Juniper Grove Cozy Mystery Box Set 3, page 25
part #7 of Juniper Grove Cozy Mystery Series
“I honestly don’t know who was in the office, but since Lauren was murdered at Sophie Crawford’s cottage, I’d start with Alison Francis and Tyra West.”
Now it was my turn to gape.
“Remember, I don’t know for certain,” she added quickly. “But there was unusual friction between those three, especially last Sunday at church. They were never openly friendly, but last Sunday the daggers were out, metaphorically speaking. And whatever was going on, Lauren held the upper hand. She was the dominant one. The one in control. You’ve met Alison, right?”
I told her I had.
“Can you imagine anyone having the upper hand over her?” Beth grinned. “But let me tell you, Lauren did.”
“What about Mariette?”
“She and Lauren were never friendly, but I didn’t notice a change in their relationship like I did with Alison and Tyra. I got the impression they’d agreed to get along by ignoring each other in church. I don’t understand why they were in a book club together. Maybe it’s a case of keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”
Not wanting to pressure her in any way, especially to break her vow, I carefully contemplated my next words. “I’m asking you to speculate,” I began, “and I wouldn’t do that if it weren’t very important. But I trust your instincts, and I need to hear your thoughts so I can take this new information to the police. Do you think either Tyra or Alison is capable of murder?”
She wet her lips with her tongue. “It depends on what the blackmail was about.”
“Something very serious, I imagine.”
“Then yes, either one.”
“Do you have any idea why one of them would hack the church’s bell system so the bells would chime after Lauren’s death?”
Beth considered my question. “It strikes me as an unnecessary embellishment. Why go to the extra trouble?”
“I agree. It was a risk that had nothing to do with achieving the goal of killing Lauren.”
Beth smiled. “Great minds think alike.”
“But we’re back to why. It’s risky enough committing murder in a house full of women, but when you add bell hacking, you involve the church and the pastor, and he was no slouch at technology. Murderers normally keep it simple. They don’t add layers of complications for themselves, especially since complications tend to backfire. Was she sending a message? Showing off?”
“Showing off how?”
“By telling the pastor she could take control.” I lifted a shoulder. “I’m only guessing, but I think the bells were meant as a thumb in the eye to either Lauren or Ackley.”
“Lauren wouldn’t have been around to appreciate the thumb.”
“The pastor would have. The pastor who was buying the cottage and land Lauren loved and doing with it what she hated. It’s possible Ackley had his suspicions about who the killer was but wanted evidence. In fact, I think he was actively gathering evidence and that’s what got him killed.”
Was it Tyra or Alison? I wondered. It had come down to those two, I felt it in my bones. Sophie hadn’t murdered someone inside the very home she was anxious to sell, or murdered one of the principals in the deal, and she hadn’t faked her fear of the other women. She knew one of her friends was a murderer. And Mariette was about to make a lot of money selling Sophie’s property to the church, but more than that, Gilroy had been right about her stumbling over the pastor’s body. She hadn’t tossed her shoe to make the scene more convincing, and she hadn’t faked her drunken shock at finding Ackley.
I thanked Beth, and as I left, I told her we should swap garden secrets when this was over—and when the May rains stopped. My front rose garden was my pride and joy, but my back garden was a jumble of spring weeds, unpruned and overgrown shrubs, and bare, muddy patches. She promised to visit and offer me advice, and I promised to make her tea when she did. The simple truth was, I liked her and wanted to see her again.
In Boston, I’d had no real friends. Admittedly, that had largely been my own fault. I’d worked long, hard hours, and because I’d felt out of place, I’d kept to myself much of the time. But it was also true that Boston—at least the publishing company side of it—was a city of guarded, reserved personalities who didn’t readily make friends themselves.
In Juniper Grove, friends were everywhere. They were like ripe fruit on a tree. I found them by saying hello to them on Main Street, sharing a cup of coffee with them, or just knocking on their doors. It still surprised me how easy it was, and how my naturally introverted nature didn’t stand in the way because a simple glimpse into someone’s beautiful backyard was enough to spark a friendship.
I hopped into my Forester and drove for the police station. I had news for Gilroy, and hopefully he had news for me regarding Ackley’s phone or computer.
And then I planned to dig up some dirt on Tyra and Alison. That meant gossiping, unfortunately. I needed to find out which one of them hated the church or the pastor almost as much as she did Lauren.
CHAPTER 17
“I was expecting donuts,” Underhill said as I walked into the station. “I’m working overtime, you know.”
“I got up late,” I said.
“Lucky you.”
The rain had slowed to a drizzle and then come to an end, and the station was bathed in bright sunlight, all the more intense for reflecting off wet cars and sidewalks.
“So you’re working long hours?” I asked him rhetorically.
“You know it, Rachel.”
“Let me ask you something.” I leaned forward and crossed my arms on the tall front desk. “If you had an intimate conversation with a pastor and you found out someone you knew was listening in to that conversation, what would you do?”
Underhill gave his chin a scratch. “What’s the conversation about?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is it something I’d do anything to keep from getting out?”
“It must be.”
“This isn’t a hypothetical, is it?”
I straightened. “No, I discovered something about Lauren.”
He pointed over his shoulder. “Grab him while you can. He’s leaving in ten minutes.”
“Thank you, Officer. Donuts later.”
“There had better be donuts. And work on getting us a new coffee machine while you’re at it?”
I marched for Gilroy’s office, rapping on the doorframe before stepping inside the open door. He was at his window, drinking a mug of sludge-black station coffee and watching what was left of the rainstorm drip from the roof line. He twisted back and smiled. “A new coffee machine. I heard. If the budget allows.”
“And better coffee. Really, James, that stuff is horrific.”
“But it packs a punch.”
“We had a bit of a downpour a minute ago.”
“I see.” Setting his mug on his desk, he strode to the door, shut it, and pulled me into his arms. “I’ll consider new coffee and a new coffeemaker.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck. “Treat your officers well.”
“I always do.” He brushed his lips against my cheek, and we kissed.
I could have stood there, holding him, for an hour at least, but there was the pressing matter of a killer on the loose. “Did you hear what I said about Lauren?” I said, dropping my arms. Back to business.
“Was she listening in on conversations with Pastor Ackley? I was wondering how she was blackmailing people. I thought she might be scouring the church files or Ackley’s computer.”
My jaw dropped. “You knew?”
“She worked at the church and she was the kind of woman who stuck her nose in other people’s business.” He shrugged. “Still, it was only a hypothesis until we got her bank records an hour ago.”
“You’re brilliant.”
“You’re not so bad yourself. But I still need to confirm the hypothesis. Though Miss Hughes made several large and unexplained cash deposits starting in early March.”
I sat on the edge of his desk. With Gilroy, nothing was confirmed until hard evidence was uncovered or the guilty party confessed. “What about Ackley’s phone? I know the text messages from Sunday were wiped out. Did the tech expert recover them?”
“He just started work on it, and I don’t know if he can do anything. We’ve contacted the service provider, but I’m not sure we’re going to get anywhere with them either. We found messages from Saturday, but there was nothing useful in them, and none of them were from the women at the cottage.”
“Did any of them contain links?”
Gilroy shook his head. “The first thing he did was look for links or anything that could hijack his phone or seize control of his bell-ringing system.” He walked around his desk and sank into his chair, and I switched seats, taking the chair on the other side of his desk. “What he did find is remote-access software on his office desktop computer.”
“I knew it! One of those women—”
“Accessed the pastor’s computer from their laptops, phones, or desktops. Yup.”
“The tech guy’s been filling you in on how it works.”
He grinned broadly. “He’s giving me an education.”
“Underhill says you’re leaving in a few minutes. Where are you off to?”
“To collect computers and phones. We had a look yesterday and didn’t find suspicious software. Nothing obvious. Now we need a thorough scrub. Even deleted, the software would leave a trace on the hard drive.” Gilroy rose, extended his arms, and bent backward, stretching the muscles in his back. My guess was he’d been up much of the night, sitting at his kitchen table and working on the case.
“You still need a motive for murder,” I said. “We know the bells and Lauren’s death are connected, but how do you prove it? And you know the blackmailer, but who was she blackmailing—and why? It must be something devastating.”
“I’m afraid our tech guy can’t help with that.”
“Beth Lightfoot thinks either Tyra or Alison hated the pastor and the church, because the bells weren’t necessary for the murder.”
“Just those two? What about Mrs. Shipley?”
“The drunken woman who tripped over the pastor and did not cleverly remove her shoe so the scene would look more realistic?”
“So you agree?” He grabbed his coffee mug and upended it, drinking what was left—no doubt dark and nasty dregs.
“The more I think about it, yeah. She didn’t do it.”
“Mrs. Crawford isn’t a suspect either,” Gilroy said flatly.
I was somewhat surprised by his confidence in her innocence, but since I agreed with him, I let it slide and pushed to my feet. “I know where to find a motive. Why didn’t I think of it? There’s once place in town where gossipers gather, and one person hears it all. Holly.”
“Does she? I didn’t know.”
“You don’t know she does because she doesn’t believe most of the gossip she hears and she never spreads it.” I waved my hand in a shoo-fly gesture. “Except when it has to do with a case, of course. Anyway, it must be the sugar high or the atmosphere, because people say things in that bakery they don’t say anywhere else. I bet she’s heard something that even Sophie hasn’t heard.”
“That could point us to a motive.”
“I’ll talk to her and text you. Did the medical examiner’s report come back?”
“It was just as the coroner thought. Ackley bled out from a stab wound. Quickly. I think he confronted the woman who killed Lauren, but for some reason, he was taken by surprise.”
“She hid the knife in the book, maybe offering him the book, and he wanted to believe she’d turn herself in. She’s probably a very good actress. Sociopaths usually are.”
“The ME thinks she stood inches from him, face to face. Ackley had no idea what was about to happen. The blood on his hands weren’t from any defensive wounds.” Gilroy raised his hands to his stomach. “He was holding the abdominal wound, trying to stop the bleeding.” He leaned in and gave me a quick peck on the cheek. “This woman needs to be locked up.”
He started for the door, but I called him back. “James? Why would the killer take Ackley’s phone, throw it into the woods, and then come back for it later? I can understand taking it, possibly to search it out of curiosity. And I understand throwing it away, but why return to look for it?”
“That’s been bothering me too.”
“She erased Sunday’s texts, right?”
Gilroy folded his arms across this chest. “We think so.”
“She killed Ackley, took his phone, and got into her car. Then she erased the texts and removed the SIM card before throwing the phone into the woods. She knew she had to go back to the cottage, so she couldn’t hide the phone there or in her car. She had to get rid of it. She threw the SIM card someplace else—in a trash bin in town or in another field. SIM cards are so small, no one will ever find it.”
“So why did she come back for the phone?”
“Maybe she thought the deleted texts might be recoverable. She had to hide the phone somewhere it would never be found—or totally destroy it. I think Ackley knew or suspected who the killer was, and on Sunday he texted one of the women about his suspicions.”
“Why would he do that? He knew to call the station if he discovered anything.”
“He was a pastor, James. His first instinct was to protect the innocent, and he felt he had to act quickly. He knew all the women were still at the cottage, and he may have thought the killer would strike again. He wanted to warn . . .” I paused. The pieces were falling into place. Ackley had discovered who hacked his system, and knowing that, he believed he also knew who had killed Lauren. So he texted his suspicions to one of the four women. The one he knew best. “Sophie. He wanted to warn Sophie. He didn’t phone the cottage because he didn’t know who would answer or overhear his call, and when Sophie didn’t text back, he walked to the back door, maybe hoping to catch Sophie alone in the kitchen. James, she told me someone moved her phone while she was napping.”
“You’re thinking one of her friends checked her messages?”
“Yes! When she’s at home, she keeps her phone on her kitchen table. After she woke from her nap yesterday, she realized someone had moved her phone.”
“While checking and then erasing Sunday’s texts.”
“I think it’s a safe bet that’s what happened. The killer couldn’t take the phone without alerting everyone, but it didn’t matter—”
“Because we’ve been focused on Ackley’s phone. No one has thought to examine Sophie’s.”
“You might be able to tap a button or two on Sophie’s phone to recover the information. Or maybe download the SIM card? Something like that.”
Gilroy took my face in his hands and kissed me. “Have I told you you’re brilliant?”
“More than once.”
“It bears repeating.”
He exited his office, told Underhill he was off to the cottage, and strode for the front door. “Call Mrs. Crawford right now—land line and cell phone. Tell her to bring her cell and charger to the station immediately. Make sure she doesn’t talk to anyone else at the cottage, and don’t leave a message for her.”
“But you’re heading there now,” Underhill said, flashing him a bewildered look.
“In case you can’t get hold of her,” Gilroy shouted as he pushed open the door.
Underhill raised a finger as I walked by, asking me to wait, so I hung around by the front desk as he made his call to the cottage. When no one answered after what must have been at least ten rings, he hung up.
“What’s happening?” he asked. “Is Sophie in danger?”
“She might be—”
“And I’m stuck here!” Underhill pounded his fist on the desk.
“Gilroy will be there in one minute. What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing.”
“You don’t usually smack the desk.”
“I’m worried, okay?”
“You and Natalie aren’t together anymore?”
He did a double-take, staring at me as if I were speaking an incomprehensible foreign language. “Of course we are. What are you talking about?”
“You and Sophie.”
“What about me and Sophie?”
“Oh, come on, Underhill. She’s drop-dead gorgeous and you know it. You were drooling over her.”
His eyes became slits. “She’s married, Rachel.”
“But you—”
“And she’s my sister-in-law. Maybe not technically, but as good as.”
He could have knocked me over with a feather. After I recovered my powers of speech, I said, quite brilliantly, “Since when?”
“Since thirteen months ago.”
“But she’s a Crawford, not an Underhill.”
“Her husband is my stepbrother. I wanted to keep my dad’s last name.”
“I had no idea.”
“Of course you didn’t. You don’t know anything about me.” He grumpily latched on to his coffee mug and headed for what was left of the dark black coffee in the station’s coffee machine.
“How would I know?” I asked.
He spun back on me. “You wouldn’t. That’s just the point. Gilroy knows. He knows who my stepbrother is and who Sophie is.”
“But he calls her Mrs. Crawford, not Sophie.”
“You know how he is. He always does that.”
“Sophie never said anything to me.”
“You only met her a few times at the library. Why would she tell you we’re related? Anyway, she probably thought you knew by now.”
I spread my hands. “You never said anything.”
“You never asked. You preferred to assume things about me instead of just asking. Is this why Julia was asking me weird questions and staring at me like I’d killed her cat?”
“She doesn’t have a cat.”
He glared at me, poured his coffee—it smelled like tar—and returned to his spot behind the desk.
“Underhill . . .”
“It’s funny, Rachel. I know all about you, but you know next to nothing about me. Why is that?”
“You never talk about yourself.”
“You never ask. You ask about cases all the time, but you’ve never once asked about my life.”
