Two Funerals and a Wedding (Domestic Bliss Mysteries Book 8)

by Leslie Caine

  Stunned into momentary silence, I soon managed to blather, “You can’t possibly mean that, Amelia. Even if you disliked him, he had a right to live out his life to its natural conclusion. We all do.”

  “You don’t understand, Erin. He’s not a good man. He pretended to like me. He pretended that I was someone special.”

  My thoughts flashed back to the party, and Eleanor’s angst at the sight of Amelia and Fitz chatting in a corner. Amelia never drank alcohol, due to how soporific the effect would be when combined with her meds. Had Fitz badgered her into having a drink with him?

  I used my mantra that I employ in tense situations: Confidence and optimism. Right now, I needed to muster plenty of the latter.

  “At my party, you mean?”

  “No. I already knew what he was like. He flirted with all of us. After the wedding.”

  “You’re talking about Michelle’s wedding, two years ago?”

  She nodded.

  If Fitz gave her a drink, then took sexual advantage of her, that would be rape. One of my future in-laws could have decided that poisoning him was justifiable homicide. The poisoning had to have been premeditated, but maybe plying women with alcohol was part of Fitz’s modus operandi.

  “When you say flirting, you mean….” I didn’t know how to complete the sentence for Amelia’s sake. My tendency was to talk to her like I would anyone else, but now, ironically, I lacked the confidence.

  “There was no inappropriate touching,” Amelia said, sparing me from coming up with my own phrasing. “When it came to me, that is.”

  Ah. She’d known about Michelle and Fitz’s affair.

  “Maybe you can explain something that’s been puzzling me, Amelia. I don’t understand why, when it’s clear that Fitz was such a shameless flirt at weddings, Michelle recommended him so highly. She truly made it sound like I’d offend her if we hired anybody else.”

  “Michelle was under his thumb. She thought that was the only way she could keep him from talking about the affair.”

  “To Mark?”

  She shook her head. “To Daddy.”

  “But…would that really have upset your father all that much? That his daughter had had an affair?”

  She shook her head. “Fitz wasn’t having an affair with Michelle. That’s just what Michelle told Aunt Bea in order to cover up the truth. Aunt Bea is a Queen Bee of gossip.”

  “I’m not following, Amelia.”

  “Michelle was trying to protect our mom. Daddy went over to Michelle’s house, looking for my mom, while Mark was away on a business trip. He saw Fitz, sneaking out of the house.”

  “Oh, my God. Fitz was having an affair with your mother?”

  Amelia nodded. “Fitz Parker was a bad person. He ruined my mom and dad’s marriage, and he ruined Michelle and Mark’s marriage.”

  It struck me as unlikely that Fitz had anything to do with Michelle’s marital troubles, although I understood her rationale regarding her parents. Fitz and Eleanor were an odd pairing. Eleanor was at least twenty-five years older than Fitz. No wonder she had tried to keep Amelia and Fitz separated at the party. With Amelia’s childlike persona, I’m sure Eleanor wanted to shield her from her former lover. Which assumed the affair had ended. And that it wasn’t a figment of Amelia’s imagination.

  A shiver ran up my spine at the very thought of Steve’s mom turning out to be guilty of poisoning Fitz. Not that the consequences were any easier to imagine if Amelia or Michelle had committed the crime.

  Setting aside my own troublesome concerns, I didn’t want to encourage Amelia’s black-and-white thinking. “There’s an old saying, Amelia. ‘It takes two to tango.’ Have you heard that before?”

  “You mean that my mom is also to blame.”

  “No. I mean that two consenting adults are just that…they’re consenting adults. When you look at a marriage that’s lasted more than thirty years, such as your parents’ marriage, they’ve experienced countless ups and downs. Who knows what compromises they’ve each made? In my opinion, it’s never fair to judge other people’s marriages.” I paused, realizing I was being somewhat prissy. “Not that I’m anyone to talk. I blamed my father for leaving my mother and me. Truth be told, I still do blame him.”

  Was I also guilty of leaping to conclusions just now? Maybe Michelle had concocted one story for Amelia and their father, and another for her husband. Steve had once told me that I should always take Michelle’s statements with a grain of salt because she had a flair for the dramatic. Furthermore, I could never know what Amelia’s inner life was like. If she had somehow gotten her hands on cyanide, maybe she could have killed Fitz because she believed she would be saving her family.

  “Do you know who killed Fitz?” I asked.

  “No, do you?”

  “No.” Although Michelle’s husband was still the top name on my list. Now followed, unfortunately, by Steve’s mother, Eleanor. “Did Fitz steal your sapphire necklace?”

  “I don’t remember. My memories are all fuzzy. I had a glass of champagne, even though I knew better. Mom went downstairs to get me a cup of coffee. I was talking to Fitz. He was playing with my hair, and my necklace. I told him I was giving it to you for your wedding. It might have broken. Or maybe I gave it to him to give to you. I just remember my mom got mad. She was going to tell Stevie about Fitz. I told her not to. And Michelle was mad, too.”

  “About your necklace? And Fitz?” Fearing that anger over Fitz stealing the necklace led to the murder, my heart was all but beating out of my chest.

  “Michelle’s always mad about the necklace. She doesn’t think I should have it when I never go anywhere fancy. I’m always stuck at home. But I want to get my own place. Daddy and Mommy are going to help me find a place after the wedding.”

  “Are they? That’s great,” I said, though my thoughts were still racing. I regretted getting coffee. My nerves were horribly on edge.

  “Stevie didn’t do it, did he?” Amelia asked.

  “No, that much I know. Neither he nor I killed Fitz. Did you really think he might have?”

  She nodded. “He told me when we were kids that he’d do anything to protect me.” She chuckled. “I told him he was my kid brother. And I’d always protect him. That’s why I was eager to get together with you, alone, before the wedding.”

  “To…protect him from me?” I asked, still anxious.

  She laughed again. “No, to make sure I didn’t ever have to protect him from you. Now I know that I don’t.” She reached over and gave my hand a squeeze. “I can tell that you’re a really good person. You’re always going to be good to my little brother.”

  “Absolutely.” Her statement made me uncomfortable. As much as I liked Amelia, if I was being honest with myself, it wasn’t the best scenario to have a mentally ill woman as your husband’s self-appointed guardian angel.

  “I still hope to be able to let you borrow my blue-gem necklace,” Amelia said in a non sequitur. “The police have it.”

  “They told me that Fitz had it in one of his pockets. Along with a pair of nail clippers.”

  “Oh! I remember now!” Amelia suddenly cried. “It broke again. I tried to fix it, using some nail clippers.”

  “Nail clippers?”

  “I didn’t have any pliers, and I tried to squeeze the link back together.”

  “So did Fitz take it to fix the chain for you?”

  “That’s what he said. I didn’t want him to, though. He would have sold it and tried to claim that I’d never given it to him. I can tell when people are trying to take advantage of me.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Or even what she meant. Did she tell him she didn’t want him to “fix” her necklace? She was staring past my shoulder, a wistful expression on her face.

  “It had a really delicate chain. Aunt Bea said that’s why she bought it for me. The bright-blue stone reminded her of my bright-blue eyes, and the delicate gold chain reminded her of my delicate nature.” Her expression changed to an ominous g
lare. “Not that my nature is all that delicate. I think she meant ‘fragile.’ She thinks my mental illness makes me helpless. A lot of people think that way. But I’m not. I can take care of myself.”

  Chapter 14

  After dropping Amelia off at home, I drove straight to the Crestview police station. My hands were still shaking. I didn’t know what, if any, impact anything Amelia had said to me could have on the investigation, but it felt like my civic duty to report what I’d heard about a murder-victim’s contentious relationships. Plus what she’d said about squeezing a link back together with nail clippers. My fear was that if I waited even an hour to tell the police, I would talk myself out of reporting the information; the last thing I wanted to discover was that any of my future in-laws were guilty of murder.

  I caught Detective O’Reilly in his usual foul mood. He came out to meet me in the lobby and greeted me by saying that we should skip the usual formalities and go straight to an interrogation room.

  “Here to confess?” he asked with a sneer as we took our seats.

  “No, I’m here to redesign the room,” I fired back. “You should go with a water-boarding motif.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll pass.”

  “Really? I could get you a great price on a thumbscrew.”

  He laced his fingers and sighed. “Okay, Miss Gilbert. What brings you here on this lovely autumn day?”

  “Two things. The first is, I need you to give me Fitz Parker’s notes for my wedding. His associate, Suki Kramer, said she was blocked from seeing them, and I need to know the status of all the vendors he subcontracted to.”

  O’Reilly was staring at me with a blank face, so I continued, “Once I have his notes, we can still hold our wedding ceremony as planned.”

  “That file is evidence. We haven’t completed examining it.”

  “You can keep the physical file itself. I’m just asking for a read-only copy. Or a printout.”

  One corner of his lips raised in a smirk. “You’re still going through with the wedding?”

  “Yes,” I replied with unmasked annoyance. “Audrey Munroe volunteered to take over the party-planning duties. Assuming she can work from Fitz’s notes.”

  He snorted a little, but nodded. “I’ll see what I can do. What’s the second thing?”

  “Fitz Parker apparently had an affair with Eleanor Sullivan, Steve’s mother. I was told that by Amelia Sullivan…who might not be considered a reliable witness.”

  “I’ve talked to Amelia,” O’Reilly snapped. “She is definitely not a reliable witness. Did anyone who isn’t on anti-psychotic medications back up that story?”

  “Not as far as I know.” I paused. As dismissive as he was to my every word, there was little point in sharing Amelia’s story about trying to fix the chain with clippers. “Bea Quince said that Fitz had had an affair with Michelle, whereas Amelia told me Michelle was covering up for their mom when she told Bea that she was the one who had the affair.”

  O’Reilly muttered under his breath that this whole thing sounded like a soap opera. “Did Michelle say anything to you about her relationship with Mr. Parker?” he asked. “Or about her mother’s relationship with him?”

  “No, I haven’t spoken with Michelle since the party.” Which reminded me; I wondered if Steve had spoken to her yet about the uncomfortable conversation I’d had with her husband at the coffee shop on Sunday. “Amelia’s story of what had happened between her mother and Fitz struck me as plausible. She said that Michelle stumbled onto Fitz and their mother when Michelle came home unexpectedly. If Amelia’s story is accurate, it would explain why Michelle recommended that we hire Fitz so avidly, yet ignored him completely at the party. She could have learned in the meantime about his relationship with her mother.”

  “From what I could see, Michelle Dunning seemed to be extremely distraught after Fitz’s death,” Detective O’Reilly pointed out.

  “True. She was crying pretty hard.”

  “Yet you believe that was…what? All an act? That she was pretending to be heartbroken over the man who’d slept with her married mother?”

  That was an excellent point. Michelle’s tears had seemed very real to me. I could feel my cheeks growing warm. “I guess when you put it that way, the story sounds a bit feeble. Never mind my second reason for coming here. Please get me a…harmless copy of Fitz Parker’s notes.”

  “Wait here. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”

  He left, closing the door behind him. I stared at the one-way glass mirror, wondering if anyone was on the other side, chuckling at me. If O’Reilly were to drop my name while asking Eleanor about this, I could forget sharing any national holidays with Steve’s family.

  My own family consisted of my adoptive dad and Jessie, my teenage half-sister. After a ten-year span of only occasional phone conversations, I’d seen them twice since moving to Crestview three years ago. They were flying into Colorado the night before the wedding and flying back to California right after the reception. Although we’d made considerable strides in the past couple of years, we had an emotionally distant relationship. In truth, a large number of friends and even clients had become closer to me than my own family members were.

  The longer I sat in this stark, lifeless room, the worse I felt. I might have just now alienated the only family I had. Steve would hate me forever for not telling him about Amelia’s statements first. Maybe by coming straight to the police, I’d lost my one chance at happiness. Even now, I would rather hammer a nail through my hand than tell Steve that his sister claimed his mother had been sleeping with Fitz Parker.

  Detective O’Reilly returned to the room. The moment my eyes met his, the brusque, indifferent expression left his face. “Are you okay, Erin?”

  I shook my head. “All I wanted to do was make sure that I wasn’t hiding anything from you that might help you solve this murder. But Steve’s mother hasn’t exactly welcomed me with open arms. If she learns that I’m the one who told you this rumor about her having a fling with the victim, she’ll never forgive me. I don’t know if Steve will forgive me, either.”

  “No worries, Erin,” O’Reilly said kindly, as he reclaimed his seat. “We don’t reveal our sources when we investigate. She’s never going to know you were here. And if that fiancé of yours can’t forgive you for doing the right thing…for reporting a contentious relationship someone had with the victim, then the guy doesn’t deserve you.”

  I was touched by his kind words. Then I realized he might not mean a single thing he’d said. “But detectives play witnesses off one another all the time.”

  “On TV. And sometimes when we’re trying to force a confession out of two perpetrators. That is not what we’re dealing with at the moment. We’re not going to take your mother- and sister-in-law into custody and force them to admit whether or not they had sex with Mr. Parker. We’re trying to unmask a murderer, not a philanderer.”

  “Okay.” Although, if the philandering had motivated the murder, I would have to testify in the trial. Audrey was right; it was extremely important to my peace of mind that my future in-laws were exonerated before our wedding.

  He peered at me for several seconds. “Feel better now?”

  “A little, I guess.”

  He handed me three pages of printed notes from a file with the header: Gilbert-Sullivan Wedding. I read the top sheet. Right below his own name, Fitz had typed as a subheading: “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General.” Under the “Groom” heading, he’d written “Poor Wandering One.” The “Bride” category was sub-headed: “I am a Maiden Cold and Stately.”

  Surprised and annoyed by Fitz Parker’s unprofessional behavior by joking about Steve’s and my names in his computer records, I flipped through the pages. Under “Flowers” was: “Little Buttercups! Ha ha!” followed by our actual choice of florists and floral arrangements.

  For groomsmen was: “My Gallant Crew,” and Bridesmaids was: “Three Little Maids from School.” (I had to laugh at that one.) />
  “He…had a little fun with the Gilbert-and-Sullivan theme,” O’Reilly said. He gave me a wry smile, then said, “A policeman’s lot is not a happy one.”

  I’d only been home for a couple of hours when someone knocked on Audrey’s front door. To my surprise and, frankly, my alarm, it was Steve’s mother once again. Amelia must have fessed up about our conversation at the DDC.

  I decided that this was not a good time to joke that we had to stop meeting like this. “Eleanor. This is a surprise. Come on in.”

  “Thank you.” She glanced around. “Is Audrey home?”

  “No, she’s taping one of her shows. I assume you know about her local show: Domestic Bliss?” The show itself had lost viewers and had recently become a weekly show that aired only at five a.m. on Tuesdays.

  “Actually, I asked because I’d hoped to have a private conversation with you.” She proceeded into the front room, and I realized a moment later that I was expected to follow her. She took a seat on the sofa, and I sat in my favorite chair, as she said, “I’ve been chatting with Amelia. I had no idea you were taking her to lunch today. You should have asked me to join you. Amelia hasn’t been doing well lately in strange places.”

  “We didn’t go to lunch. I wanted to get to know her better, so at the party, I invited her to let me take her into the Denver Design Center. You were standing right beside her at the time. This morning, she called and asked me if we could go today. I didn’t see the harm.”

  She pursed her lips. I got the impression that she was seething with anger but doing her best to maintain a reasonably calm façade. “But now you do see the harm, don’t you? Tell me precisely what she told you.”

  Our gazes locked. I hated the feeling that I was about to be schooled for being disobedient, when I’d done nothing wrong. I reminded myself, however, that she was seeing this from her own perspective—as a mother of a mentally-ill person who, like all of us, was caught up in the whirl of a murder investigation. She deserved my honesty. “She told me that you and Fitz Parker had an affair…at Michelle’s house when Mark was out of town. And that George had seen him leaving her house, so Michelle took the fall.”