Deadly Reunion (20 page)

“You left me last night,” Grace said
, pointing out the many ways she could possibly been killed by a vicious serial killer prowling the empty Hogan High School halls.

Adam
picked himself off the ground. “Oh, Grace, don’t be so melodramatic. There isn’t any serial killer or maniac or monster running around. You were perfectly safe. The only monster in town was killed last week.”

“Would you mind explaining that,” Kyle asked
, motioning for the other man to walk into the shack.

“Can I have my gun back?”

Kyle smiled. “No, I think I’ll hang onto it for a while.”

“I’m paying you, remember?” Adam snarled, stomping through the door and sitting down at a dusty little table in the corner of the room.

“I’m starting to wonder why, Adam.” Grace said sitting down opposite him. “You haven’t been very cooperative.”

“It was an impulse buy.
I saw him at the funeral, and I thought he looked like he knew what he was doing.”

Grace felt Kyle’s hand brush against her back.
She knew without looking back that he was pleased.

Adam leaned back in his chair
, and propped his foot on the table. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think I’m going to go in another direction. I did some checking on you, and no one seems to have ever heard of Kyle Drake Investigations. No offense Grace, but I think I want my money back.”

Before Kyle could start hyperventilating, Grace stood up, leaned over
, and pushed Adam’s foot off the table. “That may work back in Hollywood, but don’t forget you’re back home, now. I know you, so drop the act. Considering, I was arrested last night because of you, I think we have earned that retainer. Now, for whatever reason, you’ve hired us to find Crystal’s killer, and that’s what we are going to do. If you don’t start talking to us, I’m going to go to that nice Mr. Simpson, and tell him who was with me last night, and how interested you seem to be in a binder. In fact, I’ll go one better, I’ll tell Beth, and it will be all over town before lunch.”

“Ok
ay, okay,” he said holding up his hands. “Geez, calm down. You don’t have to pay me back.”

Kyle patted Grace’s shoulder as he sat in the remaining chair.

“Adam, spill it, or I’m going straight to the sheriff’s office.”

Kyle leaned forward. “Let me offer you some friendly advice. The
DA is looking for any reason to put you away. I think he would love to know you were running around the crime scene last night, don’t you?”

“Fine. It’s not that I don’t want to tell you, it’s just that I don’t want a lot of people to know, at least not yet.”

“Know what?” Grace asked annoyed.

“Crystal was a blackmailer,” Adam said.
“She had a little group she was routinely blackmailing.”

Kyle looked at Grace
and mouthed ‘told you so.’

“I had no intention of coming to this reunion,” Adam admitted reluctantly, “until Crystal called me and proposed a business deal. She would
sell me everyone's secrets, and I would turn it into a big screen movie. Sort of like
Peyton Place
only less respectable.”

Grace shook her head.
“Why would Crystal need money? Her family is loaded.”

Adam shook his head. “Was loaded. They're all broke. Every one of them.
Although, Diana might be a little better off than the others, at least for now. Melodie, on the other hand, barely had enough change to buy a sandwich.”

Kyle shook his head. “She seems to be doing fine.”

“Yeah,
now
. She just received a nice little payout from the insurance company a couple of days ago. You should have seen her last month. She had to borrow money from Diana just to feed herself.”

“
And the Lakes?” Grace asked.

“
Even worse. They were heavily in debt and about to lose their house. Tom couldn’t care less, but it was killing Crystal. She kept talking about starting fertility treatments and needing to come up with the money. Anyway, she was getting desperate. Her well of money had dried up.”

Kyle leaned back in his chair. “Ah, so that's w
hy she was now turning to you. How many people was she blackmailing?”

“Not many. Just a few people
, actually. Her nearest and dearest and she was willing to sell their secrets to me.”

Grace drummed her fingers on the table considering this new information. “Well, why didn't she? You were here
for a month. If she had, you wouldn't still be here. So why didn't she?”

“
She was holding out on me.” Adam shrugged his shoulders. “We couldn't work out the details.”

“
Did she tell you anything?” Grace asked.

“She told me a few things. Nothing that scandalous.
At least nothing worthy of turning into a screenplay. She told me Larry had—”

Kyle shook his head.
“We already know Larry was cheating with his secretary, and Melodie was angry because Crystal knew and didn't tell her.”

Adam laughed. “What? Where did you hear that?”

“Beth,” both Grace and Kyle said in unison.

Adam looked at Grace and laughed.
“Do you remember playing the telephone game when we were little? You whisper a secret in the ear of the person on your left, and then they do the same to the person on their left, and so on. The last person in line usually has a garbled up version of the original secret. Beth is always the last person in line. Why would you believe her?”

Grace glared at him.
“No one else knew what had happened, and you wouldn’t talk. What makes you think it's not true?”

“His secretary
was Louise Perkins. She's eighty-two. Unless he was into octogenarians, I doubt they were spending their lunch hours at the no-tell motel.” Adam, sensing he was making his audience angry, quickly added, “Beth had some of her information right. Larry was cheating, but it wasn’t with his secretary.”

“Fine,” Grace said.
“Please, enlighten us.”

“
Crystal ran through her inheritance pretty quickly after her parents died. When she ran out of money, she turned to her family. Unfortunately for her, Larry got tired of Crystal using their accounts as her own piggybank, so he finally cut her off. He told Melodie not to give her any more money. As you can imagine, Crystal wasn’t too happy with that, so she set him up. She hired a prostitute to seduce him, and then hired a detective to discover the ‘truth’. That’s all it took. That was actually one of her favorite methods of coercion.”

“So, she walked up to Larry and threatened to tell
Melodie unless he paid up?” Kyle asked. “What was to keep him from strangling her on the spot?”

“Oh no, Crystal was far too clever for that. She would send an anonymous note with a copy of the pictures. She never let her victims know
who was blackmailing them.”

“I’m surprised Larry let himself be used like that,” Grace said
, remembering Larry’s temper.

“
Larry couldn’t afford Melodie finding out. After all, Melodie was the one with the money and a pre-nup. After Crystal sent him the pictures, she slowly began bleeding him dry. Larry had to sell off property and even started embezzling from his own company to keep her quiet. He ended up taking a few loans from some rather unscrupulous people, if you get my meaning.”

“You don’t mean—” Kyle asked apprehensively.

“Oh, yes.” Adam smiled. “It all came to a head about three months ago. The business was practically bankrupt, Crystal wanted more money, and his ‘new’ business partners wanted him to pay back what he borrowed. He finally had enough. Unfortunately, by that time, he had committed so many crimes trying to cover up the affair that he was in more trouble than from just an angry wife. So, when Larry stopped paying, Crystal sent an anonymous note to Melodie along with the pictures.”

“How did
Melodie react?”

Adam shook his head. “Not well. She called Crystal for help when she got the letter and pictures. When Larry didn’t return home that night, they went into his office and found a note laying on his desk, attached to a two million dollar life insurance policy. It was your basic suicide apology note
”

“Larry committed suicide? I thought his death was an accident?” Grace asked.

“That's the official version.
Melodie destroyed the note. Can't collect insurance if there's a suicide.”

“No one suspected?”

“No. Melodie went to her aunt and borrowed enough money to get the business back on track and pay off the loan sharks and then waited for the insurance check to arrive.”

Kyle stood up and placed the unloaded
shotgun over the mantle place. “How did Melodie find out that Crystal was behind it all?”

Adam shrugged.
“Your guess is as good as mine, but I’m convinced she knew.”

Grace pu
shed her hair back off her face. “All right, let’s say you’re right. Why would Melodie have anything to do with Crystal after—”

“After she drained her husband dry and caused him to commi
t suicide?” Adam finished for her.

“Because Crystal threatened to tell everyone,”
Kyle guessed.

Adam nodded. “
If Larry committed suicide, then Melodie would lose all that nice insurance money. Over two million dollars. Melodie had to play nice with Crystal in order to keep the money. And the moment Melodie received that check; there was Crystal with her hand outstretched. Mel tried to resist, but Crystal reminded her what would happen if the insurance company found out the truth.”

“And Crystal told you all of this?” Grace asked.

Adam smirked. “I think she was proud of herself. At times, she fancied herself some type of Machiavellian villain. A puppet master pulling the strings. Then if she started to feel guilty about what had happen, she would put the blame on everyone else. According to her, she hadn’t really done anything wrong. She was a Hogan and had more of a right to Melodie’s inheritance than Larry did. She said she didn’t force Larry to cheat or to get into bed with the mob. She didn’t force him to kill himself. As far as she was concerned, she was perfectly innocent. It was Larry’s fault for being weak.” Adam made a face. “She was a horrible person.”

“
You said that was one of her favorite methods of coercion. Who else did she set up that way?” Kyle asked.

“She tried to do
the same thing with her Aunt Diana around the same time.” He laughed at their shocked faces. “After all, Diana was a Hogan, too. She inherited a bunch of money and land from her parents when they died, just like Crystal and Melodie had. Crystal firmly believed that whatever money Melodie or Diana had should belong to her, as well. Share and share alike. So, she used the same method to blackmail her aunt. After all, it had worked so well with Larry.”

“Did it?”

“Oh yeah. She found this gigolo and paid him to seduce her aunt. Then, just like with Larry, she sent an anonymous letter with pictures and threaten to tell Diana’s husband. However, unlike Larry, Diana called her blackmailer’s bluff. As soon as she got the letter and pictures, she went to her husband and confessed. Told him everything. Then she went to the police.”

“Smart woman,” Grace said.

“Hmm. Maybe not. Police never found out who sent the letter or took the pictures. And as for her husband . . . It would have been cheaper to pay the blackmail. Her husband filed for divorce the next day. She’s been battling him in divorce court for the last six months. There was no pre-nup and he’s trying to take everything.”

“Did Diana know it was Crystal
who sent the letter and the pictures?” Grace asked.

“I don’t
think so. I never noticed any tension between them. They seemed to get along with each other rather well. I’d bet anything Diana doesn’t know, yet.”

“What about Steve?
Was Crystal blackmailing him for trying to kill David Hart?”

Adam hesitated. “
Not that I know of, at least she never mentioned him. So, Steve tried to kill someone. That’s interesting.”

“You didn’t know?”
Grace asked.

Adam
shook his head.

“Who else was Crystal blackmailing?”
she asked.

“There’s James Simpson.”

Grace leaned forward. “What did she have on Simpson?”

“He’s Tom’s father
, and he’s the reason that Tom’s parents divorced. He is terrified of Tom learning the truth. Crystal told me that she had been going easy on him. Only asking for little things. The old man was so grateful that he happily agreed to anything she asked. I don’t even think he realized he was being blackmailed. If you ask me, I think she was looking to trade up, from the son to the father.”

Grace and Kyle exchanged looks. “T
o be honest, Adam, this doesn’t really sound like Academy Award winner material,” Grace said sarcastically. “I mean, it’s sleazy but . . .”