Chapter Nineteen #3
“Come in, come in.” I swept aside, gesturing him in. “Lily’s finishing up her snack but she’ll be ready soon. I can get you something too while you wait—”
He dropped to his knees. Wide eyes swallowing me, Layton pitched forward—sprawling the welcome mat dead.
I took one look and clamped my hand over my mouth, screaming into my palm.
“MRS. KIM.” BALOGUN waited for me outside Lily’s room with a serious expression that bordered more on disapproving. “We have to stop meeting like this.”
“I agree,” I rasped, stomach heaving. I was glad I couldn’t see myself in Lily’s wall mirror anymore, because I looked terrible. “Have any suggestions for how I make that happen? Because mine for you is that you catch the bastard who keeps killing everyone I know.” It was a struggle not to scream.
Balogun seemed to feel the anger in my voice all the same. She pressed her lips tightly together as she gestured for me to follow her. “How is your daughter?”
“She’s fine. My friend is looking after her right now, and my husbands are on the way home.
” I pressed my hand to my forehead, feeling flushed and sweaty.
“Thankfully, she didn’t see him like that, but now I have to explain to her that she’ll never see her teacher again so soon after losing her grandmother.
My goodness, who is doing these things, because you have to see that it’s not Mrs. Finley,” I cried, whirling on her.
“You know that she’s lying about killing my mother, don’t you? ”
She gazed at me steadily. “Mrs. Finley hasn’t given us a chance to question her story because she refuses to tell us. She hasn’t spoken a word since she was brought into custody except to say that she’s the killer, and she’ll give the full details to a reporter.”
It was scary how right I was about that.
“Naturally,” Balogun drawled, “that’s never going to happen. We don’t allow suspects to sensationalize their crimes for media attention. Even the thought of that is obscene and disrespectful to the victims.”
“I completely agree—in most cases.” I sighed, rubbing my temple.
Together we tromped down the stairs. “But in this case, Mrs. Finley didn’t kill my mother and she definitely didn’t touch Mr. Layton.
What she really wants is to give her son a voice.
To speak up for him now that he’s gone. If you promise her that she’ll get plenty of coverage and attention for confessing to the crime, and strangling me, she’ll give up the lie and tell you the truth of what really happened that night. ”
Her expression didn’t change. “An interesting suggestion, Mrs. Kim, but not what we’re here to discuss.” Stepping off the bottom step, she pointed to the man dead in my doorway. “I’m here for him.”
Seeing Layton like that again exploded bile up my throat. As dead bodies go, he didn’t crack my top three of the most horrifying to witness, but still, the massive knife sticking out of his spine made me want to run and hide.
Her partner leaned over that knife, examining it while he jotted down notes in his pad. On either side of him were two crime scene technicians, and behind all of them, was Officer Davis.
“Walk me through what happened here.” Balogun walked off, forcing me to follow—forcing me closer to the body.
“It’s like I told the first officer who took my statement.” I looked around for her but didn’t see her. “I heard the doorbell, went to answer it, and found Mr. Layton on the doorstep. He didn’t even get a chance to say anything. He just fell down dead with that knife in his back.”
She hummed, her eagle eyes sweeping the doorframe. “And you didn’t see or hear anyone else?”
“No.”
“Why did you get rid of your security cameras?”
“I—” The question penetrated. “Wait, what?”
“Why,” she asked slowly, “do you not have security cameras?” Stepping over the body, she crooked her finger for me to follow. “I noticed that the last time we were here when the mob you whipped up knocked me on my ass.”
I sensed she was expecting me to throw an apology into that awkward pause, but I didn’t. Scurrying around Kaplan, I went to see what she was pointing at.
“There, there, and there.” Balogun’s finger jabbed the air. “You have mounts for security cameras, but no cameras.”
“We—”
“It’s the same for your gate,” she sliced in. “You have the booth for a guard, but instead of hiring one, you replaced the automatic opener.”
“Replaced?”
“The sensor and gate opener are clearly new while that rusted-over gate is not.” She gave me a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“You requested that my partner and I cease with the lazy investigating and pay attention to the details, and I assure you, Mrs. Kim, from this point on, I will not miss a trick.
“So again, I repeat, why are you missing the two things that could’ve prevented Mr. Layton’s death, your mother’s and possibly Mrs. Prado’s as well? Why did you get rid of the guards and cameras?”
I blinked at the empty mount looming over my doorstep. I didn’t notice them before she said something, and now they were all I could see. “I... don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“I don’t,” I blurted. “I mean, the guard we... we probably let go of them because we couldn’t justify the expense to the estate lawyer.”
“Probably? You don’t know for sure?”
Of course I don’t know for fucking sure! I wasn’t here when any of these decisions were made!
“My mother handled everything to do with the running of the estate, and then when she got ill, my husbands took over. I’ve never been involved with the day-to-day stuff.”
“Even so.” The tense lines around her mouth hadn’t relaxed. “You would’ve noticed when the cameras disappeared. You didn’t have a thing to say about that? You didn’t ask why?”
“This is a safe town, Detective. We’ve never had a problem here until recently. My husbands were most likely tired of paying to film the leaves fall. None of us could’ve predicted all of these horrible things would happen.”
“Hm.”
That was it. Just a hum, and still that response filled me with dread.
“That will be all for now, Mrs. Kim. Please give us some space to do our work.”
I didn’t argue with her. Moving off toward the back entrance, I stared at those mounts until I couldn’t anymore—her words banging around in my head.
Why did you get rid of the two things that could’ve prevented these murders?
THAT NIGHT, I BURST into Alex’s room, startling him so bad he spilled his beer.
“Goodness, woman,” he cried, diving down to rescue the can. “You scared the mess out of me. You can’t go around bursting into rooms when there’s another freaking killer on the loose.”
I stared him down, making him back up a step.
This was the first time I’d been in Alex’s room. Unlike Micah who lived here for seven years but still barely moved in, Alex had made the space his home.
A massive big-screen television covered half the hideous wallpaper on the back wall while photos of Lily through the years covered all the rest. He got rid of the old four-poster bed that used to be in here and replaced it with a king-sized, black silk-covered mattress with a silver chrome frame.
Instead of a desk, he had a cozy, carpeted corner with books, arts and crafts supplies, and a small table for Lily to play and work on her assignments.
“Sue, you okay?”
“Why don’t we have security cameras anymore?”
“Security cameras?” Crossing to the en suite, Alex went in, then came out holding a washcloth. “Why are you asking about that? You know why we got rid of them.”
“Pretend I don’t know.”
“Pretend... you don’t know?”
My intensity didn’t let up. “Yes.”
“Okay.” Alex dropped down, cleaning up the spill.
“The one we got was too sensitive. The floodlights went crazy over every squirrel and butterfly that went past. Then, if that wasn’t enough, it started malfunctioning.
The alarm would go off for no reason and scare Lily, and one night—at three in the fucking morning—it wouldn’t turn off even though we entered the right code a dozen times.
“We got rid of it the next morning, and haven’t gotten around to getting a new one.”
Whoops. All of that did sound like something Sue would know. You don’t forget an alarm waking you at three a.m. and screaming at you nonstop for the rest of the morning.
“Okay, thank you. I did know that,” I fudged, “but I wanted to hear how it sounded from someone else. Because when I told Balogun all of this, she looked at me like I handed her the smoking gun.”
“The smoking gun? Wait. The cops can’t seriously think we had anything to do with Mr. C’s murder— Which I can’t believe I’m saying out loud.
” Alex groaned, falling back on his bed.
“What the hell is going on around here, Sue? Why was there a murdered man on our doorstep this afternoon! How are we going to explain this to Lily?” Alex bolted up and grabbed my wrist.
I squeaked as I came plopping down next to him.
“Was everything okay when you picked Lily up from school?” Alex flipped on his side. Throwing his arm across my lap, he drew me close—drawing little circles on my hip.
The complete casualness of the touch brought back my shivers and clammies.
“Did you notice anyone weird? Anyone”—his grip tightened on me—“following you? Watching you guys?”
I shook my head. “No one. I didn’t notice anyone hanging around the manor or lurking in the bushes either. I have to believe I would’ve noticed if someone was. I’ve been so on edge lately. All of my senses are on high alert.”
“Same.”
“But you’re thinking what I’m thinking, aren’t you?” I lay down next to him, meeting his eyes across the silken sheets. “This wasn’t random. The person who killed Layton also killed my mother and Mrs. Prado.”
“How can that be? Layton has nothing to do with your mother,” he said. “They didn’t even speak.”
“He was upstairs when that beast went after my mother. Layton told me he was reading in the library the whole time, but we’ll never know if that’s true now. Maybe he saw something he wasn’t supposed to, and the killer silenced him.”