Murder Most Persuasive (11 page)

When I didn’t answer right away, Peter said, “Elizabeth? You’re not actually thinking of getting involved in this, are you?”

“Well…” I paused, unsure how I really felt.

“Elizabeth! No! Please, no! I know you’ve been thrown into investigations in the past, but in those cases it was because the murder happened when you were there!”

“But in a way, I
was
there! I was at the Fourth of July party and no one saw Michael after that—or at least no one is admitting to it. After the party, Michael disappeared, and about a week later it was discovered that he’d embezzled Uncle Marty’s money. For all we know, he might have been killed during the party!”

“Yes, but he might
not
have. I don’t see why you think you need to get involved! Let the police handle this!”

“But this is family! I think Ann wants me to help—”

“Did she ask you to?” Peter interrupted.

“No, not in so many words but—”

“Did she ask in
any
words?”

“Peter! What is your problem? Ann is upset; she needs me now!”

“Fine! Hold her hand, talk to her, listen to her, but don’t play detective!” Peter took a deep breath and continued in a calmer tone. “I know you helped the police in the past, but Elizabeth, that doesn’t make you some kind of expert.”

“Hey, if it wasn’t for me, the police would have never figured out who killed Gerald Ramsey! I helped clear Aunt Winnie’s name!”

“And you also came very close to getting yourself—and me, I might add—killed!”

I squirmed a bit when he said that. I preferred to gloss over that part when I thought of my first success at sleuthing. “Peter, I’m not doing anything dangerous—nor am I
going
to do anything dangerous,” I quickly added, hearing him about to interrupt again. “I am just helping Ann while the police conduct their investigation. It’s bad enough for her that they discovered Michael’s body on the old property, but knowing that Joe is in charge of the whole investigation is pushing her over the edge. I am merely here for moral support right now.”

Peter groaned. “Right. Until you decide that moral support isn’t enough.” I had a sudden image of him resting his forehead on his desk in frustration. “Elizabeth, I don’t like this. I know you, you can’t
not
get involved, and I’m afraid that you’re going to get hurt!”

“How can I get hurt with you coming home to protect me?” I joked, hoping to lighten the mood.

“That’s just it—I won’t be home for at least another week.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“Oh, it’s a long, complicated, and ultimately stupid story,” Peter groused. “But I’ve got to stay out here awhile longer to get it all straightened out.”

“So I guess I won’t be coming out to see you this weekend?”

“It doesn’t look good. I’m sorry.”

Disappointment washed over me at the thought of Peter gone another week. “Oh. Well, that stinks.”

“I know. Just please promise me to be careful and not to get involved in anything beyond giving the police a statement. Just because this man was killed eight years ago doesn’t mean that his killer won’t do it again if threatened.”

A faint chill ran down my spine when he said that. “I promise,” I said softly, mentally amending “to be careful” to that statement. We talked a little more, but I think Peter sensed that I was bent on involving myself beyond his comfort level and was more than a little annoyed—both at being across the country and at not being able to convince me otherwise.

After we hung up, I changed into my pajamas and thought about that Fourth of July party all those years ago.

It had been a beautiful night. The day’s warmth had given way to a crystal-clear, balmy evening. Uncle Marty’s house, a white two-story colonial, sat on a manicured lawn that gently sloped down to the Miles River. Once night fell, we’d dragged wool blankets out onto the lawn and lain on them, idly watching the multicolored display of explosives above. The fireworks barge was so close that some of the debris from the explosions floated down to us like burned confetti. After the show was over, we’d watched the lights from the boats anchored on the water tip back and forth, gently rocked by the river’s current. After a while, the guests wandered off in various directions. Some, like Ann, Joe, and I, walked down to the water; others, like Frances, went inside to tend to the twins (Thing One and Thing Two), who were still nursing. Ann, Joe, and I sat on the dock, talking while we dangled our feet in the cool water. After a while, I walked back up to the house and headed to the bedroom that I was sharing with Ann. Sometime later, I heard the Things crying. When they didn’t stop after a minute or so, I got up to check on them. Scott was asleep on the bed—or rather, passed out on the bed. I had just started to soothe the boys when Frances came into the room and took over. Only seconds after I returned to my room, Ann came in disheveled and visibly shaken. It was then that she told me what had happened.

After Joe said good night, she’d remained on the dock, trying to decide if she should break it off with Joe before she left for England. Although she didn’t want to, she was being pressured by both her father and Laura to do so. As she sat there, Michael approached her. He saw that she was upset and made an effort to console her, putting his arm around her shoulders. Although Ann realized that he was drunk, she didn’t know just how drunk until he made his sudden declaration of love, a love he claimed to have always felt for her and not Reggie. He said Reggie was proud and shallow, but Ann was the real thing, going so far as to call Reggie a pale copy of Ann. He then further shocked her by trying to kiss her. When Ann pushed him away, he grew angry and tried to do much more than kiss her. His inebriation kept him from doing any real harm, but he was still bigger and stronger, and it was several desperate minutes before Ann was able to punch him and wrestle herself away. Without looking back, Ann ran blindly for the house and to our room. She was horribly shaken and upset. I wanted to tell Uncle Marty and Reggie, but Ann refused. I think on some level she knew that by telling her father and Reggie, she would be destroying Michael’s life. Even though he’d tried to attack her, she was loath to destroy him. She had some idea of talking to him in the morning and insisting that he get help and, of course, cancel the wedding. However, in the morning Michael was gone and Reggie announced that she’d broken it off with him. Ann saw no reason to tell Reggie the rest of it. A week or so later, Ann left for England and Michael’s embezzlement was discovered and we all thought we’d seen the last of him.

Which was sort of true.

But what had really happened? Had Michael left and come back? And if so, with whom and why? And why was he killed? Was it the money, or was it because of his attack on Ann? Or was it for some completely different reason? There was something there that bothered me, something I was missing. But every time I tried to pinpoint what it was, it swam out of reach.

As I continued to mull everything over, I realized that Peter was absolutely right. I
was
planning on injecting myself into this investigation. But why? Crawling under the bed’s thick duvet, I frowned at the ceiling. Was Kit (God forbid) right? Did I secretly see myself as a modern-day Nancy Drew, coolly stepping in to solve the crime when the local police force found themselves baffled? Did I actually possess a kind of knack for solving crimes, or was I merely a twenty-eight-year-old who was bored out of her skull with her current life? That last thought struck a tender nerve somewhere in the not-so-deep recesses of my head. Could that be my problem? True, I didn’t particularly enjoy my job, but so didn’t loads of other people and they didn’t run off and push themselves into murder investigations. For the first time in my adult life, I was in a mature, stable relationship with a great guy. Hell, just being in a relationship with a guy who wasn’t cheating on me, sponging off of me, or stealing my patent leather pumps for reasons best left unexamined was a first. True, a lot of my friends were getting married lately, and I could navigate both the Williams-Sonoma bridal registry and Babies “R” Us sites with my eyes closed. But did I want to get married and start a family? I loved Peter, but I didn’t know if I was ready for that step. Among other things, I always figured I should know how to balance my checkbook before I got married, let alone start a family.

No, I thought, squaring my shoulders as much as one can square shoulders in a bed with a down mattress, I refused to believe that I was focusing on these investigations to distract myself from a boring, but nevertheless secure, job and a life that seemed to have no real direction.

Then again, I’d believed in the Easter Bunny until I was almost twelve. I don’t even
want
to go into the whole Santa Claus debacle, except to say that childlike naïveté begins to resemble undiagnosed lead poisoning when it hits late adolescence.

I pulled the bedspread up to my chin and curled onto my right side. As I listened in silence to the soft, rhythmic ticking of my bedside clock, I decided the reason I found police investigations so fascinating wasn’t the issue. The issue was that a man—a man who was once considered a part of the family—had been murdered and buried under the family pool.

Don’t ask me why, but I found myself remembering the lines from
A Charlie Brown Christmas
, the scene where Charlie Brown confides to Lucy that he’s feeling let down about Christmas. Lucy assertively tells him, “You need involvement. You need to get involved in some real Christmas project. How would you like to be the director of our Christmas play?” To which Charlie Brown excitedly replies, “Me? You want
me
to be the director of the Christmas play?”

Well, no one had asked me to be the director of this investigation, but I had to admit that there was something enticing about setting an overlooked wrong to right.

CHAPTER 11

It is very difficult for the prosperous to be humble.

—
EMMA

T
HE NEXT MORNING,
Ann and I ate a quick breakfast before we headed off to our respective offices. I wasn’t at my desk five minutes before I realized that it was going to be one of those workdays that ended with me wanting to drink my feelings. Every article that landed on my desk had a same-day deadline and most appeared, by my addled brain anyway, to be written in Greek. Using both FactCheck.org and large amounts of coffee, I was able to get a majority of the work done. Unfortunately, it was a little ditty written by one Arthur MacArthur (if that was indeed his real name) that was my undoing: a two-thousand-word opus on the migratory habits of the Baltimore oriole. It took me a good five hundred words in to realize he wasn’t talking about the baseball team. By the time I finished, I had a headache, my neck hurt, and I had taken a real dislike to both Arthur MacArthur and his stupid birds. That’s about the time Kit called, wanting to know when I was returning to her house and if I could babysit Pauly that night. She wasn’t happy with either of my responses. “I don’t see why Ann thinks she needs you there,” Kit groused. “I hope you haven’t been pretending that you can actually find out who killed Michael. I’d hate to think that you’re staying there under false pretenses.”

“False pretenses! I’m helping her organize the items that Uncle Marty specified in his will and offering moral support while the police conduct their investigation.”

“Ha! You’re pretending to be Jane Marple is what you’re doing,” she shot back.

“I am doing no such thing,” I angrily bit out. Jane Marple. Please. Granted, she was a brilliant detective, but she also was a frail old woman who enjoyed bird watching and knitting. If I was going to emulate any of the women sleuths from the Golden Age, it would be Adela Bradley. Mrs. Bradley was breezy, fashionable, and devastatingly clever; she also drank gin and, perhaps more important, had no earthly desire to knit. Or maybe it was the other way around.

Kit ended the call by tersely reminding me that I’d promised to babysit next Tuesday. I forced myself to respond pleasantly and almost pulled a muscle in the process. I hung up, refusing to let myself dwell on the call. After all, I was a very busy and important career woman with much to do. For instance, I had to organize a birthday celebration for Sharon. I knew she’d like the idea because she actually e-mailed me the suggestion. The one hiccup in the plan was that on the likability scale, Sharon runs a close second to Dickey. However, lured by the anticipation of cake, the staff dutifully crowded around the conference table and sang an off-key rendition of “Happy Birthday.” Unfortunately, they all left with empty stomachs and grumpy at me because Sharon is on a diet and refused to let me buy a cake. We celebrated with celery sticks and carrots. Yeah. Happy birthday, Sharon.

I was still irritably pulling celery strings from my teeth when Ann called. However, within a matter of seconds my irritation with the celery was replaced by another emotion—uneasy foreboding.

“Joe called,” Ann said without preamble. “The coroner’s report came in. It’s official. Michael was murdered.”

“I’m sorry, Ann,” I said. “I really am.”

She sighed. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. I mean, I didn’t really think it was an accident that he wound up under the pool, but still…”

“It would have been nice to hear that it was all some terrible mistake,” I finished. “I know. I wish it was a mistake, too. Did Joe say anything else?”

“Yes,” Ann said after a moment’s pause. “He wants to talk to us again, at the house tonight. Actually, I think he really just wants to talk with Reggie again, but he’s covering that by asking to meet with us all.”

“Why do you think Joe wants to talk to Reggie in particular?”

“I don’t know. It was nothing he said, it was just that…”

“You just know him,” I finished.

“Yeah, something like that,” she said with a sigh. “Can you…”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

*   *   *

I left work as soon as I could, stopped by Kit’s to grab some more clothes, and rushed back to Uncle Marty’s house. The rest of the family had already arrived. I heard a tangle of raised voices—Reggie’s, Frances’s, Scott’s, Laura’s, and Miles’s—coming from the living room. As I peeked in, Ann saw me and made her way toward me, her shoulders slumped. “Thank God you’re finally here,” she muttered. “They’re driving me crazy with questions. Like
I
know anything!”