Софи Райан - Telling Tails

Mr. P. and Mac were working on a new security system for the shop. They’d both laughed at my idea of the sound effect of a dog barking on a constant loop.

“Go ahead,” I said. “Rose and I will go talk to Nicole. We won’t be long.” We started for the front door. Jeff Cameron’s Jeep was parked in the driveway, wheels cut hard to the right.

Nicole had seen us and was waiting at the door in a flowered cotton skirt and a white tee. She led us into the living room, which was piled with boxes. A plate with a double-tipped cheese knife, half a pear and a chunk of cheddar sat on the coffee table. “I’m sorry for the mess,” she said, gesturing at them. “The rental company is pressing me to get Jeff and Leesa’s place cleared out.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “You have a lot to deal with. We won’t take much time.”

“I’m going to Boston,” she said. “I’ve already put in my resignation at the hospital. Jeff and Leesa’s apartment will have to be emptied and there are a lot of things to handle for their estates.”

“We understand,” Rose said. “I’m sure there are a lot of reminders here of what happened.”

Nicole nodded. “On the phone you said you had something for me.”

I handed her the box with the two candlesticks. “Your brother bought these the day he . . . died. They’re yours now.”

“Thank you,” she said. She turned the box over in her hands. “I still find it hard to believe Leesa did this. I thought she loved him.”

“Did Leesa tell you she’d hired a personal trainer?” Rose asked.

I shot her a warning look.

Nicole frowned. “No. She didn’t say anything to me. Why would she hire a trainer?”

“She wanted to run a half marathon,” Rose said.

“Jeff could have trained her for that.” Two frown lines appeared between her eyes. “Wait a minute. Are you saying you think this trainer could have killed my brother, not Leesa?”

Rose shook her head. “No, dear,” she said. “You did.”

Chapter 20

That wasn’t how I had planned things.

Everything seemed to happen next in slow motion. I moved toward Nicole, and at the same time she snatched the knife off the plate on the coffee table and grabbed Rose, pressing the serrated knife edge to the older woman’s neck. I came up short, one hand out in front of me in a stop motion.

“Don’t do this,” I said hoping she couldn’t see my arm shaking. I shouldn’t have let Rose and Mr. P. come with me. I should have taken a taxi. Or walked. Or tried to wrestle both of them out of the SUV.

“Back off,” Nicole said. Her voice was flat and cold.

I took a step backward and then another one, keeping my eyes locked on Rose’s face. She looked completely calm.

“I’m sorry, dear,” she said, reaching up to gently pat the arm that was pinning her tight to her captor’s body. “I shouldn’t have blurted that out. It was rude.”

I let my arm drop and tried to calculate whether I could rush Nicole before she could stab that knife into Rose’s neck. The math wasn’t in my favor.

“Do you mind if I ask about your grandmother?” Rose said. “You said she raised you.”

“Yes,” Nicole said.

“She must have loved you very much to take on that kind of responsibility.” She turned her head a little. “I have a grandson,” she continued. “The light of my life, and if anything happened to his mother and father I’d do the same thing. I couldn’t stand thinking about him being raised by strangers.”

Nicole’s eyes flicked away from my face for a moment. “That’s what Nana said. She said we were family and family sticks together.” Her face darkened and she tightened the arm around Rose’s chest.

“Your brother left when she died.”

I saw Nicole swallow hard. “I hate him,” she said, her voice suddenly raspy.

Rose sighed softly. “What did he do?” she asked.

She really wanted to know, I realized. She wasn’t stalling, trying to buy time. She really wanted to know what had driven Nicole Cameron to murder her brother and his wife.

“It doesn’t matter now,” Nicole said, so quietly I almost missed the words.

“It matters to you,” Rose said.

We stood frozen in place for what seemed like a very long moment. Then Nicole spoke again. “I had to go on a course, away, just for a few days, and Jeff said he would be around. Nana was taking beta-blockers for an irregular heartbeat but she was fine. She could have lived for a long time.”

“Oh, child,” Rose whispered.

“The doctor said she thought Nana had forgotten to take her pills.” A tear trailed down the younger woman’s cheek and she swiped it away with her free hand. “She wouldn’t have forgotten. There was nothing wrong with her memory.” She pressed her lips together for a moment. When she spoke again her voice was stronger. “The day she died, Jeff said she gave him some money and told him to go out and enjoy his life. But . . . but I know she wouldn’t have done that. She’d told me that it was time for Jeff to stand on his own two feet. And I knew she didn’t have any money. I think . . . think he replaced her pills with something else.”

“That’s horrible,” I said.

“It took me more than a year to settle everything,” Nicole continued. “I had to borrow money to have a funeral. I had student loans. I couldn’t keep the house. And I didn’t even know where Jeff was.” She was staring right at me, but it was as if she didn’t even see me. “He didn’t even show up for the funeral.” Her mouth moved and she swallowed. “It wasn’t until I was cleaning out the house that I found out about the money.” She looked at me. “You know about the money, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I said.

“It was gone. Every penny of it.”

“You’d been waiting a long time to get justice for your grandmother.” Nothing in Rose’s voice suggested she was in any kind of distress.

“I pretended I didn’t suspect anything,” Nicole said, and for the first time there was a hint of a smile on her face. “I pretended I was just happy to see Jeff when he came back. Nana always said patience is a virtue. When he told me he was planning on leaving Leesa, I knew it was time.”

“You set her up.” I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and managed to move a couple of inches closer to Rose.

“Do you have a dog?” Nicole asked.

I shook my head. “I have a cat. Elvis.” It seemed to have been the right answer.

“Dogs love you no matter what you do,” she said. “You kick them; you don’t feed them. They still love you. Leesa was like that—all blind loyalty to someone who didn’t deserve it.”

“It was you in the pink hoodie,” Rose said.

She nodded. “Yes.”

“What did you use for the body? I know it actually wasn’t your brother.”

A hint of the smile again. “A first aid mannequin I borrowed from the hospital. I’m strong. It was easy to pull it across the floor.”

“And easy for you to move Jeff,” I said. “When you did kill him for real.”

“You set me up to see the whole thing,” Rose said.

Nicole shifted a little, leaning forward so she was in Rose’s line of sight. I took advantage of her shift in attention to move a step closer to them.

“I’m sorry about that,” she said. “Jeff told me the story about you and your friend’s granddaughter and the cell phone. When he said he was having the candlesticks delivered—kind of a screw-you to Leesa—and was leaving her that night, I knew you showing up without a cell phone would help the plan. I told him not to hit you hard. I knew the methohexital would knock you out long enough for us to leave. I help out at a clinic once a month at a nursing home in Rockport. The dentist uses it with some of the seniors. I thought it was pretty smart of me to take some instead of something from the hospital. I didn’t mean for you to get hurt.”