by Vicki Delany
“I’m not saying I buy this, Gemma,” Ryan said, “but let’s pretend I do. Jock arranged a boating accident for Edward. It worked, and then what happened?”
“Elizabeth told him she wasn’t going to marry him. I think she told him in pretty blunt terms something like it had been fun while it lasted, but now it was time for him to get lost. She might have even suspected Jock killed Edward—that I don’t know. All of Jock’s subsequent anger at Elizabeth, lasting right up to last week when they met at the auction tea, indicates a scorned and humiliated lover. He had to have her kicked out of the West London Yacht Club because he couldn’t bear seeing her every day, knowing that not only could he not have her, but she no longer wanted him. Jock then went on to have a string of affairs, and his wife, probably shocked at the change in him, found solace elsewhere.”
“That’s incredibly far-fetched,” Estrada said.
“I’ll admit,” I said, “I’m sure of only one fact: Jock O’Callaghan loved Elizabeth Dumont, he loves her still, and the agony of unrequited love haunts him. All the rest is conjecture from that point.”
Ryan and Estrada exchanged glances. “What can it hurt?” she said.
“I’ll ask to have another look at the files,” he said.
I brushed grass off my jeans. “I have to take Violet home and get back to the shop. Anyone want to walk with us?”
“I think I’ll pass,” Estrada said. “Some of us have work to do.”
Ryan smiled at me. I smiled at him. Violet wiggled her way between us.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Two weeks later, Ryan invited himself to dinner at my house. Fortunately for Ryan, Uncle Arthur was home, and he’d put the traditional English Sunday joint of beef—to be served along with roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, and two veg—into the oven while I was at the shop. A sherry trifle for dessert rested on the countertop.
Ryan arrived at the door, bearing a bottle of wine and a satisfied grin.
“What’s up?” I said, accepting the bottle while Violet danced her excitement.
“I have some news. Where’s Arthur?”
“He went out. Donald stopped by earlier to see The Valley of Fear, and then they went to the pub.”
“I thought that book was donated to the auction for the Scarlet House restoration fund?”
“It was. Uncle Arthur escorted Mrs. Johnston to the gala at the yacht club. When the bidding began, he had second thoughts and bought it back. Essentially, he paid fifteen thousand dollars for his own book.”
“Sounds like your uncle Arthur, all right.”
“He said not to wait dinner for him.” I got out the corkscrew and set to work on the bottle, with a determined frown. I’m a big fan of screw-top wine bottles. “What’s your news?”
“We’ve arrested James Cameron O’Callaghan for the murder of Edward Dumont.”
The cork came out with a pop. “I assume that’s Jock’s full name. Is the charge going to stick?”
“Probably not. But O’Callaghan didn’t like being taken away in the early hours in handcuffs. A picture of that scene will likely grace the front page of the West London Star tomorrow. Irene Talbot got an anonymous tip.”
I handed Ryan a glass of wine. “Let’s have a seat in the living room, and you can tell me what you found.”
We settled ourselves comfortably on the sofa. Ryan leaned against the cushions, and I tucked my bare legs onto his lap. Violet smiled approvingly from the floor.
“Cheers.” Ryan lifted his glass. I touched it with mine. “The lead detective on the case was an old guy by the name of Patrick Brown. He was close to retirement and not looking forward to it. Twice divorced, estranged from his kids, a couple of black marks on his record, and known to be a heavy drinker.”
“That you’re telling me the detective’s life story leads me to suspect what happened.”
“Yup. On the day he died, Edward Dumont arrived at the yacht club early in the morning, which was his regular routine. He was alone when he greeted one of the gardeners, a man he knew well, and then made his way down to his slip. The gardener watched him go but then went around the side of the building. No one saw Dumont again. It was, remember, very early in the morning.
“Detective Brown took early retirement six months later. He bought a place in Florida and moved down there to enjoy his retirement years.”
“A nice place?”
“Very. He didn’t enjoy it for long as he died of a heart attack less than a year later. His kids decided to keep the place for a vacation home. They found some papers he’d left, boxed them up, and stuck them into a closet.” He sipped his wine. His blue eyes sparkled. He was enjoying dragging the story out.
“He concealed evidence that implicated Jock?”
“Yes. I had nothing to go on other than your suspicions, but I managed to make the Florida cops think I’d found fresh evidence while investigating the murder of Dumont’s widow, and I needed to see if the original detective had kept anything I could use. They went through his papers and found what we were looking for soon enough. Brown was, apparently, guilt-stricken at subverting the law.”
“But not enough to confess to what he’d done.”
“No. He left his papers with instructions to his heirs to hand them over to the police after his death. His kids didn’t care enough to even read the note, and everything was stuffed away to look at another day. We’re lucky they didn’t throw it all out. O’Callaghan had been a witness to a robbery in a liquor store a few weeks before Dumont’s death. Brown had been the investigating officer, and he interviewed the witnesses. He’d noticed Callaghan had on an expensive designer blue blazer, which he was wearing as he’d just left the yacht club. A torn scrap of cloth matching that jacket was found caught on a loose piece of wood in Dumont’s boat. Brown simply lifted the evidence and paid a call on O’Callaghan by himself, without telling anyone. He asked to see the jacket, and O’Callaghan couldn’t produce it.”
“Because he realized it was torn and had thrown it away.”
“Brown could have ordered a search of the trash from O’Callaghan’s neighborhood, but he didn’t. He said he’d get rid of the fibers for a hundred thousand dollars.”
“And so Jock got off scot-free.”
“Until you began looking into Elizabeth’s death and read his mind.”
“If you want to put it like that.”
Ryan grinned. “Any reasonably competent lawyer will try to get O’Callaghan off on the grounds that all we have is Brown’s letter, which means almost nothing in a court of law, and a torn scrap of cloth he’d included with the note that we have absolutely nothing to match against.”
“Maybe questioning him will have the domino effect Louise talked about earlier, and he’ll fold.”
Ryan raised his glass. “Here’s to smart beautiful women who don’t know how to mind their own business.”
I saluted him with my own drink. Violet barked her approval. Ryan put down his glass and reached for me. He plucked my drink out of my hand and put it on the table next to his. “I hope that roast will keep.”
“It won’t,” I said.
“Too bad.”
The front door opened. “The problem with The Valley of Fear, Arthur,” Donald Morris said, “is that—”
“Never mind.” Ryan kissed the top of my head. “I’ve always wanted to know what the problem is with The Valley of Fear.”
I leaned back and lifted my fingers to caress his face. “In that case, you’ve come to the right place. From now on, all my detecting will be between the pages of a good book.”
I meant it. People don’t often get second chances, and I was extremely lucky Ryan had come back into my life. From now on, I’d focus on building our relationship.
No more detecting for me.
Not until the next time, anyway.
Sherlock Holmes Bookshop Mysteries
The Cat of the Baskervilles
Body on Baker Street
Elementary, She Read
Lighthouse Library Mysteries (writing as Eva Gates)
The Spook in the Stacks
Reading Up A Storm
Booked for Trouble
By Book or By Crook
Ashley Grant Mysteries
Blue Water Hues
White Sand Blues
Year-Round Christmas Mysteries
Hark the Herald Angels Slay
We Wish you a Murderous Christmas
Rest Ye Murdered Gentlemen
Constable Molly Smith Mysteries
Unreasonable Doubt
Under Cold Stone
A Cold White Sun
Among the Departed
Negative Image
Winter of Secrets
Valley of the Lost
In the Shadow of the Glacier
Also Available by Vicki Delany
More than Sorrow
Burden of Memory
Scare the Light Away
Author Biography
Vicki Delany is a national bestseller in the U.S and one of Canada’s most prolific and varied crime writers. A former computer programmer and systems analyst, Vicki lives and writes in bucolic Prince Edward County, Ontario. She is the past president of the Crime Writers of Canada.
This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, organizations, places and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real or actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Vicki Delany
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crooked Lane Books, an imprint of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Crooked Lane Books and its logo are trademarks of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication data available upon request.
ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-68331-790-6
ISBN (ePub): 978-1-68331-791-3
ISBN (ePDF): 978-1-68331-792-0
Cover illustration by Joe Burleson
Book design by Jennifer Canzone
Printed in the United States.
www.crookedlanebooks.com
Crooked Lane Books
34 West 27th St., 10th Floor
New York, NY 10001
First Edition: November 2018
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