A Catered Thanksgiving, page 23
Sean checked the time on the clock radio on the nightstand and then turned it around so it faced the wall. He didn’t want to know what time it was. He’d fall asleep when he fell asleep. Then he went back to thinking about Penny’s death. The truth was that he hadn’t had a chance to conduct more than a cursory investigation. Not with the ME’s ruling coming back the way it had. And that had rankled, too.
So even though he’d been furious with the ME at the time for his decision, maybe it was a good thing that the ME had ruled Penny’s death a misadventure/suicide rather than a homicide. It had been one of those borderline cases where the ME could have come down on either side of the fence.
After all, Penny could have taken too much insulin on her own. She could have made a careless mistake. That was within the realm of possibility. Even though everyone Sean had talked to had told him that she had had an abnormal fear of doing exactly that, so she was extra careful with her insulin, and he couldn’t see how anyone could give themselves almost thirty units—or was it forty units?—by accident.
One or two extra, yes. But not thirty. He’d seen the insulin pen she’d injected herself with three times a day, and decided that that was a mistake that one couldn’t possibly make no matter how befuddled one was. And then she’d had three ounces of Scotch on top of that, which kind of sealed the deal. Because, evidently, hard liquor reduced blood sugar levels, especially if you didn’t eat anything as well.
And Penny hadn’t liked hard liquor. That was another thing. Everyone except Monty had said so. But the ME hadn’t wanted to hear about that. He hadn’t wanted to hear about any of it. Neither had the ADA, for that matter. Jackson had told him, “Maybe something bad had happened and she’d needed a drink. Just because she usually didn’t drink didn’t mean that she wouldn’t given the correct circumstances.”
And nothing Sean could say could make him change his mind. Nor would Jackson agree with Sean that making that kind of mistake with your insulin wasn’t suspicious. What Sean had pictured happening, what he’d told Jackson, was that Monty had come up to his wife when she was asleep and jabbed the insulin into her arm. Then he’d poured the Scotch down her throat and held her mouth shut until she’d swallowed it. After that it was just a matter of waiting for the insulin to take effect.
But Jackson had rejected Sean’s hypothesis, pointing out that Penny would have woken up and would have had fifteen to twenty minutes before she went into a coma, and that she would have known her blood sugar was falling and either eaten something or called for help. In fact, there was a landline right next to her bed that she could have used. No, Jackson had continued, Penny’s cause of death was either an accident or a suicide, but in either case she administered the insulin to herself. But despite the absence of hard evidence, Sean hadn’t bought that. His gut had told him different. Aside from everything else, there was something off about Monty’s reaction to his wife’s death.
So Sean had put Penny’s death in his unfinished business file, the file that he kept in his head. That, of course, was why he hadn’t wanted the girls going out to the Field house, especially without him. Not that he was afraid that Monty would kill them. He wasn’t, because in his experience, and statistics bore him out, most murderers were not repeat offenders.
However, that said, there were always exceptions to every rule, and you couldn’t always tell who the nut jobs were. And it was the exceptions to the rule that bothered him. After all, he wouldn’t be much of a father if he let his daughters get in harm’s way, a thing he’d done his level best over the years to prevent, even though Rose had not approved of his methods. Like teaching the girls the three deadliest defense moves in the world when they were eight years old.
Sean smiled at the thought. Libby had been hopeless, but Bernie had proved to be an apt pupil, although in retrospect maybe teaching a kid how to tear someone’s ear off hadn’t been the best idea. Rose certainly hadn’t thought so. She’d been apoplectic when Bernie had demonstrated the technique to her on her doll. She’d made him swear never to do anything like that again. Which he hadn’t.
Sean took a deep breath and thought about Rose for a little while and their life together and about how much he missed her, and then, after a little while, his thoughts slowly drifted back to Monty’s murder and his daughters and their current predicament.
When Clyde had called and told Sean he had heard that Monty Field was dead, part of Sean had been pleased that Monty had finally gotten what was coming to him after all these years, but a larger part of him had been worried there was a killer loose in the house, after all, and even though the person who killed Monty Field probably had a motive that didn’t include his daughters, it didn’t make Sean feel any better.
And then, when Clyde had told him his daughters were being looked at for the murder, he’d been furious at Lucy’s temerity. The idea was ludicrous. And while he knew that everything would get straightened out eventually, he also knew that it could be a long, expensive process.
Which was why he’d advised Bernie and Libby to try and get to the bottom of this mess before Longely’s finest came on the scene. Handing them a neatly wrapped package with all the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed would make life simpler for everyone. The police would be happy because they would have their perpetrator, and the girls would be happy because they wouldn’t have to deal with the Longely police.
And now here was Joan telling him that it was Monty’s brothers who were responsible for Penny’s death, and he couldn’t even get in touch with Bernie and Libby to tell them that. Even though the more he thought about the statement, the more he realized that it made no sense to him whatsoever.
Which was why he was lying in bed, unable to sleep, while he tried to figure out whether or not what Joan had said held even a slim chance of being true, whether her intuition was in any way valid. He had a tendency to think not. But maybe that was because he didn’t want to believe what she was saying. He’d trusted her opinion before when she’d told him that she thought that Monty had killed his wife, but maybe that was because it confirmed his own. Joan obviously thought that what she was saying was true, and she had no reason to lie.
Of course, there was another possibility. Geoff could have been lying to her. Maybe Geoff had been making the whole thing up because he was angry with his uncles for something or other that they’d done. That would work. It was a fairly sick thing to do, but Sean had seen kids do things like that before. Take the Smith kid and his dad. The kid had accused his dad of killing his puppy, when the kid had done it himself.
Maybe that was why Geoff had said what he did to Joan. And then maybe Geoff had gotten embarrassed by what he’d done and started avoiding Joan at all costs, hence increasing Joan’s level of concern, which increased Geoff’s, which increased Joan’s, and so on and so forth.
Then another thought occurred to Sean. Why would Perceval and Ralph kill Penny back then and Monty now? Why wait all this time? That was the question. No, Sean corrected himself. That was one of the questions. A subset really. Now he was allowing himself to get sidetracked from the other question, the more important one, which was, why would Ralph and Perceval kill Penny at all? How did Ralph and Perceval benefit from her death?
Monty got the company when Penny died. What did Ralph and Perceval get? As far as Sean knew, they got a chance to work in the company. Or maybe they got to own a part of the company. But still, Sean was sure it wouldn’t be a big part. Monty was probably the chief stock owner. So what had Ralph and Perceval been doing before so that working in the company or even owning a piece of it was such a big step up for them that it was worth killing for?
Sean closed his eyes and tried to dredge up everything he remembered pertaining to Penny Field’s death and Monty and Monty’s brothers. He had vague memories of Perceval and Ralph.
There’d been a lot of drinking and smoking. A lot of dead-end jobs and a lot of getting fired from said dead-end jobs—mainly because Ralph and Perceval had been in the habit of not showing up for work—if Sean remembered rightly. But they didn’t do anything criminal, unless you counted stupid stuff, like getting caught trespassing on the high school football field with a case of beer and a couple of girls.
Then their parents had been killed in a house fire started by a faulty electric heater, and that seemed to have sobered them up really fast. It had been the same summer that Penny had died. Everyone had had lots of sympathy for the Field boys. Which was another reason no one had wanted to touch Penny Field’s death. Everyone had figured Monty had enough on his plate as it was.
Sean shook his head again. No matter how Sean figured it, he couldn’t see Ralph and Perceval for Penny Field’s death. They’d had no motive. Unless, of course, they’d colluded with their brother and all three of the Field boys had been in on Penny’s murder and Monty had paid them off, as well as giving them a share in the company. That made a little more sense. And now maybe they’d had a falling-out and they’d killed Monty.
No. The theory that made the most sense was that Geoff had lied to Joan for reasons of his own and that Joan had believed him. That made Sean feel a little bit better, but not as much as he would have liked. Because what happened if he was wrong? God, he wished he were back in Longely. He sighed and rolled over and punched his pillow into submission.
He wasn’t going to go there. He was going to tell himself that everything was fine and that his girls could protect themselves from anything that came along—at least Bernie could. After all, he’d taught her how. And he was going to keep telling himself that until he believed it. Otherwise he’d never get any sleep.
Ten minutes later he reached for his cell and tried Bernie’s number again. It rang, so the network was back up. But there was no answer. He tried again five minutes later. Still no answer. Plenty of reasons for that, he told himself after he’d left a voice mail. She could have lost her phone. It could be dead. She was probably sleeping and didn’t hear it. He was sure there was a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why she wasn’t calling him back. Perfectly reasonable. But after ten minutes he caved and dialed Brandon’s number. Sean let out a long sigh of relief when Brandon came on the line.
Chapter 36
Bernie woke with a start. For a moment she looked around, not knowing where she was, and then everything came rushing back. She groaned as she glanced down at her watch. The numbers on her watch dial were illuminated. They read 5:10. She looked across the way. Libby was sound asleep. Her lips were slightly parted. Bernie could tell from the way that her sister’s eyelids were twitching that she was dreaming.
And it was still snowing, although not as hard as it had been. Hopefully, the police would be able to get here by this afternoon, and she and Libby would be able to go home. Finally. She didn’t even want to think of all the shoveling she and Libby were going to have to do when they finally got back to Longely.
And then there was the shop, Bernie thought as she repinned her hair. The shop. They were officially closed today, so that was good, but they were going to have to get there by this evening, at the latest, so they could start baking. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have anything to sell tomorrow morning. The store had never had an unscheduled closing, except for the week after her mother had died, and Bernie wasn’t about to let that happen now.
Bernie rubbed her arms. It had gotten colder since she’d fallen asleep. Maybe the cold had woken her up. Or maybe she had woken up because she was hungry. She sat up and slipped on her boots and her jacket. Hopefully, she’d be able to find some leftovers in the kitchen.
If she remembered correctly, there was still some turkey and stuffing the last time she’d checked, as well as cheese, crackers, and nuts. And if worst came to worst, she could cobble something together out of that stash of camping food she and Libby had found. Then she’d go back to sleep until seven thirty, when she had to wake everyone up and get them out of their rooms.
Personally, she’d like to leave all of them in there—it was so much pleasanter not having to hear their constant arguing—but that wasn’t a possibility. Bernie passed the stairs on the way to the kitchen, automatically checking as she did to make sure that the marbles were in place. But not only were they not in place, they weren’t there.
She moved closer. The marbles were definitely not there. None of them. It was as if they’d never been. Someone had taken them during the night. She considered the implications of that fact. There were lots of them, and the more she thought about what they were, the angrier she got. Whoever was doing this was playing games with her, and she, for one, had had enough. Bottom line. She was tired of being jerked around. She was tired of being here. She wanted to get this settled and get the hell out.
She reached in her pocket and took out the skeleton key and weighed it in her hand before slipping it back in her pocket. For a moment Bernie debated going back and waking up Libby and telling her what had happened, but decided against it. She didn’t want to talk. She wanted to act. She ran up the stairs and tried the bedroom doors on the second floor.
The doors that she’d locked last night were still locked. Bernie stood outside of them, held her breath, and listened as hard as she could. She heard snores from Ralph and Perceval’s and Melissa’s rooms and nothing from the others. Next, she slowly opened the doors and peeked inside. Everyone appeared to be asleep. She carefully closed the doors and relocked them.
She checked out Geoff’s and Monty’s rooms next. They looked the same as they had last night. She sat on Monty’s bed and thought about Geoff. Okay. So was he the one who had taken the marbles, or had someone else let themselves out of their room, collected the marbles, then locked themselves back in and crawled into bed?
Put like that, she was betting on Geoff. Bernie got off the bed and hurried down the stairs. She checked the first floor and the garage. No Geoff. She studied the snow piled up outside the front and back doors and the windows. It was smooth. There were no footprints. Geoff hadn’t gone out. Frustrated, she headed for the kitchen to make some coffee. Even though she didn’t want to waste the time, experience had taught her that she needed it to think. After it was done, she would wake up Libby. They had to talk.
In Libby’s dream the snow kept on falling. And falling. It covered the houses and the sky. It smothered the air and weighed down the roofs of the houses. The houses collapsed slowly, each one breaking apart into shards of gingerbread, which melted in the snow, leaving terrible dark stains. She knew if she could get up to the attic, she could fix the leak. She could stop this. But there was no way up. The stairway was hidden. She needed the magic words. But in order to get them, she had to swim through the snow. Suddenly she was in a castle. There were snow flowers. Everything was glittering. Then something was shaking her. Her eyes flew open. She saw Bernie bending over her.
“Rise and shine, sunshine,” Bernie said. “It’s time to get up.”
Libby groaned. “I had the worst dream. Except for the end.”
“Tell me about it later,” Bernie answered as she shoved a cup of coffee under Libby’s nose.
Libby started to get up and groaned again. Everything hurt. Her back hurt. Her legs hurt. Her neck hurt. And her head. Her head hurt most of all. She had a throbbing headache right above her eyes. Or maybe it was behind her eyes. Or maybe it was both. And her mouth felt cottony and dry. And she had a bad taste in it. A very bad taste.
She looked at her glass, which was still sitting on the coffee table right where she’d left it. The smell made her want to throw up. And she hadn’t even had that much to drink. Maybe four ounces of brandy at the most. Somehow it didn’t seem fair to be so hung over after drinking so little. Now she remembered why she mostly stuck to beer and wine.
Bernie examined her sister. “You don’t look good,” she said. An understatement. Libby looked like Medusa with her hair going every which way, but she was trying to be polite.
“I don’t feel good,” Libby said.
“You have drool on your chin.”
Libby wiped it away with the back of her hand.
“Have some coffee.”
Libby squinched up her face. “Ugh.”
“How about a raw egg?”
“That’s disgusting.”
“But effective.”
“I’ll take the coffee,” Libby said, reaching for it. She took a sip, made a face, and took another sip. “What time is it, anyway?”
“Five thirty.”
Libby grimaced. “I want to go back to sleep.”
“You can’t. The marbles are gone.”
Libby gave her a blank look as she sat up and swung her legs over the side of the sofa. She felt as if she was in a stupor. “What marbles?”
Bernie snorted impatiently. Her sister always took forever to wake up. “The marbles I put on the stairs. Remember?”
“Oh, those marbles,” Libby said.
“Like we had so many of them.”
It was all coming back to Libby. Geoff. The Field family. The marbles Bernie had put on the stairs, which Libby had thought was an incredibly stupid idea, anyway.
“They’re gone,” Bernie repeated. “Vanished. Evaporated.”
“I get it,” Libby said as she wiped the sleep out of her eyes with the sleeve of her black cardigan sweater and patted her hair into place. Why did Bernie always look so good? She could spend a week sleeping in the back of a truck—and had—and still look perfect. It wasn’t fair.
“Someone took them.”
“Obviously.” Libby took another sip of her coffee. “Couldn’t you have waited another half an hour to tell me this?”
“No. It’s not my fault if you can’t drink and decided to, anyway.”
“Sometimes you are beyond outrageous.”
“Well, it’s true.”
“So you admit you are outrageous.”
Bernie grunted. “Do you want to get out of here?”
“No,” Libby snapped. “I want to stay here, because it’s so much fun. Of course I want to leave. We have to get back to the shop so we can start baking.”
