Dead in the Water (Olivia Grant Mysteries Book 1) (20 page)

She paused briefly. "No. He had his faults, but I don't believe that was one of them." She paused. "It just means he might have been attacked accidentally. Perhaps they're right, and a drug dealer did it. In the dark, he mistook Chaz for someone else."

Although the possibility of a drug dealer/perpetrator or some other person who might have done it remained, I couldn't make myself accept it. I reminded Elizabeth that the blood on the seat seemed to mean that the attacker had to be inside the car to inflict those wounds.

I didn't believe Kincaid's theory that Chaz entered and exited the car while half dead from stab wounds, especially if he was in such terrible condition that his attacker assumed he'd killed him. Why was there no blood on the steering wheel?

If someone got into the car with him, it must have been a person he knew. Not his bandmates, with whom he seemed on good terms. Not someone he didn't trust. Surely Chaz wouldn't have let a jealous husband into the car. Even worse to contemplate was that if I believed such a person had tried to kill him, I'd be back where I'd been with Noreen's killer, looking for that elusive Mister X.

That left one other possibility. Although it had nagged at me for some time, I still didn't even want to think it. Everyone in the family hated Noreen, but no one hated Chaz. They may have disliked his ways, disapproved of his lifestyle, even wished he'd move out, but no one would want to kill him. Except, perhaps, Elizabeth.

My subconscious had at last got its signals through to my conscious mind. Right from the start, she insisted Noreen's death was an accident, obviously not wanting the family to consider murder. Then, although I told her I had a theory about who tried to kill Chaz, Elizabeth had never asked me about it on the drive from the hospital, and then she refused to look inside the Rover. Furthermore, she had often seemed afraid to be alone with me, as if I'd learn something she didn't want me to know. Like hating Chaz enough to try to kill him?

At the close of our conversation that day, she'd agreed with me that probably Chaz hadn't intended to rape her and didn't consider that he had. She even confessed perhaps she'd welcomed it. However, what if she'd lied, saying that to throw me off the scent?

Could a woman—even Elizabeth, tall and fit herself—overpower a man as muscular and strong as Chaz? Perhaps, if she surprised him, began stabbing before he could react. The blood on the seats meant she got into the car with him. He'd have had no qualms about letting Elizabeth get in. No doubt he'd even encourage her.

According to my theory, if one person tried to do away with both Noreen and Chaz, then Elizabeth fit the bill. What if she already sensed my conclusions? I sat alongside her right then, at her mercy.

My brain said I was being paranoid, but was I? I looked over at her. She stared out the windshield, her lips in a thin line, shoulders hunched, hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly that, had it not been made of sturdy stuff, it would have snapped in two.

Although we didn't speak during the remainder of the drive, Elizabeth returned me safely to Mason Hall and then, claiming to have work to do at her school, drove off in her car. When she came back several hours later, she announced she again wanted an early night and disappeared into her room.

Jason came home later that afternoon, told Aunt Alice and me he'd been to the hospital and then reported to Kincaid's office as instructed, but the inspector didn't show up. I didn't remind Jason, but I calculated he'd been to Kincaid's office at the time the inspector was talking to Elizabeth and me at the crime scene, arranging for the removal of Chaz's car.

"I stopped at a pub and had a bite to eat," Jason told Aunt Alice, "so tell cook I'm not hungry and shan't want any dinner tonight." So saying, he went straight to his room.

Alice grumbled about everyone's lack of interest in dinner. "Not worth heating up the cooker for the little food they're eating these days."

"It's understandable," I told her. "We're all too upset about what's happened around here. Is there any more news about Chaz?"

"I rang up hospital a little bit ago. They say he's out of danger, moved into a private room where he can have a visitor or two tomorrow."

I looked forward to seeing him, although I disliked hospitals and avoided going there as much as possible. I'd recently read an article about the enormous number of deaths attributed to "mistakes," and worried that they'd given up curing people in favor of making sure there was never a parking space within a mile of the building.

I wondered what Chaz would look like. They'd told us he had multiple stab wounds, presumably on his upper body, perhaps his arms if he raised them to defend himself. I hoped his attacker hadn't hit anything so vital it would affect his mobility. Merely thinking about it depressed me.

However, in the meantime, hours needed to be lived through. I turned to Alice. "May I help you with dinner?"

"Won't be much to do. Annie's day off, but she left some soup and meat pie. What say we put that out on the sideboard with some bread and cheese and let everyone help himself?"

While Alice warmed the hot food, I sliced bread and cheese and put out a fruit bowl and some custard, but no such thing as a dinner party took place.

Afterward I withdrew to the library and tried to read, but I found myself seeing words on the page without understanding their meaning and soon gave it up. A vision of Noreen floating in the lily pond returned, and I felt overwhelmed with the conviction her death was no accident. I wanted to know who had killed her and why. Everyone in the house seemed to have plausible reasons to hate her, and almost anyone—except Jason, of course, who stayed in the city that night—could have followed her to the lily pond, struck her with a rock, and pushed her under.

I wasn't present when they answered Kincaid's questions, so I don't know if any had an alibi for that evening, but one of them could have used the opportunity presented by her walking the dog to eliminate her from their lives.

I remembered what Beryl had revealed to me, that Noreen tried to blackmail her. A good enough reason for her to want to kill Noreen, but did she?

Chaz had always seemed to me the one person most likely to commit such a violent act, and perhaps he knew Noreen had been blackmailing his mother. If he did, I now had one more reason for believing Chaz killed Noreen. Frankly, I was beginning to like him for it, but who tried to eliminate Chaz and why? Surely no one who thought Chaz guilty of murdering Noreen would try to kill him for vengeance. If that person wanted a murderer put away, why not just tell the police?

Aunt Alice had been listening at the door when William and Chaz argued, so she thought Elizabeth claimed Chaz raped her, but would she attempt to kill Chaz over it? She could have got into the car with him. He wouldn't have suspected her of planning to stab him, but I couldn't visualize her doing it.

Another thought popped into my head. During my conversation with Inspector Kincaid that afternoon, I'd forgotten to ask him about Tim's observations. He told me he saw Noreen and Mr. Tarkington at the lily pond, and he'd seen a car drive up. Tim had also mentioned his bicycle having been damaged and someone burning something in his trash barrel. Were those clues as well?

Despite the late hour, I placed a call to Kincaid, leaving a message on his answering machine.

Restless, I went into the small sitting room, but television failed to hold my attention. Why watch a suspense film when a real mystery surrounded me? Finally, at nearly midnight, I turned off the lights and went to bed.

Not to sleep. I turned over several times, pounded the pillow into different positions, and tried not to think. I did my little relaxation trick, imagining a large black velvet circle, but it didn't help. Reality kept intruding. A picture floated in my head: someone stabbing Chaz.

For some reason I remembered the old California case of Ron Goldman, Nicole Brown Simpson's friend. His throat cut, head nearly severed from his body, bleeding from a dozen slashes, he'd been butchered like so much raw meat. My heart pounded. No matter what Chaz had done, I didn't believe he deserved to end up like that. I felt a little queasy.

I tried to shake off the image, but another one took its place. This time I remembered talking to Kincaid, how he'd said the weapon used to stab Chaz was double-edged, wavy, and made jagged cuts. Such a knife wouldn't be left at the scene of the crime. Or even thrown away because, should it be found, its unusual nature would surely link it to the attacker.

An unusual weapon. The image lingered, joined with others from the past, from my long-ago visit to Mason Hall. We children played in the great hall often, and, unknown to our guardians, climbed on the chairs and took down the medieval weapons. One shield in particular held a secret. Hidden from view as it hung on the wall, its underside contained a leather thong and under the thong resided a nine-inch dagger.

I sat bolt upright in bed. Could that dagger have been the weapon? I tried to remember what the blade looked like but couldn't. Yet it was definitely unusual and probably could be traced back to Mason Hall.

I looked at my travel clock. One fifteen, a perfect time to go sleuthing and test my theory. I rose from the bed, thrust my feet into my slippers, and shrugged into my robe. I searched my tote bag for my flashlight. Yes, I carry one of those, as well as a tiny clock radio, a sewing kit, Band-Aids, a blow-up neck pillow, candied ginger (to combat motion sickness), roll-up metal tape measure, and a dozen tissues.

I had not brought my tiny manicure set in a wee leather case, because that had been confiscated at the airport on a previous trip. Why? Did they think some terrorist would reach under my airplane seat, drag out my carry-on, find the cosmetic bag, remove the manicure set from its leather case, pull out the tiny scissors, and try to stab someone with a blade half-an-inch long?

I opened my bedroom door a crack and peered into the hall. Nothing. I tiptoed my way to the staircase but didn't turn on the flashlight right away. Faint light filtered in from the large window over the front door and the twin narrow windows at the back of the hall, enabling me to see my way downstairs. I heard my own footsteps, even in my soft-soled slippers. The antique grandfather clock chime startled me.

When I reached the great hall, I shivered. Always awesome, it looked eerier now than by day. I tried to stifle my heavy breathing. Pinpricks of fear crept along my neck. What dastardly deeds occurred there over the centuries? Who might have fought a duel in this very room, perhaps killed someone? Ghosts hovered in the still, cold air.

I took several deep breaths and straightened my shoulders. I would not be intimidated by the dark and my own imagination. I crossed the floor, directing my flashlight beam over the walls. The light bounced off the shields, swords, and battle-axes that hung there for generations. I went straight to the shield containing the dagger and flashed my light on it. Then I tucked the flashlight under the cord of my robe and carefully dragged a heavy oak chair into position in front of the shield.

I stepped up on it, lifted down the shield, and turned it over. The dagger lay there under the leather thong.

A chill went up my spine. I pulled it free, set it on the chair seat, and replaced the shield. Then I climbed down from the chair and turned the flashlight beam on the dagger. Its blade was double-edged, with wavy curves. My throat became tight and dry.

Dark smudges marred the base of the blade where it met the hilt. Smudges that looked like blood. My hand trembled. Then my mind took over. If this was indeed the missing weapon, then I had now put my fingerprints on it. Fool! I knew better than that. But it was too late to take them back.

Holding the dagger gingerly with my fingertips, I set it down on a chair momentarily, then crept silently to the kitchen. Tark rustled in his bed near the back kitchen door, and I went to him quickly, rubbing him behind the ears and whispering to him to be quiet and not rouse the household. He sighed a doggy sigh and lay his head back down again.

In the pantry, I found a box of plastic storage bags and dropped the dagger into one of them. I'd seen movie detectives put objects in bags like this and felt like some dramatic actor in a film instead of a meddling snoop. I planned to take it to Kincaid in the morning. I had no more doubts in my mind about who had tried to kill Chaz. As far as I knew, only three of us knew about the dagger: Elizabeth, Jason, and I.

Since I knew I hadn't done it, that left Elizabeth or Jason. Both had sufficient reasons to hate Chaz, and either one could have remembered the dagger and tried to kill him.

Once more I opened the door to the great hall, this time to go back upstairs. Tark padded after me, his nails clicking on the stone floor. I stooped to pick him up and take him with me, when I realized someone else was coming down the stairs. Someone who also carried a flashlight and seemed to be trying to keep quiet.

I pushed Tark behind the closet, let go of him, and peered around the corner. From this distance, I couldn't make out who descended the stairs, but he or she went straight to the chair against the wall, stood on it and lifted down the shield.

I took a chance and crept closer. I could see the person turn the shield over, no doubt looking for the dagger. No doubt planning to clean it thoroughly this time or dispose of it for good. I could hardly keep from trembling and clamped one hand over my mouth to stop my teeth from chattering.

The person replaced the shield, stepped down off the chair, and turned her face to me. Elizabeth.