Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
We made it back to Grimm Island just as the sun was losing its argument with the horizon, that deep shade of orange that turned the marsh grass to copper and made everything look better than it was.
I was tired down to my bones and my feet hadn’t forgiven me for the Keds, which had seemed like a reasonable choice that morning.
Dash’s SUV smelled like coffee and the faint cedar of his jacket, same as it always did, and I was glad for the familiarity of it after a day spent in a stranger’s kitchen asking hard questions.
We pulled into the drive with the sun still an hour from setting, that long golden stretch of July evening that made the island look like a postcard nobody had asked for, and I could already hear Chowder through the front door before we made it up the porch steps.
Three short barks that had nothing to do with alarm and everything to do with grievance.
He met us in the foyer, made his feelings known in no uncertain terms, and then pranced off toward the kitchen with his chin in the air.
The dining room was quiet for once, which meant they’d migrated. I followed the smell of something good and the sound of Dottie and Deidre arguing about whether garlic bread needed to go under the broiler or just in the oven, which was a debate with no right answer and no end.
They’d made themselves completely at home in my kitchen, which shouldn’t have surprised me and didn’t.
Dottie was at the stove with my largest pot, stirring what appeared to be a marinara like she’d been making it in my kitchen her whole life and didn’t need anyone’s input about it.
Deidre stood beside her with a wooden spoon she kept gesturing with to make her points about the bread.
Hank had claimed a barstool at the island and was doing nothing at all, which he’d clearly decided was his contribution to the evening.
Walt was at the kitchen table with his legal pad, pen in hand, glasses on, every inch of him still working even at dinnertime.
Bea sat across from Walt with a sidecar in front of her and absolutely no intention of touching a pot or a spoon, watching the proceedings with the serene conviction that supervising counted.
“You’re back,” Dottie said, glancing up. “Good. Wash your hands. Supper’s almost ready.”
“You cooked in my kitchen,” I said.
“You weren’t here. Sit down.”
“I found pasta and a jar of San Marzanos in your pantry,” Deidre said, “and I hope that’s all right because it was either that or breakfast for supper, and Dottie refused to make eggs for seven people. There’s a salad too. And garlic bread, which Dottie is determined to put under the broiler.”
“It needs color,” Dottie said. “Pale bread is sad bread.”
“Pale bread is bread that hasn’t caught fire,” Deidre said.
“They’ve been arguing since four o’clock,” Hank said. “I’ve aged considerably.”
“Wine?” Bea asked, already reaching for the bottle.
“Please,” I said.
Ten minutes later we were all at the dining room table, plates in front of us, the boxes still stacked along the walls where Walt had left them. Dash sat across from me. The bread had color. Deidre didn’t say another word about it.
“You’ll never guess what happened today,” Bea said. She didn’t give anyone a chance to ask what. “Walt asked James about his affair with Jackie Henshaw. Go ahead, tell them, Walt.”
Walt dabbed his mouth with his napkin and set it beside his plate. “We were going through the boxes this afternoon and Jackie’s name came up. James was still here. Seemed like the right time to ask him about it directly.”
“You pulled him aside?” I asked.
“I took him out to the back garden where it was more private.”
“What did he say?” Dash asked.
“He was embarrassed. Went on about Edie. Said it was the worst mistake of his life and he’d carried it ever since.” Walt reached for his water. “Said he had no idea anyone knew. Didn’t even remember Noreen walking in on them.”
Bea snorted. “They were probably too busy to notice.”
“I felt sorry for him, truth be told,” Walt said. “He’s carried that guilt a long time. Edie forgave him and they stayed married, but you could tell it still weighs on him.” He set his water glass down. “He did mention something else though.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“He said Jackie was never really after him. Said Henry was who she wanted all along. Bringing meals by his house, showing up dressed a certain way whenever Henry was around.” Walt set his glass down. “Said she used him to stay close to Henry.”
A pregnant silence filled the room as we processed Walt’s news, and then Bea broke the silence and said, “Well, see if you can top that.” She waggled her eyebrows. “Spill it.”
So we did.
Dash started with Lila Mae. The video call that morning, the Sunday routine she’d kept for fifteen years, the coffee she’d put on before she realized he wasn’t coming down. I let him set the scene and picked it up when he got to the study.
“The decanter and both glasses were on the desk when she found him,” I said. “One glass empty, one glass full. But the crime-scene photographs show them back on the bookshelf where they belonged. We can assume Milton moved them.”
“Because two glasses on that desk told a story he didn’t want to tell,” Hank said.
“Or was paid not to tell,” Bea said.
Nobody disagreed with her.
“So we have a confirmed visitor the night Henry died,” Walt said. “Someone he poured a drink for. Someone he was comfortable enough with to invite up to his study late on a Saturday night in the middle of a storm.”
“Someone who left a full glass of whiskey behind,” Deidre said. “They didn’t drink it.”
“Because they didn’t need to,” Dash said. “The drug was already in the decanter. They just needed Henry to drink it.”
“Which raises the question of access,” Dottie said. “Someone had to get to that decanter before the visit. Before Henry poured from it.”
“Josephine said Henry always had a nightcap before bed,” I said. “Lila Mae confirmed it. One glass, every night. It wasn’t a secret.”
“So the killer knew the habit,” Walt said. “And knew the decanter.”
“Anyone who’d been in that study would have known,” Hank said. “Henry wasn’t exactly hiding it. Lila Mae said people were in and out of that house all the time.”
“Saturday was Lila Mae’s day off,” I said. “No housekeeper, no patients on a weekend. And Henry himself didn’t come home until sometime Saturday morning after his night at the Wentworth with Serena. The killer had the run of the place.”
Bea refilled her glass. Nobody rushed to fill the silence.
“There’s more,” I said. “Wait until you hear what we discovered from Byron’s daughter.”
I picked it up with Serena.
“She’d known Henry her whole life,” I said.
“Her father brought her to every foundation event from the time she was a girl. Henry was just always there. And then one day it turned into something more. She was twenty-two. He was in his mid-fifties. They both knew what people would say, so they kept it quiet. Hotels in Charleston. Weekend trips out of state. He drove her home before sunrise so the neighbors wouldn’t see. ”
“And he asked her to marry him,” Dash said.
Nobody moved.
“He’d proposed,” I said. “They were engaged. And he was planning to tell her father himself before anyone else found out.”
“Lord have mercy,” Bea said softly.
“Her father knew about the affair,” Dash said. “Serena was certain of it.”
Deidre set down her fork.
“She said when he came home with the news of Henry’s death, something in the way he looked at her told her everything. He never confronted her. Never said a word about it directly. But she knew that he knew.”
Hank pushed his plate aside. “Byron Jameson finds out his oldest friend has been carrying on with his daughter in secret. A man with that kind of temper.”
“If he did kill Henry, it wasn’t in a rage,” Bea said. “A staged suicide takes planning. That’s cold.”
“Grief does strange things to people,” Dottie said. “So does betrayal. The two together can make a person very cold indeed.”
“Or he hired someone,” Walt said.
“Doesn’t fit,” Dottie said. “There were two glasses on that desk. Whoever was in that study with him, he invited them in. He was comfortable enough to sit down and have a drink with them. That’s not a hired killer. That’s someone Henry trusted.”
“Which brings us back to who Henry would have poured a drink for at that hour,” Deidre said. “On a Saturday night. In the middle of a storm.”
Nobody had an answer for that yet.
“There’s one more thing,” I said. “Serena told her father she was pregnant a few weeks after the funeral.”
Dottie and Bea gasped. Deidre’s mouth dropped open.
“Close your mouth, Deidre,” Bea said. “You look like a codfish.”
Deidre closed it. Then opened it again. Then thought better of whatever she was about to say and reached for her tea instead.
Bea turned her glass slowly on the table.
“If Byron Jameson was the killer, that would certainly come back to bite him,” Bea said finally.
“He was a surgeon. Cutthroat and calculating when he needed to be. Cold blooded enough to plan the murder of a man he’d known his whole adult life.
And then he finds out the man he killed was the father of his own grandchild. ”
It was easy to see how Bea had been a top investigative journalist during her prime.
Deidre took her glasses off her head and set them on the table. “That poor girl,” she said.
“She’s not a girl anymore,” I said. “She’s got a good life, a good husband, three boys. But Henry was still there. You could see it when she talked about him.”
“And she never told anyone,” Bea said.
“She was twenty-two with no standing. She was his secret. No one was going to listen to her.”
“Milton certainly wasn’t,” Walt said.
Dash’s phone buzzed on the table. He looked at the screen, then at me.
“Lab,” he said.
He stepped into the hallway and I listened to the shape of the conversation without being able to hear the words. The Silver Sleuths looked at each other and then at me.