Sealed with a Kill (21 page)
Read Sealed with a Kill Online
Authors: Lucy Lawrence
“Ella, what happened to John Henry?” she asked. She hadn’t realized she was going to ask until the words flew out of her mouth, but there it was, and there was no taking it back.
“What makes you ask?” Ella didn’t seem surprised by the question and she didn’t look up from her pumpkin.
“I don’t know,” Brenna said. “It’s just that you two talk about him all of the time, and I can’t help wondering . . .”
“He died,” Ella said. Now she did look up at Brenna. “In 1966, in Vietnam.”
“I’m sorry,” Brenna said. Now she felt horrible for asking.
“It’s been forty-four years since he died, and not a day goes by that I don’t think of him,” she said. She glanced toward the kitchen. They could hear Marie humming, and Ella leaned close to Brenna and said, “He asked me to marry him, and I said no. The next day he enlisted and I never saw him again.”
There was no emotion visible on Ella’s face, but Brenna could hear the regret in her voice.
“Does Marie . . . ?”
“Know that he asked me?” Ella guessed. “No. I never told her.”
“But why did you say no? You obviously loved him, and he loved you.”
“Because Marie was in love with him, too,” she said. “I knew if I married him, it would break her heart. I couldn’t do that to her.”
Brenna felt as if all of the air had been sucked out of the room. Ella had said no to the love of her life for her sister, and he had died. How did she live with that every day?
“Why did you tell me this now?” Brenna asked.
“Because some of the choices we make can’t be undone,” Ella said. “You’re going to have an important decision to make—choose wisely.”
Brenna looked back at her pumpkin. Great, no pressure.
“So, what brings you here, Brenna?” Marie asked as she entered the room, carrying a fully loaded tray of tea and crackers with Brie.
“Can’t a friend just pop in to say hello?”
“Certainly,” Ella said. “But that’s not what you’re doing. You’re fishing for information.”
“I . . . Oh, all right. I am,” Brenna admitted.
Ella and Marie exchanged knowing glances, and Brenna wondered how many other people just stopped by the sisters’ bungalow.
“Well, you’ve come to the right place,” Marie said.
The three of them dished crackers and cheese onto their plates and then helped themselves to tea.
It was so warm and cozy here with the Porter sisters and their pumpkins that Brenna almost forgot her mission.
“Well, spill it,” Ella said. “What do you need to know?”
“I need to know what Rupert Morse’s indiscretion was.”
Ella and Marie gave her matching expressions of surprise. With their eyebrows raised and lips pursed, they looked like bookends.
“We can’t help you,” they said together.
Chapter 19
“What?” Brenna asked. “What do you mean? You two know everything about everyone. You have to know about this.”
“We didn’t say we didn’t know about it,” Marie said gently.
“We just can’t tell you,” Ella said.
Brenna took a sip of tea. She felt as if the earth was off its axis. There had been an indiscretion and the Porter sisters didn’t want to share? Something was very wrong here.
“Why can’t you tell me?” she asked.
“It was a long time ago,” Ella said. “It’s best forgotten now.”
“How can you say that?” Brenna asked. “Listen, Lydia Lester is planning to sell Lester and Morse, Inc., and she said she’d use Mr. Morse’s indiscretion to make him agree to selling if she must.”
The Porter sisters gasped as one. Ella took a bracing sip of tea, and Marie popped a Brie-covered cracker into her mouth.
“Well, that’s hitting below the belt, even for Lydia,” Ella said.
“Indeed,” sniffed Marie. “Do you think Rupert will agree to sell?”
“What choice will he have?” Ella asked. “If he wants to keep his squeaky clean image intact, he’ll have to agree.”
Brenna glanced between the two of them. Were they really not going to tell her? This was maddening.
“Okay, I’m not leaving until you tell me what Mr. Morse could possibly have done,” Brenna said. She slumped back in her chair and tried to look as if she was about to take root there.
The sisters looked at her. “Well, it’ll be nice to have an extra pair of hands around the house,” Ella said to Marie.
“Especially since we want to remodel the upstairs bathroom. She looks fit enough to do some tiling,” Marie said. “I’ll just call Sam Payson and tell him we won’t be needing him after all.”
“Oh, come on,” Brenna said. “I need to know what happened if I am going to help Tenley solve Harvey Lester’s murder and get her father out of jail.”
“It is precisely because of Tenley that we can’t tell you about Rupert,” Marie said.
“We’re trying to protect her,” Ella said.
Brenna stuffed a cracker with a chunk of Brie on it into her mouth and chewed vigorously while she thought.
“What if I promise not to tell Tenley what you tell me?” she asked.
They exchanged another look.
“I don’t know,” Ella said doubtfully. “Tenley is your best friend.”
“And this is really huge,” Marie said. “I don’t know if you’ll be able to stop yourself.”
“I can keep a secret,” Brenna said. She looked at Ella. She leaned forward in her chair and placed her teacup back on the table. She put her right hand over her heart. “I swear that whatever you tell me I will not divulge to anyone, and I do mean anyone.”
“Not Tenley,” Ella said. “Or Nate.”
“Or Dom,” Marie added.
“You have my word. I won’t even tell Hank,” Brenna said.
“The dog?” Ella asked. “You may want to hold off on that promise. Because you’re going to want to tell someone, and he doesn’t seem the type to blab.”
“Okay, okay, now tell me,” Brenna pleaded.
“All right, it—” Ella began, but Marie interrupted, “Oh, no, I get to tell her.”
“No, you don’t. It’s my turn,” Ella said.
“How do you figure that?” Marie snapped. “We’ve never told anyone this before.”
“You stole John Henry from me,” Ella said with a sidelong look at Brenna. “You owe me.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, I did not,” Marie said. “He loved me.”
Brenna put her fingers to her temples. She was pretty sure she was going to have an aneurysm. “Stop it, both of you.”
The sisters both whipped their heads in her direction.
“You can each tell me half of the story,” she said. “Ella, you start.”
Ella gave her sister a self-satisfied smirk. “It happened about twenty years ago.”
“Twenty-four,” Marie corrected.
“Fine, twenty-four,” Ella said. “Lester and Morse, Inc., was one of the top companies in town, and the Morses and the Lesters were seen at all the town functions. They each had a passel of girls, you see, so the families were always together. Then we noticed that we were seeing less and less of Rupert.”
“Poor Tricia, four girls and she was almost always alone,” Marie clucked.
“Well, they said it was the business that was keeping him so busy, but Harvey was still around, so we couldn’t figure out why Rupert seemed to be doing all of the work.”
“Then we saw her,” Marie said.
“Hey, I wasn’t finished with my half,” Ella protested.
“Yes, you were; it’s my turn now,” Marie said. “Fair’s fair.”
“Humph.” Ella sat back with her crackers and tea.
“You saw who?” Brenna asked, trying to get them back on track.
“Rupert Morse’s secretary, Lynette Compton,” Marie said in a stage whisper. “I remember exactly. I was having my annual exam when in came Lynette. She was pale and tired-looking and she threw up right on Dr. Piski.”
Brenna looked at her. Obviously this was important, but she couldn’t for the life of her figure out why.
“She was such a cute young thing,” Ella said. “Tiny and blond, she was the complete opposite of Tricia, and not at all snooty.”
“You could see why Rupert fell. Lynette was bubbly and fun, but he couldn’t very well leave his wife and four girls, now could he?” Marie asked.
“Do you mean to tell me that Rupert Morse had an affair with his secretary?” she asked.
“Not just an affair,” Marie said. “Lynette got pregnant with his child.”
Brenna felt her jaw drop. Truly, she could not picture the stuffy Mr. Morse doing anything so completely out of character. “We are talking about Rupert Morse here? Tenley’s father?”
“The same,” Ella said. “Tricia found out, of course, and Lynette was sent away and forced to put the baby up for adoption.”
“So, Tenley has a half sibling that she doesn’t even know exists?” Brenna asked.
“Now you know why we didn’t want to tell you,” Marie said. “And you have to keep your promise. We adore Tenley and we don’t want her to be hurt.”
Brenna nodded. This would flatten Tenley on a lot of levels, and she didn’t want to be the one who did that to her friend.
“Was the baby a boy or a girl?” she asked.
“No one knows,” Marie said. “Lynette was bought off with a huge chunk of money and no one ever saw her again.”
“The only people who know the truth are Rupert; Tricia; Lynette, of course; and us,” Ella said.
“How is it that you two know this?” Brenna asked.
“I just happened to be in the hall, stretching my legs, when Dr. Piski told Lynette she was pregnant,” Marie said. “I wasn’t trying to listen, really.”
“And then I saw Rupert pick her up from the doctor’s office,” Ella said. “So, we figured he was the father.”
“Uh-huh,” Brenna said. “If you’re the only ones who know about this, how is it that Lydia knows?”
“There was a time when Lydia and Tricia were best friends,” Ella said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Tricia told Lydia when it was happening. She probably needed the moral support.”
“I feel like everything I have ever known about Rupert Morse is one big, fat lie,” Brenna said. “It would kill Tenley to know that her father had an affair and a child that he sent away. If he could do all of that . . . Tell me the truth, do you think Rupert Morse killed Harvey Lester?”
The sisters were quiet for a long moment as they considered her question.
Finally, Marie said, “If Harvey did sell his half of the business to someone who planned to shut them down, then Rupert was about to lose everything.”
“Which is a pretty solid motivation for murder,” Ella said.
“But would he really be stupid enough to keep the murder weapon in his glove box?” Brenna asked. “That just screams of a setup.”
They sipped their tea and nibbled their crackers in silence, but no one could think of an answer to the larger questions of who killed Harvey Lester and who would set up Rupert Morse to take the fall?
Brenna thanked the Porter sisters for the tea and the information. The two ladies walked her to the door.
“You have to swear you won’t tell Tenley,” Marie said.
“The reason we’ve kept it such a secret all these years is to keep Tenley and her sisters from being needlessly hurt,” Ella said.
“I promise,” Brenna said. “She is suffering enough with her father being incarcerated. I definitely don’t want to add to it.”
Brenna drove into town and found a parking spot a few spaces down from the shop. She practiced keeping her face blank. She did not want to give Tenley anything to be suspicious about.
The bells jangled when she walked into the shop and she was surprised to find it empty. She walked into the break room to put her purse away and heard an awful retching noise coming from the bathroom.
“Tenley, are you all right?” she asked.
“Fine,” Tenley called. The sound of flushing and water running came from the small bathroom, and then Tenley appeared, looking pasty and wan.
“Oh, sweetie.” Brenna rushed forward and helped her into a chair. “You need to go home and get some rest. You are getting way too wiped out by all that is happening. I can take care of the shop.”
“It’s not Uncle Harvey’s murder that has me wiped out,” Tenley said.
“Is it your dad?” Brenna asked. “We’ll get him out of jail, I promise.”
Tenley pushed a lank section of hair aside and raised her face so that her eyes met Brenna’s. “I’m pregnant.”
Chapter 20
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