Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
Jackson County Sheriff’s Department
Conference Room
Sheriff Burke Scott stood at the head of the table, a legal pad in front of him. His deputies sat around the room, folders open.
“As of 0600 hours,” Burke said, “the state Medical Examiner has officially reclassified the passing of Mabel Blackwood. We are no longer handling a natural death. We are running an active homicide investigation.”
Silence tightened around the table.
Deputy Scout Wilson let out a low whistle. “Doc Kincaid signed off on natural at the scene. Said her heart quit.”
“Kincaid missed it,” Burke said bluntly, leaning his palms on the table.
“ME found petechial hemorrhaging, bruising on the left wrist consistent with restraint, and synthetic fibers in the airway. Someone pinned her down and used a textile—most likely a pillow from her own bed—to suffocate her. They staged the room and walked out the back door.”
He looked from face to face.
“We treated that house like a funeral parlor for three days. Our window for pristine physical evidence is shot. Half the valley has walked through that foyer with casseroles. We start from scratch, and we start now.”
He tapped his pad.
“Scout,” he said to Wilson, “you’re at the winery. Start with Lockwood and the cellar crew. Then sit down with Walter Grady. Walter’s been running those books thirty years; he knows every hand on that property. I want to know exactly who was on the grounds the afternoon before she was found.”
“Copy,” Scout said, jotting it down.
“Sara,” Burke turned to Deputy Parker. “You and Luke are on staff and perimeter. Talk to Savannah and Chloe in the tasting room. See if anyone noticed a customer lingering after closing, or if Mabel seemed off in the weeks leading up to this. Luke, after that, drive out to the lower pastures. Interview Red Stephens at the cattle operation. Ask him about unfamiliar trucks near the ridge access gates over the weekend.”
Luke Hale frowned. “What about the porch prowler Aubrey reported, Sheriff? That footprint?”
“Already on it,” Burke said. He nodded toward Deputies Baker and Jenkins by the door.
“Baker, Jenkins, you’re taking Ruger out to the Victorian.
The state team finished reprocessing the structure this morning, but I want K-9 running the perimeter woods.
See if Ruger can pick up a trail from that smooth-soled print outside the glass.
There’s an old, overgrown logging road behind the property—if someone used it, it would give access to the back of the house without coming through the main security gates.
Treat it as one possible route, not an answer. ”
“We’ll get him out there now, Boss,” Baker said, standing. Jenkins followed him out.
Burke waited until the door shut, then looked back at the remaining deputies.
“The rest of you get to your blocks,” he said. “I’m handling the legal and financial side myself.”
Chairs scraped back as the deputies filed out, gathering their folders. When the room finally emptied, Burke checked his watch and rubbed a hand over his face.
He had one more meeting to run.
He stepped into the hall. “Send Eleanor Harper and Declan O’Rourke to the conference room,” he told the receptionist. “And call over to Blackwood. I want Bennett McCrae and Aubrey Langford here in twenty.”
Jackson County Sheriff’s Department
Conference Room – Later
Twenty minutes later, the conference room felt smaller.
Burke stood at the far end of the table, legal pad in front of him, while Aubrey and Bennett sat side by side opposite the door. Bennett was angled slightly in front of her, shoulders rigid, his attention pinned on the whiteboard where Burke had written, in black marker:
MABEL BLACKWOOD – HOMICIDE.
“You’re both at the center of this now,” Burke said, breaking the quiet. “You need to hear what Eleanor and Declan found out about Mabel’s changes before someone else decides you’re a problem they need to solve.”
The door opened.
Eleanor Harper walked in with a slim legal folder in one hand. Declan O’Rourke came in behind her and closed the door, then took up a position against the wall.
“Burke,” Eleanor said as she sat across from Aubrey. Her voice was strained. “Tell me the rumors from the courthouse aren’t true.”
“‘They’re true,’ Burke said. ‘Mabel was murdered. According to the Medical Examiner, this wasn’t a heart attack. Someone smothered her.’”
Eleanor went pale.
“Oh, God.”
“Eleanor,” Burke said, leaning forward. “We’re building a timeline. You saw her before she died. I need to know what she was doing.”
Eleanor’s fingers tightened on the file. She glanced at Aubrey, something heavy and complicated in her eyes.
“She was changing everything,” Eleanor said. She tilted her head toward Declan. “And she hired Declan to make sure she wasn’t wrong.”
Declan pushed off the wall and stepped closer to the table.
“Mabel brought me in a few months back,” he said, his Irish brogue rough but steady. “Wanted a full look at ye, darlin’. Not just a background check—a proper profile.”
His gaze locked on Aubrey.
Aubrey swallowed.
“You… followed me?”
“Aye,” he said without flinching. “I watched yer routine. Saw who ye spent time with. Knew ye weren’t tied down to anyone serious.
Yer stepfather helped confirm a few things Mabel wanted verified—including yer compensation.
She wanted the full picture before she changed everything. ” His mouth twitched.
Aubrey’s chest tightened.
"My salary."
She swallowed.
"My friends."
"My entire life."
“Every bit of it, lass,” Declan said. “She didn’t want surprises. She wanted to know if ye had the steel to run this mountain, or if ye were just another city girl hidin’ behind a title.”
He tipped his head toward Eleanor.
“Soon as I handed her the file—showin’ ye were brilliant, unattached, and no longer livin’ in Anne’s shadow—she rang Eleanor. Said she wanted the will changed that night.”
Eleanor opened the folder and slid a stack of documents across the table.
“Mabel’s original will had been in place for years—long before Bennett became her partner in the winery.
Back then, Anne was the natural heir. But the winery had changed.
Bennett became indispensable, and Anne made it clear she had no intention of returning to Blackwood.
She knew the estate needed to reflect that reality. ”
She flipped to the amendment.
“Two weeks ago, she rewrote it.”
Bennett leaned forward, his forearm coming down on the table.
“What did she change it to?”
“She restructured the estate around Aubrey and Bennett,” Eleanor said. “She left specific provisions and legacy bonuses for long-time staff like Walter Grady and Red Stephens, but the majority of the estate passed to Aubrey and Bennett.”
She tapped the page.
“All personal assets. The mansion. Sixty percent of the winery. The entire cattle operation—those all go to Aubrey, provided she stays and actively runs the place for a year. The remaining winery stake and joint operational control are split between Aubrey and Bennett.”
Bennett blinked. "She never said a word."
Aubrey’s pulse hammered. The yellow sticky note from Walter’s office flashed in her mind—the one she suddenly wasn’t sure how many people had seen.
“Mabel told me she had to repair the fracture before it was too late,” Eleanor said, looking at Aubrey. “She wanted to pull you out of the bitterness your mother built. She made me file the revised will with the county clerk that same afternoon. It was finalized and legally binding immediately.”
Burke frowned.
“Why is that timing critical?”
“Because Mabel thought she was keeping a secret, but she wasn’t as careful as she believed,” Eleanor said.
“People talk in a valley like this. If someone in this valley found out she was restructuring the estate—if they thought they could stop her from changing the old arrangements and giving most of it to Aubrey by getting rid of her…”
Aubrey felt the pieces snap together.
“They were too late,” she whispered, looking from Eleanor to Bennett. “The will had already been filed. It was legally binding.”
“Exactly,” Eleanor said. “Whoever killed her did it to stop the future from changing. They didn’t know it was already done.”
Bennett’s hand snapped out, his fingers closing around Aubrey’s wrist, steadying the tremor there. He pulled her fractionally closer, eyes flashing as he looked at Burke.
“So if this was about the will,” Bennett said, his voice low and uncompromising, “they miscalculated. Aubrey was still named. The winery still shifted. Killing Mabel didn’t lock anything in place.”
Burke rose and turned to the dry-erase board.
“Maybe it was about the will,” he said, snapping the marker cap back into place.
“Maybe it was about who ends up with control of the winery. Maybe it was old grudges. We don’t know yet.
” He circled both AUbrEY’s and BENNETT’s names beneath MABEL’S.
“What we do know is that when the dust settled, the estate sat with you two.”
He looked from Bennett to Aubrey.
“Whoever did this thought Mabel’s death would freeze things the way they liked them,” Burke went on. “It didn’t. The future still changed. And you’re both standing in the middle of it.”
He set the marker down.
"That makes you part of whatever they were trying to stop," Burke said quietly. "Not the whole picture. Just two more pieces of it."
No one in the room disagreed.
Chairs scraped across the floor as the meeting broke up. Eleanor gathered her file while Declan held the door for her. Bennett pushed back from the table.
"Sheriff?" Aubrey said.
Burke looked up. "Yeah?"
"Could I have a word?
Bennett glanced at her.
"I'll be right out," she said softly.
He hesitated only a second before nodding and stepping into the hallway, pulling the conference room door closed behind him.
Burke leaned against the table. "What's on your mind?"
Aubrey reached into her purse and pulled out a folded piece of paper.
"I should've told you about this sooner.”
Burke accepted it and unfolded the note.
Go back to Philadelphia.
His eyes lifted to hers.
"When did you get this?"
"The morning after I arrived. I thought it was someone angry about me taking over the winery." She shook her head. "After everything we talked about today... I don't think that's what it was."
Burke slipped the note into an evidence envelope from the stack beside him.
"You had no reason to connect it then," he said. "You do now."
He met her eyes.
"From this point forward, Miss Langford, if anything happens—no matter how small—you tell me immediately."
She nodded.
"I will."
Burke tucked the envelope into his case file.
"Good. Because if someone warned you to leave." He let the thought hang between them. "Then this just became evidence."