Sinking Ships: An Abishag's First Mystery (The Abishag Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  “In this market? The brokerage firm is on Crenshaw.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded. “I’ll have someone check the Crowder house phone to see if she took any calls here that night, but this is a good lead. The rest of the calls are nothing, unless someone selling solar panels kills blackmailers on the side.”

  The mantel clock in Thomas’s study downstairs chimed the hour.

  Latching the suitcase, I said, “Gotta go. You putting in any hours in the garden before you leave?”

  “You gonna fire me if I don’t?”

  I tried to look stern, but she only laughed. “I’ll do some work before it gets dark. You got your notes on what you found in his ledgers?”

  I nodded, feeling guilty. Wasn’t I betraying Thomas by passing Kat his private information and breaking the Abishag discretion rule?

  She grabbed the suitcase and hefted the small box of papers. “Let’s keep her cell for now. You can tell Tina that you found it somewhere else later.“

  More lies to the family.

  “Meet you downstairs.”

  As I passed Thomas’s bedroom, I peeked in. “Give me a sec, Vicky. We’re putting Hillary’s things in the foyer for you.”

  Without waiting for a reply, I dashed into my bedroom and looked in the desk’s top drawer for the ledger notes—not there. Strange. I anxiously looked in the other drawers and found it in the bottom one. I’d definitely been feeble-minded yesterday.

  I hurried down the stairs to where Kat, with the patience of lit dynamite, paced. She stuffed the notes into her messenger bag, gave me a jaunty salute, and dashed out the door.

  Smelling something wonderfully garlicky from the kitchen, my stomach rumbled. I climbed the stairs slowly, letting my heart rate return to normal, trying to erase thoughts of killers so I could emote only serenity and love for Thomas.

  On the staircase, my heart started pounding again as I remembered something.

  I had left my notes in the top drawer with the first disk. While Kat and I were in Hillary’s room, someone had moved my notes and taken the disk containing the ledger files from the time of the shipwreck.

  Fired up to storm Thomas’s room and accuse Vicky, I stalled in the hall. Why would Vicky, a stranger, a hospice aide worker, steal a disk? If she was a thief, Thomas’s house had more valuable things.

  I retreated to my bedroom and shut the door. I checked my computer bag and found the other four disks, clearly labeled with to/from dates. I checked the laptop to see if the first disk was in it. It was not. The recollection of putting it in the top drawer with the notes was too clear. Holding onto my tattered serenity, I stared at the desk, trying to recreate the crime.

  The last time I’d seen the first disk was the previous night. The only people in the house between when I’d put it away before spending the night with Thomas and opening the desk just now were Dog, Kat, Sebastian, Vicky, and Mrs. Timmons. I’d seen all of them, except Mrs. Timmons, upstairs, although I couldn’t cross Mrs. Timmons off the suspect list. Someone had picked up the clothes I’d left on the floor this morning.

  I usually don’t leave things on the floor, so I suspect my innate detective skills had me leave the clothes as a ploy to catch potential thieves. Maybe the person who moved my notes, picked up my clothes and took the disk was pathologically neat.

  That left out Kat. It also didn’t make sense that she’d steal it and then ask for my notes. I crossed her off my mental suspect list.

  Uneasily I sat on the bed. Someone invaded my room and went through my things. A little strange that they’d cleaned up after me too.

  Opportunity. All the good detective stories said the murderer had to have it. Besides motive, which didn’t narrow the field much. As Tina had said and Mrs. Timmons had confirmed, Hillary’s predilection for blackmail doomed her for murder.

  A detective understood the interdependencies of opportunity, timing, and location—as did mathematicians. If one of Hillary’s blackmail victims was the killer (since our analyses was totally based on it, it must be true) then Friday night’s opportunity had collided with location. I grabbed a pad of paper and wrote down the victims’ names.

  It seemed unlikely that her neighbor would kill her here. In Torrance, he’d know her comings and goings. It’d be easier to kill her there. Besides, how many cheaters would murder over the small payments Hillary demanded? Scratch him.

  I crossed out the executive’s name too. His payments were also reasonable, and I couldn’t picture him hiking to Portuguese Cove for an evening of slaying.

  That left Thomas and Hillary’s brother-in-law Ray Jeppers.

  Thomas could not wake from a coma, kill Hillary and then returned to his mostly brain dead state. More realistic to think that someone who loved him had killed her to protect his reputation.

  Sebastian or Tina? What could I glean from the ledger accounts? Which entry was so terrible that his family would kill to keep it quiet?

  I knew the loss of Thomas’s payments to Hillary had to have been a blow. Had Hillary decided to put the screws to Tina? Had Tina and Sebastian conspired to kill her? More likely Sebastian as Tina was too tall.

  Frightening how likely this solution, but I didn’t want to believe it.

  If it had to be a family member, I’d rather it be Ray Jeppers. I grabbed my phone and dialed Tina’s number. I’d been putting off this call too long, and maybe I could find something about Jeppers too.

  She didn’t even say hello. “Leslie? Did Dad…”

  “Oh, no.” An Abishag should remember that a call from her could mean only one thing. “Your dad’s fine. Or, you know, the same. I was calling about something else.”

  “Yes?”

  The trouble was that I hadn’t rehearsed what to say. I couldn’t brazenly ask her if Ray Jeppers, someone I should know nothing about, had killed his wife’s sister. An Abishag never snooped into the family’s private business. If my duty to protect Thomas hadn’t taken precedence, I would still be fading into the background.

  Fortunately two years of living with Kat had honed my fabrication skills. “I hate to bother you with this, Tina, but I listened to the answering machine today, and there was a message from a Ray Jeppers. For Hillary.”

  “Ray is married to Hillary’s sister.” Tina’s voice turned guarded.

  I took a deep breath. I was breaking about six Abishag rules in a mighty swoop.

  “Mister Jeppers sounded agitated. He said he was finished paying her off, and now it was her time to pay. He told her not to bother calling back, that he would be seeing her soon.”

  My phone shook my hand. I couldn’t believe that I told Tina something so outrageous.

  Tina sighed. “I’m sorry you had to hear that, Leslie.”

  “Every family has its problems,” I said and delicately added, “You don’t think Mister Jeppers killed Hillary, do you?”

  A short humorless laugh. “If he could have gotten away with it, yes. Hillary found out that Ray pirated DVDs.”

  So he had been involved. “And Hillary made him pay to keep it quiet?”

  Suddenly Tina sounded a little wooden. “I’ll take care of Ray, Leslie. You’ve enough to worry about with Dad.”

  Drat. She shut me down good with that one, reminding me about my Abishag priorities, but Kat’s craftiness lessons stood me in good stead. “Of course, Tina. Finding Hillary’s body and now this phone message has probably made me overly concerned about Thomas’s safety. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

  A dirty trick, making her feel guilty, but it worked. “Oh, my dear, it’s me that’s sorry. You’ve no reason to worry about Ray. Hillary never called it blackmail, you know. She somehow orchestrated the cover-up so Ray wouldn’t be blamed. I suspect the man charged with Ray’s crime wasn’t entirely innocent himself or Dad wouldn’t have allowed it.”

  “Thomas knew?” I couldn’t stop the sharp exclamation. More evidence that Thomas wasn’t the good man he’d been reported to be.

  “I didn’
t find out about it till Dad’s second stroke. Hillary had the gall to tell me that Dad had been ‘helping her out’ since her father died. Not being as soft-hearted as he, I put a stop to it.”

  I licked my lips. Had Tina just confessed to murder?

  She continued, “I told her that if she wanted money from me, she’d better earn it. I paid for her hospice-aide classes and then provided a recommendation to the care service we use for Dad.” Under her breath, she added, “Of course, had I known she’d get herself killed in Dad’s kitchen, I would never have let them assign her to us.”

  “And you’re sure that Mister Jeppers didn’t kill her?”

  She laughed shortly. “Ray is trying to return to politics. He’s been in Sacramento all week. If you saw the news last night, you would have seen him speaking about the new water bill.”

  So I could cross Ray Jeppers off the list, but maybe I’d heard enough about Tina’s handling of Hillary to remove her as a possible suspect too. She didn’t seem to think Hillary had been blackmailing Thomas, rather thinking that Thomas had been helping to support her. Did her son Sebastian believe the same?

  “Thank you, Tina. You’ve made me less worried. I won’t…”

  She interrupted me. “Save that message, will you? I plan to confront Ray as soon as he returns.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said smoothly. “I accidently deleted it.”

  Sounding deflated, she said, “Oh, well, then, I suppose it doesn’t matter.”

  “I won’t take any more of your time. Please don’t worry about Thomas. He’s been resting peacefully. I enjoy reading to him, and I talked to him about the family videos.”

  She caught her breath. “You are a treasure, dear. Thank you.”

  I wished her a good night, and stared at the Call Ended message. It would have been easier if the evidence had been stacked against Ray Jeppers….

  I shot to my feet remembering that I was supposed to be sitting with Thomas.

  Vicky seemed disgruntled when I charged into the room, gasping apologies.

  “Well, you’re young.” But she seemed more impatient than nasty so I kept my mouth shut. And dinner did smell delicious.

  Listening to Vicky walk down the stairs, I took a few calming breaths and relaxed the tightness in my hands before I took Thomas’s.

  “It’s okay. We’ll figure it out.” I gently ran my thumb down the side of his face. Florence Harcourt said that medical studies show that a soft touch soothes the nearly dead. I don’t know if it helped my Thomas, but stroking his face certainly settled me.

  I stared out the window, again reviewing the suspects. If I’d been in my room, I’d have seen the sun dropping toward the sea. Still two hours before sunset, but from Thomas’s window I saw darkness already shadowing the orchard and the hills beyond.

  “It’s not Dog either.” I squeezed Thomas’s hand reassuringly. “I don’t want you worrying that it was either of your aides. I figure the person who took the ledger also killed your niece, and neither Dog or Vicky were around that night.”

  I didn’t tell Thomas that his grandson Sebastian was a suspect. I hadn’t questioned Mrs. Timmons who had left at 4. That left no one. I reviewed the suspects again. Nothing made sense.

  I was still stewing about it when Vicky returned from her dinner. Trying to maintain an aura of serenity for Thomas while reasoning deductively made my stomach churn.

  Although Mrs. Timmons had set a place for me in the dining room, I unwrapped my dinner from the warmer and ate at the kitchen table. Morbidly I stared at the floor where I’d found Hillary’s body. Did I have it wrong? Did the killer and the person who took the ledger have to be the same person?

  Kat had my notes, but I never forgot a number. As I ate moussaka, I sorted through memories of the ledger accounts and thought about Mrs. Timmon’s saying that Thomas loved his wife Carol too much.

  Had he covered up a dastardly act of hers?

  I didn’t know what had happened, but I knew some tragedy haunted those accounts. Between diapers for the baby, medical bills, and salvage income from the wreck, a story lurked.

  The numbers Kat brought me boiled in my head. If the missing ledger had something to do with the murder, the only possible blackmail victim would have been Thomas. Because Thomas had been comatose for months and brain-dead now, he obviously couldn’t kill her. Also Hillary hadn’t received any funds from him since his second stroke. Maybe she’d been bleeding Sebastian for something Thomas had done when his mother was a baby. Remembering his tears and holding Thomas’s hand, maybe Sebastian had been driven to protect his mother and granddad by killing Hillary.

  My eyes squeezed shut, seeing Tina’s number again on Hillary’s phone. I should have asked Tina why she’d called, but how could I admit going through Hillary’s cell phone messages? Kat’s subterfuge tactics took me only so far.

  Could I really cross Tina off the suspect list because she was tall? I didn’t know how the forensics of determining height worked, but maybe it couldn’t account for someone crouching when the blood splattered or leaning in when stabbing the victim. I’d have to ask Kat.

  Tina had been noticeably distraught that night. Maybe it hadn’t been just that her cousin had been killed while her father lay dying upstairs. Maybe she’d suffered from remorse for killing Hillary.

  She told the police that she hadn’t been at the house that day. Should I ask Kat to find out where Tina had been?

  I took a deep breath as a sudden thought struck me. Abandoning my half-eaten moussaka, I ran back upstairs and surprised Vicky reading a supermarket magazine.

  “Miss, you’re back early.” She looked flustered, trying to hide the magazine in her tote.

  “I’m eating dinner, but I wondered something.”

  She steeled herself. “Yes?”

  “Was Tina, Thomas’s daughter, here today?”

  I guess she expected me to ask something else, because she relaxed. “No, miss. Her son was here, but you saw him. Only that gardener girl, the housekeeper, and the postman have been here today.”

  I guess we could leave the postman off the list. “Thanks, Vicky.” I shot Thomas a quick look. Her magazine reading didn’t seem to be harming him. “I’d better finish dinner. I need a nap before my time with Thomas too.”

  She gave me that avid look that always crossed her face whenever I mentioned lying with Thomas. I probably should complain to the hospice agency. Her curiosity about a therapy for the comatose verged on sick fascination. Made me feel slimy and wonder if she didn’t plan to sell the story to one of those trashy magazines she read.

  “Did you see anyone go into my room today?”

  A curiosity of a different sort crossed her face. “Mrs. Timmons went in while you were with that gardener girl.”

  That solved the mystery of who had folded my clothes.

  “Is something missing?”

  I tried to read something into the question. Did she know what had been taken? But in her curiosity, I only saw the hope of something scandalous in a dull day.

  I would definitely call the hospice service and hope they could replace her with someone more professional.

  “Have a good evening, Vicky.”

  The moussaka was cold when I returned, and so were my thoughts. It seemed Sebastian was the only possible suspect. I’d left him with Thomas, and he could easily have crossed the hall to take the ledger from my room. I don’t know how he knew it was there, but he’d most likely been here the day Hillary was killed too.

  Sick at heart, I called Kat and asked her to check the whereabouts of Tina and Sebastian on Friday evening. Then I took two slices of peach pie to my room and watched the sun go down behind the shipwreck in the cove.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I didn’t wait till Dog came for me. After I heard Vicky leave, no doubt carrying Hillary’s suitcase and box, I hustled to Thomas’s room.

  Dog was swabbing out his mouth. “Is he okay?” I asked, sitting at the foot of the bed.

  H
e gave me a quick smile. “About the same. Still dying, you know.”

  There was something in his tone, as if he were warning me against hope. I managed a smile. “I know. I’m his Abishag wife. We only show up when hope is gone.”

  Approval lit his dark eyes, and I looked away quickly. My old crush on him threatened to undo me, and I reminded myself that he belonged to Kat and I belonged to Thomas.

  Till death parted us…

  I said briskly, “So in your medical opinion, there’s no way that Thomas killed his niece Hillary on Friday.”

  He laughed. “What made you think that? No way this guy’s even moved since his last stroke.”

  “There are stories,” I said delicately. “About comatose patients returning. They’re called a Lazarus.” I didn’t know an Abishag who actually had a Lazarus husband, but Jen knew a girl whose sister had one. The agency’s legal department spent months extricating her out of the marriage, and Florence Harcourt would change the subject with narrowed eyes if a trainee asked about it.

  He cocked his head. “You worried that Thomas is going to wake up when you’re with him?”

  I was worried that he woke up Friday night and killed Hillary. Was that any better than his grandson Sebastian killing Hillary for something Thomas did almost sixty years ago?

  I shook my head but maybe not convincingly.

  After a penetrating look, Dog turned back to recalibrating a monitor. “He’s brain-dead, Les. His time is winding down, not up.”

  I swallowed, my gaze on Thomas, not ready to start counting his breaths.

  “You know I was against you doing this, but I’m starting to think maybe it’s been a good thing.”

  “Really?” It surprised me to hear that I might have done something right for a change. I remembered what Jen had said about old friends dropping her and the detective’s nasty remarks about bed-warmer wives. Yet Dog and Kat had stuck by me.

  “Definitely a good thing for Thomas. His blood pressure and EEGs have definitely changed since you’ve been here.”

  “Yeah?” Without taking my eyes off Dog, I gently stroked Thomas’s feet through the blanket.