Ettie Smith Amish Mysteries Box Set 6

by Samantha Price

  “She is. She’s home, and she’s resting.”

  “Ah, good. I’ve been dreadfully worried.” She showed them through to a sunroom that overlooked a long and narrow garden.

  The inside of the house was much grander than the outside. Ettie was admiring the flowers and would’ve loved to take a walk and have a further look at all the plants, but they were there about Stacey.

  “Has Stacey said something to you to make you worried?” Evelyn asked.

  “No” Elsa-May repositioned herself on the couch and pulled a cushion from behind her back and placed it beside her. “She’s said nothing much.”

  Evelyn shook her head. “Despite what she admitted to, she didn’t kill Greville. She didn’t tell me she did it. If she’d done it, she would’ve said so to me. What I think is that their no-good son did it and she’s covering for him.”

  Elsa-May’s eyes bugged open wide. “You think Logan killed his father?”

  “I do. He was always after money. I told Stacey to be careful because if he was after his parents’ money, Stacey’s still in danger.”

  “Did they have a lot?”

  Evelyn tilted her head and shrugged. “I have no idea about that.”

  Ettie wondered if that was why the son had come back that night—assuming it had been him—because he was looking for some kind of paperwork.

  “I thought Logan did it as soon as I heard the dreadful news.”

  Elsa-May breathed out heavily. “Did you tell the police that?”

  “No, I couldn’t. Stacey would never talk to me again. I didn’t tell the police what I thought. I have no proof anyway and they’re always looking for proof, not hunches.”

  “But she could be in danger, if you’re right about him,” Elsa-May said.

  “She asked me to keep out of things, so that’s what I’m doing.” Evelyn stared at Elsa-May. “Why don’t you do the same?”

  Ettie was surprised by Evelyn’s attitude and guessed she didn’t know about the person in Stacey’s house. “We’re worried about her, that’s all.”

  “I know. I am too, but she’s old enough to make up her own mind how she wants to live her life. If she wants to cover for Logan, then it’s up to her. I told her I’d abide by whatever decision she made. That’s all an older sister can do. Now, can I offer you a cold drink?”

  Ettie stood up convinced that Evelyn didn’t really think Stacey was in danger because Logan had done it. “No thank you. We’ve got to keep moving.”

  “Yes.” Elsa-May pushed herself to her feet. “We just wanted to see if there was anything we might be able to do to help Stacey.”

  “She’s got a lawyer. He’s the only one who can help her now. Unless … unless you’d like to say a little prayer for her?”

  Ettie nodded. “We’ll do that. We've already been doing that. Would you know how we can get in contact with Logan?”

  “Goodness me, no. No one knows that. Not even his mother.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  The sister showed them to the door, and Ettie couldn’t wait to leave. She hadn’t even gotten a chance to compliment the woman on her lovely garden.

  “What do you think about that, Ettie?”

  “Weird, that’s all I can say. She’s not acting right. She’s prepared to let her brother-in-law’s killer go free and most Englischers want justice in this life.”

  “I agree, but she did make some valid points so I can see how she’s thinking.”

  “If Stacey’s in danger like she thinks, we should tell Kelly.”

  Elsa-May nodded. “Most definitely.” When they reached the taxi, they had the driver take them directly to the police station.

  After they had waited an hour to see Detective Kelly, he finally called them into his office and they sat down in front of a grumpy-looking man. Ettie was sure his mood was sour because they weren’t minding their own business instead of fussing over who killed Greville. “We think Stacey might be in danger.”

  He frowned more intensely, looking from one woman to the other. “From whom?”

  Elsa-May took over. “Her son. It seems he might want his parents’ money, and since they haven’t helped him out, he’s taking matters into his own hands. That’s what Evelyn told us. She said she didn’t know if they had a lot, but the way she was talking I’m wondering if they might have more than we think.”

  Slowly he nodded, but the ingrained frown lines on his brow didn’t lessen. “You deliberately visited Evelyn to see what you could find out?”

  “That’s right, and maybe Stacey is protecting him not knowing, not realizing, that she could very well be next. That could’ve even been him at the house looking for her the other night, trying to kill her. He wouldn’t have known she’d confessed to cover for him and was staying the night in jail.” Ettie stared at Kelly, hoping he wouldn’t be too angry with them, but from the thin line that seemed to have permanently replaced his mouth, she knew he was still upset.

  “There’s more.” His gaze dropped to the desk and it was then that Ettie knew something more than the two of them had upset him.

  “You’ve found out something else?” Elsa-May asked.

  “I’ve been thrown quite a curve ball.” He picked up a pen and tapped the end of it on his wooden desk. “You won’t believe it and I will tell you since you’re both heavily involved now.”

  “Yes?” Elsa-May asked, leaning forward eagerly while Ettie held her breath.

  They continued to sit quietly in front of him as he used the pencil to scratch his head. He’d never done that before in their presence and Ettie was worried about him, but she had to exhale before she passed out.

  The pencil fell from his hands and rolled onto the desk, then stopped. Kelly took his eyes off the pencil and looked up at them. “We routinely run prints as part of the autopsy and, funny thing is, Greville—or I should say, the man we found on the floor of your neighbor’s house—was not Greville Charmers.”

  Chapter 18

  “What?” Ettie yelped.

  “It was Greville, we saw him for ourselves,” Elsa-May said. “It most definitely was.”

  “Yes, no doubt about it. It was him and he was very much dead.”

  Kelly shook his head. “It wasn’t. The deceased on your neighbor’s floor was Kevin Garcier.”

  “No, we saw him. It was Greville lying there,” Elsa-May repeated.

  Kelly raised his hand to silence them. “Kevin Garcier was released on early parole from prison three weeks ago today.”

  “There must be some mistake.”

  Ettie shook her head, picturing Greville as he lay there lifeless on the floor. “Tell me again?”

  “The man who was dead in your neighbor’s house was not Greville Charmers.”

  “Yes, it was,” Ettie said, taking a sidelong glance at her sister. “We saw him.”

  Elsa-May's face soured. “What does Stacey say about all this?”

  “We don’t know because we can’t find her.”

  “She was at home today, before we left to visit her sister.”

  He pushed out his lips. “She wasn’t home half an hour ago.”

  “Did you try her sister’s place? We were just there, but she could’ve got there just after we left.”

  “I’ve had people out looking everywhere. She’s not at the sister’s house and her son hasn’t seen her.”

  “Did you tell the son about this Kevin person?”

  Kelly nodded. “I did. He said he doesn’t know anyone of that name, but funny thing is we just found out Logan is on the visitors’ log. Logan visited Kevin Garcier in jail twice in the past year. What’s more, we couldn’t find his name at first because he’s not Logan Charmers, he’s Logan Garcier.”

  “This is getting weirder. You mean, Greville wasn’t Greville? And …”

  Elsa-May stopped talking, so Ettie had to take over. “But we saw Greville dead and why does Logan have a different last name than he should?”

  “I thought you two might be able t
o shed some light on the whole thing.”

  The sisters shook their heads.

  “Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret that explains a lot.” Kelly smirked and the two sisters leaned toward him. “There was blood found on the victim’s clothing, which belonged neither to the victim or Stacey.”

  “Greville’s?” Ettie asked.

  “The son’s?” Elsa-May suggested.

  “The blood we tested was a match for a sibling of the deceased, Kevin Garcier.”

  “A twin, an identical twin?” Ettie asked.

  Kelly nodded once, and then shook his head. “Not exactly that, but a brother —maybe a fraternal twin—who looks strikingly similar. If they were identical twins, they would have identical blood markers and we might not have learned that there was a brother in the picture.”

  Elsa-May licked her lips. “Greville’s brother, Kevin, gets out of prison, goes to see Greville and Greville kills him and then flees?”

  Kelly raised his hands in the air. “It’s a mystery all right. Do you see why we need to speak with Stacey? It’s possible she knows all that happened. We also need to find out why Logan lied about visiting his uncle. And, his tire tracks matched the ones we found and that places him in the house with the flashlight. There’s no point taking his fingerprints because he said he visited his folks so his prints would be inside the house.”

  “So, it was him with the flashlight inside the house?”

  “He denies it still, but the tire tracks matched his. We’ve nothing to charge him on though.” He picked up the pencil once more and tapped the table twice. “Why would he lie about it?”

  “Well, it doesn’t look good. It looks like he was trying to take something from their house. Why the different names?”

  “They all used to be Garciers except Stacey and Greville changed their last names just before they moved to your street.”

  “I wonder why?” Elsa-May said.

  “I don’t know the answer.” Kelly shook his head. “Sometimes folks do that when they're embarrassed to have a family member in prison.”

  Ettie said, “Maybe Stacey had no idea what was going on. She said she heard noises and sent Greville out to see who it was. I wonder if Greville didn’t know it was his brother, and just thought it was an intruder.”

  Elsa-May gasped. “Does Stacey know she killed Kevin and not Greville?” Elsa-May asked.

  “Oh dear.” Ettie shook her head. “There was the funeral cremating the wrong man.”

  Kelly said. “That’s right. And it leads us back to the question of who killed Kevin—was it Greville or was it Stacey? Stacey confessed to killing Greville and if he’s still alive, it makes her arrest void from a legal viewpoint. Not that I’m an expert in the law, but—”

  Ettie hit Elsa-May hard on the shoulder. “That’s why he was wearing a suit, Elsa-May. Remember we kept wondering why he was in a suit rather than his pajamas?”

  Elsa-May rubbed her shoulder. “Yes, but you didn’t have to strike me so hard.”

  “Greville fled into the night in his pajamas. No, wait. The pajamas were in a heap in the room, so he would have changed quickly. That must be what happened.” Ettie was pleased that the issue of the suit had been cleared up. “If Stacey didn’t know what was going on at the start, she must’ve figured it out and that’s why she’s confessed to a crime she didn’t commit. She’s protecting Greville, not their son. Perhaps the brother—Kevin—and Logan were in it together to kill Greville, but the whole thing backfired.”

  Kelly said, “There could’ve been a plot to kill either brother, or no plot at all, just a series of unfortunate events. We can imagine whatever we’d like, but unless someone confesses or a reasonable explanation comes to the fore, we’ll never know.” Kelly leaned back and folded his arms across his chest.

  “What was Kevin in prison for?” Elsa-May asked.

  Kelly blew out a deep breath. “Writing bad checks and forging documents, as well as embezzlement.”

  “Not murder though, or anything violent?”

  “No. I can tell you I was shocked when the prints got a match in the system and they didn’t belong to Greville Charmers.”

  Ettie said, “That explains why the deceased had no poison in his system, because he wasn’t Greville.”

  “Someone was poisoning Greville. It’s my job to locate him and find out who was trying to kill him.”

  Elsa-May took off her knitting glasses. “Are fingerprints routinely taken when autopsies are done?”

  Kelly nodded. “That’s right, and for some reason I had them run the prints through the IAFIS database. I’ve always had something about Greville in the back of my mind. His name is familiar for some reason. Maybe it wasn’t his name, just a feeling. Call it a gut instinct if you will.”

  Just as Kelly reached out to take up the pencil once again, Ettie leaned forward and managed to take hold of it just in time and she placed it down in front of her. “It’s quite extraordinary. I wonder what Stacey will say about all this.”

  Kelly’s lips down-turned at the corners. “We have to find her first.”

  “Do you think she’s on the run?” Elsa-May asked.

  “It’s possible.”

  Ettie said, “I have a theory. Greville killed his brother, for whatever reason—I’m still not certain whether it was an accident or not—and then Greville, when no one believed the intruder story, told Stacey to confess to his murder to throw us off the track of what really happened that night. There was no danger at all of her going to prison because Greville was still alive. If she’d gotten off, all good, but if she’d been convicted, Greville could’ve reappeared.”

  Kelly slowly nodded. “That’s a good reason for her sudden change of story.”

  “That could be true, because she begged us to help her find out who murdered Greville and then all of a sudden, she changed and said she did it,” Elsa-May said.

  “It was all very odd,” Ettie agreed. “Surely she would’ve known it wasn’t Greville lying there on the floor.”

  Kelly shook his head. “Who knows? Maybe not with all the confusion. Especially if they were look-alike brothers and she thought the other brother—Kevin—was locked up somewhere.”

  Ettie rubbed the back of her neck. “No, I think she knew at the start because she wanted Elsa-May to say she heard a car driving away.”

  “Oh, she did, did she?”

  Ettie stared at Kelly not realizing they hadn’t told him that. “We might’ve forgotten to mention that.”

  “That’s a pretty important thing to keep to yourselves.” Now the thin line of a mouth was back. “I’m disappointed in the both of you. Now it’s all the more important that we find the missing Mrs. Charmers.”

  “She could be long gone by now,” Elsa-May said.

  “Hopefully not. She has to report weekly under the terms of her bail conditions, and we’ll be waiting for her. If she doesn’t make it or if she’s gone out of state, she’ll be in breach of bail.”

  “I don’t think so,” Elsa-May said. “Won’t that arrest be overturned? As you said, she confessed to killing her husband, not his brother.”

  “It’s gotten complicated, I’ll admit that. We only have to hope she doesn’t find out what we know before we can locate her. Now, the man you saw last night, did he have a large frame like Greville?” Kelly asked.

  “No, he was much lighter and that’s why we thought it might have been the son. Then again, it was dark and we were scared. He was moving fast. Are you thinking Greville might have borrowed the son’s car?”

  “I don’t know, but Logan’s next on my list to speak with—again.” Kelly rose to his feet. “Let me know if you learn anything else. Are you heading home?”

  “Yes. We are,” Elsa-May said.

  “I’ll have someone drive you there.”

  Ettie smiled. “Thank you.”

  “No problem, and while they’re there, they can see if Mrs. Charmers is back.”

  By the time Ettie and
Elsa-May arrived home, it was nearly dark. The officers knocked on Stacey’s door but the sisters knew Stacey wasn’t home as there was no light coming from inside. They walked through their door and, while Elsa-May lit the gas lantern, Ettie walked to the couch and collapsed lifting up her feet and plopping them on top of her crocheted throw blanket. “Well, what do you think of all that?”

  “Shocking and unbelievable. At least we have a clear idea of what happened. Greville killed his brother.”

  “No, we don’t know that at all. That’s what it looks like.” Ettie sat up. “What if Stacey was in on it from the start?”

  Elsa-May’s eyebrows drew together. “What?”

  “They lured the brother over there to kill him. Then because they keep to themselves and no one knows them, we didn’t even know Greville had a look-alike brother, or a son. That’s why they moved to this quiet location, they had it all planned out. If Kelly hadn’t taken the prints to send to the … whatever it was, then no one would’ve known it wasn’t Greville who died. It was the perfect murder.”

  “Nee, it wasn’t, Elsa-May, because everyone thinks Greville’s dead. How can that be the perfect murder when Greville has to hide for the rest of his life?”

  “When I said perfect, I meant … Oh, don’t bother.” Elsa-May swiped a hand through the air.

  “You know what, Elsa-May?”

  “What?”

  “That’s why Greville acted aggressive and she acted like he was abusive. It was all a plot to kill the brother.”

  Elsa-May said, “Or, the other thing could be that it was an innocent mistake. The brother wanted to surprise them because he’d got out of prison early, they thought he was an intruder and killed him. They panicked and hid their tracks.”

  “Possibly, but why would they want to kill him?”

  “Clean out your ears, Ettie. I said they accidently killed him and then panicked.”

  Ettie shook her head. “Sorry, I wasn’t really listening.”

  Elsa-May huffed, looked disgusted with her and walked to the kitchen.

  “Sorry,” Ettie called after her. “I was thinking of something else while you were talking.”