stupid questions.”

  “Please.” Rowen reached into her purse and fished out her wallet. She removed a hundred dollar bill. She’d had it handy for the first time she had spoken with Miranda, just in case she hadn’t wanted to answer her questions. “I’ll pay you for the info and I’ll tell you where the nearest laundromat is.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Gaby was at the country club again. That was what Miranda had told Rowen. It was the only things of use she had told her after being paid. She had yet to get the information Rowen really wanted, the names of Gaby’s exes. That would take her a little while, she’d insisted. A few hours at least. The woman she had gotten the info from lived in a completely different time zone and was probably still asleep. That was why she couldn’t be reached. “I’ll call you as soon as I get a hold of her,” Miranda had promised. Rowen wasn’t sure she trusted Miranda to drop everything and give her a call the very moment the information came in, but there wasn’t a whole lot she could do about it. There were other matters Rowen needed to attend to.

  The first order of business was to call Ben. She did that before she had pulled out from the hotel. He answered the phone with a sigh. “Hello?”

  “No need to sound so thrilled to talk to me,” Rowen grumbled, a little offended by the sigh he’d let out. It had been a while since they had last talked. He couldn’t know that she didn’t have much in the way of information to update him with, that she was calling with more questions of her own.

  “Sorry,” said Ben, but it didn’t sound like he much meant it. “I’m a little busy. What do you need?”

  “Did you ever get results back? About Kyle’s cause of death, I mean.”

  There was another sigh on the other end of the phone. “I’m not at liberty to discuss that right now.” The way he spoke was overly polite, a tone of voice too formal to be used on Rowen.

  “You’re not alone, huh?” Rowen guessed.

  “Correct,” said Ben.

  “Any idea when you might have a moment alone? Think you can call me then?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ll have to see. Right now I need to go.”

  “Gaby used to date this man named, Jacob Steiner,” Rowen added quickly. “I don’t know if that has anything to do with anything, but it’s something I just found out. She’s got my mother’s luck with men. It’s what I plan on looking into next.”

  “All right.” Ben said those words a little more slowly, like he was considering them. “Call me back if you find out anything else. I’ll—”

  “Also, Gaby is leaving town soon. I’m not sure if she’s allowed to skip town yet, but that’s what she’s doing.”

  “We don’t have any good reason to hold her here. Someone as wealthy as her is bound to have better lawyers than we do.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure my dad is cheating on her with my mother. So now she really doesn’t have any sort of reason to stick around.”

  There was some hesitation from Ben on the other end of the line. “You have a theory about what happened, don’t you?”

  “I’m working on one. Just call me when you can talk freely and tell me the cause of death. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Ben echoed. “I’ll do that.”

  “Bye.” Rowen hung up the phone and headed for the Lainswich Inquirer. Rose and Coreen’s cars were the only ones parked around back. Rowen pulled into her usual parking spot and headed inside.

  Rose poked her head out of her office a few seconds after the door closed, checking to see who it was that had just come in. “It’s just me,” Rowen said a little late, like it could possibly be anyone else.

  “No kidding.” Rose took a step from her office and leaned back against the door frame. “You here to get some work done? We could use your help.”

  “Actually, I just came here because it was closer than home. I wanted to use my computer.” Rowen hesitated when she saw that Coreen was already at her computer, typing away at the word processor. “I’ll use a different computer.” She went to Willow’s desk, sitting down there instead.

  Rose sighed. “It’s a good thing you brought Coreen on. I would be the only one here otherwise.”

  Coreen looked up with a bright smile. “Glad I can be of service.”

  “You’re a lifesaver,” Rose corrected, emphasizing the words.

  Rowen couldn’t help but feel a swell of pride, even if it wasn’t her Rose was thanking. She was glad Coreen working with them had panned out. She liked her sister but had had no way of knowing if this sort of work would suit her. Evidently it had. Maybe it would even ensure she stuck around for a while. That would be nice. “Sorry I haven’t been much help.”

  Rose waved a hand like that didn’t matter. “You’re always like this when there’s a mystery that hits close to home. It’s more important that you figure this out. I’m worried about Peony.”

  “She’ll be all right.” Rowen wasn’t sure why she felt so sure of that, but she did. Regardless of what happened next, Peony would be okay. “She and Tina told Lydia and Nadine that they were an item.”

  “Did they?” Rose pushed away from the door and stood a little straighter. “What did they say?” The smile on her face suggested she already knew that their response had been positive.

  “They were thrilled obviously. Tina hasn’t told her own family yet, but… They’re going through a lot. She doesn’t want to add this to it right now. So… keep on keeping it to yourself, I guess.”

  The smile fell from Rose’s face. “If my mother knows, I’m not sure it’ll stay a complete secret much longer.” She was right about that. Lydia had a big mouth. She also loved love more than anyone Rowen knew. It stood to reason that she would want to celebrate that with Tina’s parents, try to bring them into the family a bit more.

  “I think even she has the common sense to keep quiet until all this is over.” Rowen opened up her web browser.

  “And how close is this to being over?” asked Rose.

  Over her shoulder, Rowen could hear Rose pulling up a chair from a nearby desk. “I think I’m close.” She turned and scanned the room. Coreen was sliding her chair on over as well. “Where is everyone?”

  “Willow is out getting some footage with Benji. Margo is probably sitting around with Julia Martinez. Ben said they’ll be releasing an official police statement soon.” Rose sighed. “That means we’re working well into the night, I’m afraid.”

  “Who’s Jacob Steiner?” asked Coreen.

  “He’s the man Gaby was seeing before our father. Well, he was one of the men. This was a while ago.” Rowen was looking at his picture as she spoke. He was a reasonably handsome fellow with a square jaw and pronounced cheekbones. The mugshot the paper used made him look tired and haggard, but it was still easy to see the face Gaby and, ostensibly, Jacob’s own secretary had fallen for.

  “He’s a murderer,” Coreen said, stating the obvious.

  Rowen nodded. “That’s what I found out today.”

  “From who?” Rose this time.

  “Gaby’s assistant.”

  “She hired another one so soon?” Rose again.

  “She has several assistants,” Coreen explained. She had known Gaby longer than any of them. “Goodness knows why. It’s not like she does much. She inherited money from her folks and invests it. She owns a few businesses, but it’s not like she really runs them.”

  “That’s probably why she has the assistants then,” Rose reasoned. “To do all the work for her.”

  Rose waved a hand, dismissing all that. It didn’t matter. “Anyway, this Jacob guy wasn’t Gaby’s first boyfriend.”<
br />
  “Well, I’d hope not,” muttered Coreen. “She’s getting up there in years. Even if this guy was several years ago, she seems like the sort of woman who would have had more romantic partners than that.”

  “And she did,” said Rowen, snapping the words a little. If they would just let her finish without interruption, she could explain everything a whole lot faster. “I talked to an assistant named Miranda. According to her, Gaby has bad luck with men. Like, really bad luck with men. She listed three exes to me. One was Jacob. The other two also died. One killed himself. Another was a murder suicide.”

  “Geez,” breathed Rose. “She has your mother’s luck with men.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Rowen said with a nod.

  “Do you know the names of the other two guys?” asked Coreen.

  Rowen shook her head. “Miranda didn’t remember them. She said she would get in touch with someone who did know, though. She’s supposed to call me as soon as she finds out.”

  “And how soon do you think that’ll be?”

  Rowen swiveled her chair toward her sister. “I don’t know. Maybe as soon as the woman finishes calling her back. Maybe as soon as she’s finished with her errands. Gaby’s leaving town.”

  “Can she do that?” asked Rose.

  “I called Ben. He said he couldn’t hold her, so I guess it’s fine.”

  “Does that mean Desmond is leaving too?” asked Coreen.

  Rowen shook her head. “I don’t think he even knows she’s leaving. He’s with my mother right now.”

  “Oh,” said Coreen, voice flat.

  “Yeah,” Rowen replied with the same intonation. “I think it’s pretty safe to say that they won’t be getting married any time soon.”

  “He’s going to be kicking himself over this.” Coreen rolled her eyes. “He’s been working on this one for a long time. She’s loaded. He’s really missing out on a big payday.”

  “You sound disappointed,” Rowen pointed out.

  “I feel like I’m perpetually disappointed in our father… But this time, no. This is probably for the best. She should get out while she still can, fortune intact.”