“Next time I suggest you don’t accuse someone without proof, Detective Inspector. I can understand why you thought it was me. I did have the best opportunity, but I didn’t have a motive, and I didn’t know until recently either Lisa or Tom knew Paul.”
“You don’t believe it was Lisa.”
“Right now I don’t know what to believe. She said it was her, so I should believe her, and yet I have trouble seeing my friend as a murderer. I’m sure it’s the same for all the people who find out one of their friends has committed such a terrible crime.”
“There’s more to it than that. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“You have someone arrested. Isn’t that enough for you?”
“Not if I’ve arrested the wrong person, Miss Lennon, and I don’t think your friend Lisa actually murderer, Paul.” He brushed a hand through his hair. “I think she’s covering for someone.”
“Do you think she’s covering for me?”
“This time, no, I don’t. I don’t believe the two of you were close enough for her to go to all this effort for you. If it had been Hannah, on the other hand, I would have thought it was more likely, but in this case… could she be covering for her boyfriend, Tom?”
“I had no way of knowing what she’s doing. All I know for certain is that she confessed to murder. Now, if that’s all, I would like to spend some time getting my shop back in order. I hope you’re going to be talking to the papers about this.”
“I will be–and I will set the record straight, Miss Lennon because I never should have said what I did in the first place.”
***
Robert was waiting outside the police station. “Why don’t you think Lisa committed the murder?”
“Paul wasn’t the sort of person to hurt Lisa for saying no to him.”
“You said you didn’t know him.”
“I didn’t, but both Cassie and Becca did, and I haven’t heard either of them say a bad word about him. The very thought of him doing something like that… it doesn’t make sense, Robert.” Mary Ann shook her head. “I shouldn’t care, because someone is in prison and it’s not me, but Lisa’s a friends, and if she’s said she murdered Paul to protect Tom I need to find out.”
“Maybe the best thing you could do is get you life back to normal. You don’t want for Tom to come after you.”
“There’s a chance he’ll come after me no matter what I do. I saw him when I arrived at the station and he was furious with me for being the one Lisa made this decision for.” She sighed. “My problem is not knowing why she confessed. Did she confess for me? Did she confess for him.”
“Did she confess for both of you?” Robert shrugged. “It’s entirely possible she confessed so he wouldn’t and you’d be safe from the threat of being arrested. Had she not confessed to the murder my brother would have kept trying to find the evidence he needed to convict you. There’s a chance Thomas would have given him that evidence, in order to protect himself.”
“Yes, there is. Did you find out what Marco said?”
“He was very kind about you. Alex wasn’t best pleased when Marco said he didn’t think it was possible you’d murdered Paul. For a start there was no way for you to know who was going to take each piece.”
“Russian Roulette, with lemon meringue.” Mary Ann laughed. “I can just see that coming up as an explanation.”
“Interesting idea, but not one that would make much sense because you had even less reason to hurt a lot of other people in the shop that night. There is a chance Darren or Hannah would have taken the poisoned slice.”
Mary Ann could feel the colour drain from her face. “Please don’t say things like that.”
“We both know it’s true, and that’s why you wouldn’t have done something like that. The last thing you would have wanted was to hurt someone you cared about. Marco was right about it being impossible for you to know for certain Paul would take the slice he did because they were all pretty much identical. How did you do that?”
“Practice. It’s important that everything is consistent in the shop, so I made certain it is.” Their eyes met. “Okay, so that means my opportunity wasn’t as great as it seemed.”
“No, it wasn’t.” D. I. O’Connor’s voice made her jump. “I didn’t realise the two of you knew each other.”
“We didn’t until recently, Alex. This case has changed things.”
***
Sitting in the coffee shop with both the O’Connors wasn’t how Mary Ann had anticipated spending any time, but working with them might help. Knowing Thomas might have murdered Paul made it much more likely he would be willing to do whatever he thought needed to be done in order to get Lisa out of prison. That could well involve killed someone else. As she sipped her coffee, trying to work out how her life had become so difficult in such a short space of time, she stared out of the window at a world that hadn’t changed. In some ways that was the hardest part. Everyone else was living normally and she was fighting to put her old life back together.
“Why would Thomas have killed Paul?” D. I. O’Connor shook his head. “Lisa had a motive.”
“Lisa gave you a motive. Everyone I’ve spoken to about Paul said he was a lovely guy, and that, to me, doesn’t make me think he’d be capable of doing something like that to Lisa. I might be wrong, but I don’t think I am. I think she was giving you a motive, because she felt she had to confess.”
“The arsenic bottle had her fingerprints on. The gloves had her fingerprints inside.”
“Yes, and she had two days to plan this. It’s really not hard to buy a pair of gloves to stick your fingers inside and a bottle is easy enough to wipe down before she touched it.” Mary Ann shrugged. “If Tom did murder Paul then the most important thing is working out why. Lisa gave you a motive. It made a lot of sense, unless, of course, you actually knew Paul, but he’s dead and can’t argue against her. Cassie or Becca might try to, and they’d be seen as loyal friends trying to protect the reputation of someone they’ve recently lost. Greg told me he saw Tom and Paul together in a coffee shop at some time before the party. He doesn’t know what they were talking about, but it seems likely that was the day their friendship came to an end.”
Robert looked at his brother. “Did you find anything that might lead us to Paul’s killer in his apartment?”
“No, unfortunately. Men are often the type to write in journals and we didn’t find any other paperwork there that might have talked about a problem he was having with friends of his. Maybe it would be better if we talked to Cassie and Rebecca again. Now we know who the killer might have been they might be able to tell us something.”
“Or they might not.” Mary Ann brushed a hand through her hair. “Not all of my friends happen to be friends with each other. When we all get together, it works, but that doesn’t mean Paul would have mentioned Tom to them. I think, for now, I want to go back to living my life without worrying about this. Lisa’s not going anywhere and I don’t think Tom is either.”
***
Hannah wrapped her arms around Mary Ann. “Next time you have a party I want you to promise me there won’t be any deaths.”
Mary Ann sighed. “I’m not stupid enough to make promises I can’t keep, but I’m telling you now it’s very unlikely I’m going to be having any parties in the future.” She shook her head. “That one went incredibly wrong and I don’t ever want to have to think about it again.”
“That’s not going to stop you.”
“No, it’s not, but that’s the way I feel right now.” Their eyes met. “I just spent an hour in a coffee shop talking with Robert and D. I. O’Connor about why I don’t think Lisa killed Paul.”
“Why do you think it was?”
“Tom.”
“Considering the person he’s become in recent months I wouldn’t put it past him, but he doesn’t have a motive.”
“Neither does Lisa. She made one up, because she wanted to protect two people she cared about, and I think, even though I
wish she hadn’t, the person she wanted to protect the most was me. Tom’s furious with me for being the reason she’s in prison.”
“If he is the murderer he’s the reason she’s in prison.”
“At the moment I think he’s too angry to be logical, Han. He wants someone to blame for what happened and he’s decided to blame me. Maybe that’s what happened when he chose to poison Paul.”
“No, that was too well thought out to be a spur of the moment thing. If you are right and it was Tom he would have had to have bought the arsenic, decanted some of it the night of the party, remembered to take gloves, and probably a syringe of some kind in order to inject the arsenic into the pie… that was cold blooded murder, Mare.”
Shuddering, she shook her head. “I didn’t think any one of our friends was capable of that.”
“Tom’s changed a lot in the last six months. After he started drinking I realised I didn’t know him anymore. He’s not the same person he was.”
“I didn’t know he was drinking.”
“You’ve been so focused on getting your life together I don’t think you would have noticed, and, if you had done, he would have done everything to make you think you were wrong about it all. He doesn’t want to admit he has a problem when he really does. He doesn’t want anyone, apart from Lisa, to help him through this, and that makes me think he might have done something in the recent past he wasn’t proud of.”
“Like what?”
“I wish I knew because then we might have worked out why he made the decision to murder Paul.”
“Paul has to have known something about Tom he was going to tell Lisa about. That’s the only explanation I can come up with. I just don’t know what it could have been.”
Chapter 9
Mary Ann should have been sorting out her shop, but instead she found herself at the library. She’d already planned to have a couple of days off and checked to make sure she could afford it, so taking the extra days wasn’t going to do too much harm. Finding out the truth was far more important. When she reached the microfiche machines, she couldn’t help laughing. “How far have you got, Robert?”
“I started a year ago, even though I know Thomas’ drinking problem didn’t start until six months ago, because I was wondering if whatever happened was what set off the drinking in the first place. So far I’m a month in and I haven’t found anything that might link to him.” Robert looked at her. “Shouldn’t you be at the shop?”
“Yes, but I’ve realised I’m not the sort of person who can let something like this go. I spent most of last night wishing I was.”
“Join me. You can take May of last year and I’ll go onto June.”
“Thank you.” Mary Ann sighed. “I’m not going to let Lisa go to jail for something she didn’t do.”
“You’re certain you’re right about this.”
“As certain as I can be. I don’t want this to be true, but I believe Tom killed Paul. I just have to work out what the motive was and then I’m going to confront him.”
“Which is the most terrible idea you’ve ever had.”
“Maybe it is, but I can’t just walk away from this. If it makes you feel better, I’ll do my best to take your brother with me, because then he can arrest Tom straight away, and you won’t have to worry about anything happening to me. You shouldn’t anyway. We barely know each other.”
“Barely knowing each other doesn’t change anything, Mary Ann. I liked you from the moment I met you and I don’t want anything to happen to you.” Robert shook his head. “That is if you are right about Tom.”
“Lisa’s story didn’t make sense. Not according to the people who knew Paul. Both Cassie and Becca told me it wasn’t possible for Paul to do something like that to anyone, and they’re certain he didn’t have a thing for her.”
“Okay, then we need to go back to this and try to find whatever it was that led to this happening.”
Nodding, Mary Ann turned to the papers for May, slowly going through the pages, looking for something that jumped out at her as something that might have caused Thomas’ drinking problem… or be the reason he made the decision to kill someone in cold blood. There was nothing. None of the news reports about accidents made her think Thomas might have been at one of them and she knew there hadn’t been any deaths in his life. Hannah had done everything she could to fill Mary Ann in on Thomas, to make it easier for her to find out the truth.
***
After three long hours at staring at microfiche pages Mary Ann was beginning to feel like she wanted to go to sleep. Yawning, she turned to the next page, and that was when she felt something buzzing next to her. Robert took his phone out of his pocket and then left. Obviously it was a call he needed to take. She brushed a hand through her hair, doing her best not to think about coffee, and turned another page, wishing the reports she was reading were more interesting. The local paper was full of everything that was boring because barely anything happened. A murder was big news. Accidents were big news too, but they weren’t regular occurrences, so most of the reports she read were about squirrels in the park or children having fun at school.
It was a nice distraction when Robert came back in, looking uncertain. “Alex just called me to say he’s gone a little deeper into Paul’s history. The two of them were step-brothers at one point. Thomas’ father married Paul’s mother when they were both fifteen, but the marriage didn’t last for very long. Now Alex is trying to get hold of Paul’s mother to ask why the relationship broke up, because that might have had something to do with the choices they made, although I don’t think that’s why they came to hate each other.”
“No, but it does explain how they knew each other.” Mary Ann flicked another page. “Your paper is very boring.”
“Yes, it is, and I’m glad of that. I like that there aren’t too many murders in the local area, which is why I live here instead of the centre of the city. That’s where the worst crime is. Alex moved out here with me to get away from that.”
“There are still murders, though.”
“In every place there’s going to be murder. People get angry, they get jealous, they make mistakes.” Robert flicked a page. “Cold blooded murders, like Paul’s, are far rarer, although it does make sense for it to have been Lisa who killed him. Poison is often the weapon of choice for women. Men prefer to use guns. They seem to like the person they killed knowing it was them that killed them. It seems like Thomas was doing his best not to get caught.”
“Or he was doing his best to blame me for the murder.” Mary Ann sighed. “Means and opportunity meant I was the most likely suspect, and then Lisa made the decision to confess, in order to protect me, when that was the last thing he wanted.”
“You think of Thomas as a friend.”
“Maybe Hannah’s right when she says he’s changed more than I realised. I’ve spent so much of my time here focusing on my life I haven’t had a chance to focus on everyone else’s. When I left for college Lisa and Tom weren’t even together. Back then it seemed like an impossibility.”
***
When Mary Ann looked at the time, she realised she’d been looking for the truth for over six hours. “Robert, we need to take a break. Both of us need something to eat and to drink.”
He shook his head, before looking over at her. “I’m always like this. I get too involved in my work and forget to eat or drink.” He stepped away from the machine. “This time I am going to do what my body needs me to do, instead of what I want to be doing.”
“There’s a little cafe just up the road we can go to. The owner buys my pies occasionally.”
“Do you think being accused of murder will affect your business?”
“I have no idea.” She sighed. “I hope it won’t, but like I said before, I know there are going to be people who believe I am the murderer, even though someone else confessed.” She shook her head. “I hate that Lisa confessed to protect me.”
“You can’t be certain of that.”
“No, I can’t, but I think it’s the more likely explanation. It would explain why Tom was so angry with me. I don’t know why he would have wanted me arrested for murder.”
“Unlike him you’re successful. He’s in a dead-end job that he hates and seeing you living your dream makes him jealous. He thought he could deal with two problems at the same time by murdering Paul and blaming it on you.”
“Tom never would have done something like that. He was a really nice guy when I knew him before. The drink… I didn’t know it could change someone that much.”
“How do you know he wasn’t pretending to be a nice guy and drinker Thomas is who he’s always been?” Robert shrugged. “The problem with people is you never truly know who they are. Sometimes they let their true colours out, but most of the time they act the way they feel they should. It’s a part of being human.”
The Alpha Billionaire's Unexpected Baby: A Billionaire BWWM Pregnancy Romance Page 52
