by Jessica Beck
I was about to lose my temper when I took a few deep breaths and got it back under control. If I was anything, it was fiercely loyal to my friends, and George was within my closest inner circle. “Let’s assume for a second that George didn’t do it. Who else would make your list?”
She frowned for a moment before she answered. “Like I said, lately he didn’t get along too well with Nathaniel or Curtis, either.”
“We’re already looking into both men,” I said. “Is there anyone else you can think of?”
“Not off the top of my head,” she said. “Now, you two really do need to excuse me. It’s about that time.”
Hadn’t the woman ever heard of a DVR or Tivoing something? I was about to keep her a little longer when Grace surprised me. “What about Megan Gray?”
“What about her?” Amber looked clearly distracted by the approaching show’s start.
“She told Harley she loved him,” Grace said calmly.
Amber looked at Grace to see if she was kidding, and when she didn’t smile in return, Amber shook her head. “That’s why she wouldn’t have killed him.”
“How can you be so sure?” I asked her.
“If I ended up dead, sure, she’d be at the head of the list, but she worshipped Harley. As a matter of fact, we both used to laugh about it.”
I thought quite a bit less of Harley at the moment, but I couldn’t let that stop me from trying to find his killer. “He openly rejected her, though. Doesn’t that count for something?”
“You tell me; you’re the detectives. I’ve really got to go. Bye.”
“One last thing,” I said, stalling her as long as I could manage. “Where have you been all day?”
“I’ve been right here.”
“Can you prove that?” I asked her.
“All day? No, and I don’t have to.”
“Was anyone here with you at any time?” I asked her.
“I had a few girls here to try out for jobs this morning, but they were all gone by nine thirty.” That gave her plenty of time to go to City Hall, kill Harley, and make it back without anyone noticing her absence. “Now go.” She used her bulk and forced us out the door before either one of us could say another word.
“That was interesting,” Grace said.
“Which part of it?” I asked as we walked back to my Jeep.
“All of it. Amber didn’t seem too torn up about Harley’s murder, did she?”
“Maybe she’s just good at hiding it. Then again, she might not have loved him at all, given her description of how she felt about him.”
“Or maybe, just maybe, she’s better at it than we’re giving her credit for. What if she killed him out of jealousy, and now she’s trying to act as though it didn’t matter to her one way or the other?”
“It’s something we need to keep in mind,” I said. “I wonder what show she’s hooked on?”
“I’m not sure that I even want to know the answer to that,” Grace said as I started the engine. “Why don’t you drive me home so you can pick up your momma? I expect a full report as soon as you’re finished.”
“How about if I swing by your place on my way home after we’re done?” I offered.
“That sounds great,” she said.
After I dropped Grace off at home, I headed over to Momma’s place. It was time to start the second phase of the investigation.
I wasn’t sure how I was going to balance the involvement between both women, but I’d come up with something. After all, Momma had been right. She hadn’t been the only one dining with her two favorite women in the world, and it was up to me to keep them both happy about our arrangements.
Chapter 9
“Is Momma ready to go?” I asked Phillip as he answered the door. When they’d first gotten married, Momma had left the cottage we’d shared to start her new life, but she’d chosen a home to move into that felt as though she’d lived there forever. There was a warm comfort to the place that suited her, and I admired her ability to move into a new house and make it feel like home so quickly. The only place in the world I felt that was at the cottage I shared with Jake, and I knew that if I ever had to leave it, for what reason I couldn’t imagine, I’d never find another place that suited me so perfectly.
“She’s on an important call, but she asked me to tell you that she’d be right with you,” Phillip said as he stood aside and let me in. The former chief of police had happily settled into retirement, but he hadn’t been idle since he’d left the April Springs police department. His latest hobby was researching the history of the town, and usually he could be found poring over old newspapers and journals from long ago. “Make yourself at home,” he said.
I looked at their expansive kitchen table and saw that it was currently littered with layer upon layer of all kinds of old papers. “What are you up to?”
“I’m digging into a murder,” he said with a grin. “It’s taken me quite some time to gather enough information together, but I’ve finally cracked the case and put all of the pieces of the puzzle together once and for all.”
The news surprised me. “Are you talking about Harley Boggess’s murder?” I hadn’t even realized that he’d been working on the case.
“Oh, no. This all happened eighty years ago,” he said excitedly as he led me over to his research. “At the time, they called them all accidents, but I’m positive that at least once, and probably three times, it was homicide.”
“How can you be so sure if it all happened so long ago?” I asked, caught up in his enthusiasm. Since Phillip Martin had left the force, our relationship had slowly warmed up to the point where I actually enjoyed being around him.
“Eighty years ago, a man named Copernicus Jones had a wife in April Springs called Faith that died in the bathtub,” he said as he pointed to a brief headline in a faded newspaper. “She’d been sick for some time, at least according to Copernicus, and the local doctor wrote it up as an accidental drowning. At the time, nobody seemed to think that it was anything other than what it appeared to be.”
“Isn’t it possible that it was an accident?” I asked.
“Sure, but when it gets complicated is when I started tracing Copernicus’s life before he came to April Springs. Three years before he married Faith, he had been married to a woman named Amity he’d met in Union Square. She, too, died in the bathtub. Kind of an odd coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”
“I don’t believe in coincidences any more than you do,” I said. “What was his story with her?”
“He claimed to be out of town, but he was a hard horse-ride away, yet no one saw him that day. Amity’s best friend found her, and Copernicus claimed to be so grieved over the loss that he sold everything, including all of Amity’s jewelry that she’d inherited from her mother. Apparently it was worth quite a fortune back then.”
“Was Faith wealthy as well?” I asked, peering down at the pile that was suddenly beginning to make sense.
“She was indeed,” he said with a grin. “Copernicus made even more off her death. But that’s not the kicker.”
“What was?” I asked, caught up despite myself. Phillip’s enthusiasm was catching.
“There was a third wife after Faith that he married in Hudson Creek,” he said. “Her name was Harriet.”
“Don’t tell me. She died in the bathtub, too.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But the truth is even stranger than that.”
At that moment, Momma came out from the other room. “Suzanne, I’m ready if you are.”
“Hang on a second. Phillip’s not finished telling me about his investigation.”
Momma laughed. “He’s caught you up in it too, has he?”
“Dorothea, you can’t deny that it’s fascinating.”
She kissed his cheek fondly. “I wouldn’t dream of it. Where are you in the narrative?”
“He just told me about Copernicus’s third wife.”
“Oh, we’re getting to the good part. Don’t let me interrupt.” Momma was clearly pleased that her husband and I were getting along, but then again, so was I.
“What happened to Harriet?” I asked him.
“She lived to the ripe old age of sixty-three,” he said, “and died in her sleep.”
I couldn’t help but feel let down by the ending of his story. “That’s it?”
Phillip grinned at me. “Now ask me about Copernicus.”
“What happened to him? I’m guessing that he managed to escape justice for the two murders. Did the police finally figure it out, or did he get away with them?”
“I wouldn’t say that he got away with them, exactly,” Phillip said.
“Dear, don’t keep the poor girl in suspense. Tell her what happened,” Momma said.
“I was just getting to it,” Phillip said, and then he turned back to me. “Copernicus had an accident of his own. He fell down a flight of stairs and broke his neck not long after he married Harriet.”
“Do you honestly believe that she killed him instead?”
“What do you think? I just uncovered the last piece of evidence that I’ve been missing. When the police arrived on the scene, the chief noted in his journal that the crime scene looked odd to him from the start, but he could never prove that anything was amiss, so he didn’t pursue it.”
“What did he find that struck him as so unusual?”
“Harriet’s hair was wet, her clothes were damp, and Copernicus’s shirt sleeves were both soaked with water.”
I thought about it for a moment, and then I said, “Copernicus tried to kill Harriet in the tub, too, but she was too strong for him. She fought back and somehow managed to break his neck. After that, to cover up what she’d done, she shoved his body down the stairs to make it look like an accident.”
Phillip smiled as he nodded at me. “That’s exactly what I believe happened. I just dug up the chief’s journal, and I stumbled across the entry this morning.”
“It’s a marvelous job of detection,” Momma said, “but I’m not sure what good it does anyone. Who are you going to tell, Harriet’s great-grandchildren?”
“Dorothea, I don’t need to tell anyone. Just uncovering it all is enough for me.” He looked at me for approval, and I patted his shoulder. In this case, I agreed with him over my mother, something that I’d sooner die than ever admit.
“Thanks, Phillip. That was fascinating.”
“You’re welcome. Thank you for listening.”
“Now that you’ve cracked this one, what’s next on your agenda?”
“There’s a suspicious accident at the sawmill in Maple Hollow that I’m going to investigate. One of the workers was killed ‘accidentally,’ and three months later, the mill operator married his widowed wife.”
“It could have been a legitimate accident,” Momma said.
“I know, but what fun would that be?” he asked with a grin as he began gathering up his papers.
Once we were outside, Momma said, “Sometimes I wonder about my husband’s choice of retirement interests.”
“I think it’s perfect for a former cop,” I said. “He gets to solve crimes with no real stakes involved, since the guilty parties are long dead.”
“You two seem to be getting along better these days,” she said with a smile.
“What can I say? He’s growing on me.” I didn’t want to have that particular discussion, so I asked instead, “Are you ready to tackle Megan?”
“I am, though I’m going to feel a bit like a bully dealing with her. She’s quite the mouse, isn’t she?”
“Maybe not all of the time,” I said. “If we treat her gently, we’ll be fine, but don’t forget, just because she seems like a victim doesn’t mean that she’s not a killer, too. Underestimating her capacity for violence could cost us both our lives.”
“I understand,” Momma said. “Do you have any idea where we might find her?”
“She’s bound to be at work at this time of day,” I said.
“Where does she work?” Momma asked. “And how do you know that?”
“She gets donuts for her boss sometimes,” I explained as we drove to the hospital.
“I thought we were going to her office?” Momma asked me when she realized where we were headed.
“We are. She works in the admitting department.”
“Will she be free to speak with us? I’d hate to get her in trouble with her boss.”
“Megan told me recently that she works by herself most of the time, so we should be fine.” We parked near the administration area, and I found Megan’s small office without much trouble. She was with someone at the moment, and the door was closed.
“Should we come back later?” Momma asked me.
“No, let’s wait a bit and see how long she’ll be.” We settled into some chairs outside her space, and I picked up a magazine that was at least ten years old. Momma chose not to read. Instead, I found her staring at me when I looked up. “Is there something I can do for you?”
“Suzanne, how can you be so calm when we’re about to interview a potential killer?”
“I don’t know,” I said as I leafed through the pages, hoping to find something interesting. “Maybe I talk to suspects so often that it’s become a bit routine for me.”
“Oh, I hope not.”
“Why’s that?” I asked her.
“The moment you let your guard down, that’s when danger is most likely to strike.”
I put the magazine back on the pile. “Momma, I don’t need to be worried about anything at the moment, or even be particularly cautious, unless you’re going to pull a knife on me,” I said with a grin. “When we get inside Megan’s office, that’s when I’ll start being careful.”
“And in the meantime?”
“We sit and wait,” I said.
It wasn’t that long after all. Less than ten minutes after we’d arrived, Megan’s door opened and the man she’d been speaking with came out with a sheaf of papers, a plastic band on his wrist, and a bewildered look on his face. Whatever he was in for, I didn’t envy him.
“Hi, Suzanne,” Megan said when she saw me. She looked at me warily, as though my visit had an ulterior motive, which it did. “You can both come on in.”
“Megan, this is my mother, Dorothea,” I explained as Momma and I entered her small cubicle of an office. I saw that Megan had done what she could to make the paste-tinted walls homier. There were several framed book covers, all featuring masculine men in various stages of undress. As I studied them a little closer, I realized that they all had something else in common, as well. Each and every man depicted on the covers had graying hair, though their bodies were quite a bit younger.
Megan noticed the way I was studying her posters, and she must have misinterpreted it. “I just love to read. Don’t you?”
“We do, but Momma and I mostly stick to mysteries,” I said as we took our seats across from her desk.
“Oh, I enjoy some mysteries too, mostly cozies, but what I really love is a good romance.” She tapped a few keys on her computer, and then she turned to Momma. “Now, how may I help? What procedure are you undergoing, and who is your primary care physician?”
Momma looked startled by the question. “Pardon me?”
“I just assumed that since Suzanne brought you that you were the one checking in,” she said.
“Megan, neither one of us is here to be admitted,” I said.
She looked puzzled by my statement. “Then why are you in the admitting office?”
“We came to talk to you about Harley Boggess,” I said.
I’d been watching her closely, but my focus wasn’t all that necessary. Megan’s reaction was clear and immediate. “Why?
Have you heard something about who killed him?”
“No, not yet,” I said.
Before I could say another word, she blurted out, “Suzanne, you’re the one who found him. How bad was it?”
“It wasn’t pleasant,” I said.
“Did he look tortured, or was he peaceful?”
How was I supposed to answer a question like that? I thought about it for a moment before I spoke. “He looked as though he were taking a nap.” In spite of the letter opener sticking in his chest, I wisely failed to add.
“I can’t believe he’s really gone.”
“You two had a relationship, didn’t you? I’m sorry for your loss.”
Megan blushed a bit. “It wasn’t a relationship. It’s no secret that I was in love with him, but he didn’t feel the same way about me.”
Momma said softly, “That must have been terrible for you, dear.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Megan asked. “I was mooning after the man for years, and when I finally got the nerve up to tell him how I felt, he laughed in my face.”
“How humiliating,” I said. “How did that make you feel?”
“The truth? Certainly I was upset for a bit, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that he’d done me a favor. I knew then and there that I needed to change.”
“How so?” Momma asked in that voice that made folks want to confess everything to her. I didn’t know how she managed the inflection, but I would have loved to learn how she did it.
“It all goes back to the fact that my father left my mother on my thirteenth birthday,” she said after biting her lower lip. “He just disappeared, and ever since, I’ve been trying to get an older man’s approval. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I didn’t even know that I’d been doing it until Harley pointed it out to me. Was it cruel the way he reacted? Probably, but it was the shock I needed. I wish he were still here, so I could thank him for waking me up. I know that no matter how hard I try, I’ll never get my father’s admiration, either in reality or through a surrogate.”
“Is the therapy helping?” Momma asked softly, and Megan’s jaw dropped for a moment.
