by Mary Maxwell
“Sounds fairly juvenile,” I said.
Ethan nodded. “That’s it in a nutshell. Apparently, the whole thing started between Ned and Simon Wargrave when they were kids, so it’s fitting that childish behavior is still at the core.”
“It started when they were children?” I could hear the disbelief in my voice. “Did they really know one another back then?”
“They met when they were nine,” Ethan said. “Northside Middle School in Jacksonville. Ned was the scrawny, shy kid with glasses. Simon was bigger, taller and thrilled to be the bully and predator. We talked to about a dozen of their fellow classmates from those days. Every person remembered the same basic story: Ned was Simon’s favorite victim. He would taunt the guy constantly, but only when adults were nowhere in sight.”
“So they never knew what was going on?” I asked. “Didn’t the other kids tell their parents or teachers?”
“They did,” Ethan said. “And Simon was cautioned more than once. But there was never any proof of physical harm because Simon’s deal was psychological intimidation and threats. Simon Wargrave was always very persuasive when it came to manipulating the behavior of other people. Even as a child, he could coerce other kids to do his bidding.”
“Okay, that’s pretty creepy,” I said. “He sounds like a character from a Stephen King book.”
Ethan smiled. “That’s an interesting way to describe the guy.”
“Well, how would you portray him?”
He drank some coffee and thought about the question. Then he slowly and carefully delivered his response. It included a recap of Wargrave’s successful real estate career, from his first job as an agent in his hometown of Jacksonville to a broker’s license in Jupiter and then opening his own business in Tampa.
“From there, the guy just got every lucky break you can imagine,” Ethan said. “He met a wealthy man from New Orleans who was looking to invest in rental property along the Gulf. That investor introduced him a bunch of his equally wealthy buddies, and soon enough, Simon was rolling in commissions and property management fees and a few Ponzi schemes that made him the proverbial Real Estate King of Crystal Bay.”
“When did he move to town?” I asked.
“Twenty years ago,” Ethan answered. “He barely escaped arrest for assault and battery in Tampa. After the charges were dropped, he went off the grid for a while. His wife ran the real estate business while Simon went to rehab. It seems he had a rather strong fondness for cocaine and rum that made him even meaner and more aggressive than when he was sober.”
“So Denise enabled him?”
Ethan narrowed his eyes. “I’d say that she became very gifted at denial,” he said. “For the first twenty-odd years, she learned to duck and weave when he threw his punches, both literally and figuratively. But she finally got tired of the guy’s…” He paused, sipping his coffee as he contemplated the Simon Wargrave story. “You know,” he began again, “I’m not sure how much of this we need to drill down into, Liz. Suffice to say, plenty of folks believe the guy got what he deserved for a lifetime of bad behavior.”
I nodded. “And what about you?” I asked. “Would you agree with that assessment?”
“Not exactly,” Ethan said. “No matter how bad someone is, murder is never the right choice. Obviously, killing someone in self-defense is one thing. But the choices that Ned Marshall made were just as criminal as the things that Wargrave did throughout his life.”
We sat in silence and drank our coffee. I tried to picture Christine Marshall in a holding cell at the county jail. She’d been charged with accessory to commit murder, obstruction of justice and destroying evidence. Aunt Dot told me that Christine’s attorney was one of the best in the state, but the proliferation of evidence and her brother’s confession suggested that she would do serious time for the role she played in Simon Wargrave’s killing.
“Can I ask a couple of questions?” I said eventually.
Ethan smiled. “I can handle a few more,” he said. “As long as we don’t get into confidential details about the case.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “The first one isn’t about the Wargrave case.”
He put down his cup and leaned toward the table. “Let’s hear it,” he said.
“I don’t know about you, but I haven’t eaten since breakfast.” I pointed at the glass display cabinet beside the coffee shop’s register. “Do you want to split one of those chocolate chip cookies?”
CHAPTER 37
Twenty minutes and two cookies later, I asked Ethan about Doug Peralta.
“What do you want to know?”
“Is he still in the hospital?” I said. “He looked pretty rough when they brought him out to the ambulance at the Coconut Reef.”
Ethan shrugged. “That’s what happens when you end up on the wrong side of Ned Marshall. But to answer your question, he was released late last night, just in time to be arraigned for aiding and abetting a homicide and a couple of other things.”
“Did he know about Ned’s plans?”
“I don’t believe that he had knowledge in advance,” Ethan answered. “But he was damn well aware after he followed Marshall to Simon Wargrave’s office and watched it all go down through the window.”
“Seriously?”
“He claimed the sight of Ned stabbing Simon left him traumatized,” Ethan continued. “I don’t know if that’ll stand up in court, but it’s the best excuse Doug could come up with for not calling 911.”
“Was he concerned about being implicated?” I asked.
“That’s the most logical explanation,” Ethan replied. “But Peralta didn’t say that specifically. He just told us that when Ned asked for Simon’s address, it was pretty obvious that he was up to no good. So Doug tailed him to Wargrave’s place to find out what was going on. By the time he arrived, Ned and his hunting knife were already at work on Simon.”
“Where was Christine?” I asked. “Did she witness the stabbing?”
“I’m still trying to work out the details of her story,” he told me. “She admitted to unlocking the rear entrance of Wargrave’s office that morning so her brother could come in from the alley. But every time I asked her about anything more, Christine completely lost it. She was sobbing so hard that I was afraid we’d have to call paramedics.”
“And what about the motive?” I asked. “Did either Ned or Christine give you anything to explain what was behind the murder?”
“According to both of them, Simon Wargrave has been a bully since the day he was born,” Ethan said. “When they were kids, Simon threatened to punch other classmates if they didn’t give him their lunch money. As an adult, he did the same thing, but the stakes were much higher and it wasn’t a buck or two. Over the past few years, it was millions of dollars. And hundreds of good, decent people lost their life savings to one of Simon’s Ponzi schemes or another. The Feds have been investigating him for the past few months after receiving an avalanche of complaints about Simon’s last scam.”
“Did Ned intend to kill Wargrave when he came to Crystal Bay?” I asked.
“He and Christine claimed that it was an accident,” Ethan told me. “They both told me that when Ned confronted Wargrave and demanded that he return Christine’s money, they got into a shouting match. And then fists started flying. Right after Simon grazed Ned’s chin with a lucky right hook, Marshall clobbered him with a solid left uppercut. It surprised him so much that he lurched back, tripped over a box of files and hit his head on the edge of a table. That enraged Simon so much that he got up and charged Ned, who’d pulled his knife to try and frighten Simon. At that point, Wargrave started taunting Ned because they’ve both been pursuing Nadine, and he…well, I guess you could say that he snapped. Ned began stabbing Simon repeatedly until he dropped.”
“So Ned claimed that it was done in a blind rage?”
Ethan nodded. “That’s his story, but I can’t imagine a defense like that holding up in court. There were more than twenty stab wound
s. It was very clearly an act of rage and revenge.”
“What about Maybelle’s ballpoint pen and the note under Simon’s body?” I said. “Don’t those details poke a pretty sizable hole in Ned’s story?”
“They do,” Ethan agreed. “And there’s also the wrinkle that Ned brought two different knives in from his SUV.”
“Did he tell you why?”
“Ned was apparently a lifelong fan of anything sharp,” he explained. “Knives, machetes, arrows, spears, power saws. One of his old arrests was for breaking into a sporting goods store. He stole a dozen knives and left all of the handguns. When I interviewed Christine the day after her arrest, she told me that Ned was also bullied a few times by Simon with a knife when they were in high school, including one time when Ned sustained a cut that required eight stitches from the Emergency Room.”
“So this whole thing began with a childhood bully?” I asked.
“And his main victim,” Ethan added. “If you leave that kind of anger simmering on the back burner long enough, you’re bound to see fireworks at some point.”
CHAPTER 38
Maybelle Fletcher sat across from Aunt Dot and me at Soderberg’s Luncheonette. We were having breakfast the morning after my conversation with Detective Shaw. Despite the brilliant blue sky and gleeful tourists on the beach outside the windows, the mood at our table was appropriately somber. I’d promised Maybelle to get together and discuss the Wargrave case, but for the past half hour the conversation had been dominated by her attempts to assuage the guilt that she felt in the aftermath of Simon Wargrave’s murder.
“I should’ve known,” she said again. “I mean, Christine had been acting so strangely in the past couple of weeks. The day before Simon died, I invited her to get a mani-pedi with me at Tips & Toes, but she turned me down because Steel Magnolias was on again.”
“What’s the connection?” Dot asked.
Maybelle dabbed at her eyes with a crumpled napkin. “Don’t you remember, Dottie? The very first time that we played cards with Christine, she told us all how much she loathed Julia Roberts.”
My aunt gasped. “She did?”
“Plain as day,” Maybelle said. “But it had been so long and I didn’t remember her saying that when I invited her to get our nails done together.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “You really shouldn’t blame yourself for what happened.”
She sniffled into the napkin. “Easier said than done, Lizzie. This is the kind of nightmare that is going to haunt me to my grave. I should’ve known something was up with Christine. She didn’t want to get her nails done, and that girl always loved going to the salon together. We used to have the best time, drinking champagne and gossiping and talking about the new properties that we’d listed and our most recent sales.”
“And you can still do all of those things,” Dot said gently. “I’ll go to Candy’s place with you and get my nails painted.”
Maybelle reached across the table. “That’s so kind, Dottie. I’ll definitely take you up on that offer, but not until I can put this terrible sense of remorse out of my heart. I pray every night that Simon will forgive me, but I haven’t had a sign yet.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” my aunt said gently.
“We all know that’s much easier said than done.” Maybelle’s voice had dropped to a hoarse whisper. “I also need to apologize to y’all. I lied when Detective Shaw first asked me about Simon. I told him that I was at your shop buying ice cream because it was the first thing that I could think of. Based on the timeline that the police put together, I guess that I actually left Simon’s office just a few minutes before Christine’s brother snuck in from the alley.”
“Where did you go after that?” I asked.
Maybelle sighed. “To the bank to try and get a loan,” she said. “Luckily, Mr. Albright vouched for me with the police. That’s why they let me out of that horrible jail cell.”
“Why didn’t you tell Detective Shaw the truth in the first place?” I asked.
My aunt’s friend slumped back in her seat. “I panicked,” she said. “I went to beg Simon Wargrave to let me have the listing on Darla and Ted Simpson’s house. Things haven’t been quite as flush lately, and I’m going through a pretty rough financial patch. I knew that they were ready to put their place on the market, and I even felt like I had a buyer. If I could list their house and get a smidgen above asking price, my financial difficulties would improve as soon as we closed on the sale.”
Aunt Dot scoffed. “Don’t you know that lying to the police is a crime, too?”
“Yes, but I was…” Maybelle paused to collect her thoughts. “It’s like I already told you; I panicked the instant Detective Shaw asked me if I was at Simon’s place at around ten that morning. I knew it was a lie, but I was mortified that anybody in town would find out that I’d gone to that horrible, horrible man to ask for help.”
“So you lied to the detective?” Dot said. “You risked criminal charges to avoid a little bit of shame?”
Maybelle shrugged. “I’ve just been all jumbled up lately,” she said. “That’s why I made an appointment tomorrow after work to go see that spiritual healer over on Grove Street. I hope that she can help me straighten out the sadness and embarrassment that have made my heart so heavy.”
“I’ve seen the sign outside her place,” I said. “Madame De Lune, right?”
Maybelle nodded. “Delilah Welch told me that the woman correctly predicted the sex of her baby.”
Aunt Dot cooed. “Oh, that child is adorable. It’s the sweetest little girl in the world.”
“I thought that’s what you called me when I was born,” I said.
“Oh, c’mon,” my aunt replied. “You’re my sister’s child. How could I say anything else?”
I smiled. “Well, that makes me feel much better. Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
My aunt made a face. “Relax, Liz. You were adorable as a baby, and you’re even more so now. I forecast that the day you were born, too. Ask your mother if you don’t believe me. I predicted that you would be a sweet, charming woman. And you are! So who needs a psychic? I mean, I can predict the future for half the price that Madame De Lunatic charges.”
I shot a quick look at my aunt before giving her leg a gentle nudge.
“Ouch!” she cried. “Why’d you kick me?”
“That wasn’t a kick,” I said. “It was a lovingly tap.”
She huffed. “We’ll see what you say later when you get a look at the bruise.”
“You really think that was hard enough to leave a mark?” I asked.
“I’m a delicate flower” she answered. “As fragile and slight as a hummingbird’s song.”
Maybelle snorted a laugh. “You? Fragile? That’s a good one! You’ve got nerves of steel, a heart of gold and—”
“Yes, yes,” my aunt cut in. “And I’ve got legs like a Rockette, but I’m also sensitive and delicate.”
“Well, that’s a load of malarkey,” said Maybelle. “Those twigs of yours couldn’t last ten minutes on the stage. The way those dancers kick and twirl and prance and jump would be way more than you can handle!”
As Dot and her friend slipped into the familiar dynamics of their frequent debates, I sat back and listened. Maybelle’s voice became stronger and more confident as they talked, and the usual joyful spark returned to my aunt’s eyes. They’d been friends for so long that the well-known, relaxed give-and-take of their friendship seemed to dissipate the stressed, frazzled haze that had enveloped them for the past few days.
The longer they pecked back and forth, the more I started to daydream about how great it was to be back in my hometown. I loved the years in Georgia, and missed all of my friends there, but it was a relatively easy drive between Crystal Bay and Atlanta. I knew that once my routine was established at the Big Dipper and my tiny apartment nest was feathered and arranged, I could invite my closest girlfriends in Atlanta to come for a three-day weekend.
&
nbsp; I was considering the local attractions and restaurants that I would show them when I realized that Aunt Dot was tapping her coffee cup with a spoon to get my attention.
“What are you grinning at?” she asked. “You look about half tipsy over there, Liz.”
I shrugged. “It’s just nice to see you two getting along so well,” I said.
Maybelle scowled. “When weren’t we getting along?”
“Well,” I said, “there was a little dustup the morning that you came in to get ice cream for your grandkids.”
“Nonsense!” Dot said, dismissing my comment with a flick of her wrist. “We’ve been friends way too long to let a little misunderstanding cause any harm.”
“That’s right,” Maybelle said. “We know that agreeing to disagree is far more productive than whining and griping about the little stuff.”
“And we also know that differences of opinion can actually make for much more robust and lively conversations,” added my aunt. “After all, rainbows and sunsets have far more than one color. If we were all the same, the world would be a whole lot less interesting.”
CHAPTER 39
I was in the Big Dipper walk-in the next afternoon at four, looking for the walnuts that had been delivered earlier in the week, when my mother’s voice cleaved the gentle hum of the cooler’s motor.
“There you are!” she said. “Your brother and I wanted to talk with you about Simon Wargrave.”
“Leave me out of this,” Matt called from somewhere in the distance. “I just stopped by on my way home to get ice cream for the kids.”
Matt and his wife, a charming, patient woman named Alexandra, were the proud parents of two adorable children, five-year-old Helena and three-year-old Brandon. Every Friday when his shift ended, my brother bought a pint of Chocolate Cherry Cheesecake that he split after dinner with the kids. Alexandra worked as a nurse at the local hospital on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, so Matt served the sweet treat to try and make the three nights without their mother special for the little ones.
