The Stone of Sadness (An Olivia Miller Mystery Book 3) (7 page)

Olivia blinked back tears. She cleared her throat. “My aunt,” she said softly.

Hannah looked puzzled for a moment, but her face cleared. “She took care of you. Like a mother.”

Olivia nodded. “Yes.”

“She looks out for you.” Hannah smiled. “She calls you ‘Livvy’.”

Olivia’s hands started to shake. Her face turned pale. Tears spilled from her eyes. How could Hannah know this?

“She’s all right, Olivia. She has peace in her heart.” Hannah took Olivia’s hand. “She’s proud of you.” Olivia pressed against the back of the patio chair trying to steady herself. Her heart pounded against her chest.

A little girl with dark hair opened the back door. “Mom, your appointment is here.”

“I have a client now,” Hannah said.

Olivia nodded.

“I’m glad we met. Come back again, if you like.”

Olivia drove back to the house with more questions than she had when she left. She held tight to the steering wheel. Her head was a buzzing mess of confusion. She wanted to talk to Brad and was glad that they had arranged to Skype that afternoon
.

“That’s what she told me, Brad,” Olivia said to her boyfriend over the computer connection. “How could she do that? How could she see people who have passed? How could she know about Aggie?”

“I don’t know, Liv,” Brad said. “Maybe she looked you up on the internet. Maybe she read the stories online about you last summer. Maybe she saw Aggie’s obituary.”

Olivia pondered that. “I didn’t think of that. That’s possible. Maybe she did.”

“It’s weird, though,” Brad said. “How’d she know what Aggie called you? That was never in the news stories.”

“Yeah…right. How would she know that?” Olivia felt dizzy.

“Could she have read your mind?”

Olivia looked stunned. “Read my mind? But I wasn’t even thinking of what Aggie called me.” Olivia shook her head. “It would be pretty impressive if she could read my mind. But that wasn’t even in my mind. My mind was blank. I was so shocked at what she said about Aggie.”

Brad stared at Olivia through the screen. “I have no idea. I really don’t know.”

“It scares me. Could it be possible? Could she be in touch with people who have passed?”

Brad shrugged. “I don’t know. How could it be possible?”

“Could people who have passed…could they leave something behind when they go? Like energy or something? Could she tap into that and know things?” Olivia asked.

“That’s too wild for me. I don’t know what’s going on. And she claims to have assisted police across the country?” He paused, thinking. “Maybe she
can
sense those who have passed?”

Olivia ran her hands through her hair. “I wish you were here, Brad. I wish you could get away.”

“I…” Brad started.

Olivia waved her hand. “I know…I know you can’t. I understand. I just mean I wish you were here so you could hear things first hand.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry, I can’t.”

“It’s okay.” Olivia smiled. “You can’t leave the store. I know that. I’m not trying to make you feel bad. I like having you around, that’s all.”

Brad grinned at her. “Thanks. You’re not so bad yourself.”

“I suppose I’m not going to be able to understand this stuff. Maybe it’s unknowable and unexplainable for most people. It raises a lot of questions and there aren’t any answers. The more I think about it the more my brain gets muddled. I’m going to have to focus on the murders and forget about whether or not that psychic can really do what she says she can do.”

“Why don’t you just forget about it? What difference does it make anymore? Why get wrapped up in it?” Brad asked. “Mary’s own son doesn’t want to know about the killer or what happened. He doesn’t need the murders resolved.”

Olivia thought for a minute. “That doesn’t make it okay. Just because he wants to leave it in the past. That’s his personal choice. But, it isn’t right that the killer has been living his life for the past forty years. Kimmy was four, Brad. She never got a chance to live her life.”

“I know,” Brad said softly. “But what if you could solve it? What good would it do? It was so long ago. What does it matter anymore?”

Olivia leaned closer to her laptop screen and sighed. “It doesn’t matter if it was four years ago, or forty years, or four hundred years. It matters that their lives were taken from them. It matters that someone went unpunished.
They
matter.”

Emily Bradford’s mother, Isabel, phoned Olivia and told her she would be willing to meet and discuss the “unfortunate events of the past” which is how she put it. Her older daughter Angela would be coming for afternoon tea and Olivia was invited to join them.

Olivia found the house easily. It was a huge red brick mansion at the end of a long driveway hidden from view from the main street of the Magnolia Hill neighborhood. Olivia rang the bell and the door was answered by a trim older woman with blonde chin length hair. She was well-dressed in cream colored linen slacks and a crisp white shirt.

“Hello. Olivia? I’m Angela Kildare. Emily’s older sister.” They shook hands. “My friend, Lydia Andrews, said you would be interested in speaking with my mother. I’m glad you could join us. Please come in. Mother is in the family room.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Angela. Lydia spoke highly of you. I appreciate that your mom is willing to talk with me.”

Angela led Olivia through the foyer and down a long central hallway to the back of the house. They entered an enormous family room that had a cathedral ceiling and a full wall of glass looking out over a stone terrace and a beautifully landscaped in-ground pool. Several panels of the glass wall slid back to open the room to the outside.

A petite woman with snow white hair was sitting in an ivory straight-backed chair sipping tea from a china cup. She was dressed in a linen skirt and pale blue blouse. She turned to Olivia and Angela as they entered the room.

“Hello, Olivia. I’m Isabel Bradford. Please excuse me for not rising to greet you. My arthritis is kicking up.” She indicated a white sofa positioned directly across from her, a glass coffee table in between. “Please sit. Angela, would you pour our guest some tea?” There was a heavy, blue and white vase in the center of the table and on either side of it was a three-tiered plate holder laden with various squares and miniature cookies. “Help yourself to some treats, Olivia.”

Angela and Olivia sat side by side on the white sofa.

“Thank you for seeing me, Mrs. Bradford.”

“I’m glad to help if I can. What can I tell you?”

“Well, I’m interested in finding out about the murders of my cousins. I’m talking with people who lived in town at the time.”

“Your cousin was a lovely woman. An active member of our church.” She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. “It is still unimaginable, even after all these years. The brutality of it. Killing a mother and child. It shook our community to its core.” She spoke of it as if the very words were foul-tasting.

“Are you sure it’s not too troubling for you to recall?” Olivia asked.

“It’s terribly troubling. However, I do wish to assist you if I can. I’m an old woman, Olivia. There are exceedingly limited ways for me to be useful. What can I tell you that might be helpful?”

“I appreciate it,” Olivia told her. “I wonder about the suspects. And, of course, why no one was brought to justice. I understand that you knew Kenny Overman.”

“I knew him.” Her words dripped with disgust. “I cringed every time he set foot in this house. Which my late husband and I tried to keep to a minimum. I gather you’ve spoken to Emily?”

Olivia nodded. “I met with her at a coffee shop in Brookline.”

“How nice. She probably said more to you in your short visit than she has to me in the past few years.”

“Mother…” Angela started.

“Never mind.” Isabel raised her hand. “I’m sure Emily informed you that we are estranged.”

“You’re not estranged,” Angela said.

“Angela,” Isabel said sharply. “I do not need to be corrected. Call it what you will. Emily and I have very little to do with one another. We don’t get along. It’s been like this since my husband and I asked her to leave the house a few months after the murders. We withdrew financial support shortly after that.”

“Was that because of her relationship with Kenny?”

“It was due to her behavior and attitude towards us. But our family issues aren’t what you’re interested in. It’s Kenny you want to know about. Yes?”

Olivia nodded.

“There isn’t much to say about him. If I may be blunt, he was not of our social status. Emily should not have been dating him. He was uneducated. No prospects. He had a drinking problem, inherited from that louse of a father. He was ill-mannered, rough. Emily defied our wishes. It was constant fighting. It was like living in hell with the tension and stress that girl caused us. Thankfully, Angela was married and living in her own place and didn’t have to suffer what we went through.”

“It sounds very difficult,” Olivia said. “Mrs. Bradford, do you remember if Kenny came to your house on the evening of the murders?”

She took a deep breath. “Yes he did. I would not let him in the house. Emily had to speak to him at the front portico.”

“Did you usually let him in?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“What was the difference this time?”

Mrs. Bradford fiddled with the napkin on her lap.

“Mother…” Angela said.

Mrs. Bradford flashed Angela a warning look.

“Tell Olivia what happened that night,” Angela said. “It’s long in the past. It doesn’t matter now.”

Mrs. Bradford sighed and adjusted herself in her chair. “Emily and I had an altercation earlier that evening.”

“About Kenny?”

“Amazingly, no. I had gone to Boston to meet a friend for shopping and dinner. The friend took ill and we had to cancel our dinner plans and I returned home earlier than expected. When I came into the house, I could smell smoke coming from the living room. I ran in and Emily was standing at the fireplace. A fire was blazing and smoke was filling the room. I yelled at her, ‘What are you doing? Did you open the damper?’ I rushed over to her. She wheeled on me…she had such a look of hate on her face. She had the fireplace poker in her hands and as I approached her, she lifted the poker with both her hands, horizontally to the floor, and she smashed it into my chest. She yelled, ‘Don’t come over here, leave me alone.’ I was completely caught off guard. The force she hit me with sent me reeling backwards and I hit the floor. I smashed my head into the coffee table. I knew there was animosity between us, but that day I clearly understood her hatred of us.”

“Why did she have a fire going?” Olivia asked. “It was June.”

“That’s what I asked her. I pulled myself up off the floor. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of thinking she injured me. I stood there seething. I asked, ‘Why the hell do you have a fire going in June?’ She glared at me and told me she just felt like it. I stormed over to the fireplace to put the screen across it…Emily had it wide open with the roaring fire going full blast…sparks could have ignited the rug. I told her if she touched me again, I would call the police and have her arrested. She threw the poker on the floor and told me to go ahead and call them. She stormed out of the room. It was a terrible, terrible day. My own daughter striking me like that. Can you imagine?”

“I’m sorry to hear how difficult it was,” Olivia said. “Did you send her away immediately?”

“No. My husband and I thought it best if we stayed quiet until the end of the summer. We thought if we kicked Emily out right away it would just drive her into Kenny’s arms. Once Overman was suspected, we were hoping that he would be taken into custody before the end of the summer. That didn’t happen. When September came, we told Emily that we would pay for that year’s college expenses and that would be it. She would have to take loans for the final two years of school or find a job and pay for it that way. We told her it was time she got her own place and started her life as an adult.”

“Did you notice if she was burning something in the fireplace?” Olivia asked.

“I assumed it was wood,” Mrs. Bradford said with an edge to her voice.

Angela asked Olivia, “What do you mean?”

Olivia turned to Angela. “Is it possible that she might have been trying to destroy something? Burn it to get rid of it.”

“You didn’t notice anything mixed in with the wood? Or in the ashes later on?” Olivia asked Mrs. Bradford.

Mrs. Bradford sipped her tea. “I don’t recall looking into the fireplace. What could she have been burning? Since you asked, you must have something in mind.”

“I wondered if she might have been helping Kenny by burning something related to the case. His shirt. Something he took from the victims. To get rid of evidence,” Olivia said.

Mrs. Bradford looked over her porcelain cup at Olivia with a steely gaze. “My daughter went to New York City that day. I don’t believe she would have had time to be an accomplice to that ne’er-do-well.”

“Oh. No,” Olivia said. “I didn’t mean to imply that Emily was an accomplice. I just wondered if Kenny may have asked her to get rid of something for him without telling her what was going on. Maybe she burned something for him because he asked her to.”

“I doubt it. She was fooling around with the fireplace before Overman showed up here.” Mrs. Bradford placed her cup on the table. “To be honest, I can’t tell you much about Kenny. I didn’t care to know the young man. I tried to avoid him whenever he dropped by. I admit he had a difficult life, but that wasn’t something we wanted seeping into our lives. That’s really all I can help you with, Olivia. I’m sorry I can’t provide more information.”

“You’ve been very helpful. Thank you for seeing me,” Olivia said. “I appreciate it.”

“Angela will see you out,” Mrs. Bradford said looking off into the yard.

At the front door, Angela said, “Mother can come off as a very stern person. She is kind, but she sees things in black and white. There are no shades of gray with her. She’s a product of a strict upbringing from a wealthy family. She expected certain standards of behavior from us and she could be cold and harsh if we didn’t toe the line.”