Divas and Dead Rebels (39 page)

I had to confess, “I don’t have a detailed list of questions. Just a few main ones I hope will catch him off-guard.”

“That should be enough,” said Rayna. “With what we know, all we have to do is get him to incriminate himself.”

“What do we know?” asked Bitty.

“I think you should be careful about how you pose the questions,” Gaynelle said. “If you spook him too badly, he’s liable to destroy any evidence he may have.”

“What do we know?” asked Bitty.

“True,” I said in response to Gaynelle’s comment. “I hope when we confront him, he might be taken back enough to realize it’s useless to deny his guilt.”

“What do we know?” asked Bitty.

“I’m amazed Hartford’s still in town,” said Rayna. “He should be somewhere in the Azores or a remote island in the North Atlantic, with the paper trail he left behind. It was almost too easy to find. He’s either extremely arrogant or convinced of immunity.”

I nodded. “I can’t figure out why the police don’t act on just what
we
know.”

“What do
we
know?” asked Bitty.

“Because they’re hindered by things like ‘probable cause’ and proof,” Rayna answered me. “We’re not.”

Just as I opened my mouth to point out that we were hindered by things like being assaulted or arrested for trespassing, Bitty let out a grinding shriek that scared the liver out of me. I jumped, my purse fell onto the floor, and the contents spilled over the new floor mats.

“What on earth is the matter with you?” I demanded of my cousin as soon as I recovered a little from my fright. “You nearly scared me to death!”

“You’ve been ignoring me. I hate being ignored. I want to know what we’re supposed to know that all of you seem to know, but I don’t.”

I eyed her for a moment. Her blue eyes were bright, and her face was red, probably because she’d broken a blood vessel or two with her shriek. Her expression was plainly irate. “It wasn’t so much that I was ignoring you,” I finally said. “It was that I hoped you wouldn’t keep asking.”

“Why?”

“Because you somehow manage to tell everything you know at the wrong time. It’s best if you don’t know some things.”

Bitty lifted a brow and gave me a look that told me she wasn’t happy with my reply. Then she smiled. “Really. I know a lot of things I haven’t told to anyone. Like the time you forgot to wear panties to school, and all the boys kept asking you to pick up their pencil off the floor for them. I had to tell you why at recess that day. Then there was the time—”

“Maybe it’s okay if you know a few things,” I said hastily before she got any farther down Memory Lane. “Rayna did some investigating, did her magic on computer, asked a few judicious questions of her informant in the police department, and found out quite a bit about Breck Hartford’s recent activities.”

“Goody. That sounds like something useful. So what did we find out?” She’d stressed the
we
, so I knew better than to hold back too much.

“Breck Hartford has been a busy little bee,” I began, “so Rayna managed to ferret out useful info using his credit card trail. Once I heard what she discovered, I knew I was on the right track. It all started with the movie Catherine left for me.”

“That Seventeen movie?” Bitty asked on a note of disbelief.

I nodded. “Yep. I’d never seen it or heard of it until Jackson Lee gave it to me, but once I watched it, I knew what she was trying to tell me.”

“And what was that?”

“For one thing, she was probably right about her son being killed rather than him having committed suicide.”

Bitty blinked at me. “A movie told you that?”

“First I’ll tell you what I think happened, then Rayna can tell you what we know as fact. But pay attention, Bitty, because if you say the wrong thing to Hartford, it could be a disaster.”

“The
Titanic
was a disaster. This would be unpleasant.”

I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. So here are my theories, but I’ve been up late for two nights going over all this, so don’t expect me to be brilliant.”

“Oh, I never do, honey,” my sweet cousin demurred with a smile, and I knew she hadn’t quite forgiven me yet for keeping things from her. So be it.

I quickly summarized the movie’s plot about three boys who accidentally killed a teenage girl at a party and the cover-up that followed. One of the boys had an attack of conscience and said he was going to confess to the police. So he was murdered, and it was made to look like a suicide. Only the dead boy’s mother refused to believe he took his own life. Just like Catherine had refused to believe Monty committed suicide.

“I kept racking my brain,” I finished, “trying to figure out what clues she might have left me, when Jackson Lee gave me that DVD with my name written across it. It had been in Catherine’s cabin when she was murdered. Whoever killed her didn’t bother to take it or didn’t make the connection.”

“Police found a folder of papers burned in the fireplace,” added Rayna. “There wasn’t enough left to reconstruct the contents, but they were probably her notes on what she’d learned about Hartford, his son Bret and Trisha. Catherine had bought her own software to track public records and even private records on Sturgis and Breck, so she probably already knew what I just recently learned.”

“So why haven’t the police discovered this?” Bitty asked dubiously. “You’d think they could do the same thing you and Cat have done, only a lot sooner.”

Rayna nodded. “I’m sure they can and probably have, but since the police are constrained by law to gather enough evidence for an arrest warrant, there has to be credible proof of a crime. Trisha’s death was ruled an accident. Then Monty Moore’s death was ruled a suicide. Again, no reason to continue an investigation. If we’re right, Breck Hartford got off cleanly with both those deaths and would have no reason to kill anyone else. So Professor Sturgis had to have some kind of proof of Hartford’s actions and intended to betray him somehow.”

“What on earth could he have or know that would implicate Hartford?” Bitty mused. “I can’t see Monty Moore confessing to Spencer Sturgis. He wasn’t exactly a student favorite. And that isn’t
proof
, anyway. It’s hearsay.”

When she looked at me, I nodded. “True. Emily admitted that Breck forged the credentials to get Spencer into Ole Miss.” I paused. “Yet that would hurt Hartford as well as Sturgis. So, I think it
must
have to do with Trisha Atwood.”

“You mean the professor knew that Breck had killed them both and told him that he intended to go to the police?” Bitty’s brow furrowed. “Wouldn’t he have known that was dangerous?”

“He should have, yes.”

“Maybe,” Gaynelle said, “Spencer was willing to risk it to see Breck behind bars. He could have rationalized that if he informed on him, Hartford wouldn’t dare be rash enough to try to harm him. Or maybe he didn’t tell Breck Hartford what he knew, but Breck found out somehow that the professor intended to go to the police.”

“All are possibilities.” I glanced out the window up the street to the house where Hartford and his family lived. A second-floor balcony overlooked the front yard, and behind it huge trees led down to a lake in the distance. It reeked of success. “There’s another theory, of course. Breck Hartford could have been protecting his son, like the parents in the movie protected their guilty son. Otherwise, I can’t understand why Hartford would risk his career, much less his freedom, by such reckless actions. Murder is the ultimate act of idiocy.”

Rayna answered, “Impulse control. Men like Hartford who are used to having their every whim met don’t react well to being told no. Maybe Trisha Atwood refused him, and he killed her. To give him the benefit of the doubt, it could have been accidental. Still . . . murder or manslaughter, a man like Breck Hartford would hardly allow himself or his son to be taken to jail if he could help it.”

“Which brings me to my next theory,” I said to Bitty. “Monty Moore either found out what had happened to Trisha, or he was there, as in the movie. So to stop him going to the police, Monty was murdered and his death made to look like a suicide.”

“That’s sad,” said Bitty. “If it’s true, then Catherine really was right all that time.”

I nodded. “I know.”

Bitty sighed. “Now I feel bad about not believing her.”

“So do I. The best thing we can do for her now is see that her son’s killer faces the law for his actions.”

“Or her actions,” Bitty said. “I still say Emily did it. It’s always the wife.”

I rolled my eyes again. “You are the most stubborn woman I have ever known.”

Bitty looked pleased. “Aren’t I? I’m usually right, too.”

“Not this time, Bitty,” said Rayna. “Emily simply cannot have done it. She has an iron-clad alibi for the time of her husband’s death, and there was absolutely no reason for her to have killed either Trisha Atwood or Monty Moore. And Catherine would never have let Emily within six feet of her if she suspected her capable of doing harm.”

“Maybe Emily was trying to protect Breck. It happens.” Bitty shrugged. “If she and her lover were covering up his crimes, they could have managed it together.”

“All this conjecture,” said Gaynelle, “gets us nowhere. We have to go by facts, not what could be, or may have, happened.”

It was a timely reminder. I nodded. “Okay, then let’s go and see what kind of facts we can get out of Mr. Hartford.”

I felt much braver with back-up. Granted, we weren’t the Avengers team, but we could be pretty formidable if we chose. In retrospect, presenting a united front probably wasn’t the best way to go about it. However, at the moment it seemed like the right thing to do, and we walked two-abreast up the red brick sidewalk to the generous front porch. I rang the bell. It made a gonging sound that reminded me of old horror movies.

When I heard the telltale noise of a bolt being unlatched, I braced myself to face Breck Hartford or a member of his family. It was a bit deflating to see a uniformed maid peer at us inquiringly.

“Is Mr. Hartford at home?” I asked. “We’d like to speak with him.”

Shaking her head, the middle-aged woman said, “No, he’s out. Mrs. Hartford is home if you would like to speak to her. May I ask who you represent?”

Apparently she thought we were salespeople. I scrambled mentally for a plausible answer, but it was Gaynelle who lied, “The Holly Springs Garden Club. Each April the club hosts an annual Pilgrimage. You may have heard about it?”

“Oh yes, I know about that. Please wait here while I see if Mrs. Hartford is able to meet with you.”

We stepped into the entrance hall as she held the door a little wider, and I looked around the house, or what I could see of it from our position. A lovely staircase curved up in a gentle half-circle, with wood banisters atop iron spindles. On one side was the living room, decorated formally in a way I suspected was just for show. On the other side was a formal dining room with a gigantic chandelier that caught light from the Palladium windows and threw it back at us in a rainbow of prisms. Straight ahead lay the family room. From where I stood I saw a deep brown leather chair and a wide-screen TV. A set of weights looked oddly out of place behind the chair, with the bench and steel bars showing signs of frequent use. A towel lay draped over the side of the bench as if thrown there carelessly. It was a rather incongruous thing in a house that otherwise reeked of comfort and money. And I wasn’t the only one who noticed.

Behind me, Bitty whispered, “Who’s their decorator, a gym teacher?”

I might have answered with a
yes
, but a woman appeared on the staircase, so I did the best thing and kept my mouth shut. She was tall, fairly slender, dressed in a denim skirt and light blouse, the sleeves pushed up to her elbows, and her brown hair was pulled back into a tight French braid. The expression on her face was not welcoming.

“Mrs. Hartford, may we have a moment of your time?” I asked when she halted at the bottom of the staircase. “My name is—”

“I know who you are,” she replied tersely. “I can’t imagine why you think I have anything at all to say to you.”

I smiled. Opposition wasn’t going to deter me. “Not even to save your husband?”

“That’s not why you’re here. You suspect Breck of killing Spencer and probably Catherine Moore too. Well, you’re wrong. Both of us have said to the police all that we need to say about their murders.”

Gaynelle spoke up: “Are you sure about that? My understanding is that you know a great deal more than you profess. In fact, your entire family is involved.”

The silence that fell was thick with tension. I wasn’t sure what Gaynelle intended, or how far she should go, but kept my silence. Anything that worked would be helpful.

“Well?” Gaynelle prompted. “You cannot deny that you have not only held back information from the police, but you have lied to them.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Victoria Hartford said coolly after a moment passed. “Now leave my house at once.”

I had to admire her nerve. She kept calm and didn’t betray herself or her husband in any way. But I had come here with the intention of getting some reactions, and I didn’t want to leave without something useful.