The Last Thing She Said

by Lauren Carr

  The German shepherd positioned himself in the middle of the threesome to protect Chris and Helen from what could be a potential threat.

  “What’s your issue that you need a service dog?” Kyle asked around the cigar.

  “Truthfully,” Chris said in a low voice, “I’m his service human.”

  Kyle’s eyebrows rose high on his brow. A slow grin crossed his face. He decided to stick out his hand. “Kyle Billingsley.”

  Chris shook his hand and introduced Helen and Sterling.

  “Bart, get us a bottle of scotch—a good one—and three glasses.” Kyle gestured for them to follow him as he slowly made his way up the circular stairs. It was a difficult exercise with the cane and what appeared to be a bad left leg.

  They took seats around a table with a full view of the harbor. Puffing on the cigar, Kyle continued to study them while they took their seats. Sterling took a spot on the floor between the table and stairs.

  “Under what circumstance did Mercedes tell you about my hitting her in the face with a shovel?” Kyle asked.

  “She didn’t tell me,” Chris said. “She told my mom. They were very close friends. After her disappearance, your sister allowed her hair to go natural. It was dark with a shock of white hair on the left side of her forehead. I didn’t want to embarrass her by asking about it, but my mother allowed her curiosity to get the best of her.”

  “The impact from the blow killed the pigments at the roots,” Kyle said with a nod of his head. “Mercedes considered it an intriguing trait. Our mother was horrified. She thought it would deter suitable husbands and dragged Mercedes to the salon to have her hair dyed blond from the time she was a teenager.” He chuckled. “Mother nearly fainted when Mercedes came home from college with her hair cut short and its natural color. She nagged Mercedes during the whole break. No one could lay a guilt trip like Mother. By the time break was over, Mercedes was a blonde again. I knew as soon as she ran away that she’d let it go natural.” He took a long puff on the cigar while eying Chris. “I thought maybe you were her son.” His tone was blunt when he asked, “Why are you here?”

  “We came to tell you that your sister passed away yesterday,” Chris said.

  Behind the glasses, Kyle’s eyes grew wide. The corner of his mouth began to quiver—working its way across his lips.

  “We’re sorry for your loss,” Helen said.

  “It isn’t like we’ve seen or talked to each other since …” Kyle’s voice trailed off. He swallowed.

  Bart arrived with a tray containing a bottle of scotch, ice bucket, and three glasses. Sensing that something was going on, he made a quick exit. As soon as Bart was gone, Kyle filled one of the glasses with scotch and gulped it down. He gestured for Helen and Chris to join him. Helen tossed an ice cube to Sterling who caught it in mid-air. She put ice in the remaining glasses and poured the scotch. Chris and Helen nursed their drinks while Kyle refilled his glass.

  “You said you haven’t seen or talked to your sister,” Helen said. “Does that mean she didn’t contact you after her disappearance to let you know that she was all right?”

  Kyle shook his head. “She told me that she was going to run away, change her identity, and marry the love of her life.” He raised his glass. “I said more power to you.” He took a drink. “What about him? Billy. How’s—”

  “Billy passed away from cancer two months ago,” Helen said.

  “Was she happy?” Kyle asked. “Was what they had together worth walking away from all she had as Mercedes Livingston?”

  Chris nodded his head. “She had a wonderful life with Billy. She adored their children. When Billy died …” His voice trailed off.

  Kyle leaned across the table. “Billy ruined her.”

  “How?” Helen asked.

  “Because he loved her, and she loved him. When that happened, all of our father’s ambitions for her future as a high society matron—Phfft!” Kyle waved his hand. “It all went up in smoke.” He shrugged his thin shoulders. “She tried to go along, but it was too late. The genie was out of the bottle. She’d gotten a taste of the real thing. So much for being the devoted country club wife making her executive husband look good. The Pulitzer-prize winning author of The Last Thing She Said was her own woman—white streak and all.” He took a gulp from the glass and looked at Chris out of the corner of his eye. “She died just yesterday?”

  “Medical examiner thinks it was from a heart attack,” Helen said.

  “They were married what—forty years?” Kyle said.

  Helen nodded her head. “Close to it.”

  “Wow,” Kyle said with a gasp. “That’s an eternity where I come from. You mentioned children. How many?”

  “They had three children,” Helen said. “A son and two daughters. Amanda is a nurse. Erin works with computer networking. Their youngest is a son. Speare took his father’s place as department chair of the English and literature department at a university.”

  “What kind of name is Speare?” Kyle asked.

  “Short for Shakespeare,” Chris said. “His real name is William after his father. He teaches Shakespeare. Has memorized the sonnets.”

  Kyle scoffed.

  “Don’t laugh,” Helen said. “His wife told me that she swept him off her feet reciting Shakespeare’s love sonnets to her.”

  “Speare writes novels, too,” Chris said. “He has a world of talent. Mercedes taught him everything she knew. It would do his career a lot of good if he could publicly claim Mercedes Livingston as his mother.”

  “I don’t think there’s any market for Shakespeare.” Kyle poured himself another drink. When he offered refills to them, they refused.

  “Speare writes historical crime fiction,” Chris said. “I’ve read some of it. He’s inherited his mother’s talent. I had no idea how much until I’d read Mercedes’s letter.”

  “What letter?”

  “We only found out about Shannon being your sister yesterday,” Chris said. “She’d left a letter telling us about how she had voluntarily disappeared. If that information goes public, everyone is going to assume she’d killed George. We need to find out what really happened.”

  Kyle’s eyes grew wide.

  “Mercedes’s last wish was for us to find out who really killed him,” Chris said.

  “Mercedes wrote in her letter that you were the only one she’d told about her plan to disappear,” Helen said.

  “It wasn’t me,” Kyle said. “I was in LA. I didn’t know anything until Father called about George and Mercedes getting kidnapped.” He shook his head. “Truthfully, I always thought she’d killed George.”

  “Did they have a tendency to be violent with each other?” Chris asked.

  “No,” Kyle said sharply. “George was a lot like our father. An alpha male. He was a good guy, but everything had to be his way. For the first several years, while George was in law school, Mercedes went along. She did what was expected of her, but she’d spend a lot of time alone and missed Billy. The book was her escape. Well then, George graduated from law school, passed the bar, and walked into a vice president position with Father’s company. Everything was as it should be. He was the big-wheel executive and she was his devoted wife.” With a chuckle, Kyle stuck the cigar into his mouth. “Then, Mercedes turned the tables.”

  “She became an award-winning, best-selling author,” Chris said.

  “The Last Thing She Said was no love story. It was a murder mystery with a strong, independent, female lead. That was a big thing back in those days. She signed a seven-figure deal with Hollywood for the movie rights, and poor Georgie was just a measly corporate vice president.”

  “Did that bruise George’s ego?” Helen asked.

  “How couldn’t it?” Kyle asked. “Here he was married to a woman forced to marry him. She liked him. She treated him with respect, but she never pretended t
o love him. Then, overnight, she became a household name. Now, imagine what he’d do if he found out she was planning to walk out on him. How would that look to his peers at the club? To his subordinates? Believe me, George and Father were all about appearances. That’s one of the reasons why she decided to disappear. It would have been too embarrassing for George if she had divorced him. Better for everyone to think something had happened to her. After all, Father had said she’d be dead to him if she’d divorced George.”

  “She figured there was no reason to not kill Mercedes Livingston,” Helen said.

  “Notice that nothing was missing from her hotel room. She’d told me that she was taking nothing but the clothes on her back so that no one would know that she’d run away.”

  “If she went to such lengths to not humiliate George, then she must have cared about him,” Helen said. “What makes you think she’d kill him?”

  “I think he found out about what she was going to do and tried to stop her,” Kyle said. “Things got out of hand and Mercedes was forced to kill him in self-defense.”

  “She said in her letter that she never saw George and didn’t know what happened to him,” Chris said. “She learned about George’s disappearance and the ransom demand from the news after she’d married Billy.”

  “Well—”

  “Mercedes had no reason to lie in her letter,” Chris said.

  “Witnesses saw George climb into Mercedes’s rental car,” Kyle said. “That placed her in Shepherdstown.”

  “That places the rental car in Shepherdstown,” Chris said. “Witnesses saw Mercedes leave the hotel on foot. She’d met Billy in the historic part of Harpers Ferry and they immediately left the area—leaving the rental car in the parking lot at Hill House.”

  “According to her letter, they were long gone by the time George went missing and your father got that ransom demand,” Helen said.

  “Mercedes must have lied in her letter to spare her kids,” Kyle said. “I didn’t kill George. I had no reason to. I was in LA.”

  “Maybe you had someone do it for you,” Chris said.

  “Why?”

  “Your father had disowned you,” Chris said. “George had been invited into the family business—made an executive right off the bat. Mercedes was the family darling. She was leaving. With George still around—he could be the son your father wanted you to be. So you used Mercedes’s disappearance to extort half a million dollars from your father. You got an accomplice to steal the car she’d left behind, and lure George away from the Bavarian to kill him and dispose of the body. Then, your accomplice made the ransom demand while you were still on the other side of the country.”

  “The kidnappers demanded that you deliver the ransom,” Helen said, “giving you access to the money.”

  “Mercedes and your rival for your father’s affection were gone and you became a rich man,” Chris said.

  Kyle slowly clapped his hands. “Good theory, but not true. My father was an unpleasant, unforgiving, greedy bastard. I wanted nothing to do with him or his money. Even if he had left me in his will, I would have refused his money. He was the reason I lost Mercedes. She was the only one who understood me. She knew the meaning of unconditional love. Yes, she’d told me that she was leaving, but she never told me the specifics.” He shook his head. “She only told me that when I heard that she was missing or kidnapped, not to take it seriously because it was going to be a cover-up for her running away and marrying Billy. So, when I got word that Father got a ransom demand, that’s what I thought it was. I didn’t take any of it seriously until I heard that George was missing, too.”

  “What happened to the half a million dollars?” Chris asked.

  “The feds put it in a duffel bag with a tracking device. The lead investigator put the bag together and set it in the car the feds gave to me to make the drop. The kidnappers sent me on a road trip all over the tri-state area before telling me to leave it in an old root cellar in Antietam Battlefield and walk away. That’s what I did. The FBI staked the money out all night. The next morning, they checked on the bag and found it full of newspaper. The tracker was still there. Turns out, there was a small tunnel at the back of the root cellar that came out at a stream. Everybody assumed I had something to do with the money disappearing. The feds searched my room, car, and everything. I had feds following me for years. Even my father thought I was in on it. He never spoke to me again. All I got in his will was an order to not come near his funeral—like I’d show up.” He drained his glass and slammed it down on the table.

  “If you didn’t tell anyone about Mercedes’s plans, then how did someone know when to engineer George’s abduction and ransom demand at the exact time that she disappeared?” Chris asked.

  Kyle yanked the cigar from his mouth and leaned toward them from across the table. “Did you ever read The Last Thing She Said?”

  “Years ago,” Chris said.

  “Your sister stated in her letter that she based the plot on her college roommate’s murder,” Helen said.

  “That’s right.” Kyle let out a soft gasp. “I forgot all about that. Lacey. I can’t remember her last name. Nice girl. Pretty. She was even more into books than Mercedes. She was really into literary history, too. Knew all about the old-time writers and what inspired them.” His expression turned sad. “They never arrested the bastard who beat the crap out of her and wrung her neck. I guess the ex-boyfriend had a lot of juice. Must have to have kept him out of jail after what he did to Lacey.”

  “Cases like that can be very difficult to solve,” Helen said. “Sure, everyone may know who did it, but you still have to prove it. That’s the mark of a civilized society.”

  “Do you think George’s kidnapping and murder had something to do with Lacey Woodhouse’s murder?” Chris asked.

  “Nah,” Kyle said. “I’m talking about figuring out how Mercedes’s mind worked. I’m not into books, but I’ve read The Last Thing She Said several times.” He gestured at their surroundings in the club. “It’s no coincidence that I named this club after its main character. Maisie. Mercedes’s first and only book became an American classic for a reason. Look at the intricate plot—the twists and turns. Mercedes was beyond clever. Every time I read it, I end up in awe of this person I knew as my sister.” He tapped his temple with his finger. “She was a genius. Our father was devious, but Mercedes could run circles around him. Someone pulled off this caper, and the only one I know who could have engineered it was Mercedes.”

  “I’ve known your sister for decades—after her disappearance. She was no murderer. Who else could have done it?” Chris wanted to argue that Mercedes had her own money that she had transferred from her and George’s joint account but didn’t want to divulge that information in case Kyle didn’t know.

  To their surprise, Kyle did know. “The feds told us afterwards that someone had embezzled over a million dollars from George and Mercedes’s savings account in the weeks leading up to her disappearance.”

  “Did the feds have any theories on who?” Helen asked.

  Kyle shrugged his shoulders. “I’d heard a rumor from a friend of mine who was in Shepherdstown that weekend that George was furious with one of his employees. He had told her to clean out her desk on Monday. I don’t know her name though.” He shifted in his seat. “To tell you the truth, I’m not even sure if that was why he was firing her.”

  “A friend of yours who was in Shepherdstown?” Chris asked. “Does this friend have a name?”

  “Gavin Fallon,” Kyle said. “We were in boarding school together and did crew at USC. He got married and came back east. He and his wife, Patricia Baker, started a PR firm. Did really well. The firm I mean. Marriage had hit the rocks almost immediately. They got divorced within a year. But remained partners. Between them, they had a ton of connections. They did event planning—conventions and that. They coordinated that conference in Shepherd
stown. As part of it, they were there that whole weekend.” He snapped his fingers. “As a matter of fact, Patricia saw George leaving with Mercedes.”

  “Could she have been mistaken?” Helen asked.

  “She’d known him for years,” Kyle said. “She knew Mercedes, too. She told me to my face that she had seen George that afternoon and he told her that he was going to dinner with Mercedes.” He shrugged.

  “Therefore, you assumed your sister killed him,” Helen said.

  “Exactly,” Kyle said.

  Chris took out his cell phone to type in Kyle’s information. “Do you keep in touch with Gavin?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know where he is living now?”

  “Either heaven or hell.” Kyle took another sip of his drink. “He was agnostic. So most likely he’s in hell.”

  “He’s dead?” Helen asked.

  Kyle nodded his head. “House fire a little over six weeks after George and Mercedes went missing.”

  “What about his ex-wife? Patricia?” Chris asked.

  “I’ve never kept track of her,” Kyle said with a wave of her hand. “She never liked me. Bitch said I wasn’t sophisticated enough.”

  Chapter Nine

  Chris’s rump and legs were cramped from driving what seemed to be the entire day.

  After leaving Kyle Billingsley in Baltimore, he drove Helen and Sterling south on the Capital Beltway and across the state line into Virginia. They didn’t exit until they’d arrived at Tyson’s Corner, a spider’s web of freeways, subways, shopping centers, gated communities, high-rise condos and office parks. Chris’s spine stiffened with tension as he plunged into the midst of it all to make his way through the obstacle course of moving vehicles to the Silver Diner, a homestyle restaurant chain boasting the atmosphere from a long-forgotten time.

  He sighed with relief when he finally pulled into a vacant parking space and turned off the engine. “I remember now what I hated most about living here.”