The Long Stitch Good Night: An Embroidery Mystery (26 page)

“Charlie, you could’ve just asked me for the book,” Blake said. “For that matter, you could’ve just asked me if I was the father of Tawny’s child.”

“It’s irrelevant now,” said Charles. “I know you are.”

“No I’m not,” Blake told him emphatically.

“But you and Sadie had the argument.” Charles’s eyes darted from Blake to me. “Marcy remembered that. You’d broken up for a week or so. Didn’t you get back together with Tawny—I mean, Sarah—at that time?”

“Yes. I mean, no. We didn’t get back together.” Blake looked down at the sand, finding it difficult to talk to Charles about a tryst he’d once had with the man’s now-deceased wife. “It was a onetime thing. We were drunk, and we regretted it immediately.”

“Still, that one night was enough to produce Drew,” Charles said. “All I’m asking is that you sign over your parental rights. Then I can raise Drew as my own son … as I have for the past seven years. With Sarah dead and without me being granted legal guardianship over Drew, he and I have a tenuous arrangement. I wouldn’t even be able to sign him into a hospital if he got sick.”

“I’m telling you, Charlie, I am not Drew’s father,” Blake insisted. “Tawny and I slept together the first week in January. Marcy said Drew was born at the end of December.”

Charles drew a shuddering breath. “Please. Just sign your rights away. Then John will testify that I’ve been a good father to the boy, and the judge will grant me custody.”

“Do the math!” Blake yelled. “I’m not the boy’s biological father!”

“You are!” Charles shouted. “I don’t care about the math! All I care about is gaining custody of my child!” He held his arms toward
Blake. “Please, man. Just sign a paper. It’ll be all right.”

“It won’t,” Blake said softly. “I’d do anything I could to help you, Charlie, but the court might require a paternity test. And I’m
not
Drew’s biological father.”

“Can’t you petition the court and say the identity of the father is unknown and that you’ve raised the child with his mother for the past seven years?” I asked quickly. Like Blake, I really wanted to help this poor guy get custody of his son. “You know Riley Kendall. She’s a wonderful attorney. I’m sure she’d take your case.”

Charles stepped toward me. He got so close that when he screamed at me, his spit flew in my face. It was disgusting. “You think everything can be solved if you poke around in it, don’t you? You think you’re such a genius! Well, you’re not! You’re a freakin’ screwup! Why didn’t you just let this all go? Why did you have to make it worse?” He grabbed me by the shoulders.

Blake stepped between us. “That’s enough. None of this is Marcy’s fault. This is between you and me.”

I looked beyond Blake and Charles and saw that Angus had climbed out the window of the Jeep and was running toward us furiously. I
started to head him off, but Charles jerked me backward. I tripped and fell in the sand. As I struggled to my feet, Charles noticed the dog. He took a pistol from his jacket pocket and aimed it at Angus.

“No!” I screamed. I dived at Charles as he fired. I knocked his arm upward, so his shot went high.

Blake grabbed Charles’s wrist and slammed it against the lighthouse wall until Charles loosened his grip on the gun so Blake could take it away from him.

Sobbing, I ran to Angus. He was standing just a short distance away from us, and he was—as far as I could tell—fine. I buried my face in his neck and held him as tightly as I could.

I heard feet pounding on the path, and I looked up to see Ted and Todd racing toward us. Since Blake still had Charles pinned against the lighthouse, Ted went to confiscate the gun and handcuff Charles.

“Careful with that gun,” Blake said. “I think you’ll find that it’s the one that killed Graham Stott.”

“Marcy, are you all right?” Todd asked, bending down to see about me.

Angus growled.

“Back away,” I said. “Please. He’s scared…and he might be hurt.”

Todd did as I asked, and put some distance between us. “I don’t see any blood on the ground.”

“I don’t either.” I ran my hands gingerly over Angus’s torso. I didn’t see any blood, and he didn’t flinch at my touch. “I believe he’s all right. Just scared.”

“And you’re trembling like the last leaf of autumn,” Ted said, leading Charles in a wide arc away from Angus and me. “Will you be okay to drive yourself home?”

I nodded.

“Then take Angus on to the house,” he said. “Blake, you and Todd follow me to the station. Marcy, I’ll come by to get your statement later.”

“Thanks.” I stood, took Angus by the collar, and led him to the Jeep. Hopefully we could all begin closing the book on this fiasco.

It was about nine p.m. by the time Ted got to the house to take my statement. He told me Todd had come to the station a few minutes after running into me on the sidewalk. He’d felt something was off about the way Blake had sent me an urgent message asking me to meet him and
telling me not to mention it to Sadie. Todd went on to MacKenzies’ Mochas and asked Sadie where Blake was. She said he got an urgent message and went to help a friend. That’s all she knew. Now convinced something weird was going on, Todd went by the police station to get Ted before coming to the lighthouse.

“Charles Siegel had already come on our radar as a suspect in the murder,” Ted told me. “More than one person said he shoved them out of the way in order to get away from the back room immediately following the shooting. They simply thought he was scared, but we thought it was worth looking into.”

“What makes me the sickest is that none of this needed to have happened for Charles to get what he wanted,” I said. “It’s like I told him—he could’ve said he wanted custody of the child and that the paternity was unknown. The authorities would have looked at the birth certificate, seen Graham Stott listed as the father, and contacted Graham about his parental rights. But Graham wouldn’t have opposed Charles. And now Drew is without a father.”

“I guess Charles was afraid Graham would claim the boy, since he didn’t know Graham wasn’t the biological father,” said Ted. “But you’re wrong about Drew not having a father.”

I
t was a sunny day in early April when a little boy I recognized from his photo as Drew Masterson came running into my shop. He was as delighted to meet Angus as Angus was to meet him. The child was smiling and happy. No one would have guessed that his mom had died and that the man he’d known as his father would be going on trial for murder soon. Andy and I had remained friends, mainly because Andy credited me for helping to bring him and Drew together as father and son.

“Hey, Uncle Andy, look!” he called.

“I told you that you’d love Angus,” Andy said.

“Andy, come on into my office and pick out sodas for you and Drew,” I said.

“I’ll be right back, buddy. Behave yourself.” Andy followed me into my office.

“Did you get the test results back yet?” I asked.

He nodded. “He’s all mine.” He beamed. “I think on some level I knew all along. Sure, Tawny and I remained close friends, but I think my being Drew’s real father was part of that. She wanted the two of us to be close. I should’ve asked her about it, but I was afraid to. I didn’t want to upset the applecart.”

“Will you tell Drew you’re his dad?” I asked.

“When he’s ready. He and I have moved in with his grandpa John for the time being,” he said. “John has a fenced backyard, and my landlord didn’t allow dogs.”

I told him to help himself to the minifridge, and he took out two mango juices. We went back into the office and watched Drew romping happily with the dog. On the wall behind where Drew and Angus were playing hung the Mountmellick piece that I’d finished just the day before.

I smiled as I remembered another Marilyn Monroe quote:
I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they’re right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.

Amanda Lee lives in southwest Virginia with her husband and two beautiful children, a boy and a girl. She’s a full-time writer/editor/mom/wife and chief cook and bottle washer, and she loves every minute of it. Okay, not the bottle washing so much, but the rest of it is great.