Murder on the Lost Coast (He said, She said Mystery Series Book 2)

by Jeramy Gates

  He raised an eyebrow. “You would?”

  “Of course.”

  The sheriff pressed his lips together as he looked her up and down. Then, without another word, he walked over to the bar and helped himself to a cup of coffee. We all watched in silence as he quietly opened a container of cream and stirred it in, immediately followed by a packet of sugar. Hillman lifted the cup to his lips, inhaling deeply of the aroma, and then took a long sip. He gulped it down and made a smacking sound as he licked his lips.

  “Ahh,” he said. “That’s better. A few cups of this and I might be ready to start my day.” He took another drink, gulped it down, and then drew his gaze back to Tanja.

  “Now, what’s this about you knowing who the killer is?”

  “If you don’t mind,” she said, “I think Gerard should be here, too.”

  He glared at her. “What do you think this is, some late night television show?”

  “Indulge me, sheriff. I promise it will be worth it. The time it will save your investigation will be invaluable.”

  Hillman sighed. After a moment’s consideration, he lifted his police radio to his mouth and radioed for one of the deputies to go get Gerard. We could hear the man as he came downstairs and left through the lobby. Once he was gone, the sheriff said, “All right, why don’t you go ahead and get started with your story?”

  Hillman poured himself a second cup of coffee and settled on one of the barstools as he listened. Tanja related the entire story of the last twenty-four hours, including the discovery of Charlotte’s body, our trip up the mountain to visit Gerard, and both times Blake had pulled his gun. (This part of the story was quite embarrassing for Blake, who immediately handed his firearm over to the sheriff, along with the derringer he still had tucked into his belt).

  Tanja went on to describe seeing Charlotte break into the lighthouse and leave with a book in her arms, but failed to mention the fact that we’d broken in before her. In Tanja’s version -our official version- we had simply been out for a walk, never mind the driving rain, the howling wind, or the muddy trails.

  Throughout the course of the story, the others chimed in here and there, filling the sheriff in on details that had occurred in our absence. Of course, everyone had pet theories about who had committed the murders, and that took some time as well. Somewhere in the middle of it all, the deputy returned with Gerard, who was rather distraught over this turn of events.

  “This is unacceptable, sheriff!” he said. “I refuse to be questioned like this without a lawyer.”

  “Then sit down and keep your mouth shut,” said the sheriff. Gerard, somewhat taken aback by this blunt response, dropped into a chair.

  We went on. By the time our story was finished, everyone in the room had been accused of murder at least once. My wife and I were no exception. Most of us had alibis of some sort or other, but they were all shaky. Truthfully, any one of us could have killed Jacob. It had happened late at night, when we were all in our rooms. Even I could have slipped out to kill him after Tanja had gone to sleep. The sheriff said as much.

  “You’re right,” my wife conceded. “Almost anyone in this room could have killed Jacob, assuming that person had the strength or ingenuity to both strangle him and then throw him over the cliff. The same goes for Charlotte. It’s certainly not hard to poison someone.”

  “But she was alone when it happened,” said Nancy. “And you and Joe were the first to arrive.”

  “True,” said Tanja. “But there’s no telling exactly when she was poisoned. The wine she drank may have been waiting for her all evening. We can only assume that the killer knew Charlotte well enough to know her habits. The killer must have known that she would have a glass of wine in her office that night, which undoubtedly was her nightly ritual.”

  “But we didn’t know that!” said Nancy, moving closer to her husband. George put his arm around her.

  “Anyone can make that claim,” Tanja said, “but no one can prove whether they knew it or not at the time.”

  “I’m starting to think you’re wasting my time,” said the sheriff. “So far, all you’ve proven is that anyone could have done it…”

  “This should help,” one of the deputies said, coming into the room. He held up a small box of rat poison, which he handed to the sheriff.

  “Where did you find this?”

  The deputy pointed at Chef Melville. “It was in his shaving kit, in the bathroom.”

  Nancy gasped. “Chef, how could you?”

  I glanced at Tanja and she gave me a reassuring smile. She had expected this. The chef, not surprisingly, acted horrified. “This is ridiculous!” he said. “I’ve never seen that box in my life.”

  “It was in your room,” said the sheriff. “And it seems to me that you had a better opportunity to kill Charlotte than anyone here, seeing as you prepared all of her meals. Tell me, where were you on the night of Jacob’s death?”

  “I was sleeping, of course! I had to be up at five a.m. to prepare breakfast.”

  “And who can corroborate your alibi?”

  The chef clamped his mouth shut.

  “I thought so. Why did you do it, Mr. Melville? Was it because Charlotte was selling the place? Were you afraid of losing your job? What did Jacob have to do with it?”

  The chef crossed his arms over his chest and refused to talk any more. The sheriff continued grilling him, asking him what Jacob had done to deserve such a death, and why Chef Melville thought he would get away with it. It went on for a minute, until Tanja couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “Stop!” she said, holding her hands in the air. “Sheriff, the chef isn’t the killer.”

  His jaw dropped. “Oh? And how do you know that, Mrs. Shepherd?”

  “I already told you, I know who the killer is. It’s not him.”

  “Is that so? Then why don’t you enlighten the rest of us?”

  Tanja rose from her seat and walked to the center of the room where we could all see her clearly. “For the last twenty-four hours, everyone in this room has been suspected,” she said. “We’ve all discussed in great length the opportunities and motives available to each one of us. My husband Joe, for instance, had an altercation with Jacob, and also trespassed on his boat. Dana had a confrontation with Jacob, which was only the most recent of many such occasions. In fact, knowing what I now know about Jacob, I suspect almost everyone here has had a difference of opinion with Jacob some point. But while we can all be suspects, we can’t all be the killer. The process of elimination shows that only a few of us had the opportunity -and fewer still had motive- to kill both Jacob and Charlotte.”

  “Her employees all had motive,” the sheriff said. “Their jobs were at stake.”

  “Not necessarily. You see, that’s a failure in logic, Sheriff. The truth is that no one could be sure killing Charlotte would save his or her job. If Charlotte died, Gerard stood to inherit the property, and if Gerard took ownership, it was just as likely that he would shut the place down or outright sell it. On the other hand, if the sale went through, there was a chance that some employees might end up working for Blake. In other words, the employees had a better chance of keeping their jobs with Charlotte alive.”

  “Then who had a motive for killing Charlotte?”

  Tanja smiled. “I’m coming to that sheriff. You see, the first clue we had in the murders was the receipt Joe found in the lighthouse. Jacob had withdrawn his life savings -completely emptied his account- and the money was missing. What didn’t make sense was the fact that no one would murder a man over such a small amount of money. Maybe a random mugger in an alleyway, but not here, not for two thousand, five hundred dollars.”

  Nancy spoke up: “I thought you said the receipt was a clue. How can that be, if the money had nothing to do with his murder?”

  “It did have something to do with the murder,” said Tanja. “It just wasn’t the motive. Now, our next clue was given to us by Charlotte herself. On the night of her murder, Charlotte broke into t
he lighthouse and stole something from Jacob’s bookshelf. At first, we thought it might be some sort of ledger or other incriminating evidence, but when it turned out to be a simple photo album, we thought it must have been a mistake. She must have taken something else. Of course, we were wrong.”

  “It was a photo album?” said the sheriff. “What was in it?”

  “Just pictures,” Tanja said. “In fact, the picture hanging behind the desk in the lobby is the same as the one in the book.”

  The sheriff gestured at one of the deputies. He hurried out to the lobby, and returned a few seconds later with the framed photograph. He handed it to the sheriff, who looked it over, and then turned it so we all could see it.

  “What’s so important about this?” he said.

  “Do you recognize the men in the photo?”

  “The one on her left is Gerard,” said the sheriff. Gerard nodded, indicating this was correct.

  “And isn’t that her father on her right?” I said. “That was just a few years before he died.”

  “Yes, you are both correct. As we all know, Charlotte and Gerard divorced, and he now lives up the hill. They didn’t have a very good relationship-”

  “Excuse me?” said Gerard, jumping to his feet. He pointed his finger in her face, and I tensed up. Tanja glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. She shook her head. She was in no danger. She was manipulating him. I crossed my arms over my chest and tried to look relaxed. Gerard went on:

  “I’ll have you know that Charlotte and I-”

  “Stow it,” said Tanja. “Even Joe and I have seen you fight with Charlotte, and at the time we had only been here a few hours. Out of all the people in this room, no one had more obvious motive to kill Charlotte than you. Your objections only serve to demonstrate your lack of self-control. Now sit back down, or I’ll have the sheriff cuff you right now.”

  Gerard’s face paled, and he sank back into his chair.

  “Now,” said Tanja. “Where were we? Oh, yes, the photograph. I’m sure you all recall that Charlotte’s father died five years ago when his boat sank. That’s the death Angus has been investigating. Now, look a bit closer at the second man in this image.”

  The sheriff did. He stared at it for a minute and then shook his head. “I don’t get it. What am I looking for?”

  “Look at her father. Imagine him with longer hair, with a beard. Imagine her father a few years older, and a few pounds heavier…”

  “God almighty,” said Sheriff Hillman. “He’d look just like Jacob.”

  “He was Jacob,” said Tanja. “And Angus was right to be investigating this case. Charlotte and her father were involved in a case of insurance fraud.”

  The sheriff handed me the photo, and I looked at it up close. My wife was right. If I’d had a marker, I could have drawn a beard on him and it would have been an almost perfect likeness. As she said, Jacob had put on some weight and grown out his hair and his beard, but the eyes gave it away. Those steel blue eyes and that habitual squint were a dead giveaway. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it earlier. Angus leaned over my shoulder to stare at the photo.

  “They faked Jacob’s death,” he muttered. “Why didn’t I see this before?”

  “Even if it’s true,” said the sheriff, “it doesn’t do us much good now. We can’t prosecute them, since they’re both dead.”

  “They both paid the ultimate price,” said Tanja, “because it was this crime that led to their murders.”

  “How so?”

  “This brings us to the money. The reason Jacob had withdrawn such a large amount of money from his account was that he was being blackmailed. If you search his bank records, I’m sure you’ll find this withdrawal was only the most recent in a series of payments going back years.”

  “Somebody’s been blackmailing him all this time?” said the sheriff. “Who?”

  “The killer,” said Tanja. “Miguel.”

  Miguel held his hands in the air. “It wasn’t me! It was Chef. De poison came from him! He poisoned her.”

  “No,” Tanja said. “You poisoned her, Miguel.”

  “Sheriff, dis is crazy!”

  The sheriff was standing straight up now, his eyes fixed on Tanja. “That’s a serious accusation. I assume you have some kind of proof?”

  “I can prove it, if you’ll bear with me for just a few more minutes, sheriff. You see, when Joe and I arrived, Jacob had just come back from town. He was in a hurry because of the storm, and he was angry because he had just withdrawn the last of his money from the bank. It was every penny he had. But he also knew a secret: Charlotte was about to sell the inn, and soon he would be free. The blackmailing would stop, and Jacob could leave with his daughter and start a new life somewhere far away.

  “But at dinner that night, Charlotte let the cat out of the bag. She announced to everyone that she was selling the place. When Miguel found that out, he figured he would hit Jacob up for one more payment. A big one. After all, the information he had was damning. If he went to the police, the sale would be ruined, and Charlotte and her father would go to jail. So they met in the lighthouse that night, and Miguel demanded more money. Jacob was furious. They fought, and Miguel ended up killing him.

  “Miguel had a few hours to cover up his crime. He decided to make it look like an accident. He wanted it to look like Jacob had a fishing accident in the storm. Nobody was ever supposed to find the body, just the empty boat, which he cut loose that night. But that’s where the plan went wrong.

  “Miguel threw the body over the cliff when the tide was high, thinking it would be washed out to sea. Instead, Jacob’s body was caught on the rocks, holding it close to the beach. As the tide went out in the morning, the body came to rest where we later found it. In the meanwhile, Jacob actually helped Joe rescue the fishing boat, believing this would convince us all of Jacob’s unfortunate accident. He didn’t count on the body being found. He also didn’t count on a room full of private investigators asking awkward questions.

  “Once the body was discovered, Miguel knew the truth was going to come out sooner or later. He was lucky that the sheriff had to leave in a hurry, or his act would have been discovered immediately.”

  “So why kill Charlotte?” said Gerard. “She didn’t know Miguel was the killer. Nobody would ever be able to prove it. All he had to do was wait it out.”

  “Almost. You see, Miguel had one problem: he was the only employee who had worked here when Jacob was still alive. All the rest of them had been fired. Charlotte had to get rid of them, otherwise they might recognize her father when he returned with his new appearance.”

  “That’s why she fired them?” said Dana.

  “Exactly. Charlotte made an excuse that they were being laid off during renovations, and the following summer, she brought on a whole new crew. She also spread a rumor about someone stealing from her, just to discourage further curiosity. But for some strange reason,” Tanja added with a grin, “Charlotte kept Miguel on.”

  “Why would she do that?” said the sheriff.

  “Because Miguel knew they had faked Jacob’s death. Either he caught them in the act, or he was an accomplice. Either way, he knew what they had done, and Charlotte couldn’t fire him without risking Miguel going to the police. He knew their secret, and the only way to keep him quiet was to give him whatever he wanted. Unfortunately, that opened the door for Miguel to take further advantage. Charlotte was right not to trust him. We know that now. He’s probably been blackmailing Jacob all along, leeching the old man for every penny he had. He may have been blackmailing Charlotte at the same time.”

  “There is no honor among thieves,” said Angus. “Charlotte dug her own grave in her dealings with him.”

  “That’s right,” said Tanja. “You see, after Jacob’s death Miguel had to kill Charlotte before she could expose their scheme. Even if she kept the secret, sooner or later Sheriff Hillman would figure out Jacob had been murdered, and he was bound to uncover everything else. When that happe
ned, Miguel wouldn’t just be on the hook for fraud, but also murder.”

  “And that’s when he decided to poison her,” I said.

  “Exactly. And he put the rat poison in the chef’s room, because he knew the chef would make a perfect suspect. Chef Melville had every opportunity to poison Charlotte’s food, and even though the chef had no motive in Jacob’s murder, it would be nearly impossible to prove his innocence in Charlotte’s death.”

  The sheriff chuckled quietly. “Well, that’s some story. Very creative. Unfortunately, the one thing you seem to be lacking is evidence.”

  Miguel’s face lit up. “That’s right!” he said. “You can’t prove it. You can’t prove nothing.”

  “Check the bank accounts,” Tanja said. “I’m sure you’ll see an interesting correlation between Jacob’s withdrawals and Miguel’s income.”

  “That’s circumstantial,” said the sheriff. “I’m not even sure I could get a warrant for that.”

  “Then check my tablet. It’s upstairs, on the balcony.”

  “Your tablet?”

  “Yes. I had it out in the hallway yesterday, looking for a cellular signal. I was hoping to contact my family. I couldn’t get a signal, so I left it there to try again later. Last night, after we found Charlotte, I saw it sitting there, so I turned on the video camera.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I programmed the camera so that every time somebody passed by, it would record video. That way, if someone tried to tamper with the evidence in Charlotte’s office, they’d be caught on video.”

  “Very clever. You’re saying this video camera caught Miguel going into Chef Melville’s room?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying, sheriff. He can deny it all he wants, but all we have to do is watch the video to find out the truth.”

  That was enough for Miguel. He made a break for it. He moved so fast that nobody even saw it coming. He shoved his way past the sheriff in a mad dash for the balcony. The sheriff stumbled back, crashing into a table. I was on my feet in an instant. I used my chair as a booster, stepping up onto the table, and launched myself across the room.