by Leslie Caine
I looked at the soapy water, which reeked of gasoline. “It does look like he was cleaning up,” I said to Steve.
“Lucky for you we didn’t get her sooner. If we’d gotten here half an hour or so ago, I’d be calling the police.”
“Oui. And now I can use your help to clean up the mess I made. It is not so easy to clean out several liters of petrol.” He raised his arms in a dramatic gesture. “This is what the place has done to me.”
The odor in the kitchen was strongest near a small plastic wastebasket that must have been moved from the office. “I think I’ll start by emptying the wastebasket in the dumpster and rinsing it out,” I said. A group of papers were soaked and twisted up like a torch. He was apparently going to light this wad, then toss it through the door. I separated one and started to skim read. “What are these papers?” I asked. They appeared to be a financial contract between him and Drew.
“Give that to me!” Lucas shouted, grabbing at the papers. “That is private.”
Steve was already sorting through the contents of the trashcan. “Bank statements. Receipts.”
“You were going to put these up in flames as well.”
“I already explained,” Lucas said indignantly. “I tried to leave my past behind by setting it on fire, but I changed my mind.”
“And you wanted to destroy evidence that could prove you killed Drew,” Steve said, “and maybe Fitz.”
Did Steve think announcing his theory would make Lucas surrender on the spot?
“I did not kill anyone. I had nothing whatsoever to do with their deaths.” “Put that back in the wastebasket,” Steve told me. “We’ll turn it over to the police.”
“Do they arrest people in America for thinking about crimes that they do not actually commit?” Lucas asked, his voice haughty.
“No, but they do for embezzlement,” I said. “Drew was telling the truth about an employee stealing from his California restaurant, wasn’t he?” I was talking through my hat, reasoning that I had nothing to lose.
“Is that why you killed Drew?” Steve demanded. “Was he going to turn you in for the twenty grand you stole from him?”
I dialed Detective O’Reilly on my cellphone, a number which, I’m sorry to say, I had committed to memory. Lucas made no move to stop me or to leave.
“I did not kill either man. I was long gone before Fitz came down with the poisoning. I would never have jeopardized my future by poisoning someone. And I was here in Crestview when Drew overdosed.”
“Mark said Drew said your name before he died,” Steve said. “Maybe he was trying to name his killer.”
When O’Reilly picked up, I told him the state that Parsley and Sage was in and that we were currently with Lucas and had incriminating evidence linking him to money that was missing from Drew’s restaurant.
“Do you have an alibi?” Steve asked Lucas. “Were you with anyone who can prove that you were in Crestview yesterday morning?”
“I was alone at my hotel room. The maid and the clerk at the desk spoke with me, however. The money records are all Drew’s doings. His records. I will tell that to the police, and they will set me free.” He removed his apron and slammed it on the countertop. “My hands might smell of petrol, but they are clean. I will not speak with you ever again.”
Chapter 22
Lucas Leblanc continued to stay silent, sitting on a barstool, while we waited. His silent treatment was going to make his catering our wedding next week awkward. Steve and I pored through all of the records and contracts we could find. I was familiar enough with business practices to see that, although it was clear that somebody had been taking money from the till, nothing that Lucas was going to burn linked him directly to the crime.
Detective O’Reilly arrived. Lucas was maintaining his silent treatment, sitting alone at the end of the bar. O’Reilly seemed to surmise the situation as we greeted one another. He addressed us all formally—using our last names—and Lucas merely gave him a nod in return. “Thanks for the call, Ms. Gilbert,” O’Reilly then said. “Or is that going to be Mrs. Sullivan soon?”
“She’ll keep the name ‘Gilbert,’” Steve said.
“We like our business name as it is,” I said, “as opposed to Sullivan and Sullivan Designs.”
“Good decision.”
“I’ve done nothing wrong,” Lucas said. “Gilbert and Sullivan arrived after a woeful moment that I was in the middle of reversing. Mademoiselle Gilbert jumped to the wrong conclusions.”
“He was about to destroy evidence.” Steve gestured at the papers that we’d spread on the counters as we attempted to salvage them. According to these records, there really was an employee who was stealing from Drew.”
“As I already explained, those files are from Drew’s office. They were sent to him. Look at the top of the paper. You see his name. He was trying to cheat the insurance company. And to frame me for embezzlement.”
“No way,” Steve said.
“These are the real records. It is true that the records he supplied to the insurance company show mysterious electronic deposits into an account that he set up in my name. They are the same amounts as the supposed thefts. He told me the money was profit sharing as I became a co-owner.”
“I don’t believe you!” Steve retorted.
“And Mr. Benson is not here to defend himself. I alone am left holding the bag. That is why I changed my mind about setting fire to this place. The insurance company would only see the money in my account. They would not believe I was set up. So, now, you want to arrest me for what I almost did, that is your choice. You want to arrest me for stealing money or insurance fraud, you have the wrong man. I must now try to mend my ways and get this establishment up and running. I am a great chef. We will make it a great restaurant.”
“Not when you’re behind bars,” Steve said.
“I’m in the process of getting a warrant,” O’Reilly interjected. “We’ll seize all of the documents and computers, and go from there.”
“Good,” Lucas said. “They will point you toward the woman who killed him.”
“The woman?” I repeated.
Lucas merely gave me a glare. Focusing his attention instead on Detective O’Reilly, he said, “I realized I had almost made a terrible mistake by burning the records that Monsieur Benson wished to use to incriminate me in his own fraud.” He unbuttoned his vest and removed a tri-folded set of legal-sized documents. “You will see it was a woman who was being blackmailed by Drew Benson. Instead of that dark word—blackmail—they wrote up a contract, in which she is called his investor. I’m certain that Drew had no intention to pay it back, however.”
“So this woman is now a part owner of Parsley and Sage?” O’Reilly asked. “Yet we have no proof that she was forced to give him investment money?”
He handed it to me, without meeting my eyes. “You see who was funding this restaurant for the past two months?”
“Barbara Elizabeth Quinn,” I read aloud.
“Aunt Bea,” Steve and I said in unison.
Chapter 23
“Would you mind coming out to the stationhouse and giving me a statement?” Detective O’Reilly asked Lucas.
“If you would be so kind as to drive me there and back, I’d like to get some fresh air,” Lucas said, rising from his seat—and frumpiness—at the bar. “You are welcome to take these papers with you,” he added. “You will see how Monsieur Benson was suddenly getting large amounts of money from this woman everyone calls ‘Aunt Bea’, although he told me last week that she hated him almost as much as he hated her.”
Detective O’Reilly opened the door for Lucas. He looked back at Steve and me. “Are you two going to stay here and continue to breathe in these fumes?”
“We’re leaving in a minute,” Steve said, “once we can see if there’s a way to reduce them.”
“Kitty litter and charcoal,” I said. “Otherwise, we’ll just have to air it out as best we can.”
“Good luck,” the detec
tive said as he followed Lucas.
I looked at Steve. “It sounds as if Lucas was right that Drew was threatening Aunt Bea. Unless you can think of another explanation why Aunt Bea would suddenly decide to give him tens of thousands of dollars.”
“Not off the top of my head,” Steve said with a sigh. “She never said anything to you about giving him money?”
I shook my head. “Pretty much the opposite. She gave me the impression that she assumed this venture of his was going to fail. So I can’t imagine he gave her a legitimate incentive to invest in it.”
“We already know Fitz had been blackmailing my family members,” Steve said. “Maybe he had something on Bea. And shared it with Drew.”
“Fitz would never have shared anything with Drew,” I countered. “They were enemies.”
“My point is that killing her blackmailers would be one hell of a good motive.”
Poison, as I’d been recently reminded by Lucas, was a woman’s murder method of choice. And injecting an overdose of cocaine would also count as a similar method. No need to physically overpower the victim or to endure blood and guts. Still. I hated to think of Aunt Bea as a murderer. Or anybody connected to Steve’s family.
“What are you thinking?” Steve asked, studying my features.
“It makes most sense that the same person who killed Fitz also killed Drew.”
“Yeah. I agree.”
“So the list of plausible suspects has narrowed from everyone at our shower—including the staff of servers—to a party guest who hated Fitz and also knew Drew was heading to Mark and Michelle’s home, following Fitz’s funeral.”
“Then it’s Mark,” Steve said firmly. “Or Aunt Bea. My parents and sisters are innocent.”
I knew how dearly he wanted to believe that, but his parents and sisters were in the immediate area, and Drew’s murder might not have been premeditated. One of them could have spotted Drew in the act of shooting cocaine into his system and given him a second dose.
“Maybe it’s Lucas,” I told Steve. “Even though he wasn’t at the memorial service, Drew could have met up with him at whatever Denver restaurant he’d gone to. Maybe Lucas even drugged Drew in advance, drove Drew’s car, then took a taxi back to his own car.”
Steve gave no response and continued to study my features. “You don’t…actually believe one of my sisters or parents is a double-murderer, do you?” Steve said.
“No, I’m just…like I said, it could be Bea, or Lucas, or Mark.” Or Michelle. Or Eleanor, George, or Amelia. “All three had a motive for at least one of the murders. It’s just that…the police are going to have to take a serious look at all of your family members, since they were all in the vicinity of the crime scene.”
“I know my family members, Erin! If they were capable of killing another human being, I’d know! That would be like saying that, just because Hildi kills mice and birds, she might kill another cat. And she wouldn’t.”
I stared at Steve for a moment, surprised he would make such an illogical statement. “It would actually be more like saying: cats kill other cats all the time, but I know my cat wouldn’t kill a cat.”
“I need to go get some air,” he grumbled. “The gasoline fumes are messing with my brain.”
I tried to give him a kiss, but he only allowed me to kiss his cheek. He hadn’t shaved and his cheek was scruffy. I felt a pang as I watched him walk away. If our roles were reversed, I’m sure I’d have felt every bit as isolated as he did. I didn’t have his past history with his family members. I could imagine a scenario for each of them that could lead to their feeling so boxed in that they acted out of ruthless desperation.
Maybe that was a difference between him and me. I had become so jaded over the past couple of years that I now believed almost anybody could find themselves capable of doing terrible things.
My thought pattern led me to recall something that Aunt Bea had said to me, just before all of this began. As time goes on, you get to recognize how easy it is to be on the wrong side. Maybe Steve was right when he said that Fitz and Drew could have been working together, possibly to wrench Bea’s money away from her. If she’d been contemplating killing them, it could go a long way in explaining her frame of mind back then.
The next day we learned that Drew had named Steve to be his executor. He arranged for a cremation, per Drew’s will, and we scheduled the wake for him to be on Wednesday evening. My bridesmaids would be in town by then, and we agreed that Drew would have liked showing off Parsley and Sage to them.
Audrey seemed to be trying to kill me with kindness. She’d helped me plan a tour of the town’s highlights for when my bridesmaids arrived mid-week. Having a hard time concentrating on the wedding plans, I did a brain dump on her, rehashing the minute details of my week in no particular order—the interview with the Denver police detectives, Eleanor’s confession of infidelity, Lucas and the almost fire, and finally my conclusion that, other than Lucas—who was a longshot—all of the suspects were related to Steve, either directly or through marriage.
“Are you going to be able to…adapt if it’s one of Steve’s blood relatives?” Audrey asked me, quietly, as we lingered over our bowls of yogurt and granola.
“I think so. I hope so.”
“Have you considered asking Steve if he can cope if one of the members of his family is guilty?”
I shuddered at that idea. “Do you think I should?”
She reached over the countertop and patted my hand. “Sweetie, my track record with marriage isn’t very good. So maybe you should do the exact opposite of what I would do. But, yes, I’d use as gentle a voice as I could muster, and I’d ask that direct question. I think he might need to prepare himself for that possibility. If the worst happens, he’ll have a heavy load on his shoulders.”
I couldn’t reply at first.
“Marriage is hard. It’s difficult to stay with someone when it starts feeling so much easier not to. And even in the best unions, in-laws can pose problems. In this case, they pose lethal chasms for you. So I think it’s critical for both of you to know for certain that you are Steve’s most important relationship. More important than his parents or sisters.”
“The thought of one of Steve’s blood relatives being a murderer makes me want to drink the contents of Aunt Bea’s wine cellar dry. Or to hope that the murders are never solved.”
“Neither of those ideas sound practical, but if you decide to go with the first option, call me.”
At two o’clock, my hunger pangs reached enough of a crescendo to remind me that I hadn’t eaten lunch yet, it was almost. I made myself a turkey-avocado sandwich and started poring over the notes that Audrey had compiled for my schedule for next two days, up through the rehearsal dinner on Thursday. She’d entitled it: Frivolous Fun with Friends. Frivolity felt like the farthest thing from my mind. My phone rang. I looked at its screen. Michelle Dunning. Not wanting to hear any more troublesome news, I hesitated for a moment, then answered.
“Erin, I need your help,” Michelle said, her voice strained. She seemed to be panting.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It’s Mark. He’s been drinking non-stop since last night. I got Zoey out of there and brought her to my parents’ place. Plus I hid his car keys, so he can’t drive. But my parents aren’t here. Amelia said they had a scheduled art-museum thing with some friends. And Mom must have left her phone in the car again.”
“What is Mark doing? Where—?”
“I don’t want Zoey to see her dad like this. He’s going to hurt someone. Or himself.”
“I don’t understand what—”
“He was banging on the door. Of my parent’s house. Just now. Amelia’s all freaked out. She thinks he’s gone to get his gun.”
“Well, good God, Michelle! Call the police! Now! Or else I will!”
“I will...I’ll call nine-one-one. I just…. First I want you to contact Steve. I tried his cell and he didn’t answer. I left a message, but—” She
stopped and took a ragged breath. “I need someone to watch Zoey and help Amelia while I talk to the police. Amelia’s…going over the edge.”
“I understand, but your first priority is preventing your drunken husband from handling a loaded gun. Or, if it’s already too late, getting him disarmed as fast as possible. Don’t you see that?”
“I…suppose you’re right.”
“There’s no doubt I’m right, Michelle. I’m going to call them myself.”
“Okay, okay. I’m calling.” She hung up.
I muttered an obscenity while, heart pounding, I called Steve’s cell. I was bluffing about calling the police in thirty seconds, but I’d go ahead if Steve thought I should.
“Hi, hon. I was just about—”
“Have you listened to your phone messages?” I interrupted.
“Yeah. I got one from Michelle. Why?”
“Michelle called me, too. There’s an emergency, and she needs…our help.”
“She called it an emergency? All she said in her message was that she needs a babysitter urgently, and Amelia isn’t up to it. What did she tell you?”
“That Mark’s horribly intoxicated and she hid his keys and took Zoey to your parents’ house, but they aren’t there and Amelia’s flipped out, and Mark’s possibly getting his gun.”
“God damn it!”
“She’s calling nine-one-one. Are you at the office?”
“Yeah. I’ll try calling the house.”
“I’ll meet you at the office in five minutes, tops.” I hung up, wondering if Steve meant his parents’ house or Michelle’s. I dialed 911 and was told that the police were already on their way.
I swept up my purse and keys and raced out the door, not even pausing long enough to locate Audrey and tell her what was happening. In what felt like no more than three or four minutes, I pulled into my reserved space at our office. Steve was talking on his cell and standing by the door.
