The Readaholics and the Poirot Puzzle (23 page)

“Bernie killed my dad?” His mouth hung open.

“No. She just knows something about it. She was . . . involved.”

“Why didn't she say something sooner? What—? Will she go to prison?”

“I don't know.”

He looked dazed. He flipped his hair off his face, but it fell into his eyes again when he shook his head and said, “That poor kid.”

I gave him a puzzled look.

“Billy. He seems like a decent kid.”

Kolby's moment of humanity surprised me and
made me feel more kindly to him. “It'll be hard on all of them.”

“Does Bernie know who killed him? Is that it? Who—? Aunt Angie!”

It was my turn to be astonished. How had he guessed? Then I noticed he was staring over my shoulder, toward the door. I turned to see Angie Dreesen crossing the floor toward us.

G
ordon's sister looked thinner and older than she had a mere week ago, a couple of breakouts marring her complexion, and muddy circles under her eyes. Her blond hair was the only bright note. She wore maroon scrubs and I guessed she'd come from the clinic. I knew immediately that Bernie must have called her. For a fleeting second, I thought she might be here to shut me up, keeping me from telling the police what I knew, and adrenaline zinged through me, but a second later the thought was gone.

She didn't look like a murderer prepared to kill again to cover her tracks. She looked utterly defeated. Broken. A woman who has done herself irreparable harm by abandoning her moral compass and doing something so heinous she'd never forgive herself. She stopped in front of us and no one said anything for a long moment.

Finally, Angie licked dry lips and said, “I'm looking for Derek Johnson. Is he here?”

“No,” I said.

Her eyes met mine with what might have been her last ounce of resolve. “I've come to apologize to him. Bernie called me. I might not have the opportunity later to tell him how sorry I am.”

“What do you have to be sorry for, Aunt Angie?” Kolby asked.

She hesitated, clearly not wanting to tell her nephew she'd killed his father. I wondered when she'd realize she owed Kolby the biggest apology.

“Kolby,” I said, “I need you to hold down the fort for half an hour or so. Your aunt and I need to find Derek.” I ducked under the bar. “My folks should be here soon.”

“You mean I'm in charge?” he asked, clearly taken with the idea. “My dad never let me be in charge.”

“You're in charge,” I affirmed. I'd only be gone half an hour—he couldn't do any damage in thirty minutes, could he?

I escorted Angie from the bar and walked her to my van. It was probably stupid, to hop into a vehicle with a murderer, but I didn't feel threatened at all. “Derek's with his lawyer,” I told Angie. “We can find him there. I'll call and let them know we're coming.” While Angie got in on the passenger side, I dialed not Derek's number, but Hart's. He didn't answer, but I left a message telling him Angie and I were headed to Courtney's office. Disconnecting, I hopped into the driver's seat and we rolled out of the parking lot.

“The police are probably looking for me already,” Angie said. “And Gene. I should have called him. After
Bernadette told me. But he might have made a run for it, and I couldn't let him do that. We need to pay for what we did. I thought killing Gordon would make me feel better about Kinleigh, and it did, in the moment, but then . . .” She angled the vents to focus the air-conditioning on her face.

We idled at a stoplight and I asked, “How did you—?”

“It wasn't so hard,” she said, understanding my question. “Not once we had Bernadette on board. We knew Gordon spent a lot of time on the roof, smoking, so we decided to do it there. We picked the night of the opening because there would be so many people there it would be hard to keep track of any one person's movements, and because there would be lots of suspects. I dropped Gene off a few blocks away early in the afternoon. He waited for his chance and snuck up to the roof and hid. He had the tire iron from his car with him, and an umbrella, because we could see it was going to rain.”

The light turned green and I depressed the accelerator a bit too hard. We rocked back in our seats.

“I got to the party as early as I could and kept an eye on Gordon. When I saw him heading for a smoke, I waited a few seconds and followed him. I told people I was going to the bathroom. He was at the wall, smoking, when I came onto the roof. I wasn't trying to be quiet—I wanted him to know what was happening and why, that it was for Kinleigh.” Her voice shook. “It was for Kinleigh. When he saw me, he started saying things, things that didn't even make sense, calling me names.
He lurched toward me like he was going to hit me. That made it easier.

“Gene hit him. The tire iron hitting his head made the ugliest sound. A wet cracking sound, like dropping a cantaloupe. You know, I've treated people with horrible injuries—from knives and guns, tractors, falls, car accidents—and I never thought of the sound a body makes when it's assaulted.”

I swallowed hard. I didn't want to think of it now.

“Gordon went down. Gene took his shoulders and I took his feet, and we got him up onto the wall and rolled him off. We didn't know how professional the HPD was; we were hoping his death might be called an accident, or maybe suicide. When it wasn't, when the police arrested your brother, that's when it all began to unravel for me. I couldn't live with the idea of putting an innocent man in prison. I'm not proud to say I killed Gordon, but he deserved it for what he did to Kinleigh. But your brother . . . he didn't deserve what was happening to him.”

I could feel her gaze on my profile as I drove. She said, “I like to think that even if Bernie hadn't given us up, I'd have come forward if it looked like your brother was going to get convicted. I told Gene we had to tell if he went to trial.”

I didn't point out that Derek was going through hell and might lose his business because of the arrest, never mind the trial. “How did you get off the roof without being spotted?” I asked instead. “And what did you do with the tire iron?”

A hint of pride showed on her face. “The plan was
for me to rejoin the party and say I was in the bathroom, if anyone asked. Gene was supposed to come down on the elevator and mingle with the crowd. There was some risk that he'd be seen, but if he summoned the elevator, the chances that someone would be in it were slim, since the roof was off-limits, and if someone saw him get off on the first floor, he could say he'd come down from the pool room on the second floor. But then the fire alarm went off and that was so much easier with everyone rushing outside. We tucked the tire iron inside the umbrella.”

I remembered wondering why they didn't put up the umbrella when they ran across the parking lot to her car.

We pulled up in front of the office building where Courtney's firm had its offices. Angie unbuckled her seat belt and said, “It was all easy. Too easy.”

She made a move to get out, but I stopped her. “You know Gordon had a brain tumor, right? It was growing. It was terminal. That's probably why he spouted gobbledygook at you on the roof. And it's probably why he was dizzy the night Kinleigh drove him home. He wasn't drunk—he was ill.”

“You're lying,” she breathed. “Why is everyone lying to us about that night? He was driving the night of the accident, and the police covered it up. He was drunk—the PI we hired found witnesses that said he was staggering around, but the cops told us the blood test came back negative. Liars! He probably bribed them; that was the way he did business. Kinleigh's friend, the one who said Kinleigh was driving, she was
lying, and now you are, too!” Her voice had gotten shrill.

“No, I'm not. It's in the autopsy report.” It sounded as though she hadn't seen it—and why would she?—and hadn't known about Gordon's tumor. When the truth sank in and she realized that he truly hadn't been drunk or driving the night of her daughter's death, I didn't know what it would do to her. I'd never lost someone I loved like that, but I suspected it had broken something inside her. Something in her needed to blame someone other than her daughter or capricious fate for what had happened. I wondered if Lola had experienced similar feelings when the drunk killed her parents.

She looked stricken. “But then—”

Hart's Chevy Tahoe and an HPD patrol car with its light bar flashing pulled in beside us and behind us. I sat still, with my hands on the steering wheel, while an officer helped Angie out of the van. Hart came to my window, his face stormy.

“What in the world were you thinking, Amy-Faye, to be alone with a murder suspect—?” He pulled open my door and I got out. He didn't back away, so we were standing chest to chest, the open door partially shielding us from others' view.

“Look at her,” I said, pointing to Angie, who stood docilely as the officer cuffed her. She looked blank and frail, as brittle as an autumn leaf.

“That's not the point,” Hart said, more quietly. “You put yourself in harm's way.”

“She wants to apologize to Derek,” I said. “Can't she—”

“Derek can hear her say ‘I'm sorry' at the jail, if he wants to,” Hart said. “She's not going anywhere except to the station. We've already picked up her husband. He hasn't told us anything, though. Asked for a lawyer first thing. Did she—?”

I nodded. “Full confession. Every detail. She's eaten up with guilt.”

“Good.” His hand reached for mine, down at my side, and squeezed it. “I'm glad you're okay. I'll need a full statement from you, but you can run up and tell Derek everything while I get her processed at the station. Don't take too long, okay?”

“Okay.”

His smile was almost as good as a kiss, and I jogged into the building to tell Derek he was off the hook, feeling like someone had replaced my blood with helium.

A
fter I told Derek and he slumped across the table with relief, and Courtney high-fived me so hard my hand stung for half an hour, we decided to hold an impromptu victory party at the pub Tuesday night, a private gathering. Derek insisted that I tell everyone how I worked out who the killers were and got him released. I demurred, but he insisted, so the next night, clad in jeans and a kelly green scoop-neck shirt, I sat on the bar at Elysium, legs swinging, and regaled my friends and family with the details of the investigation. All the Readaholics were there: Troy was with Brooke, and Lola had brought her grandmother and Axie. Kerry had brought Roman and I used his cast as “Exhibit A” when I explained how I came to suspect Bernie. He blushed red and tried to slump down in the booth. My family was there, of course, as were Hart, Doug, Courtney, Al Frink (who had promised me his response to my offer next week), and a handful of Derek's friends. A sign on the front door said
CLOSED FOR PRIVATE PARTY
. Several times during my narrative, would-be customers rattled the door and then left. One or two thumped on it, but we ignored them. I felt a little like Hercule Poirot revealing his insights and
strategies in the restaurant car of the Orient Express, only I was talking to friends and family instead of suspects.

Derek was serving his Purgatory Porter, to celebrate his release from purgatory, he said. I was not playing bartender; in fact, I'd turned Sam's orange uniform shirt over to Derek and told him I was retiring. He told me I hadn't worked long enough to get a pension. I socked his shoulder and looked around. Bernie not being here was weird. Even though what she'd done was truly awful, I missed her humor and her quirky take on things. I'd heard that her sister was keeping the boys for now. I felt my eyes misting, a combination of sadness for Bernie and her boys, and relief for Derek. It had been an emotional week.

“What about the blood on Derek's shirt?” Peri asked when I'd given them the bare bones of events, including my conversations with Bernie and Angie Marsh. “The blood that got him arrested?”

Hart spoke up. “I can answer that.” Everyone swiveled to look at him where he stood near the entrance door, beer mug dwarfed by his large, strong hand. “The lab has stated that it's possibly a case of transfer, especially given that there was so little blood on the shirt Derek wore the night of Marsh's murder.” Noting some puzzled looks, he elaborated. “The blood from Gordon's nosebleed after he and Derek fought was transferred to the trash can when Derek threw out the shirt he was wearing that day. Then, when he dumped the other shirt in the can, the night of the murder, the dried blood transferred from the metal trash can to the new
shirt.”

“I was going to argue that as part of my defense strategy,” Courtney said.

“Because you're brilliant,” Derek said.

Courtney gave a bow with a small flourish. “That's why you hired me.”

“Damn right. That, and because you've got a wicked free throw percentage.”

We laughed. Everything Derek said was a little too loud, his relief at being out from under suspicion exploding out of him. He was grinning like a maniacal jack-o'-lantern, and he kept foisting beer and munchies on everyone. I hoped it would wear off soon; watching him was tiring me out.

“I knew it was a conspiracy all along,” Maud said. She sat with Lola and her family at a table right in front of me, her long jeans-clad legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle. “Although I'll admit I didn't ever suspect Bernie was involved. I thought it would turn out to be the son and the ex-wife, or the ex-wife and one of the WOSCers.”

A few people didn't know who she meant by “the WOSCers,” so she had a great time telling them. When she finished, one of Derek's basketball buddies in the back squirmed and said, “Harassment like that shouldn't be allowed.”

If I were his girlfriend or wife, I'd be suspicious.

“I went to see Angie Dreesen at the jail,” Mom said unexpectedly. Unlike me, she was still wearing her orange uniform shirt and her chestnut hair was freshly dyed and curled, poofing out in a way that made her round face seem even rounder.

“You did?” That wiped the smile off Derek's face.

She nodded, chins jiggling. “I wanted to see what kind of woman could do what she did to my son. Her husband is still denying everything, but she told me she's made a full confession—”

I looked at Hart to see him nodding.

“—and she's ready to pay for what she did. She's still insisting that Gordon is responsible for her daughter's death and she's refusing to believe he had brain cancer. She won't even look at the autopsy report or X-rays. Her daughter dying clearly knocked her off the rails. She needs help, medical help.”

“Do you feel sorry for her, June?” Lola asked.

I expected Mom, a famous bleeding heart who gave everyone the benefit of the doubt, to say yes.

“No.” Mom's lips compressed to a thin tangerine line. “Well, I feel sorry that she lost her daughter the way she did—I'd feel sorry for anyone that happened to—but I can't be sorry she's going to prison. Not after what she did to her brother and Derek.”

Derek crossed to Mom and slung his arm over her shoulders, squeezing her against him. “Amen, Mom.” He kissed her cheek with a loud smack.

The serious moment had drained some of the fun out of the gathering, and Derek released Mom and turned back to the group, saying, “More beer for everyone!”

With my turn in the spotlight done, I swung myself off the bar, landing with a plop. Hart appeared at my side, smiling down at me. “Ready to go?”

I was more than ready for dinner, more than ready to be alone with him, but I held up a finger. “Give me a moment.”

I wove my way to the table where Lola, Maud, Axie, and Mrs. Paget sat. Exchanging a few words with Lola's grandmother, I turned to Axie and asked if she'd like to work for me a few hours a week. Her pretty face lit up.

She looked at Lola. “Can I? If I stay on top of my homework?”

“And still put in your hours in the greenhouse,” Lola said. “You'll have less time to spend with Cassie and Lorenzo,” she warned, “and you might have to cut back on your extracurriculars.”

“How much are you paying me?” Axie asked, brown eyes meeting mine directly.

I liked that she was assertive enough to ask. That boded well for her interactions with clients and potential clients. “Minimum wage at first,” I said. “Then, if you like it and show some promise, I can give you more responsibility and more money.”

Axie stuck out her hand with an air of resolution. “It's a deal,” she said. A huge grin chased her adult air away. “My first real job! I don't count babysitting and working for Lo. When can I start?”

“How about next week?” We hashed out the details, and I moved on after a few minutes, catching up with Brooke and Troy, who were headed for the door.

“Wait, wait, wait,” I said, latching onto Brooke's arm. She and Troy stopped. Troy Widefield Jr. was an attractive man with a slightly droopy posture who seemed younger than thirty-two. Tall and slender, he had a pleasant, open face and light brown hair that waved around his ears. I'd always thought he had a weak chin, but he and Brooke made an attractive couple. “How'd it go today?” I asked.

Today was the day she and Troy had met with the teenage mother who was looking to give up her baby for adoption. I'd called Brooke last night to wish her luck, and told her I was praying for her. She'd been hovering between hopeful, anxious, and pessimistic.

A tremulous smile wavered across Brooke's face. “She was really nice. Anastasia. Pretty, and smart, too, didn't you think, Troy?”

“Yeah,” he said, “although you gotta wonder how smart any of these girls are, when they get themselves pregnant by accident.”

“Troy!” She slapped his arm lightly. “She didn't get pregnant by herself, you know. I thought you liked her?”

“I did. No one's going to believe that the baby is really ours, though. Not with that white-blond hair she has, and the father being a redhead.”

A troubled look clouded Brooke's eyes as she studied her husband. “Of course the baby will be ‘really' ours,” she said. “We're not going to try to convince people he's our biological child.”

“Anyway . . . ?” I prompted.

Twirling a lock of hair, Brooke said, “Anastasia said she's talking to two other couples, but she'll let us know by the end of the week. We had a good talk. She's a senior this year, and is applying to CSU. She wants to be a vet. I told her about CSU and Fort Collins. I think she liked me—us.”

“She liked you,” Troy affirmed. “What's not to like?” He smiled and dropped a kiss on Brooke's hair, but I could see it cost him something.

I got the feeling he wasn't as gung ho about adopting a baby as Brooke was. Maybe, I thought, as I wished them luck, hugged Brooke, and they left, he was just uncomfortable with an open adoption, worried that the baby's birth mother might want to insinuate herself into their lives. The Widefields were one of the richest families in town and I was sure that Troy had experience with people wanting to be his friend only because he had money, and with people trying to take advantage of him. More likely, I decided as Hart joined me by the door, his parents, especially his mother, were dripping poison in his ear about polluting the Widefield gene pool.

“Trouble?” Hart asked, reading my expression.

“No, I'm just worried Brooke will get her heart broken if this girl they met with doesn't choose them to adopt her baby.”

“You can't fix everything for everyone, Amy-Faye,” he said. “If this girl doesn't pick them, the next one will. Or the one after that.”

“You're right,” I said, looking up at him and smiling.

He put on a face of mock amazement. “That may be the first time you've told me I'm right.”

“I like to give credit where credit is due, but don't get used to it,” I said, nudging him to the door.

The celebration noise faded when the door swung shut behind us. “Shall I tell you what I'd like to get used to?” Hart asked.

The huskiness in his voice made my breath hitch and I looked at him instead of watching where I was going when I stepped onto the graveled parking lot. I half tripped and he caught me around the waist to keep me from falling. Arched back over his encircling arms, I fixated on the way the sun, low on the horizon behind him, lit his hair, seeming to make individual strands glow from within, turning the light brown to amber.

“Or maybe I should show you,” he said. His hand tipped my chin up while his other arm drew me in close for a long kiss. His lips had drifted to my neck when Brooke and Troy drove past us in his BMW. Troy tooted the horn and both of them grinned. Hart released me with a sigh.

“Later?” he asked, lacing his fingers with mine and drawing me toward his Tahoe and our delayed dinner.

“Absolutely,” I promised, thinking later couldn't get here soon enough.