Death of a Coupon Clipper, page 22
She mounted the porch steps and reached into her pants pocket to retrieve her key, when she suddenly noticed that the front door was wide open. She cautiously entered and looked around. Instantly she saw one of the dining-room chairs tipped over.
That was odd.
“Randy?”
She heard a faint scratching.
She moved a little farther inside the house and the scratching got louder.
Then she picked up a soft whimpering.
Leroy.
She followed the sound of the persistent scratching to the downstairs coat closet and swung open the door.
Leroy scurried out, with a frantic look in his eyes.
Hayley bent down and scooped him up in her arms and held him tightly to her chest. “Hey, there, boy, where’s Uncle Randy?”
Leroy licked her face a dozen times; his tiny little body was shaking.
Blueberry was gone at last. So, why was Leroy so upset?
Unless Randy’s visitor spooked him.
The sick feeling in her stomach only got stronger.
She carried Leroy into the kitchen.
The empty casserole dish Randy was eating out of when she called had fallen to the floor and was smashed to pieces.
She hugged Leroy more tightly.
What the hell happened here?
Suddenly there was a high-pitched screaming and Hayley jumped, yelping in surprise. She nearly dropped Leroy, but he clung to her winter coat, not about to let go.
They were both scared.
Hayley spun around in the direction where the screaming was coming from.
It wasn’t screaming.
It was whistling from a teakettle. Steam shot out of the spout. The burner was jacked up too high and was fiery red.
Hayley crossed to the stove and shut off the burner underneath the teapot and the whistling faded.
Randy was making himself a cup of tea, but he didn’t stick around long enough to drink it. She looked down at the floor and saw a box of Earl Grey tea crushed as if someone had stomped on it.
Tea bags were strewn across the floor.
Randy’s favorite The Golden Girls mug was on its side in the corner.
Cracked in half.
Hayley didn’t want to admit it to herself, but she had no choice.
It looked to her as if some kind of struggle had taken place.
She glanced out the window.
The snow was coming down harder than she could ever remember.
She was going to be stuck in this house all night. At least until Lex could come by in the morning with his plow truck.
Hayley had no idea what had just happened to her brother.
Or where he had been taken.
Chapter 34
Hayley tried Randy’s cell phone three more times, and each time she got his voicemail.
She was worried and was feeling really alone and isolated now.
Part of her wanted to start scouring the town looking for him, but she knew that would just be a waste of time. Snow was blanketing the entire island, making it treacherous to drive and impossible to walk.
She wasn’t going anywhere, and she knew it.
She kept trying to convince herself that she was blowing this out of proportion, but then she would glance at the tipped-over dining-room chair, The Golden Girls mug lying, cracked, in the corner, and the unattended teakettle.
Those clues clearly told her she wasn’t blowing anything out of proportion.
Something disturbing had happened here.
And she started panicking all over again.
Her first thought was to call the police, but that would entail Officer Donnie spearheading the search. In Hayley’s mind this would be a colossal waste of time. Clark Hollingsworth’s name kept creeping into her mind.
Hayley fed Leroy and went back into the living room, sat down on the couch, and flipped open her laptop. She googled the name Clark Hollingsworth and started reading various articles, hoping to find some kind of clue that would indicate what kind of dirt Candace might have had on him.
Based on the material coming up in her search, it became obvious Clark was the kind of man who refused to just live off his family name and indulge in the typical hedonistic lifestyle of a spoiled heir. No, Clark Hollingsworth was trying to make a difference in the world: building toilets in Africa, working in an orphanage in Haiti. Fighting poverty was a passion in his life. It was a noble pursuit, and it didn’t jibe one bit with the Clark Hollingsworth who had arrived in town after Edgar fell ill.
Hayley did a quick search for images of Clark Hollingsworth. But the only ones that came up were family photos from his childhood, surrounded by his cousins at a Hollingsworth family picnic on the island, which was covered by the local press. She instantly recognized the cherubic face she went to camp with that one summer.
But why were there no recent photos available?
She kept clicking, bringing up more articles, reading about more philanthropic deeds Clark had done all over the world. There was one photo that caught him, standing outside a new orphanage he had just helped build, surrounded by twenty beautiful, smiling Haitian children. He stood in the back, his face in the shadows, being very careful not to be seen.
Hayley leaned in for a closer look. He was about the right height as the Clark she now knew. Same build. The shape of the head hidden in the shadows was similar. But what was troubling was she just couldn’t get her mind around this much beloved do-gooder being the same Clark Hollingsworth as the petty, secretive, coupon-clipping Clark Hollingsworth she had been dealing with the past couple of weeks.
Hayley went on to read about how press shy Clark was, how he didn’t want his family name overshadowing the plight of the poverty-stricken he was working so hard for, how unseemly it was for anyone to make the story about him.
This was a good, kindhearted, spiritual man.
And there was no way this was the same Clark Hollingsworth as the one taking the reins at his uncle’s estate and making Lex’s life miserable.
Hayley had a gut feeling.
She kept researching.
Skimming more articles.
Desperate to find one clue that would back up the theory that was now taking hold in her mind.
And then she found it.
A tiny article from three weeks ago in a small Port-au-Prince newspaper. Clark Hollingsworth was hospitalized after experiencing a potentially life-threatening anaphylactic shock in response to an ingestion of peanuts. One of the orphans he was caring for brought him a chocolate bar and Clark didn’t realize it was loaded with the nut, which he had been severely allergic to ever since he was a boy.
Hayley’s blood ran cold.
Peanuts.
The Clark in Bar Harbor had bought peanuts at the Shop ’n Save.
Hayley had even given him a coupon so he could get a discount.
It wasn’t the kind of evidence that would hold up in court.
But it was enough for her finally to be sure that the man who showed up at the Hollingsworth estate claiming to be Clark Hollingsworth was a big, fat fake. A con man who probably read about Edgar’s medical condition and showed up posing as his nephew in order to pilfer as much as he could from the endless piles of Hollingsworth money.
He must have known Edgar was in a coma. And given how averse the real Clark was to photos and publicity, the locals just might buy his story.
And they did.
Hayley included.
Then there was the matter of Candace Culpepper.
When she wasn’t at the hospital, she was working as a nurse tending to Edgar. She had access to his personal belongings. Maybe she saw a family photo of the real Clark Hollingsworth. So when the fake Clark showed up, she might have seen right through his insidious plot and threatened to expose him. He could not have her blowing his cover, so he had to get rid of her.
The only hitch in Hayley’s mind was his alibi.
According to the entire staff at the Porter House, Clark was in plain view, shoveling down a steak and chugging a whole bottle of red wine at the time of the murder. Sabrina was adamant that Candace had died instantly, around nine o’clock, when one of the stab wounds punctured her lung. That meant Clark could not have committed the murder.
Suddenly the lights in the entire house went out and Hayley was plunged into darkness, except for the glow from her computer screen. But because of a low battery, she was about to lose that too. She used the few moments of light she had left from the computer to maneuver her way into the kitchen, where she found a candle and some matches in the pantry. She lit one just as her computer shut down and the screen went black.
She picked up the flickering candle and looked out the kitchen window. Complete darkness. Definitely a citywide blackout due to the snowstorm.
Hayley heard a noise.
Like someone jiggling a doorknob, trying to get inside the house.
Then she heard a loud bang.
Someone was using his shoulder to force open the front door.
Leroy jumped away from his food bowl and skidded out of the kitchen toward the front door, barking.
She held her breath.
Hayley used the candle to search the pantry for some kind of weapon. Canned fruits and vegetables just weren’t going to cut it. She hadn’t played softball since high school, so her throwing arm was rusty.
She held the candle up and searched the kitchen, spotting a knife block on the kitchen counter next to the stove. She rushed over and withdrew the largest knife she could find.
A butcher knife.
She gripped the handle and blew out the candle.
Leroy’s barking was getting more frantic by the second.
Then she slowly walked out of the kitchen, back into the living room.
Another bang against the front door caused Leroy to go crazy and run in circles and bark as loudly as he could.
Hayley raised the knife, cleared her throat, and then yelled, “Who is it? Who’s there?”
No answer.
Just more pounding.
Hayley moved a step closer and spoke more loudly. “I said who’s there?”
“It’s me. Open the door.”
It was a man’s voice.
One she knew well.
Hayley took a deep breath, stepped forward, and opened the door to find Lex Bansfield standing on the porch.
And he was stinking drunk.
Even more so than Cassidy Culpepper on the night she nearly ran Hayley down with her rental car.
“Lex, what are you doing out on a night like this?”
“I quit today, Hayley. I couldn’t take it anymore, so I quit,” Lex slurred, gripping the door to keep from falling over.
“Come in here before you freeze to death,” Hayley said, pulling him inside.
“I finally told that bastard what I thought of him. Said he was a mean son of a bitch and I wasn’t going to take orders from him anymore. And neither were my men, so we all walked.”
“When did this happen?”
“This afternoon . . . right before happy hour . . . lucky coincidence. . . . Me and the guys have been celebrating our freedom at Drinks Like A Fish . . . since four this afternoon. . . .”
“So you haven’t seen Clark since you told him you were quitting? And that was around four this afternoon?”
“Yup . . . your brother have any whiskey on hand?” Lex took a step toward the kitchen, but then he stopped and steadied himself. “Whoa. Is it me or is the room spinning?”
Lex stumbled to the right, tripping over the upended dining-room chair and falling flat on his face.
Hayley rushed over and knelt down. “Lex, are you all right?”
She checked his skull for bleeding.
He started snoring.
It was so loud that Leroy quietly backed away, as if trying to steer clear of some kind of monster.
Lex would be fine.
But at this point she wasn’t so sure about her brother, Randy.
She tried his cell phone one more time.
Voicemail.
She had to do something.
If only she knew what.
Chapter 35
Hayley reached down and tried lifting Lex by the shoulders to drag him toward the couch, but he was too heavy. She got him a few feet and then gave up, opting just to grab a pillow and gently place it underneath his head. He snorted, raised his head a few inches, opened his bloodshot eyes, and then looked around. He tried focusing on Hayley’s face, a smile forming on his lips; but then he dropped his head down into the pillow and passed out.
His deafening snoring picked right up again. Lex was going to be no help whatsoever. Hayley was just grateful he passed out in a heated house. If he had been stumbling along the sidewalk on his way here in such a drunken state, he could have toppled off the curb and twisted his ankle or fallen to the pavement and just passed out. He might have spent the whole night outside facedown in the snow.
He would have frozen to death.
The thought of that stopped Hayley.
Frozen to death.
Of course.
It all made sense.
It would explain everything.
Hayley treasured the giant white chest freezer out in her garage. Whenever choice meats and expensive seafood went on sale at the Shop ’n Save, she would buy up as much as she could afford and then store it in her freezer until she needed them. It was a great way to save money because the sales never lasted long and the food kept for months.
What if someone stabbed Candace and left her dead on the front lawn, but because of the cold temperature—it was below zero that night after all—her body froze, slowing down the decomposition of the corpse?
She remembered seeing something about that on the Discovery Channel last November.
Thank God she paid her cable bill that month.
What if Sabrina forgot to factor in the freezing temperature that night and got the time of death wrong?
What if Candace died hours earlier?
Then Clark Hollingsworth’s airtight alibi would be blown wide open.
He could have stabbed Candace with the scissors and then strolled over to the Porter House for a steak and some red wine, where he hung out the rest of the night, closing the place well after ten o’clock when the murder supposedly took place.
Hayley grabbed her cell phone and looked Sabrina Merryweather up in her list of contacts. She hastily tapped the number and heard ringing.
Sabrina answered in a huff. “Yes?”
“Sabrina, it’s me, Hayley Powell.”
“Hey, girl. Can you believe this nasty weather? I hate it. It’s nights like this I want to quit my job as county coroner and move to Hawaii. Not Florida. Why punish myself by going someplace where I’d be spitting distance from my crazy mother?”
“Listen, Sabrina—”
“Hold on a sec, Hayley, I have to yell at my deadbeat husband,” she said. “Put your pants on! We’re not having sex tonight! Get it through your thick skull! I’ve told you a dozen times already!”
Hayley didn’t relish the idea of having to listen to this.
“No, I’m not in the mood! You want to get me hot and excited? Get a friggin’ job!” she bellowed before returning to her usual sweet-and-fake tone. “I’m back, Hayley. Can you believe him? I work hard performing autopsies and assisting the police with complicated murder investigations, while he lounges around all day in his underwear watching Ellen DeGeneres and painting one Acadia National Park landscape a year! If I want to see this beautiful place where we live, I can just step outside. I don’t need to hang a painting on my wall! Am I right?”
“Listen, the reason I’m calling—”
“I don’t mean to unload on you, but I came home early today because of the storm and, shock of all shocks, he was actually at his easel working. I just about fainted dead away. But then the damn power went out and he couldn’t see what he was doing, so he decided he wanted to do his other favorite pursuit. Me! Can you believe it? All I wanted was to sit on the couch with a glass of Chablis to relax and watch my TV shows I have stored on the DVR. I am so far behind on Revenge. Don’t you just love that one, Hayley? That conniving girl sticking it to everyone who wronged her? She’s like my role model. Only half my age, which is why I hate her. But I do love that Madeleine Stowe. If only I could be as bitchy and mean and hateful to my husband as she is!”
Hayley tactfully chose not to respond to that.
Instead, Hayley forged ahead. “Sabrina, I just need to know if it’s possible for a dead body to decompose at a slower rate if it’s out in the cold in freezing temperatures.”
“Yes, of course, it’s possible. Don’t you watch the Discovery Channel?”
“So then it’s also possible for a medical examiner to get the time of death wrong if she perhaps . . . or, um, he . . . didn’t take the outside temperature into account when performing the autopsy and just focused on how much the body had decomposed?”
There was a long, stony silence.
“I’m not sure what you’re getting at, Hayley,” Sabrina finally said flatly.
“Well, is it possible you got the time of death wrong?”
“Absolutely not.”
Hayley had known Sabrina since high school. And she knew she was lying. Hayley was right. She had forgotten to take the temperature into account. But she also knew Sabrina was never going to admit it.
“Do you have any idea the reputation I have built in this state, Hayley? I will not have you running around tearing me down by suggesting I got a very important detail wrong in my autopsy report. I thought we were friends. I thought you had changed since high school.”
Changed? Me?
Sabrina was the ultimate mean girl, who had made Hayley’s life miserable when they were fifteen. The idea that Sabrina believed Hayley was the one who was somehow . . .
Hayley stopped herself.
She couldn’t get caught up in these memories now.
She had just identified Candace’s killer.
And she still had to find Randy.
“You’re right, Sabrina. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
