Karen shrugged. “I genuinely don’t know,” she said. “It’s not like we’re coordinating this.”
“Yes, I can see,” Sean said. “Honestly, I didn’t think Nora was going to be more trouble behind bars than out in the world.”
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t have put her in there on trumped up charges!” Karen exclaimed. “That is so typical you, Sean. You just have to follow the letter of the law no matter what. Even if it means…” She shook her head. “Never mind.”
“No. Go on,” Sean said. “Looks to me like you were saying what was actually on your mind. Let me tell you, that’s a relief. I’ve gone crazy trying to figure out what you were thinking over the last few months. I can never tell whether you want to be with me, or away from Milburn.”
“Both!” Karen exclaimed, with some frustration. “I want to be with you, and I want to be away from Milburn. But this stupid town is your life, and I’m not.”
Sean’s face closed off. “You’re asking me to choose between the girl I love and the town I love,” he said. “If you can’t see that it’s unfair—”
“I know,” Karen said, immediately sorry. “I didn’t mean that quite the way it sounded.”
“Yes, you did,” Sean said. “You’ve tried to tell me there are no hard feelings, and you understand totally why I need to stay in town, but the truth is you’re angry at me. You were asking me to make that choice and you feel betrayed that I didn’t choose you.”
“I know,” Karen said miserably. “I know I did, and I know I feel angry at you when I shouldn’t. It’s just that… with JJ, I was always second priority to his music, except when I threatened to leave. Then suddenly, his world revolved around me. I don’t think I can bear the same thing again. I want to be with a man who puts me first, not his career.”
“So, you’re punishing me by leaving town?” Sean asked. “Because you’re jealous of the time I spend on my job?”
“No… it really isn’t like that,” Karen said. “I promise- that’s not why I had to leave. I had to leave because I couldn’t stand being around the gossip, and I couldn’t stand being surrounded by memories of JJ. It’s not like I don’t love you…”
“Oh, please,” Sean said. “At least tell the truth about that, Karen. You don’t love me. Not while the ghost of JJ is still in your mind. You can’t love me. Not fully.”
“That’s exactly why I need to leave town,” Karen said. “That’s exactly why I wanted to start someplace new with you, so that we could be together without the shadow of the past touching us. Don’t you see how good that would be? You could get a job with Boston PD, and we could—”
“It isn’t happening,” Sean said. “Milburn is my home, and I’m not moving out of it.”
“You’ve never moved out of it,” Karen said. “Can’t you at least try? For me?”
“I might actually have done it if I thought there was a chance of the two of us working out,” Sean said. “Unfortunately, there never was. I think we got together too soon, and for all the wrong reasons, Karen.”
“What are you saying?”
“That you can’t outrun your past, and you can’t make it disappear just by moving to a new place,” Sean said. “It catches up with you. You think you’ll change when you go to Boston, but you’ll find you’re just the same person you always were, and all these memories of JJ that affect you so much, will be present there just as much as they are here.”
“So, what, I should just stay in Milburn forever?”
“No,” Sean said. “Go. Go to Boston, and meet new people, and change yourself, and become a new you, and then, sometime in the future, when you’re able to make peace with the old you, maybe then we’ll have a chance.”
Karen was near tears. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything,” Sean said. “We got together when you weren’t over JJ. It was a mistake, and it caught up with us. I should have waited till you were really ready to give your heart again, instead, I just got caught up in giving you mine.”
A tear slipped down her cheek. “I promise you, Sean, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Sean gave her a wry smile. “You didn’t mean to. I can believe that.”
“But I did, anyway, didn’t I?” Karen asked.
Sean shrugged. “Big deal. I’m a tough guy. I’ll deal with it. It’s not your job to worry about it.”
“I—”
“No.” His voice was harsh as he backed away from her. “Don’t make this worse, Karen. You’ve got a lot of work to do, and a lot of emotions to figure out. The best way to keep from hurting me anymore, is for you to move forward and not look back. I’ll manage.”
“You’re a fantastic guy, Sean,” she said. “I really wish I could have loved you as much as you loved me.”
“Yeah, well,” Sean said. “Do me a favor and stay out, all right? Out of my personal life, and out of my professional life as well.”
*****
Chapter 16
Harvey Learns A Secret
Thunder lit up the sky as a freak summer storm moved in. From her bed, Nora couldn’t see much, just the edge of the sky, peeping out against whitewashed buildings, but the sound and the smell of rain carried over to her nevertheless. This was her second morning in jail, and she couldn’t wait to get out. Her good cheer and optimism had lasted her for a day, but any more than that, and she’d go mad.
“You’re free to go,” Sean said, opening the cell door.
“Oh, thank heavens!” Nora exclaimed, springing up from the bed and rushing out.
Harvey and Tina were waiting for her in the lobby, and once she was done signing the paperwork and getting back her belongings, they rushed over to her. Tina stayed behind a little, while Harvey grabbed Nora in a tight embrace. She hugged him back equally hard.
“You don’t appreciate freedom till it gets taken away from you,” Nora said. “I missed you, Harvey. I can’t believe I never appreciated that I can hug you any time I want to.”
“Wait until you get married to me,” Harvey said, giving her a squeeze. “I’m going to be hugging you 24/7. You’ll have to hop to work with me hugging you, and cook while I’m hugging you, and sleep while I’m hugging you, and wake with me hugging you. I’ll be like a backpack that you carry around everywhere.”
Nora laughed. “You’re wonderfully silly. I missed that too.”
“Okay folks, mind moving along?” Sean asked. “I’ll have to mop up this trail of sugar that you’re dropping all over the floor.”
“We’re all heading to Mrs. Mullally’s for a victory brunch,” Harvey said. “She can’t wait to meet you either. We didn’t bring her along because we figured Maynard would go mad when he saw you.”
“How is she?” Nora asked. “I hope she wasn’t too upset by all this. I know she has problems with her blood pressure and—”
“Actually, she thought it was a lark,” Harvey said. “She said it’ll be a tale you can tell your grandchildren.”
“She’s fine, Nora.” Tina gave her a hug. “It’s me you should be worried about. I’ve been tearing my hair out wondering where I’d find a partner half as good as you if you should get thrown into jail permanently.”
“Total lie,” Harvey teased, as they walked to the car. “Tina’s been singing and dancing and celebrating.”
“You’re such a dope, Harvey!”
“Well, and she’s been helping me investigate some stuff in between all that celebrating,” Harvey said. He had his umbrella out, but was holding it over Nora and Tina, so that he was half soaked by the time they got into the car.
“We need to get you changed,” Nora said. “Before you catch a cold.”
“I missed that.” Harvey smiled. “No one to fuss over me while you were locked up.”
“Did you get any tattoos in jail?” Tina teased. “Or join a gang?”
“Not in one day,” Nora said. “But maybe if you’d let me stay in there a week more...” The laughter went out of
her voice at the prospect of a week more. “To be honest, I can’t tell you how glad I am to be out. It was incredibly frustrating and depressing to have to sit there behind bars while the world moved on without me. I’ve never felt bad for the people I helped put away, but now I realize just how terrible a punishment it is.”
Tina patted her back. “It’s been hard on you.”
“But I’m out now,” Nora said, “And we still need to find out who sabotaged our diner and why.”
“Harvey’s been busy following up on some leads,” Tina said.
“Tina helped.” Harvey smiled.
“What did you find out?” Nora asked.
“It’s… complicated,” Harvey said with a frown. “Can I share my thought process with you?”
“Yes please.” Nora smiled. “I think we should air out our thoughts and compare them.”
“Right,” Harvey said. “So here’s the thing. The series of events is as follows. You found the cake in the hallway, and the heads of the statuettes were broken. You didn’t know this then, but the cake was poisoned. To be more accurate, the frosting on the cake was poisoned. The cake was eaten by Eliza as a prank, and then she died. Right so far?”
“Right.” Nora nodded.
“Eliza hated Charlotte,” Harvey said. “Is that accurate?”
“I’d say she had some animosity towards her sister.” Nora nodded. “I’m not sure just how much. But since she is dead now, it’s safe to say Eliza wasn’t a murderer.”
“Or so you’d think,” Harvey said. “Because, according to Simone, there was a suicide note, or at least the draft of a message on Eliza’s phone that indicates she may have committed suicide.”
“I can’t think of a worse way to do it,” Tina said. “Poisoning the frosting on your sister’s wedding cake? Why would you do something so convoluted? If Eliza wanted drama she could have shot herself or something. Why mix Nora in this?”
“Hang on,” Harvey said. “Let’s go step by step, shall we?”
“Right,” Tina said. “Excuse me for being impatient. Go on, Sherlock.”
“I think I’m Watson here.” Harvey grinned. “Nora’s the Sherlock.”
“Well, until a little while ago, I was Sher-locked up.” Nora smiled.
“I can’t believe you,” Tina groaned. “Where do you get the energy to make puns like that?”
Nora sneaked her hands into Harvey’s and squeezed him tight. “Harvey’s fault. He’s like a catalyst that brings out the long buried joker in me.”
“It was buried for good reason,” Tina said. “Anyway. Getting back to our little recap.”
“Right,” Harvey said. “So, Eliza is dead. But most of us were focusing on her death, forgetting that Charlotte might have been the original target.”
Nora nodded. “Yes. I remember Sean warning her and Jeremy to be careful, that the murderer could strike again.”
“Exactly,” Harvey said. “The thing is that was before Bret called you. That call changed everything. For one, we found out that unlike what we’d thought, the cake wasn’t poisoned while in the hallway, the poisoned frosting was found in your freezer at the diner. So someone with access to the diner’s keys contaminated that sample. Right? Most likely, they got the keys from Bret.”
“Right.” Nora nodded.
“Second, Bret himself,” Harvey said. “Someone twisted his arm, forced him to poison the frosting. Torn with guilt, he called you, and then, silence. We don’t know where he is. Sean’s been searching and so have I, but we haven’t found out his whereabouts.”
Nora nodded. “I’m very worried about him.”
“The thing is, Tina and I realized that instead of focusing on Eliza, our focus should be on Jeremy. After all, Jeremy could have been a target, too. Right?”
Nora nodded. “Makes sense.”
“Well, that’s when it hit me. Who could possibly have a motive to kill both you and Jeremy? Naturally, it was someone obvious. Ashley. Jeremy’s ex-wife, who murdered Raquel in a fit of jealousy, and who you helped put behind bars.”
Nora nodded. “I thought of her myself,” she said. “But she can’t have done it. Sean told me that she’s dead. She died in prison just a little while ago.”
“Yes,” Harvey said. “I set a private investigator on her, to find out what she was doing. Turns out, she was either killed by a fellow prisoner, or committed suicide. The warden isn’t very clear which it was.”
“Poor Ashley,” Nora said. “She was a monster, but… I can’t help feel sorry for her. Still, this rules her out completely, doesn’t it?”
“No,” Harvey said. “I don’t think it does. See this private investigator I hired, was able to get access to the prisoner logs, and find out who visited her in the last year.”
“Yes?”
“No one did, surprisingly,” Harvey said. “Except once. Just a month before she died.”
Nora leaned forward. “Who?”
“A man named Alastair,” Harvey said. “Sound familiar?”
Nora’s eyes grew wide. “Are you serious?”
“That’s not all,” Harvey said. “The private investigator was able to secure Ashley’s birth records. Now, as far as we knew, she was brought up by a single mother. But according to her birth certificate, this same Alastair is her father.”
“That’s… that’s impossible!” Nora exclaimed. “It’s just not possible! It can’t be true!”
“Oh, it is possible.” Harvey said. “It’s also too great of a coincidence, don’t you think?”
“We need to go talk to him,” Nora said. “There has to be some sort of explanation.”
“There better be,” Harvey said. “Because the one I’m thinking of, that’s a pretty grim explanation.”
*****
Chapter 17
A Father’s Story
Father Alastair Mackenzie’s house was a small cottage a few hundred feet away from Milburn’s biggest church. A whitewashed house with a stone tiled roof and dark green trim around it, it looked as weathered yet solid as Father Mackenzie himself. As she knocked at the door, Nora thought back to all the years she had known him, and yet, what did she really know? Father Mackenzie had become Pastor only in his late forties. No one really knew about his life before then. If he was Ashley’s father… could he have held a grudge against Nora? Surely not. This was the man who had comforted her when her parents had died. This was the man who had spoken at her best friend Raquel’s funeral. This man was good through and through - there was no way he could have poisoned the wedding cake and tried to frame Nora for it.
Could he?
Nora hated that the doubt had crept into her mind. There was no way this could be true. She told herself that again and again, and yet there could be no greater coincidence than this. How could Ashley Norton’s father be officiating the wedding of her ex-husband?
Father Mackenzie answered the door dressed in a white short-sleeved shirt and grey slacks. He looked very surprised to see her and Harvey. Tina had chosen not to come.
“Well, so both of you are here to talk?” he asked. He looked at his watch. “Yes, well, I suppose I have half an hour before I go meet the ladies for the fund raising meeting.”
Nora and Harvey looked at each other. “This isn’t about—”
“Oh, there’s no need to be shy.” Father Mackenzie invited them inside with the crook of his finger. Nora would have expected a bachelor’s house to be messy - Harvey’s certainly was. But Father Mackenzie’s house was spotlessly clean. Every surface gleamed, and the floor looked clean enough to eat off. The house was sparsely furnished too. There was no TV, only an old radio kept by the window, and a bookshelf full of aging paperbacks and leather-bound books. The living room had a plush couch, a couple of wood-backed chairs, and an oak coffee table that the Father had made himself. He seated them on the couch, and then despite their protests, went to the kitchen, and emerged with three glasses of orange juice and a plate of assorted biscuits.
“I don’t
keep coffee in the house,” he said. “Or I’d have offered you some. My digestive system can’t handle it anymore, unfortunately.”
“This will be fine,” Harvey said. Nora could tell that he was feeling nonplussed. Before he’d come here, he was almost ready to charge Father Mackenzie with murder. But faced with his kind, smiling face, their words seemed to die in their throats.
“So?” Father Mackenzie sat down on one of the wood-backed chairs, and clapped his hands together. Rubbing them briskly, he said, “Every couple, without fail, has doubts in their mind before they are married. They might be tiny doubts, they might be huge. They might be doubts about the self, or about the spouse. The important thing, I feel, is to communicate these doubts to each other. After all, a strong marriage is built on three things - kindness, communication and respect.”
“What about trust and honesty?” Harvey asked. “Those are important too.”
“I feel they arise naturally where there is kindness and respect,” Father Mackenzie said. “The reverse, surprisingly, is not always true. I’ve had couples here who were very honest with each other, to the point that they were unkind.”
“We’re not here to talk about us as a couple anyway,” Harvey said bluntly. “We’re very confident about ourselves, thank you very much.”
“Are you?” Father Mackenzie asked, looking at Nora.
Harvey looked at her as if he were seeing her for the first time. “What?”
“This is besides the point,” Nora said. “Father Mackenzie, we know who you are. We know you’re Ashley Norton’s father.”
There was a stunned silence. Father Mackenzie’s confidence seemed to evaporate as he looked at the two of them. “How… how did you find that out?” he asked weakly.
“So it’s true?” Nora said. “Why haven’t you told Sean about this?”
“I didn’t see it was any of his business,” Father Mackenzie said. “Nor do I see how it is yours. Ashley was paying her debt to society. There was no need to flash around her entire life story. It felt vulgar.”
The Milburn Big Box Set Page 85
