Ornaments of Death (23 page)

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Ellis came and got me about an hour later.

Getting up was tricky, but with Ellis watching, I rolled myself upright, clenching my teeth to keep myself from crying out at the sharp jabs emanating from my left shoulder and arm.

“Are you certain you're up to this?” Ellis asked.

“Yes.” When we walked into Interrogation Room One, Ethan was staring at the ceiling, his ladder-back chair tilted forty-five degrees, his heels perched on the tabletop.

The room was as I remembered it. A wall-long one-way mirror was on the right. The human-sized cage stood in the far left corner, ready to receive what Ty had called unruly guests. Tiny red lights told me the ceiling-mounted video cameras were recording. The ivory-colored drapes were drawn, covering the windows that overlooked the rear parking lot.

“Josie!” he said, swinging his feet off the table and leaning forward to bring his chair to level ground. “They drag you in, too?”

“Did the detective tell me wrong?” Ellis asked, his tone neutral. “I was under the impression you were here voluntarily.”

“Is that what they're calling it these days? I was under the impression I'd been summoned.”

“We certainly appreciate your cooperation. Are you okay with talking to me?”

“Sure.” He jerked his head in my direction. “Do I get to talk to her, too?”

“I asked her to sit in in case any questions about the miniature portraits come up.”

“I'm always glad to see Josie.” He flashed a grin at me. “What do you say? Coffee after? A drink?”

“Maybe.”

Ellis nodded at a chair to Ethan's right, and I sat down.

Ellis sat at the head of the table, directly opposite Ethan. “Tell me about this new job you're taking on, overseeing Becca's fieldwork in her absence.”

“I have a better idea. Tell me why you're asking.”

“I just spoke to Dr. Bennett.”

“Okay, I'll bite.”

“He said this was a pretty good gig for you.”

“Is there a point here?”

“With Becca out of the picture, things are looking up for you.”

He turned to me, patently unimpressed and unamused. “Did you put him up to this?”

“Me? No.”

“I don't believe you. I'm betting you shared my jokes with the good police chief.”

“I didn't think you were joking,” I said.

“So I gather. I take back my offer of a drink.”

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“Me, too.”

“Come on, Ethan,” Ellis said, grinning. “What's the big deal? You're going to be named acting principal investigator, is that right?”

“Yes. And yes, it's good news for me, career-wise, but it's also good news for the program, the institute, the environment, the other scientists on the grant, the clams themselves, and all the businesses in Rocky Point we patronize while we're up here working on it. Losing a grant is good for no one.”

“Understood,” Ellis said. “Tell me about your relationship with Becca. Hot and heavy? Serious? Friends with benefits?”

“Roommates. Co-workers.”

“That's it?” Ellis asked, his tone disbelieving.

“That's it.”

Ellis jotted a note. “Were you in Rocky Point last Sunday?”

“Why?”

“Around four
P.M.
Where were you then?”

Ethan laughed. “Do I need an alibi for something?”

Ellis let the question hang for a moment. “Yes.”

Ethan grinned and held out his arms, his wrists pressed together, ready for handcuffs. Evidently, he was amused that he was considered a suspect in some crime.

“I did it. You've got me.”

“What did you do?”

“I killed him in the library with the candlestick.”

“This isn't a joke, Mr. Ferguson.”

“The hell it isn't. What happened Sunday at four?”

“Ian Bennington was murdered.”

Ethan stopped laughing. He looked at me, then back at Ellis. “And you think I did it?” he asked, sounding incredulous.

“I'm following up on every lead. Where were you Sunday at four?”

“I was in Boston.”

“Will anyone be able to attest to that?”

“No. I was alone.”

“Thank you,” Ellis said, jotting another note.

Ethan stood up and looked down at Ellis. “Someone in your department asked me about an alibi for yesterday, too, when Josie was attacked. I don't know what's going on, but I can assure you I'm not your man.”

“Duly noted.” Ellis stood up. “Let me walk you out.”

Ethan didn't look at me on his way out. I sat there for a long time, staring at my lap thinking sad and lonely thoughts, until Ellis came back and told me my car was out front. He handed me the new key and the spare.

“Are you okay to drive?”

“A hundred percent. I can't believe it's done already.”

“They rushed it,” he said.

“Thank you, Ellis.”

I left and patted my car hello, noting the small dent on the front hood where the tree limb had landed. As I turned onto Ocean, I smiled. I was glad to be behind the wheel, to be on my own, and to be away from the police station.

I spent Saturday night and all day Sunday alone, never leaving my house. Zoë invited me for dinner, but I didn't want to go. Instead, I cooked. I made a week's worth of food, using recipes from my mom's handwritten cookbook, freezing everything in individual portions. I made lasagna, and orange chicken, and thyme-infused pork roast with a wine-apricot-mustard sauce, and chocolate bundles.

While my hands were busy, my mind was on Ian and what he'd told me about Becca, on Lia, and Ethan, and Pat Weston, and seventeenth-century miniature portraits. I reviewed every word and gesture, every call and hang-up, and every violent act. Mostly I thought about Becca, and the more I did, the more curious I became. I wondered what her relationship with her dad was like when she was a girl. I wondered what her mom had been like, and whether she had friends back home in England, or whether she was as self-contained and private there as she was here in a foreign land. I spoke to Ty twice, Zoë once, and when I finally feel asleep on Sunday, it was with the same nagging feeling I'd had before that I was missing something.

At 2:58
A.M.
, I woke up with a gasp and knew with utter clarity what had been bothering me.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

By 3:10
A.M.
Monday, I was sitting at my home computer, waiting for it to boot up. I stared at the gray screen, but what I saw was the photograph in Becca's Boston apartment. Becca standing next to an older man, leaning in toward him, just a little, their shoulders not quite touching. My dad and I used to stand like that.

I turned toward the silver-framed photo I kept on my desk, my dad and me at my college graduation. His eyes crinkled with pride. My smile was off the charts, half because I'd graduated and half because I'd pleased him. I touched the glass with my fingertip, stroking his arm.

I turned back to the monitor. Once the computer flashed to life, I Googled “Ian and Rebecca Bennington Christmas Common England,” and when the search results appeared, I stared at the top link in stunned silence. The teaser copy was dated two weeks earlier and read
IAN BENNINGTON DEAD.

I clicked through to an article in Christmas Common's local paper, the
Trumpet.
The article included a standard-issue head shot, the kind of photograph that was used in passports. Even though it was grainy, I could tell that this was the man in the photograph in Becca's room. Which meant the man I'd known as Ian was—I had no idea who.

I leaned back and stared into space, seeing nothing. It made no sense. Why would someone pretend to be Ian?

I continued reading. The real Ian Bennington had died of asphyxiation. He had, apparently, killed himself. His body had been found hanging from the rafters by his cleaning woman.

The article referred to his daughter as Rebecca Lewis. Apparently, she'd gone back to using her maiden name—or maybe she kept her maiden name for work purposes.

Ethan hadn't mentioned a husband or an ex-husband, though. Dr. Bennett had, repeating gossip that Becca had been in a bad marriage.

I Googled “Rebecca Bennington and Christmas Common” and learned more about Becca. She graduated at the top of her primary school class, was a nationally ranked swimmer at fourteen, had earned top marks in shooting competitions at fifteen, and by the time she went to university, her sole focus was on clams. She had married a man named Thomas Lewis in 2009. I scrolled down until I came to the wedding photo—and gasped, my eyes glued to the image. The blonde in the wedding photo was the same woman I'd seen standing alongside her dad in the photo in her room. Becca. Becca's husband was the man I'd known as Ian.

No wonder Ian—
Thomas,
I corrected myself—looked young. He'd said it was good genes, but the truth was he looked young because he
was
young. My instinct that anyone seeing Becca and the man I now knew to be Thomas might think they were a couple was on the mark—they looked like a couple because they
were
a couple. Or at least they used to be. Were they divorced? Separated? Why on earth had Thomas pretended to be Becca's father?

Completely befuddled, I continued my research.

According to an article about debutantes who worked instead of living a glittery social life, published in
London Society
magazine in 2012, Thomas Lewis was a real estate developer, specializing in resorts. Becca and Thomas met in 2008 when she worked for an environmental consulting firm assigned to study the impact of one of his proposed seaside resorts. Thomas's U.K.-based firm fell victim to the global recession, and in 2010, shortly after their June marriage, he sold it to a competitor at a fire-sale price.

An article in
New Hampshire Revealed
profiling New Hampshire start-ups discussed how Thomas Lewis moved to New Hampshire to open a new business with funding provided by his father-in-law, the real Ian. The couple moved to the resort town of North Conway so Thomas could form a real estate development consultancy with a sixty-one-year-old American named Rupert Morrishein. Thomas's consultancy's goal was to invest in projects up and down the East Coast.

Once she found herself in New Hampshire, Becca focused on finishing her dissertation. She connected with the Rocky Point Oceanographic Institute and used her preliminary research to win a grant to compare clam behavior at Reynard University's two oceanside research facilities, one in Plymouth, England, the other in Rocky Point.

I checked the North Conway Business Licensing Bureau's Web site and discovered that the Lewis-Morrishein partnership did not go well. The firm filed for bankruptcy protection within ten months of opening its doors.

“Yikes,” I said.

Both men lost everything they'd invested in the business. To Thomas, the loss was disastrous, and mortifying, I should think, given that it represented his second business failure in as many years. This one must have been especially humiliating—not only did it represent a personal failure, but he cost his father-in-law millions. The firm's collapse caught the attention of a reporter for
Real Estate Fortune.
“At least,” Lewis was quoted as saying, “I'm young enough to start over yet again.” In the accompanying photo, Becca beamed at him, a woman standing steadfastly by her man.

A follow-up article in the same magazine reported that Rupert Morrishein had filed a lawsuit accusing Thomas of fraud. Before the case was adjudicated, only three weeks after the firm went out of business, Morrishein died from a massive stroke. The lawsuit, now spearheaded by Morrishein's widow, Cheryl, was evidently still wending its way through the court system.

I kept digging around and found a Reynard University newsletter from 2011 announcing that Becca had accepted a lecturer position at the university's Plymouth campus in the United Kingdom. The reporter referred to Becca as Dr. Bennington.

I leaned back, trying to understand what might have happened. I knew financial troubles wrecked a lot of marriages; witness Lia, although her ex's wandering eye didn't help. Had Thomas pretended to be Ian because he'd been trying to reconnect with Becca? How could such a pretense possibly help that cause? I shook my head. No. That wasn't the answer to the mystery.

I recalled how often Thomas had mentioned Becca's miniatures. Thomas wasn't looking for Becca. He was looking for her possessions. He wasn't a romantic; he was a thief. A thief with a partner who killed him—and maybe Becca—then went on a one-man hunt for the paintings. Or one-woman.
The woman at the window.

I logged on to my company's Web site and navigated my way to the security footage archives. Bringing up the shots of the woman peering in the window at my party, I studied the partial view. A woman in a dark cloche hat. A sliver of white skin. No sign of hair. Impossible to tell the color of her eyes. Her nose was hidden by her gloved hand. I didn't recognize her, but neither could I swear I'd never seen her before. If that was Thomas's partner, I had no clue as to her identity. I saved the image to my desktop and logged out.

What if Thomas and his mystery partner had a falling-out?

Had Thomas double-crossed him?

Had Becca found out what was going on and announced a plan to go to the police?

If so, how would Thomas's partner react to the threat? He'd kill her.

Oh, God.

If Thomas had tried to stop him, to protect Becca, whether motivated by chivalry or greed, his partner might have killed him first.

I shook my head. It was baffling.

What the witness perceived as Becca saying no, no, might have been Becca expressing dismay and disbelief at the news Thomas was delivering, that her life was in danger. She heard him out, then ran for it. The disgruntled partner witnessed the scene from his car around the corner and interpreted it accurately. He mowed down Thomas and headed out after Becca. She made it to her car before he could catch her and sped away.