Chapter 7
Clive’s screen door was unlocked, and after I called out to him a few times and didn’t receive an answer, I made an executive decision to let myself in, stepping into the living room and over to the dartboard to get a better look.
Three darts were embedded in the board. Two landed just outside the photograph, and the third in the center of Wren’s forehead.
I stood there for a moment, studying it.
The sense of anger, real anger, couldn’t be missed.
The photograph looked like it had been cut from a company newsletter. Wren was standing in the middle of a group of elderly residents, smiling at the camera.
Turning away from the dartboard, I focused on the house.
It smelled of cigarette smoke and stale beer, and the living room looked like it hadn’t seen a cleaning cloth in years.
Old magazines were stacked on the floor, dishes crusted with food sat on a small side table, and a sagging couch rested in the corner.
My eyes moved across the table.
More darts.
An empty beer bottle.
A folded newspaper.
The back screen door snapped open, a sharp sound cracking through the house like a gunshot.
I turned.
A man stood in the doorway leading to the kitchen. He was tall but stooped with age, his gray hair wild beneath a faded baseball cap. Dirty overalls hung over a stained white tank top, and in his hand he held a rifle.
He lifted it, pointing the barrel at my chest.
“Well,” he grunted. “What do we have here?”
So much for easing into the conversation.
“You’ve got about three seconds to explain who you are and why you’re in my house,” he said.
Annoyed with myself for not thinking through the consequences of entering his house uninvited, I raised my hands.
“You have every right to question me,” I said. “Please, allow me to explain.”
His eyes narrowed. “I could shoot you right where you stand and get away with it. You’re trespassing.”
My heart thumped against my ribs, but I kept my voice steady.
“My name is Georgiana Germaine. I’m a private investigator.”
“And?”
“I’m looking into Wren Mayfair’s murder.”
At the sound of Wren’s name, something flickered in his eyes.
Still, the rifle remained in position.
“Detective Whitlock knows I’m here,” I added, “which means it wouldn’t be a good idea to shoot me. You’re Clive, right? I believe you two spoke before, right after Wren died.”
He stared me down for a long moment and then lowered the rifle.
“You’ve got some nerve busting into my house the way you did,” he muttered.
It wasn’t the first time someone had said that to me, and it wouldn’t be the last.
He gestured toward the couch. “Sit.”
The fabric on the couch was stained in ways I didn’t care to analyze.
“I’d rather stand,” I said.
His eyes hardened. “I said sit.”
Right.
Upper hand.
He had it.
I didn’t.
I lowered myself onto the edge of the couch, careful not to lean back and get the full experience.
Clive disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a beer in one hand and the rifle in the other.
Using the edge of the counter, he popped the cap and raised the bottle to his lips.
Then he leaned against the wall and looked at me.
“Well?” he said. “You broke into my house. Might as well get to the point.”
I tipped my head toward the dartboard. “I came here to talk to you about Wren.”
His eyes followed my gaze.
For a moment he said nothing, and then he snorted. “If you’re here, I’m guessing you know where I worked and what went down there.”
“I do, but I’d like to hear your version of the story.”
“The first couple months at the senior care center were fine. Then she started calling me into her office.”
“Because of mistakes you’d made.”
He nodded. “Said I was messing up medication charts. Giving wrong pills. Missing doses.”
“Were you?”
His jaw tightened.
“At first I was sure she was wrong, even when it happened multiple times.” He laughed once, his tone bitter and short. “I admired her when I first started, and I thought she was one of the good ones. But after she started blaming the mix-ups in medication on me, I began to think otherwise.”
“Did you ever threaten Wren?”
“When she fired me, I may have said something about her regretting the decision.”
“Sounds like a threat to me.”
He took a hearty swig of beer. “Look, I was mad. Real mad. Even thought about slashing her tires or keying her car, but I didn’t.”
“What stopped you?”
For the first time since we started talking, his expression became lighter.
“My wife,” he said.
Given his place looked like a junkyard collector’s bachelor pad, I was shocked.
“Your wife?”
“Mm-hmm. She gave me an ultimatum. Either I went to a doctor and got checked out or she was leaving me. Turns out, Wren wasn’t wrong. The doctor ran tests. Memory stuff. Cognitive things.”
“And?”
He set the beer aside, rubbing his face with a hand. “I’ve got Alzheimer’s. Had it for some time, the doc says. At first I didn’t believe it. Thought the whole thing was nonsense. Then my wife started pointing things out. Little slip-ups like me forgetting appointments and misplacing things.”
His gaze drifted toward the dartboard again.
“I was messing up those medications, just like Wren said,” he admitted. “Didn’t realize it at the time. I’d never do something like that on purpose.”
“The diagnosis must have been hard to accept.”
“You ever have someone tell you your brain’s falling apart bit by bit? It isn’t great. I thought someone at work was messing up those medications, and Wren was covering for them and shifting the blame on me. It was a stupid assumption. Now I know she did what she had to do.”
I glanced again at the dartboard. “But the picture stayed.”
“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to take it down.”
“But you haven’t.”
“Funny story, that.”
“Funny how?” I asked.
“Wren stopped by after she fired me. She saw the dartboard, and I apologized for it and for my behavior. Said I’d put her picture there before I was diagnosed.
I said I was going to take it down, and she laughed and told me to leave it up.
We even threw a few darts while she was here.
I guess I leave it up now because …” He reached for his beer, took a long swig, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“It’s the last memory I have of her. When I heard she’d been murdered, I felt sick inside. ”
“Why?”
“Aside from our disagreement, Wren was the kindest person I’ve ever worked with in my life. Everyone loved her. If I’m being honest, I did too.”
He downed the rest of his beer and tossed the empty bottle into a trash can. “You got any more questions?”
“Just one. Where were you the night Wren was murdered?”
“I was here, and my wife vouched for me when we talked to the police.”
I stood, and he watched me walk to the door.
Just before I stepped outside, he said, “For what it’s worth, I didn’t kill her.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“Good.”
I walked toward my car, my mind sorting through every emotion he had expressed—anger, resentment, but also regret.
And a diagnosis that explained far more than a simple workplace grudge.
If Clive had hated Wren enough to kill her, he hadn’t done himself any favors by leaving her picture up on the dartboard or saying what he’d thought of her when she fired him.
I slid into the driver’s seat and started the car, questioning the odds that Clive was the killer. He had an alibi, if his wife wasn’t covering for him.
If he didn’t do it, then who?
I wanted answers, and there was one person who might have them—Silas, the county coroner and a man who just so happened to be my good friend.