by Patti Larsen
“Do you know what was on Faith’s list?” Noel might be able to give me what I needed without Mila. That would be a big relief and would mean I could have Crew arrest her before anything bad happened. Because something bad was going to happen, I just knew it.
But Noel shook her head, though she didn’t mention Faith’s list when she spoke next. “I had one piece of information, and one only,” she said, eyes intense, hands shaking, lower lip trembling. “And it got me here.”
“What did you find out?” I wanted to pat her hand, to tell her it was going to be okay. She seemed so frail, so vulnerable and I just couldn’t bring myself to judge her. She’d made her choices, no matter where they’d led her, against Grace or not. There was just too much hurt in her for me to find her anything but sad.
“You’ll think I’m a suspect in her murder.” Noel started to cry, hands over her eyes. “But I swear I didn’t kill her.” She dropped her fingers, tears leaking down her thin face, so open and utterly exposed I believed every word she said. “Faith was selling drugs to the other girls. And when she found out I knew, she ruined me.”
***
Chapter Twenty Six
It took me a moment to process, but when I finally did I gasped. “She was a drug dealer?”
Noel nodded, misery on her face, slumping over the remains of her salad. “I don’t do drugs, I swear it. I abhor them. My sister died of an overdose when she was fifteen.” There was the hurt again, rancor. “We were models together, the two of us. But she got into drugs to stay thin and I couldn’t stop her.” Noel was crying all over again, though clearly audible and understandable, unlike me when I wept. “I would never take anything, ever. Not after what Chrissy went through.” I nodded to encourage her to go on and she did, sniffling, wiping her tears on her hands then on her jeans. “I’m positive it was Faith who set me up and got me arrested.” She shrugged, looked away. “She made it look like I was the dealer, slipped me drugs so I had that meltdown on the runway. I barely remember it.” She shuddered. “All I do remember is feeling like my skin was crawling off and I had to fix it. I’ve never been so terrified in my life. Like everyone in the crowd was laughing at me, waiting for that dress to devour me.” Holy, that sounded utterly nightmarish. No wonder she freaked out. “The police let me go because they didn’t have any proof aside from the drugs in my system. But Henry dropped me, no one else would touch me. All because I found out Faith was selling.”
“That sounds like an excellent murder motive, Noel.” It was only fair to play straight with her. And it worked. She shrugged one more time, her hair escaping the ponytail keeping it back from her face, long strands falling forward that she pushed away with impatient hands.
“I know,” she said, suddenly desperate, with an ache in her voice that made my chest hurt. “I get that, I told you. But I didn’t do it. Besides,” she tossed her head, face set into a flare of rage, “if I was going to kill Faith, I’d do something more direct. Like stuffing her own drugs down her throat. Not hanging her with that dumb dress.”
More direct, huh? “How about using a stun gun?”
Noel didn’t seem to notice I’d dropped a hint and I covered my wince with a bite of cookie. “Kami has one of those,” she said, casual, distracted as she stared into the remains of sad salad on her plate. “So does Libby.”
Libby again. “What do you know about her, her past?” Noel was being forthcoming, so I might as well take full advantage. Because hell and all, I was going, right? Might as well just rifle around for gossip when this poor girl was at her most vulnerable.
Sorry. Not sorry.
“I don’t,” Noel said. “No one does, as far as I can tell. She’s always been pretty secretive about where she came from and all. She works for Grace, so maybe she knows?”
“Did Faith ever act like she had anything on Libby?” I didn’t trust the assistant, her missing background making her my prime suspect.
Noel perked at that, nodding without her broken hurt so visible this time, like helping was giving her what she needed. The parallel to Mila wasn’t lost on me but I just sighed and listened to her response.
“I don’t know what,” she said, “but Faith claimed to have dirt on Libby, now that you mention it. And whatever Libby’s hiding?” She shivered, rubbing her thin arms brusquely. “No one crosses her. No one. She’s scary.”
Not hard evidence, per se, but following the line of my own suspicions sufficiently it was good enough for me.
Mom’s bustling arrival interrupted us, her harried expression smoothing out at the sight of Noel. Weird, Mom was never late, dinner’s pre-prep not even started. Come to think of it, she was usually here all day. Where had she been? The worried look on her face made me pause on my way to seek out Libby.
“Anything I can help with?” Mom rarely showed it when she was concerned.
She just patted my hand and put on her apron, Petunia eagerly hanging out at her feet in turn, abandoning Noel whose tiny bites garnered little in the way of falling crumbs.
“It’s fine,” she said. “Your father’s just away on a case and I worry.”
Huh. He was supposed to be running security here for me. Nice of him to tell me he was leaving town. “Is he okay?” Maybe I should have been more worried about him than less, but Dad could take care of himself.
“Absolutely.” Okay, that amount of faked assurance made me nervous. But Mom wasn’t talking any further, smiling at Noel and actually putting her to work. I left the kitchen and headed back to the lodge, my in-transit call to my father ending at his gruff voice telling me to leave him a message.
Grunt. Fine. I’d call back later. Right now, I had a suspect to question.
Libby was easier to find than I expected, hanging out in the coffee shop near the ski lift, another new addition of Alicia’s to the White Valley Lodge. I slipped into the seat next to the scowling young woman, pinning her against the window as I tucked into the bench and offered a bigger than necessary smile.
I wasn’t exactly trying to comfort her. Nope, it was my intention instead to rattle her if possible. Because at this point, I was rather over the whole business and really wanted to get back to my life, thanks. There was just too much going on around me for the full enjoyment of murder mystery solving to take hold.
Did I just call murder enjoyable? Oh, Fee.
“Tell me what Faith had on you,” I said without preamble, still smiling.
Libby’s dark brows pulled together and she looked away after her initial startled response to my sudden appearance. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”
Sullen, huh? I could do sullen. I poked her with one finger, doing my best not to shake her, actually, and proud of myself for holding it together. Because grinning maniacally at a murder suspect while pinning her down and prodding her for a confession was holding myself together. You betcha.
“I know about Faith’s list.” Libby didn’t even flinch, so she must have gotten that from my initial question. “And I know she had enough on you to make you nervous. That’s motive for murder.” Okay, a stretch, fine. But the young woman’s twitch of guilt wasn’t lost on me. “Were you supplying her with drugs?”
“Whatever,” she said, looking away again, staring into her coffee cup. “Think what you want. But I had nothing to do with any of it. I work for Grace. That’s it.”
Argh. Totally the wrong attitude to take with me at the moment. But before I could go all Mom on her and dissect her with my weighty older woman vibes, someone else did it for me.
Grace appeared, slipping into the bench seat across from us, not looking at me. Instead, she fixed her eyes on Libby with her own face creased in worry.
“Lib.” The young woman flinched this time, hard core, refusing to look at her boss, shivering a little. “Please. I know you didn’t kill Faith. But you have to tell me what you’re hiding. I can’t protect you if you won’t talk to me.”
This sounded like an old conversation I’d dropped myself in the middle of
and from the strained look between the pair I was right about my guess. I might as well not have been there at all as Libby finally met her boss’s eyes and exhaled, leaning in to grasp Grace’s hand with one of her own, so tightly the skin whitened at the knuckles.
“I never meant to involve you, Grace, I swear.” Libby sounded close to tears while the older woman cupped her hand with her free one and showed no sign if the desperate grasp hurt or not. “I just needed a job, a place to hide out for a while. I didn’t want anyone else to suffer for my past.”
“You can tell me anything,” Grace said in that level, warm tone that was both maternal and friendly and so far from what I’d mastered I let her have the moment. “Anything. I won’t judge. You know me better than that by now.”
Libby nodded, misery clear on her face and for the first time I watched her lower her guard and let Grace in. And, in doing so, let me in, too.
“Despite what you might think, (was that aimed at me or Grace? Didn’t matter) this has nothing to do with Faith. She thought she knew what I was hiding, but she had no real idea. None.” Libby was shaking for real by now, her lower lip trembling, tears welling and falling down her cheeks to splash on the table top. Grace reached out and liberated a few napkins, handing them over, while the young woman sniffled and pulled herself into order enough to go on. “I’m not a murderer, but I’m related to some.”
Wow, what?
Grace glanced at me and, in that brief instant of eye contact, told me I was to remain utterly silent and under no circumstances was I to interfere. Amazing how much information ccould be transferred from one person to another in the flash of a glance. I held perfectly still and waited Libby out while her boss simply sat there and held her hand.
Libby choked on her next words before shaking her head and sagging forward, sobbing softly into the handful of napkins. “My family,” she finally managed, voice thick, rough. “I’m hiding from my family. If they find me, they’ll kill me.”
My heart palpitated while I fought empathy at her admission. Understanding rode a wild horse through my mind while Grace’s dismay turned to compassion.
“Tell me,” she said, firm, warm but demanding.
Libby didn’t protest at all, simply lowering the napkins so she could speak, tears an endless trickle to join the puddle on the table. “My real name is Eve O’Shea,” she whispered, “only daughter of Patrick O’Shea, youngest son of the Chicago O’Sheas. The crime family.”
Yikes. The names didn’t mean anything to me, but being on the wrong side of organized crime wasn’t anything to sniff at.
“Libby,” Grace said, paused. “Eve.” She squeezed and the young woman squeezed back. “Why did you run away?”
“My father was trying to force me to marry the son of one of his competitors to join the families together.” Libby/Eve sniffled, wiped at her nose, her tears finally slowing as indignant anger took over. “When I ran, I betrayed him, betrayed everyone. But I couldn’t live like that, not anymore. I escaped and went to New York and reinvented myself. Found you.” She blinked at Grace. “At first I just needed you as a cover, to create a new life. I didn’t mean to put you in danger, I swear. I was only going to stay a few months, to give myself some backstory. Then I was going to move on.” She exhaled softly, shook her head. “But you’re awesome, Grace, and every time I planned to tell you I was leaving it seemed like terrible timing. You needed me.” She sobbed one more time, silent and heartbreaking. “I should have left before it was too late. But now it is and you’re in danger because I didn’t go when I should have.”
What did that mean? I had an uncomfortable flash of insight that made me want to throw up suddenly, but instead of prodding that particular line of thought, I blurted something much more immediate.
“Where were you when Faith was killed, Libby?” I winced and almost called her Eve but the young woman was already speaking, to Grace, not to me, but at least she was still talking.
“I don’t have an alibi.” Her thin shoulders rose and fell in defeat. “I was hiding in my room.”
“Why?” I already knew the answer, wanted to deny it, but couldn’t. I had enough intimate connection to the reason for her need to escape to let myself be surprised when she answered.
“One of my father’s men is here,” she said, empty and hopeless. “When he showed up at the lodge I knew I had stayed too long with you.”
I swallowed while Grace’s fingers lifted, stroked the last of the tears from the girl’s cheek. “We’ll deal with this together. I’ll do everything I can to keep you safe, I swear it.” She met my eyes, hers full of anxious worry. “Can we have the sheriff put her in protective custody?”
I nodded, not sure if he could or would, but prepared to go to bat for exactly that if necessary. “Libby,” I said, knowing my own voice sounded hollow and devoid of emotion, “the man you saw, the one you’re afraid of. What’s his name?”
The young woman met my eyes at last, and, tone dull with fear, said, “Malcolm Murray.”
***
Chapter Twenty Seven
I reached out to Libby before thinking, covering Grace’s hand with mine in a pyramid of female support while wondering how I could have ever thought the clearly terrified young woman could have been a murder suspect. How had I missed the obvious signs of buried horror, the reflexive retreat like a build-in flinch from life? Because I’d been set on blaming someone for the death of Faith so I could move on already.
Huh. Not like me to treat murder so lightly. I really either had to choose to back away from the death game or commit totally. Wait, was that Dad’s problem with me? Why he didn’t share? Because I wouldn’t commit to his business? I felt my insides shrivel slightly while I spoke up in an attempt to reassure the scared and ready to rabbit Libby/Eve.
“Malcolm is my problem,” I said, knowing now why he’d been here. Not for me, but that business he mentioned. Libby. Eve. Damn it, not in my town. “Let me deal with him.”
She stared at me, wide-eyed. “You know him?”
“Let’s just say I have something I can leverage against him.” Just let him try to hurt this young woman on my watch. If he wanted answers like he claimed he did, answers for Siobhan I now believed were tied to her daughter, Fiona, he’d be backing the hell off, orders from his bosses or not.
She swallowed, looked away, clearly disbelieving. “Check the video footage,” she whispered, returning to stare into her coffee cup. “I should be on it going to my room. I didn’t come out again until Grace called me.”
I’d take that as an alibi. “Thank you for trusting me,” I said.
She shook her head then, looking up at Grace who smiled faintly, kindly. “Not you,” she said.
Point taken.
I paused, knowing I’d built a bit of cred and not wanting to eliminate it entirely, but needing confirmation despite what Henry told me. “Libby, why were you talking with Henry Ostler on Sunday morning?”
Grace froze, stared at her assistant, then me, with enough hurt in her eyes I wished I’d kept my mouth shut.
Libby sagged, squeezing her boss’s hands. “We need to talk,” she said. “I know you’re hurting but I believe him, Grace.” Compassion? Now? Wow, she was a better person than I’d given her credit for. “Henry still loves you.”
Whoops. I hadn’t meant to get in the middle of this and when tears welled in Grace’s eyes I knew it was time for me to go. Nothing to do with murder here, and affairs of the heart weren’t my job at the moment. At least not Grace’s.
I left the pair talking quietly and hurried back to town, to the sheriff’s office, rushing into Crew’s presence with growing unease in my heart. I spilled what Libby had told me, taking in his surprise then grim nodding as he retreated to his desk to take notes. But when I wrapped up with her possible innocence being recorded for posterity, he made a face that told me it wasn’t so neat and tidy just yet.
“Turns out there’s no actual footage.” Crew’s grimace reached the corners of
his blue eyes as he rocked back in his chair, the wood creaking faintly under his weight.
Just what we needed. “The killer found a way to sabotage the cameras?”
His lips twisted, a wry grin. “Nothing so nefarious,” he said. “Mundane, unfortunately. Turns out something went wrong with the whole system. Alicia contacted the company and found out they were tracking a glitch in their programming. So, just a tech issue, but still problematic.”
I groaned and sank back myself, staring at the small stain on the hardwood floor under the corner of the desk near my foot, scowling at it like the blot under the old varnish was an intentional mark against us. “Great, so no proof either way, for any of our suspects.”
Crew shrugged, sitting forward with his muscular forearms, bared to the elbows where he’d rolled his sleeves back, resting on the cluttered surface of his desk. His long, strong fingers toyed with a pen as he spoke. “It certainly doesn’t help us narrow things down.”
“Well, I’m counting Libby out, if that’s worth anything.” I scowled at my bobbing foot, crossed over one knee, knowing the motion was pure agitation and forcing it to stop out of stubbornness only to have it start up all over again the moment I switched focus. Sigh. “She’s scared, Crew, but not of being caught as a murderer. And she was certain the footage would exonerate her, with no way of knowing it wouldn’t be available.”
He didn’t change expressions, though when he spoke it was clear he was trying not to ruffle feathers. “I’m sure you’re right,” he said, “but we can’t discount anything just yet, Fee. You know that.”
In other words I’d been wrong in the past enough times he couldn’t trust my gut, though I always seemed to end up on the right (or was that wrong?) end of the real murderer. Lucky me.
“You’re also forgetting to mention she had excellent reason to kill Faith if she was terrified for her life.” He pointedly locked gazes with me, though again not confrontational, steady and ready for my reaction. “If she thought Faith was going to turn her in to her family, protecting her own life by taking the model’s makes perfect sense, sweetheart.”
