by J A Whiting
“Go on.” Mrs. Bradford’s voice was hoarse.
“Emily flirted with Father Anthony, made him uncomfortable whenever she was around. Father Anthony and Mary were friends. People gossiped about them being more than friends. The idea that Father Anthony and Mary might be having an affair made Emily crazy.”
“Shut up,” Emily screamed. “You don’t know me.”
Mrs. Bradford shot Emily a warning look.
“Kenny spoiled Emily’s plans to go to New York City for the day. Emily claimed she went, but she didn’t. She couldn’t have arrived home so quickly that day if she had taken the bus back and forth like she says she did. She would have only been in New York for two hours if she was home when you say you arrived back from Boston, Mrs. Bradford.” Olivia paused to steady her voice. “Emily went to the church that afternoon to see Father Anthony. He rebuffed her. She was in a rage. Father Anthony went into the rectory to get away from her. Mary and her daughter arrived at the church hall with the paint, but only Emily was there.”
Olivia faced Emily. “I don’t know what happened next, but your fury and jealousy caused you to murder my cousins.”
Emily’s fingernails had pierced the fabric of the chair arms. Her eyes were wild and she was hyperventilating.
“Explain the semen.” Mrs. Bradford’s voice was tense.
Olivia wiped at her eyes and cleared her throat. She tried to speak but nothing came out.
“I would offer you a drink, Olivia, but this isn’t a social occasion,” Mrs. Bradford said. “Keep talking.”
Olivia coughed. “Kenny came over that night…the night of the murders. You wouldn’t let him in because of your earlier fight with Emily near the fireplace. So Kenny and Emily talked outside…in her parked car.”
“Go on.”
Olivia looked at Emily.
“Angela said she saw you and Kenny in the backseat of your car when she pulled into the driveway of your parents’ house. You were having sex with Kenny in the car. I think you were high from the killings. You didn’t care if your parents caught you screwing Kenny in their driveway. Your sister drove up to the house right when you and Kenny were finishing up. When she drove in, you or Kenny pulled off the condom and left it in your car. Later that night you got the idea to convince the police that the killer was a man. Maybe you planned to pin the murders on Kenny. So you got the used condom out of your car and took off through the woods behind your house to the field where the bodies were still undiscovered. You emptied the condom at the scene and ran home.” Olivia kept her eyes fixed on Emily. “No one would ever suspect that a woman was the killer since someone left semen there, would they?”
“You bitch,” Emily growled. “You have a vivid imagination.” Emily made a move towards Olivia.
“Stay in that seat,” Mrs. Bradford ordered.
Olivia’s heart was pounding. Adrenaline coursed through her body. She wanted to put her hands around Emily’s neck and choke her. “Angela said she went up to your room to talk to you about the fight you had with your mother that day. She said you had cuts on your arms, bruises. She thought Kenny had hurt you, but you must have gotten them when you ran through the woods in the dark. Or, maybe when my cousin was fighting for her life and the life of her daughter.”
Emily’s chest was heaving up and down.
Mrs. Bradford spoke to Emily. “After our fight at the fireplace that day, I decided to check the ashes after the fire burned out.” She paused. “I found a piece of your blouse in the ashes. The blouse I bought you for your birthday. And the buckle of your belt…it was under the logs that hadn’t fully burned.” Her eyes searched Emily’s. “You were burning the clothes you wore when you murdered them.”
Emily choked on her words. “You can’t prove it,” she croaked. “You can’t prove it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Mrs. Bradford asked. Her voice was just above a whisper.
“You would have told the police,” Emily said.
Mrs. Bradford shook her head, tears in her eyes. “I would have protected you.”
“No, you wouldn’t have.” Emily’s words dripped with bitterness. “Your daughter, the murderer. That would have gone over well at the country club, Mother.
Mrs. Bradford blinked.
Emily stared at her mother, then looked off into space. “I went to the church to tell him.”
“Tell who?” Mrs. Bradford asked.
“Anthony,” Emily said.
Mrs. Bradford asked, her lips trembling, “To tell him what?”
Emily leaned forward in her chair, a wide, wild smile on her face. “To tell him I loved him.” Her mouth contorted. “But he rejected me. He didn’t want anything to do with me. He told me to get out.” Her eyes clouded over and she glared at her mother. “I wasn’t good enough. Never good enough. Not for you. Not for Anthony. Not for anyone. Even Kenny wanted to break it off with me.” Emily stared across the room. “Anthony loved that bitch. That bitch, Mary Monahan.” Her voice was like ice. Her head snapped towards her mother. “How would that have gone over with you, Mother? Isabel Bradford, the social queen bee of Howland. Your daughter arrested for murder. You would have been the talk of the town.”
Emily’s eyes darted around the room, looking at nothing. “Mary and her brat drove up just then. I was still in the rec hall. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to kill dear, saintly Father Anthony. There was a box cutter on the table. And, a knife. I picked them up.” She sucked in a long breath. “They came in just then, carrying the paint. Mary. It was Mary he loved, not me.”
Her hands gripped the arms of the chair. Emily’s jaw was slack, she was breathing through her mouth. She shifted her eyes onto Olivia.
“I killed them,” she hissed. Her face was triumphant.
Olivia clenched her hands into fists. She wanted to lunge at Emily and punch her in the face and it took all of her will power to remain in her seat.
“But that wasn’t the end of it, was it?” Olivia asked.
Emily’s eyes narrowed into slits. “What are you talking about?” she sneered.
“What about James, Emily?” Olivia could barely get the words out of her throat it was so constricted with rage.
“What?” Emily asked.
“James Martin.”
Olivia and Emily stared each other down.
“No one can get in the way of what you want, can they?” Olivia asked.
Emily sucked in a breath.
“You killed him, too,” Olivia said.
Emily’s eyes were like saucers. Her facial muscles were tight and pulled her lips into a frightful grimace. She leaned forward. “Yes, bitch,” she whispered. “I killed him, too.”
Mrs. Bradford’s face was wet with tears. She brushed them away with her bony hand. “James? Why?”
Emily turned to her mother. “He wouldn’t help me. He wouldn’t help me.” Her breathing was fast. Her fists pounded the arms of the chair. “I told him. We were drinking that night. We were drunk. I told him what I did to the Monahans.”
She swung her head back to Olivia and glared. “He was going to tell the police. I begged him not to. Oh, the way he looked at me.” Emily paused, and then her voice was hard. “So I smashed him in the face with one of the loose bricks from the patio. He staggered back. He fell into the pool.” Tears gathered in Emily’s eyes. “I didn’t want to kill him. But I had to.” Her face was crumbling. “He held his hand out to me from the water. I let him drown. I watched him die.”
Emily straightened in her chair and her eyes shot daggers at Olivia. “I let him drown because of your stupid cousin. It was Anthony’s fault. He loved her. That bitch. That fucking bitch!”
Emily breathed in several quick breaths. Her wild eyes bore into Olivia. Her voice was so soft. “You should have died before tonight. Too bad you were with that fat cow on the rail trail when I tied up your dog. If you were alone that day you wouldn’t be sitting here now.”
An icy chill filled Olivia’s body.
“A
nd why didn’t you die from the carbon monoxide? You can’t be a lucky bitch forever.” Emily sprang out of her chair, her hands outstretched aiming for Olivia’s throat. Olivia jumped up to meet her, lifting the palm of her hand forward where it connected with Emily’s jaw. Emily’s head snapped back.
A crack filled the air and a bullet hit the ceiling above the women. Both women spun to face Mrs. Bradford who held her pistol outstretched towards them.
“Emily!” Mrs. Bradford’s eyes were blazing. “Sit! Both of you!” She moved the gun towards one, then the other, as warning.
They both sat. Olivia’s mind was racing, thinking of how to get to Mrs. Bradford before she could fire the gun.
“Don’t get out of those chairs,” Mrs. Bradford said. “Or the bullet won’t hit the ceiling the next time.”
Emily turned to her mother, her eyes black with hate.
“I always suspected you killed the Monahans,” Mrs. Bradford spoke. “But I couldn’t explain the details.” Her small voice was firm. “I had to know the truth. To be sure.” She raised the pistol towards Emily. “Before I did this.”
Emily’s jaw dropped.
Mrs. Bradford shifted the gun away from Emily and pointed it at Olivia.
Olivia pressed back against the sofa.
“I won’t let you destroy my daughter.”
Just as Mrs. Bradford’s finger was about to press the trigger, Olivia hurled herself off the sofa onto the floor, Emily lurched from her chair to go after Olivia, and Angela Bradford and her husband ran through the entranceway into the family room.
“Mother!” Angela shouted.
Angela’s sudden appearance caused the old woman’s hand to jerk the barrel of the gun in Emily’s direction, and the bullet hit her square in the shoulder. Emily stumbled backward onto the chair.
Screams from Emily and Mrs. Bradford rattled Olivia’s brain as she leaped up, stepped onto the coffee table and was beside Mrs. Bradford in two strides. She grabbed for the gun and yanked it from the old woman’s feeble hand before she could fire it again.
Angela and her husband were frozen in place in the doorway. Angela’s face was white. Her arms hung at her sides. Her mouth was open in a large “O”.
Emily was wailing and writhing.
“Take this,” Olivia said holding the pistol out to Angela.
Angela stepped forward in a daze and took the gun from Olivia. She handed it off to her husband.
“Call 911,” Olivia said.
Angela stared at Olivia.
“Angela! Call 911.”
Angela hesitated like she was trying to process what Olivia said to her, then she blinked and pulled out her cell phone to place the emergency call.
Emily was thrashing in the chair clutching her shoulder. Blood was soaking her blouse and dripping onto the white fabric of the chair. Mrs. Bradford was slumped in her seat. Olivia couldn’t tell if she had passed out. Olivia grabbed the blanket off Mrs. Bradford’s lap, balled it up and pressed it tightly to the wound in Emily’s shoulder.
“This is your fault,” Emily shrieked at Olivia. “This is all because of you!”
Olivia’s face was lined with disgust. “Shut. Up.”
***
It seemed to take an hour for the police and EMT’s to arrive but it was really only fifteen minutes before their sirens could be heard wailing up the Bradford driveway.
When Jackie entered the mansion after receiving the call from the officers who arrived on the scene, Olivia was sitting on the sofa, shaking. Emily and Mrs. Bradford were already in the ambulances. Angela was crying, speaking with one of the detectives. Her husband was standing beside her chair, his hand on her shoulder.
Jackie glanced at the police, at Angela, the bloody chair where Emily had been sitting. She walked to the sofa and took a seat next to Olivia.
“I asked the police to call you,” Olivia said.
“You’re not hurt?” Jackie put her arm around Olivia’s shoulders.
Olivia shook her head.
“Jesus,” Jackie said.
Olivia nodded. “Yeah.”
Chapter 39
After dinner, Olivia and Jackie sat on the front porch in the white rocking chairs sipping drinks. With the sun lower in the sky, the air was cooling off. Earlier in the day, Olivia had spent a couple of hours at the Howland Police department answering more of their questions and speaking with Kenny Overman’s attorney. All charges against Kenny were dropped. Emily Bradford confessed to the murders of Mary and Kimberly Monahan and James Martin, and was taken into custody. Isabel Bradford was in the hospital and would be charged with assault or some such thing but Olivia believed that whatever sentence was imposed on her probably would not be served.
“So when did you figure it out, Olivia?” Jackie asked as they rocked on the porch.
“When I went back to the house to pick up my phone charger and the food for Lily, I went out on the deck. I saw you had left your sweater on the railing. I saw Lily’s collar on the deck. I put it there to dry after I washed the mud off of it when we came back from the state park that day I couldn’t find her. I picked up the collar. It still had a piece of the rope on it that Emily used to tie her up. I looked at that piece of rope and something in my brain made a connection. It looked the same as Emily’s climbing rope that was in the box that dropped out of her hatch the day we went to the running event. Something clicked. So many things ran through my head. Remember what Emily’s office manager said to me? ‘Emily may as well be a man.’ Little pieces of things started swirling around in my head. Angela told me that Emily and Kenny were having sex in the car in the driveway of the Bradford house on the night of the murders. Kenny told me that they always used protection. When Brad was here, we walked on the trails behind the Bradford house. Those trails lead right to the field where my cousins were killed. So many little things started to add up. James Martin’s mother told me that James and Emily were having an argument the night he died in the pool. She thought she heard them talking about my cousins. All these things were swirling in my brain. Emily and James had been drinking. Turns out, Emily confessed to James that night about killing my cousins and he didn’t take it well. He was going to tell the police, so she killed him too.”
“My God,” Jackie said.
“And climbing is one of Emily’s hobbies. She wouldn’t have been afraid to go up on the roof and put the toolbox across the chimney. It would have been easy for her. So many other things…little things…they were all pointing to her. I figured she was the one who put those squirrels on the front porch and, I bet the night she did it, she saw the construction here and got the idea to block the chimney.”
“She knew you would figure it out,” Jackie said. “You were getting too close.”
Olivia continued. “When Emily walked into the family room at the Bradford house, I had all the pieces. Her presence in the room, something she was giving off, it was like my body was giving me signals to get out of there, that she was dangerous. It confirmed my suspicion that she was the one. I knew she was the killer. I could feel it.” Olivia paused. “The day at the park when Lily was tied up. Emily knew I would search for Lily. Emily was going to kill me…in that isolated area of the park. Just like she did to my cousins.” Olivia shuddered.
“Thank God you ran into Robin and her dog.” Jackie closed her eyes for several seconds. “Emily was certainly clever… planting the semen at the crime scene. Making the killer seem like some pervert. No one would suspect the killer was a woman. Not with semen there. And, the carbon monoxide to kill you off. She is one smart monster.”
“Yeah,” Olivia said. “Emily was infatuated with Father Anthony. She wanted him and when he rebuffed her she was hysterical, it pushed her over the edge. In her head, she was sure it was Mary that he loved. Father Anthony said he ran into the rectory to get away from Emily. Emily was in the rec hall when Mary and Kimmy arrived with the paint.” Olivia paused and swallowed. “Emily killed them in a fit of rage.”
“An
d you believed Overman was innocent,” Jackie said.
Olivia nodded. “After we talked, I just didn’t believe he did it.”
Jackie and Olivia heard the sound of a car approaching and turned to see who was coming down the driveway.
“It better not be another news reporter,” Olivia said.
“We’ll just go inside and tell them we’ll call the cops,” Jackie said.
A black Honda came around the trees.
“It’s Father Mike,” Olivia said leaning forward in her chair.
“Who’s in the car with him?” Jackie asked.
“I can’t see.” Olivia stood up and walked down the front steps to meet the car.
“Olivia.” Father Mike emerged with a wide smile. He took her hand and gave it a squeeze.
Father Anthony Foley got out of the driver’s side.
Father Mike gestured at the other priest. “Anthony called me. He decided to come up when he heard the news.”
Anthony walked around the front of the car. “You solved it, Olivia.”
“Come sit. Have a drink with us,” she said.
Olivia put her hand under Father Mike’s arm and assisted him up the porch steps. The two men greeted Jackie and sat down in rockers. Olivia brought them drinks.
“Your interest and persistence has cleared an innocent man. Once and for all,” Father Mike said to Olivia. “You found the person responsible for those terrible murders. May Mary and her daughter rest in peace.”
“I think they were already at peace,” Olivia said. She met Father Mike’s eyes. “I think…maybe…justice is for the living.”
Father Mike’s kind eyes were bright. “Perhaps you’re right, my dear.”
Father Anthony spoke. “I wanted to come up and talk with Mike. And, with you, Olivia.” He leaned forward, his face serious.
“I swear to you I did not know that Emily was the killer.” He shook his head. “I am still coming to grips with it.” He paused. “I never meant to lead her on. She accused me of having an affair with Mary. I didn’t know what to do. If Emily made that claim publicly…would people have believed my denials, Mary’s denials?”
