“Nothing.” The older woman’s reply was much too fast.
Jessie crept over to see what she was up to. She had developed a sixth sense for when her aunt was up to mischief. And she wasn’t wrong this time.
“What are you doing?” Jessie gasped, reaching for her phone.
But Bee was too quick this time. She pirouetted out of Jessie’s reach before she could grab the phone. “Just a moment,” she muttered.
“No,” Jessie gasped, half laughing at the ridiculousness of it. “You’ve got your own phone. What do you need mine for?” She lunged at the phone again, but Bee ducked away just in time, her fingers moving rapidly across the screen.
“Bee!”
“Just a minute, Jessie. Why do you always have to be so impatient?”
Jessie frowned. “Because it’s my phone? Don’t turn this around on me. I—”
“There,” Bee said triumphant, tapping the screen again. “Finished.”
“So now you’ll give it back to me?”
Bee nodded. “Here you go.”
Jessie eyed her suspiciously. “What were you up to?” The screen was just as she had left it, blank on the home screen. She opened her messages, expecting to see something juvenile in her sent items. Her heart plummeted when she saw Mike’s name. Jessie had called him that morning but she couldn’t remember the last time she’d sent him a text.
“Aunt Bee, why were you texting Mike from my phone?”
Jessie didn’t wait for her aunt to answer. She tapped the message and skimmed through it with growing horror.
“I don’t want you to go,” she read aloud. “Oh, Aunt Bee. Why would you send that to him?”
Bee shrugged. “Because it’s the truth,” she said simply.
“But…” Jessie sighed and buried her head in her hands. “I told you. We’ll get through this. It’s his dream job and I want to support him, not pressure him to stay here for me.”
Bee opened her mouth to protest, but before she could do so, the kitchen door swung open. Martin popped his head around the door.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he smiled. “Newspaper’s here.” He dropped that day’s edition of the Chronicle on the bench just inside the door.
Jessie watched with relief as Bee beelined for it. She always liked to be the first to hear of any news in town, not that she often got scooped by the Chronicle. Jessie watched her eyes skim across the front page.
“Oh my goodness,” Bee said after a few moments. She stepped backward so unsteadily that Jessie wondered if she should go get her aunt a chair.
“What is it?”
Bee’s face was pale. “It’s Lottie. They’ve dropped the charges against her. She’s a free woman, Jessie.”
Jessie grinned. “That’s fantastic news, Aunt Bee.”
Chapter 19
It felt like Jessie had only just closed her eyes when her phone blared. She fumbled on the nightstand for it. The light hurt her eyes. She narrowed them as much as she could and squinted at the screen.
It was six in the morning and Chief Daly was the one interrupting her only lie-in of the week.
“Hi, Chief,” she murmured.
“Jessie. Did I wake you?” He didn’t give her any time to answer before he carried on. “There’s been another murder, Jessie.”
Jessie sat bolt upright. Panic rose inside her as the consequences of her actions began to sink in. “Oh no,” she muttered. “No, no, no.”
“I’m afraid so,” the chief said matter-of-factly.
“It’s all my fault,” Jessie said slowly. “I should never have allowed myself to get carried away by my crazy theories.” She froze, eyes welling with tears. She’d been proved right, but far from feeling smug, it made her heart wrench. “Who was it?”
“Well, I think we can safely assume—”
“No, Chief,” she whispered. “Who was murdered?”
“Oh,” he muttered. The noise behind him suggested he was at the crime scene. She heard vehicles swoosh past and loud voices in the background. “I misunderstood. It was Tom Rushe. I don’t know if you’d met him—he just moved here not long ago.”
Jessie shook her head sadly. She hadn’t thought this through.
“It’s not your fault she made bail, Jessie,” the chief said, after several moment’s silence in which Jessie had tried to collect her thoughts.
“No,” she said quietly. “I guess it’s not.”
But that planted story in the Chronicle certainly was her fault. She didn’t dare mention it to him now, though.
“You want to know what happened?”
It had become a given that Jessie would help out with the investigation whenever there was a murder in Springdale. Up until the Fairway murder, that hadn’t happened for several months. She had started to think—to hope—that Springdale’s crime spree was over.
“Yeah,” she said morosely, still unable to shake the feeling that it was all her fault.
It had been her idea. It was the perfect way to prove Jessie’s theory that Lottie had been set up. Except she and Ken had thought pretending Lottie had been cleared might cause the killer to become upset in public. That had been the plan. Watch everybody on her list—especially Karen—and see if they acted strangely.
She should have known it would escalate. Jessie sighed. Her theory had been proven correct, but there was no pleasure at all in that, even though it was now obvious that Lottie was innocent.
“Well I hate to be the one to tell you this, Jessie, but it’s pretty clear now that Lottie is our murderer.”
“Why do you say that, Chief?” Jessie asked, trying to massage away the headache that had formed behind her eyes.
He sighed. “Because it’s more of the same. The murder weapon is a monogrammed golf club with the initials LB on there. I’ve asked the lab to rush the prints, but I don’t think there’s any doubt about what they’ll come back with.”
“They’re definitely hers?”
Chief Daly made a tutting noise. “Yes, Jessie. I’ve seen her play with them myself. And who else in town has the initials LB?”
“What’s the link between Lottie and Tom Rushe exactly?”
“Yet to be established,” the chief said. “I’ll ask her when the boys go pick her up.”
Jessie’s heart beat faster. She knew she needed to play this carefully, but it was so early in the morning that her brain wasn’t working right yet. “You won’t find her there.”
“Pardon me?” the chief barked.
“You won’t find her there,” Jessie said faintly.
“And why is that, Jessie?” he said, taking a huge breath before continuing. “I don’t have to tell you the penalties involved in sheltering a fugitive, do I?”
“No,” Jessie said, climbing out of bed and sliding her feet into her slippers. The sight of Toby’s manically wagging tail cheered her a little, though she knew she didn’t deserve his affection. “Of course not.”
“Then you better explain what’s going on.”
***
Not half an hour later, Chief Daly was sitting at her tiny kitchen table as she put a fresh coffee filter into the pot. He was busy petting Toby, but his irritation hadn’t ebbed, to judge from the look on his face.
“Why don’t you explain yourself, Jessie?”
She nodded. “I will,” she said, slowly moving to the table.
He watched her closely. So did Toby. Jessie took a deep breath. “Mel,” she shouted. “Can you come in here?”
“I don’t see how dragging your cousin into this is going to—” he gasped. “So she is here.”
Jessie turned around to see Mel at the door with Lottie. She turned back to the chief. “Yes.”
He shuffled in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. Jessie had never seen him so angry. “Explain. Now.”
She sighed and sat at the table, gesturing for the others to join her. “Lottie stayed here last night. Before that, she and Mel spent the entire day together.”
“So yo
u had a girls’ day. Great. That doesn’t prove a thing.”
“Actually it does,” Mel said, sitting down opposite Jessie. “Lottie hasn’t been out of our sight since around midday yesterday.”
“Difficult to believe, given Jessie’s very public stand to prove her innocence.” He glared at Jessie. “I know you were trying to do good, but by being so outspoken you’ve removed any little bit of credibility that this… this… pantomime might have had.”
“I was here too,” Mel pointed out.
The chief glanced at her. “You’re Jessie’s cousin. She could have pushed you into it.”
Jessie looked at Lottie, who was staring at the table with the most hopeless expression imaginable. “Video footage doesn’t lie,” she said slowly. “Mel went to Glenvale. Got two video cameras. We’ve got hours of footage showing us together that’s time-stamped.”
The chief opened his mouth to object.
“They also feature Lottie holding up yesterday’s copy of the Glenvale Gazette.”
“But—”
“And the TV remained on in the background all night. It’ll be easy to cross reference with the programming from KTN.”
“Jessie,” he muttered. “What are you telling me? You can’t have known that the murder would happen unless…”
Jessie shuddered.
“Of course we didn’t know it would happen,” Lottie said passionately. “Don’t you see what she’s done? She stood by me when nobody else would and she proved that I didn’t do this.”
“How did you know there would be another murder?” Chief Daly asked. There was a harshness to his tone that Jessie hadn’t often heard.
She shook her head. She understood his anger and skepticism. She wasn’t exactly her own biggest fan right at that moment. “Chief,” she said in a small voice. “I thought the Chronicle story would draw the real killer out of the woodwork. I know everybody said it wasn’t a conspiracy, but the idea niggled at me. It was the only thing that made sense.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “That doesn’t explain this setup. How could you have known?”
Jessie set her mouth. “I didn’t. But we were prepared to stay with Lottie for as long as it took.”
“That story—” the chief started.
Jessie nodded, tears pricking her eyes. Now the truth was out, all she could think about was the all-consuming guilt she felt at being indirectly responsible for a murder.
“I know,” she whispered, avoiding their eyes. “I know. I was foolish. I thought it might draw them out and make them mess up. If I ever thought that they’d strike again, I wouldn’t…” her voice faltered to a croak. “Anyway, Chief. Now will you take me seriously? We should go and speak to Karen as soon as we can.”
“That’s not going to be possible, Jessie.”
“Why?” Jessie said, bristling. Surely the latest development was more reason to follow up with Karen than ever?
“Because,” the chief sighed. “She took a bus to Chicago last night.”
Jessie snorted. “Really? I don’t believe that for a moment. I—”
“Pete Kendall dropped her to the station because of the amount of baggage she had. He watched that bus take off himself. Jessie, there’s a very good reason she seemed subdued. She was having a hard time settling back here. I had a long talk with her before she went, as it happens. There’s a very simple reason she was sore at Lottie—and I said sore, not vengeful or homicidal.” He glanced at Lottie and shook his head disapprovingly. “Karen tried to take her boy into the butchery to speak to Santa, but Lottie told them she didn’t have time.”
Jessie winced. “The trademark Benson bluntness, I guess?” she said, looking at Lottie.
Lottie shrugged. “It’s been a busy time. The child was coming in the store and sneezing all over my stock. What was I supposed to do?”
Jessie shook her head.
“Don’t judge me, Jessie,” Lottie said simply.
“I’m not,” Jessie protested, pursing her lips. “I’m just frustrated. You know where this leaves us? Right back at square one.”
Chapter 20
One look from the chief was enough to send Lottie and Mel from the room. Jessie expected him to berate her, but he didn’t. Instead, he took her hands in his and smiled at her sympathetically.
“You want to know the real villain here, Jessie?”
She shrugged.
“I’ll give you a clue. It’s not you. What you did was incredibly foolhardy. What if they’d come here looking for Lottie?”
Jessie shook her head. “They wouldn’t have. We got automatic timers for the lamps at Lottie’s. Mel stayed with her all day yesterday and then they came back here. They were really careful. Mel pulled right up to Lottie’s house. When she was leaving, she made a big deal of waving goodbye in case anyone was watching. Then she snuck in the car.” Jessie shrugged. “It obviously worked because whoever it was thought that Lottie was home alone last night with no alibi.”
“Still,” the chief hissed through his teeth.
“I had to do something. I couldn’t just give up on her. You know what she’s like. She wouldn’t hire a cut-throat attorney on principle and I looked into the guy the court appointed. Do you want to know why he’s taking cases in Springdale? It’s because nobody in his own town will have him.”
Chief Daly sighed. “You’re missing the point. What you did was dangerous. But I appreciate it came from a good place.” He shook his head. “My goodness, Jessie. You know what this means?”
“Somebody out there has one huge grudge against Lottie?”
“Yes,” he said, nodding. “There’s that. But more worryingly, it means there’s a criminal capable of hiding their tracks so well that their crime went almost undetected. They were able to act with such speed that they jumped on Lottie’s unplanned absence from the party and used that as their basis to frame her.”
Jessie nodded. At first she’d felt overjoyed that he believed Lottie was innocent of the crime, but his words had filled her with dread. He was right—whoever was behind this was capable of carrying out crimes that left no trace. And without much planning time, either.
“What kind of person are we dealing with here?” Jessie asked with a shiver. “I can’t believe…I mean, I thought we’d watch Lottie just in case they tried to…” she shivered. Somebody in town had gone out and murdered another resident in cold blood in order to get at Lottie. They’d done it less than twenty-four hours after they believed Lottie had been cleared.
“They’re careful,” he said, getting up and pouring a large mug of coffee each. “Whoever they are.”
“And they were there at the party,” she said. “They must have been. There was no way to watch from outside and nowhere to lurk inside without running the risk of being seen.
He nodded. “Plus they would have had to have been there to know that Lottie hadn’t shown up for the party.”
Jessie shivered. She wondered if it was because of the early morning chill or the morbid subject matter. It didn’t take a genius to figure that one out.
“Wait,” Jessie said, wrapping her fingers around the mug. “What if they knew Lottie wasn’t going to make it to the party?”
He looked up. “What do you mean?”
“Well, what if somebody knew she was having this issue with her suppliers?”
“Had she mentioned anything to you?”
Jessie shook her head. “She didn’t. She didn’t say it to Bee or Julia either.”
Chief Daly sighed and took another sip of coffee. “I think it’s time that we got Lottie involved in this investigation.”
***
Lottie shook her head and stared at them bewildered. “I don’t know. I’m not being difficult you guys; I genuinely have no idea who’d want to do this to me.”
“I know,” the chief said calmly. “But please, you’ve got to try. Anything you can think of. It doesn’t matter how spurious it might seem to you.” He glanced at Jessie. “Because G
od knows I’m used to spurious theories at this stage.”
Jessie knew what he was doing, but it didn’t work. Lottie looked as glum as ever.
Melanie got up from the table. “I’ll make some more coffee,” she said quietly.
Jessie raked her fingers through her hair. It was getting bright outside and they were no closer to hashing this thing out.
“I don’t know,” Lottie said quietly.
The chief patted her hand. “We’re dealing with somebody who’s incredibly clever. Does that remind you of anybody? Somebody who’s capable of creating and carrying out a plan that’s ruthlessly precise on short notice. They pulled this together at the last minute—there aren't a lot of people capable of doing that.”
Lottie shrugged. “I don’t know. Jessie? Maddie? So many of my friends are good organizers, but there’s no way they were involved. Chief, I wish I could help but it’s not possible. I don’t know anything. I’m not the most observant person in the world. If I had any idea how important it was, I would have paid more attention.” She shook her head sadly. “Or I would have tried to talk them out of doing it in the first place.”
“We’ve got to find them,” Jessie said as delicately as she could. “I mean, it goes without saying that you can stay here until we find them but that doesn’t make you safe.”
Lottie looked at her in despair.
“I’m sorry,” Jessie said, closing her hand around her friend’s. “But let’s just chat about that morning. Who did you see?”
Lottie closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair. They all watched her expectantly.
“This is hopeless. Come on. I don’t know. You were there too Jessie. I…”
“You can do this, Lottie. Think. It could save somebody else’s life.”
Lottie nodded and squeezed her eyes closed again. “Okay. Let’s see. I didn’t meet you guys at the café. I was doing the bird. I’d weighed it the night before and worked out that it needed to go in the oven at seven. Thank goodness I gave myself extra time. I had a coffee and showered. Then I got started. Prepped the veg for my gravy. Got the bird ready and seasoned, made my secret stuffing recipe, heaved the thing into the oven…”
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