by Mary Bowers
“No,” Taylor said. “She had a boyfriend, and you thought you recognized him, but you refused to believe it. That’s why you said it didn’t make sense.”
Roy watched her warily.
“You didn’t want to believe it, because you didn’t think that even a woman like Jessamine would be fooling around with her husband’s own son.”
Roy’s head elevated, he paused, then he said, “Bullseye.”
She looked at Dobbs. “You felt the same way about it. You liked Jessamine. You didn’t want to believe it.”
“I still don’t.”
“Fascinating,” Bruno said blandly. “You said there was proof?”
“Go ahead, Dobbs. Tell them.”
He reared back. “Me? I don’t have any proof.”
“Yes you do. You saw her talking on a cellphone, but when you checked, there was nothing in the calls log. And when she went to the beach, she was talking on a phone. You said she had it up against her head when she turned around and waved goodbye to you.”
“With one finger,” he said.
“Right.” She turned to Bruno. “But you said you found her cellphone next to her purse in her bedroom, after she died.”
Something like, “Holy shit,” escaped from Stetson, then he got a grip on himself. “We didn’t believe him when he said she was talking on a phone when she walked away. We thought he must have made that up, because she didn’t have one on her at the beach, and we found her phone still in the house.”
“We were suspicious of everything he said,” Bruno said, looking right at Dobbs, “because of the way he ran away that night.”
“For the last time, I did not run away! I’d quit the investigation and I didn’t know she was dead. And,” Dobbs added fiercely, “I didn’t kill her!”
“So,” Taylor said, “Jessamine had a secret phone. A prepaid cellphone that I’m guessing she only used to call one number. If there was no cellphone on the beach, he must have taken it away with him after he killed her. Find out whose number she was calling and you’ve got your man.”
“That may not be so easy.”
“Check the calls made to either Kent’s or Britt’s phones. It was one of them, I’m sure of it. I’m just not sure which.”
“We already checked. Nothing between either one of them and Jessamine. Nothing suspicious on either phone.”
“I was afraid of that. Then he has a prepaid phone, too, and he’s probably gotten rid of it by now.” Taylor sat back, frustrated.
“Wait a minute,” Stetson said. He turned to Bruno. “Remember that number we couldn’t identify in Wendy Pissarro’s calls log?”
“That had to be it,” Taylor said, excitedly. “It’s most likely to be Kent then, but still, it could have been either one of them. Can you find out?”
“We already have,” Bruno said.
“How?”
“We asked her. It was a call from her son. He must have accidentally used the wrong phone, or the battery was down on his usual cellphone. Whatever. Anyway, we’ve got the number. We can connect it to the one Jessamine had, and there’s our link. Bravo, Taylor. Nice job.”
But she didn’t seem very happy about it. “I was kind of hoping . . . Britt just doesn’t have the same kind of charisma . . . .”
“Britt’s not a killer,” Bruno said. “He’s just a normal, average, slightly irritating guy, who’s going to make Tiffany Pissarro a very good husband – unless she gets bored with him. Now: we’re pretty sure who it was, and we’re pretty sure how it was done. Would you care to make our job even easier, and tell us why?”
Chapter 27
She shrugged. “I can only guess.”
“Please,” Bruno said. “Guess away. Your guesses always fascinate me.”
“Hatred.”
They waited for more, and when she wasn’t forthcoming, Bruno said, “Of . . . ?”
“His father. Kent is very close to his mother. He must have been outraged at the way his father treated her.”
“It’s true, detective,” Ed said. “I had to warn him at the séance not to break the chain, because he hovered over her so much I was afraid he was going to put his arm around her.”
“We picked up on that ourselves,” Bruno said. “After the divorce, the three of them – his ex-wife and kids – turned on him. Wendy Pissarro was always weepy and bewildered, and Tiffany seemed absorbed in protecting her mother, but Kent was smoldering. And yet – and yet – the kids still kept in touch with their father. Kent even did some work on his new house. When we notified them of Alan’s death, the only one really upset was Wendy.”
“Which brings up another question,” Dobbs said. “Was Tiffany in on it with her brother?”
Taylor said, “I hope not.” She looked at Ed. “You said Kent had admitted that Jessamine had flirted with him. That’s what got me started thinking about it: what if those two were working together, at least as long as Kent still needed Jessamine. He told you he rejected her. What if he didn’t? What if he saw it as an opportunity to get close to her, to manipulate her into agreeing to get rid of a husband who had turned out to be depressed and angry? Trust me as a woman, Kent is the kind of man who can get a woman like Jessamine to do whatever he wants. He must have seen it as the perfect opportunity to get revenge against his father for betraying all of them, and especially Wendy. And also the opportunity to have revenge against the woman that had torn his family apart.”
“The same goes for Tiffany,” Dobbs persisted, and Taylor shot him a look. “I like the girl, but I draw the line at murderers.”
Taylor looked to the detectives. “Where was Tiffany that night?”
“At the beach condo, with her fiancé,” Bruno said. “They alibied one another, and they ordered a pizza that night. The pizza man remembers them, because they gave him such a big tip.”
“They still could have been working with Kent, and just let him do the dirty work that night,” Dobbs said. “Maybe that’s why they gave the pizza guy such a memorable tip.”
“Dobbs, shut up,” Taylor said. “More accomplices just don’t fit. They’re not necessary. Besides, why would Britt want to kill Alan?”
“Because Alan didn’t like him,” Roy said. “He kept telling Tiffany not to marry him, but after Alan divorced Wendy, Tiffany wasn’t listening to him anymore. With Alan alive, I would never have considered bringing Britt into the business, like he wanted. Alan wouldn’t have stood for it.”
Taylor transferred her gaze to Bruno. “He’s not the type. Britt Bascombe is just a guy who wants to manage a beach bar because he likes the romantic image of the gentleman renegade, turning his back on Society and tending an island bar full of colorful characters. But he wouldn’t kill for it. I’m sure of it.”
“Are you really?” Bruno said. “Well, so am I. As for Tiffany . . . I’m not so sure. And even if we get enough evidence to arrest her brother, he’ll never admit it if she was involved.”
“She’s not involved.”
“Really?” Bruno said. “I wondered, because she was the one who tried to keep a connection with her father, and at least tried to be friendly with her stepmother. That could have been all part of the plan, though. And I figure she must have been the one who told Jessamine to go ahead and hire Dobbs.”
“No, that was Kent,” Dobbs said. “Jessamine said that after Alan died, things were better between her and her stepchildren, at least for a while. She even gave Tiffany her husband’s car.”
“She told me that, too,” Ed said. “She said something about the key being missing. And then, out of the blue, it turned up again.”
Bruno turned to Taylor. “Any ideas about that?”
“When you get that prepaid phone, check the text log. It’ll tell you more than the calls log. I bet she texted Kent that the key was missing, and he managed to get it back to her.”
“But he didn’t do it that way,” Ed said. “He was gaslighting her. He took the key, and then after she’d had another one made and gave the car
to Tiffany, he put the one he had back on the hook. She thought Alan’s ghost had done it. I’m sure she wasn’t lying about that part of it, because she seemed so relieved when she decided Alan approved of Tiffany getting the car. But the part before that, where she claimed the car tried to kill her – the way she told it, it just came off rather bogus. I think that must have been a story Kent told her to make her afraid of the car, and when she was trying to get me to believe her, she repeated it back at me, saying it had happened to her. But she wasn’t showing any emotion, other than frustration that I was skeptical of her. People who have had real, near-death experiences have emotional meltdowns when they recount them. Then, later, at the séance, Kent claimed it had happened to him. But it was all a lie. If there really had been such an incident, he’d never have allowed his sister to drive that car. He just made it up to convince Jessamine that her husband was a danger to her – to them both.”
“I wondered about that,” Dobbs said. “He was getting so hostile about Taylor’s performance as a medium, and then suddenly he was all in with us, believing in his father’s ghost.”
“He needed to redirect the conversation, and fast,” Ed said. “Taylor was getting dangerously close to asking Britt questions about his kayak. He had to think fast, and that’s what he came up with: the story about the homicidal car that he had made up for Jessamine. He didn’t know that she had told me the same story, saying it had happened to her instead of him. After her death, I reviewed my notes and began to suspect somebody had been trying to frighten her, convince her she was being haunted. Now we know it was Kent.”
“Why?” Bruno asked.
“A little bit of torture, before finally killing her?” Taylor asked. “A way of making her seem unbalanced, so it was more plausible she had killed her husband. The security system for that house is set up to work remotely from an app. You noticed that, right? And who had the app on his phone?” she added, batting her eyes.
“Kent Pissarro,” Bruno said.
Roy spoke up. “He installed the system for his father. I remember, because Alan thought the fact that Kent was willing to do that meant he was getting over his anger.”
“And nobody bothered to tell Jessamine,” Dobbs added. “She didn’t know about it.”
“I think I can explain that,” Roy said. “It took a good eight months to get their house on Paradise Island to the point where they could move into it. By that time, I don’t think their relationship was that good anymore. He might have kept it secret from her so he could spy on her.”
“Are there cameras?” Taylor asked, perking up.
“Unfortunately, no,” Bruno said. “Only motion detectors.”
“Darn. Well, if Kent was planning on fooling around with Jessamine, he’d hardly have installed them.”
“Alan wanted them,” Roy said. “He kept complaining that Kent couldn’t get them operational, and he was talking about having somebody else install them, but he never would have. He wouldn’t have wanted to upset Kent, and Alan was just an idea man. He thought things up, and then other people did the work.”
Dobbs seemed to be relishing the scenario they were uncovering. “And then her lover used his control of her house to scare the daylights out of her. Punish her for taking his father away, before he finally killed her.”
“It wasn’t just that,” Taylor said. “He wanted to make her seem delusional, in case she’d confided in anybody about him. People who believe in the paranormal are notoriously goofy,” she added with hooded eyes.
“So how do you think it went down that night?” Bruno asked Taylor.
She shrugged. “It might be all mapped out for you when you find that prepaid phone.”
“Please,” he said, spreading his hands. “I’m interested.”
“Well,” she began slowly, “Dobbs said he and Jessamine had a fight. He told her he was quitting, and she was angry. She must have texted or called Kent and told him while she was upstairs alone in her bedroom, and for whatever reason, Kent wanted her to keep Dobbs here.”
“If things didn’t go as planned, I was going to be the fall guy,” Dobbs said. “And I nearly was.”
“Kent texted her back and told her they had to talk. He wanted her to come to the beach, since Dobbs was in the house and they couldn’t talk there. He might have been tired of trying to sneak Britt’s kayak out of the garage and down the river at night, too. Anyway, with Dobbs about to leave at any time, he decided to end it. He got her to the beach under the cover of darkness, strangled her into unconsciousness and then drowned her. Then he took her prepaid phone and left her there on the beach, dead.”
She stopped. She hadn’t made the effort to visualize the incident before, and it was so ugly. Whatever Jessamine had been, nobody deserved to die like that, and at the hands of a lover.
“Well,” Bruno said, rising, “we’ll try to track down that secret cellphone and see how right or wrong you are.” He glanced at Ed. “Mind if I take that?” he said, looking at the recorder.
Ed gave it a little push toward the detectives. “You can return it to me when you return my video camera.”
“Absolutely.” Bruno took out a little notepad and scribbled a receipt, gave it to Ed, took the recorder and left with his partner.
There was a general air of being able to breathe again. As if she’d been waiting in the wings, the cat, Bastet, came striding out of Taylor’s office and paused, gazing around at the people at the table. Then she padded over near Taylor and jumped onto the table itself. Positioning herself as she’d been at the séance, she curled up in front of her human and steadily gazed.
“Fascinating,” Ed said. “How do you interpret this, Taylor?” he asked in half-voice.
Addressing herself to the cat, Taylor said, “You want to be fed, huh? That’s the only real function of human beings, right? That’s why you bother to keep us around.” She reached out and wove her fingers through the thick, silky fur of Bastet’s back. “Not quite yet, baby. You know when dinner time is, and you’re two hours early.”
The cat, watching Taylor intently, had no comment.
“Well,” Michael said, “now that we’re alone, friends, would anybody like that coffee?”
“I’ll take a good stiff drink,” Roy Angers said.
“You got it,” Michael told him, moving away from the banquet table. The others kept their seats, looking deflated.
Then Roy got up and walked around the table, seating himself at Taylor’s elbow.
“So you think Kent will come for me next?”
She twisted her lips and looked at him. “Let’s just say I think you need a few days’ rest in a private asylum by the river.”
“I’ve got a business to run.”
“I think you’ll be safe enough there, but don’t tell anybody you’re staying with us, okay?”
He studied her for a few long moments, and in that time, Michael slid his drink in front of him. Roy picked up the glass and drank deeply. The cat, who appeared to have gone to sleep, suddenly raised her head and stared at Roy.
When he set the glass down again, he told Taylor, “From now on, I’m following any orders you give me, no matter how squirrely they are.”
Bastet went back to sleep.
* * * * *
Roy spent the evening working at The Big Catch, and he didn’t return to Cadbury House until 1:30 am. When he walked in the door, Taylor and Michael were waiting for him.
“We couldn’t sleep,” Taylor said. “We wanted to make sure you got back all right. That dirt road isn’t easy to navigate in the dark, if you’re not used to it.”
He eyed them, and his usual stand-offish demeanor underwent a change. “Thanks. I know why you were really worried, but everything was fine tonight. No sign of trouble. I usually unwind after work with a beer. Want to join me?”
They went to the breakfast bar and the men had beers while Taylor had a glass of wine. They had been chatting idly for about half an hour, and Taylor was just about to say she was
going to bed when Roy’s cellphone rang. He looked at it, then looked up at Taylor.
“Unknown Caller.”
“It might be Kent,” she said immediately. “Answer it. If it’s him, tell him you’re at home now. Tell him you’re already in bed.”
Roy answered the call, and then a sadness came over his face, as he said, “Hi, Kent.”
He did as Taylor had instructed. Then he ended the call and put the phone down on the counter.
“He didn’t ask to come over. He just wanted to talk.”
“He wanted to be sure you were at home now. Does he usually call you in the middle of the night, just to talk?”
“No.” Roy began to sag. “He’s never done it before. I’ve known him since he was a baby. I changed his diapers. I taught him to surf.”
“As far as he’s concerned, it’s your life or his.” She looked at him but he wouldn’t look back.
She shared a sympathetic look with Michael and then she took up her own cellphone and called Detective Bruno.
Hours later, Bruno called Taylor back. The anxiety of the long wait had exhausted her, and she listened almost silently, thanked him, then ended the call.
“They’ve got Kent,” she said to nobody in particular. Michael and Roy were sitting there listening, but they acted as if they hadn’t heard. Nobody was surprised. “Bruno’s thrilled. They can book him on breaking and entering, then investigate away to their heart’s content on the murders while he’s locked up. He came in from the river, by kayak, and he has no good explanation for that. His prepaid cellphone was in his pocket; he was probably going to throw it into the river after . . . he wouldn’t have needed it anymore after tonight.”
“He broke into my house?” Roy asked, as if he weren’t really interested.
“The garage,” she said. “He had the code for the keypad that operates your garage doors. He started one of your cars. They’ll charge him with trying to steal the car, but they think he was going to leave it running and close the garage door again.”
