Grounds for Remorse

by Misty Simon

  I only heard his side of the conversation.

  “Yes, you can house her overnight, but make sure she doesn’t go anywhere.”

  He paused, scratching his chin.

  “I don’t want her anywhere near that other woman. You have to make sure there is no contact.”

  Pause again.

  “Yes, Tallie does always seem to be where she isn’t wanted and where she’s not supposed to be. We’ve had a talk about it, but either she didn’t hear me, or she thinks she’s above the law.”

  I sputtered. He smiled a sharky grin. Eavesdropping never got me anywhere when I was eavesdropping on a conversation about myself. It was rarely, if ever, flattering.

  “Fine, I’ll have her transport Michelle to you. But remember that she must stay with you.”

  He hung up, then crossed his arms over the chest of his blue uniform shirt. “You can take her directly there. Do not deviate. And if she tries to talk you out of dropping her off, you tell her that it’s the only condition under which I’m willing to let her go from here.”

  “You had to say that part about already talking to me.”

  “Yes, I did. And you’re lucky I didn’t respond to everything he said about you.” Uncrossing his arms, he strode out of my cousin’s office. “Now, come get your entourage and get the heck out of here. When I said I’d deal with you, I didn’t think it was going to be twenty-four hours a day.”

  And I hadn’t thought that he would arrest my friend over and over again. I guess we had both been wrong.

  Still, I was getting out of here before he could change his mind.

  Walking back to the cells, it had been strange to see Michelle and Gina sitting on opposite sides of the bars and talking. After that scene in the Bean that first day, I was sure they’d never speak to one another ever. Some things could change, though. And now if I could just clear my best friend, I’d be happy as a clam and ready to enjoy the rest of Max’s vacation with him.

  * * *

  The ride to Drake’s took about half an hour. He not only lived across the river but through the woods, too. His house was a stately, two-story, stone dream. Situated on a large plot of land, it looked like it had been a farm at one time but now had houses on all three sides and fronted the road. He must have made a pretty penny if he was the one who had sold the land to a developer.

  I pulled into the driveway, lined with old-fashioned streetlamps, then around the back of the house, which was lit with soft ground lights shining onto the stone. The front didn’t look like it got much use. When I commented on it, Michelle told me the real entrance was at the back of the house. The front was just for show.

  How often had she been here? Had it ever been alone? Drake swore that they’d never had an affair, but why had Michelle stayed so long with a man who cheated on her constantly in the open and without remorse?

  Yes, I had stayed with Waldo for a while when I knew he was a jerk, but I also didn’t have anywhere else to go and thought that I could put up with his crap as long as he kept paying the bills. Shallow, I know, and thank God I wasn’t that person anymore.

  But Michelle didn’t seem to have that much in the way of money and little if any respect for herself as a woman. Was that why she had stayed?

  If we were closer, or hadn’t been trading insults just a handful of hours ago, I might have asked. But it wasn’t my place, and I certainly wasn’t going to judge.

  Maybe she had said something to Gina, though. That I would have no problem asking.

  Drake was waiting at the back door when I pulled up behind the house. He stepped out onto the deck, haloed by light spilling from the house, and hesitated. I could almost see his brain working. Should he come out? Wait for her to come to him? Would she be angry that she was here instead of her own house?

  Not that she could go to her house anyway. Burton had said it was off-limits until they sorted out whom it belonged to.

  Surprisingly she had been silent after I’d told her where we were going. She only gave directions in a soft voice and seemed to scrunch in on herself in the front seat.

  She wasn’t afraid of him, was she? I hadn’t even thought to ask that. Right then might not have been the best time with him standing on the deck, but I had to take the time.

  “Michelle, I have to ask before you get out of the car. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable and I know we’re not exactly friends, but will you feel safe with Drake?”

  “Great time to ask that now, Tallie,” Gina chimed in from the backseat. I glared at her, then turned back to Michelle.

  “No,” Michelle said on a sigh. “I’m not afraid of him. It’s just that we were almost something a long time ago and I think he’s never forgotten it and wants to rekindle it. But he doesn’t know me. And I think he just likes the idea of me, not the real me.”

  Boy, did I know that one like a song that wouldn’t get out of your head.

  “Maybe being here with him will change that.” It couldn’t hurt, anyway.

  She stared at me for a moment. “I’m recently widowed, as in four days ago, in case you’ve forgotten, and I don’t want another man. I want that bitch out of my house and I want my life back. Craig might not have been the best of husbands, but at least I knew what I was getting in the end.”

  What a sad way to look at life. But again, I wasn’t judging. I’d had no idea what Waldo was like, and I’d left him when I’d found out for sure. Michelle had chosen to stay through who knew how many girlfriends. There must have been something there that I just couldn’t understand.

  “Well, we’d better get you out of the car before Drake comes for you.”

  “Yes, I suppose we should.” She unhunched long enough to open the door and step out. But as soon as she stood up from my low-slung car, her shoulders rounded back down.

  Drake met her at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the deck and put an arm around her shoulders. She stepped in to him and began to sob.

  Maybe it was the stress of the day, or the last few days. Maybe it was finally being in the arms of someone who you knew was not a jerk. Maybe she was just letting it all out now that she was out of jail and at least would have a warm bed and food that didn’t come out of the microwave. Whatever it was, I left it there on Drake’s driveway as I backed the car up and did a nine-point turn to get out.

  “Do you think they did it together?” Gina asked. She’d remained in the backseat, along with a very quiet Max, making me feel like a chauffeur.

  “I wish one of you would have moved up here, and no, I don’t think they ‘did it together’ as long as the ‘it’ we’re talking about means murdering Craig.”

  “Of course. I don’t want to know about any other ‘doing it’ at this point. I just wonder if they decided to kill him together. Then Drake would get his company back under his own hand and not have to pay for a ton of dates and flowers. And Michelle could have been done with always being left behind.”

  I thought of how Michelle had said that Craig hadn’t looked at her like he’d looked at Gina. Ever. I supposed it could be possible that she had hooked up with Drake to remove the jerk.

  However, I was leaning more toward the actual wife. It was awfully convenient that she’d waltzed in mere days after her husband was dead and knew enough about him and his estate and holdings to think she could swoop in and take it all without being contested. How had she known that they definitely weren’t divorced? And if she only lived two hours away, why did she take so long to make contact?

  I thought about those questions and about a hundred more as I made my way back to my apartment.

  Gina and Max sat silently in the backseat. Actually I was pretty sure I heard Max snuffle out a snore. It had been a long day. A long four days. I think we all just needed the chill time and the silence. I didn’t even turn the radio on for once, and instead rolled the windows down and stuck my hand out to ride the current of high-speed air going past us.

  Whoever had done this had to have access to poisons a
nd the knowledge of how to use them. What they were capable of. And in the case of Craig, how long it would take them to react. I highly doubted they’d actually gotten the poison from Gina’s cabinet. They were just trying to make it look like it had come from there to more solidly point the finger at her.

  I wished that Brenna would wake up so I could ask her if she’d seen who had hurt her. She was still in a medically induced coma last I had checked with the hospital. The hemlock the person or persons had used was not something commonly seen, and the antidote wasn’t exactly orthodox. They were working as fast and as hard as they could to get her well enough to be able to talk. After she was stable, hopefully she could blow the whistle on this whole thing.

  Until then I was still on a mission to find out everything I could and bring the killer and the attacker to justice. I had to, for the friend sitting quietly in the back of the car.

  Chapter Eleven

  The next day was filled with cleaning and other non-sleuthing things. I did try to do my own research on the marriage of Lily and Craig but got nowhere. While Max and I had lunch, I tried not to fret that I didn’t have any new leads in the murder case. After eating, I called Gina to see how she was doing. Apparently, she’d opened the Bean, where business was brisk, then went for a walk around town until it was time for her to go to dinner with Jeremy. She still refused to tell me where they were going, drat her.

  Once Gina left for her dinner date with my brother, I did my best to talk Max into following them, but he nixed the idea and instead presented me with other, more enticing things to do.

  I was still awake when Gina came in late. I saw her lights go on across the street but she refused to answer her cell, even though I called her seven times.

  I got up the next morning, groggy but filled with purpose. I would make progress on who had killed Craig today even while I cleaned. With that in mind, I dragged Max with me to the cleaning job I had scheduled for one of the old guard.

  Mrs. Smythe had to be nearing ninety, and she still refused to even go out and get her mail without full makeup and heels on. Sometimes she forgot the clothes in between, but her daughter lived with her to remind her to put them on before she stepped out the door.

  “Now remember, she likes them young, so be careful what you say or she’ll have you in her boudoir in two point three seconds,” I said to Max.

  I wasn’t talking about Mrs. Smythe but the daughter, Miss Smythe. She’d gone back to her maiden name after getting rid of husband number four. I could honestly say that if I couldn’t make it work three times I probably wouldn’t go for a fourth. I admired people with that kind of optimism, but I was not one of them.

  Heck, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to get married a second time. Miss Smythe, though, was an overachiever in the marriage department and somehow they always seemed to die on her. Then again, that wasn’t so hard to believe since she tended to only marry men who were much older than her. If she wanted to fool around, she always went for the younger guys.

  To each his or her own, I suppose.

  When we arrived at the grand house on the hill, I stepped out of my car and stretched. I hadn’t slept well last night, even with Max beside me. Not being sure what my next move might be had kept me tossing and turning.

  Where did I go from here? I had put in a call to my cousin the interior decorator, but she hadn’t yet called me back. If I didn’t hear from her today I was calling her mom to see what I had to do to get an audience with her highness, the queen of sheers.

  And if that didn’t work, then I’d go track her down myself. I needed the skinny on the people in a circle I was most definitely not a part of, and I needed it now so I could parse through the info and try to figure out who else had something to gain by offing Craig.

  Although the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if it wasn’t someone in our town. It would have had to be pretty random for someone to be in town at the same time as Craig and poison him before he got to Gina’s.

  I was baffled, and I didn’t like it one bit.

  Max carried my tools of the trade up the front walk. Miss Smythe opened the large, carved, oak door with a smile and not a lot else.

  Had she stripped down when she’d seen me pull up with Max? I sure hoped not.

  “Miss Smythe, how nice to see you.” Nearly all of you, I thought, keeping my eyes on hers. “This is my boyfriend, Max. He’ll be helping out today.” Better to lay the law out right from the get-go instead of letting her get any ideas in her pretty head.

  “Oh poo. Boyfriend? I thought maybe you had hired a crew to help with this monstrosity.”

  “Boyfriend,” I said firmly. “And he’s only here for a vacation. I had him ride along to help so we can get out of here early and spend some time together this afternoon.”

  “You know what you’re doing. I’ll just leave you to it.” She pulled the see-through wrap tighter around the short silk dress and sauntered off toward the kitchen.

  “Good Lord,” Max said from behind me. “Did she really think that the hired help was going to fall into bed with her without even exchanging names?”

  “Keep your voice down,” I whispered, but ruined the stern tone when I snickered. “And yes, she would.”

  He laughed, patting me on the shoulder. “I’ll remember that if I ever need a different job than the Taxinator.”

  Blushing was not something I liked to do, but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t realize he had remembered I’d called him that.

  “Anyway,” I said, “let’s get this done. There probably isn’t much since they do have a day maid. I’m only here because she doesn’t like to do the high places or the corners.”

  An hour later, I was bopping along with my music in the kitchen while Max cleaned out the cobwebs in the dining room next door.

  “Oh, Tallie, did you hear? That wonderful Craig Johnson died!” Miss Smythe came into the kitchen fully dressed this time and looking far more distraught than I’d ever seen her before. “Oh, you might not know him since I doubt you’re in a place that you can remodel. You’re still at your father’s above the funeral parlor, correct?”

  “I did hear that. And yes, I still live there.” Had she really just heard or was she trying to let me in on gossip she thought was important? I didn’t remember seeing her at the funeral, but maybe she had not gotten an invitation.

  She had always been a gossip. Even when I was vapid and ridiculous I had at least known enough to stay away from her as much as possible.

  I wanted to keep my cards close to my vest here. Craig would be about the age she liked, and he would have probably been perfect for her. Was this another one of his girlfriends?

  “I’m devastated. Absolutely devastated.” I saw no tears forming in her eyes, but everyone dealt with devastation differently, I guessed.

  “Were the two of you seeing each other?”

  She laughed gaily, a high-pitched trill. “Oh heavens, no. He had a bevy of ladies after him. I might change husbands as often as some people change their hairdo, but I like mine unmarried and not quite so polished.”

  She leaned against the counter I’d just scrubbed and idly ran her finger over the top, lifting it to her face. To check for dirt or dust? She wouldn’t find any. I was good at my job. That was why people hired me.

  “I’m devastated because he was going to remodel our house. That man had ideas like you wouldn’t believe. You would have thought he would be more masculine, but some of the things he wanted to install, and the way he seemed to almost read my mind about the little feminine touches, were astounding.”

  Feminine touches? I had taken Craig for a man with an eye for the ladies. But one never could tell about these things. I had never seen any of his work that I knew of, and his Web site had been strangely devoid of any finished project pictures.

  “Well, hopefully you can find someone else. Does he have a partner that could maybe still do the job?” Yes, I was playing dumb, but this could be information I could use if she k
new things and had worked with them before.

  “Ah, yes, Drake. Now, that man is magnificent to look at but not so wonderful with the designs. I was scheduled with him first.” She mock shivered. “His ideas were far too blocky, too masculine.”

  “Did Craig do most of the designing?” With my rubber-gloved hand in ammonia, I kept scrubbing the silver as we talked.

  “Oh, I think he did a fair amount. Drake was mostly the one who would follow along behind him with the hammer and nails. A strange partnership if you ask me, especially with the way everyone knows Drake wanted Craig’s wife.”

  Everyone but me, until recently.

  “And how did Craig seem about Drake wanting his wife?” An outside opinion could go a long way to seeing the dynamics in a totally different light. Especially since I had not known Craig when he was alive and had never seen him with his wife except for when she was pulling him out of the Bean that fateful day.

  “Unconcerned. It was curious, but I would not have been surprised if Craig was actually gay. He showed all the feminine qualities of my friend Roger. Do you know Roger?”

  Yes, I knew Roger and had enjoyed chatting with the flamboyant man who always had a laugh and smile on his face while he wore silk smoking jackets with cravats that were perfectly arranged. I had loved Roger, but as far as I was concerned he was nothing like Craig. “Roger and I used to get in debates about the theater.” Long ago, when I was married to Waldo, Roger was one of the bright spots in any party I had to go to.

  “Oh, the theater. He can’t ever stop talking about that. Anyway, I just always thought Craig might be more of a man’s man, if you know what I mean.” And then she winked at me.

  And now I had a whole other thing to think about. How many women that he dated did Craig sleep with? All? Or was it all just flowers and showmanship? Was he gay? Could it have been a man who’d killed him? One who’d seen him go into Gina’s house one more time? I put it into my mental file, but I had doubts. Coming from this particular source, I had to wonder if the theory had more to do with Miss Smythe failing to capture Craig’s attention and so blaming it on something that had nothing to do with her.