THE DEEP END (22 page)

Twenty-Five

No way had Madeline spent any time in her kitchen. She probably hadn’t even known where it was. Say what you will about her non-existent morals, her sexual proclivities or her talent for causing trouble, the woman had possessed good taste. She’d had no hand in the harvest gold and pumpkin orange wallpaper or the dated cabinets. The kitchen was dreadful. Add a comatose middle-aged man in his bathrobe and a leather-clad dominatrix and it was downright awful.

I stopped noticing the walls when the ambulance arrived. I was too busy shrinking into the breakfast nook while men with blood pressure cuffs and needles and a gurney swarmed around Roger.

“Is he going to be all right?” I asked.

One of the paramedics grunted and then they all ignored me. They had a harder time ignoring the leather-clad dominatrix. Only the man monitoring Roger’s vitals kept his eyes on his work, the rest ogled.

I tried to shrink further into the nook when Detective Jones arrived, but a dying Swedish ivy in a macramé hanger whapped me between the eyes. It hurt like hell. Turns out cursing in a crowded room is a fairly effective way of gathering all the attention you don’t want. Lesson learned.

Kathleen O’Malley tittered, Detective Jones glared, and I closed my watering eyes and rubbed the bridge of my nose.

“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” the detective asked.

There was an option? If I didn’t want to tell him, I could leave? I’d go to the farm and move in. Grace could spend her summer in horse heaven, Max could chase varmints to his heart’s content, and I could paint. If wishes were horses...

I opened my eyes to find a very stern Detective Anarchy Jones standing in front of me with his arms crossed. The fingers of his left hand drummed against his right bicep.

“Miss O’Malley stopped by to visit Roger. When she found him with his head in the oven, she called me.”

The fingers drummed faster. “Why did Miss O’Malley call you?”

“You’d have to ask her.”

Arms still crossed, Detective Jones turned toward Mistress K. “Why?”

Her smile was kitten sweet. “Mrs. Russell introduced me to Roger.”

Oh dear Lord, what a bitch. I attempted to mimic her kittenish smile then abandoned the effort. It wasn’t working and even if it did, I wouldn’t look sultry or sexy, I’d look like a simpering fool. The distant, chilly smile I’d spent years perfecting at the country club slid into place. “That’s not exactly correct. Mr. Harper met Miss O’Malley before I did. I did not introduce them.”

“How did you meet Miss O’Malley?”

My cheeks warmed, but I kept the chilly smile on my lips. “At her club.”

“That’s where, not how, Mrs. Russell.”

Mrs. Russell, again. I searched his face. Same dark hair, same lean cheeks, same brown eyes. Except, those eyes didn’t look remotely nice anymore.

My chilly smile slipped away. “Mr. Harper wanted to see where his wife and my husband had been spending their time.” My cheeks weren’t warm anymore. Nope, they flamed hotter than a barbeque grill. I covered them with the tips of my fingers. “We drove there together.”

Detective Jones shifted his gaze back to Miss O’Malley, Mistress K. He assessed the black leather pants, the stiletto heels, the bustier barely containing an abundance of rounded flesh, the whip on her left hip, and the flogger on her right. So did the men who were taking an unconscionably long time cleaning up after wheeling Roger to the ambulance.

My skirt, a navy wrap that reversed to a ladybug print, was long enough to cover the scabs on my knees. Coupled with a white linen camp shirt, it felt downright dowdy. I fingered the bow tied at my waist.

“I take it Mr. Harper returned to your club?”

The tip of Mistress K’s pink tongue moistened her already glistening lips. “Take what you want.” She tried the kitten smile again.

“Yes or no, Miss O’Malley?”

She gave up on the smile. Instead her lower lip, pouty, red, and as full as a down sofa cushion extended. “Yes.” Somehow, she managed to make that one word sound like an invitation and a promise.

“Did Mrs. Russell return to your club?”

Heat rose from my toes to my hairline. How could he think such a thing? Ask such a thing?

“You’re serious?” Mistress K snorted. “Look at her. Henry told me the most adventurous thing she’s ever done is go to a swingers’ party. Even then she left as soon as she figured it out.” When Mistress K laughed her breasts looked like they might spill over the top of her bustier. “She fished their keys out of the bowl and left. Henry was furious. Well, at least until he ended up in a threesome. Then it became an amusing story.”

I remembered that night and the skin-crawling realization that Henry was willing to let another man have me so long as he got access to that man’s wife.

Of course, I’d walked out.

I was stodgy. I was boring. I believed in monogamy. I believed marriage should be a partnership not a power exchange. I forced myself to look into Detective Jones’ brown eyes. Let him judge me, I wasn’t backing down from who I was or what I believed.

His eyes were marginally nicer, almost like he felt bad for embarrassing me in front of a room full of lingering paramedics. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he didn’t feel bad. Maybe I saw pity.

I swallowed around the lump in my throat, took one very deep breath, then picked up my handbag from the breakfast table. “When I arrived here this morning, Miss O’Malley led me to the kitchen. Roger’s head was in the oven and she showed me the note on the counter.” I pointed to the piece of paper. “She thought Roger was dead from gas, but the Harpers’ oven has been broken for months. I pulled Roger out of the oven, determined he wasn’t dead, and called an ambulance.” I tightened my grip on my handbag. “Someone staged Roger’s suicide. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to see my daughter.”

I stepped out of the nook, sidled past a gawking paramedic, and achieved the doorway without looking over my shoulder.

“Mrs. Russell, wait.” Unless he arrested me, I wasn’t listening to Detective Jones anymore.

I kept walking.

“Ellison.” Even with my back turned I could sense Mistress K’s eyebrows rise at his use of my first name.

My damn foot paused in mid-air. Fortunately, Hunter chose that moment to arrive. He wore a navy suit, a striped tie, and polished wingtips. Safe. Familiar. Just stodgy enough to limit his sexual adventures to one woman at a time. I hurried toward him. “Please. Get me out of here.”

Hunter glared down the length of the hallway, closed a hand around my elbow, and led me into the morning sunshine. His steps slowed. “Are you okay? Who in the hell was that?”

He didn’t mean Detective Jones. “That was Kathleen O’Malley.”

“Who?”

“Mistress K. Henry and Madeline frequented her club.” Roger had too. Three people, two of them were dead, and the third looked like he might join them at any moment. Had I overlooked a suspect? Was Mistress K a killer?

He shuddered. “Dreadful looking woman.”

I studied his face. The corner of his lip was curled and his nose was wrinkled as if he’d smelled something distasteful. He meant it. Hunter didn’t find Kathleen, her leather, her whips or her over-taxed bustier remotely attractive. I smiled at him. Not the chilly smile.

“What happened here?” Hunter asked.

“Someone tried to kill Roger Harper and make it look like a suicide.”

Hunter froze for an instant. If I hadn’t been walking next to him, I might not have noticed the sudden stillness and then the return to movement.

“What?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

He glanced toward the front of the Harper’s colonial home. The hunter green door was closed, the shades were drawn and still he whispered. “I’ll follow you home and tell you about it there.”

Aggie opened the front door as soon as we pulled in the driveway. “Your mother just called, Mrs. Russell. She wanted to know what you were doing at the Harpers’.”

God save me from nosy neighbors. They were everywhere. I glanced at my car. Perhaps I should invest in something less distinctive. Maybe a blue Volvo station wagon like half the mothers at the country club. Perhaps a Mercedes sedan in boring black. My British racing green Triumph was far too distinctive.

“Your sister called,” Aggie continued.

Marjorie? It was official. Hell had frozen over. After Mother’s less than warm welcome of Marjorie’s husband, communication with my sister was as rare as an honest politician.

Hunter’s hand at the small of my back propelled me inside. “I have things to tell you.”

The envelopes. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what was in the envelopes. One look at the grim expression on Hunter’s face told me I didn’t have a choice.

Hunter settled onto one of the stools at the kitchen island. He opened a briefcase he’d carried in from his car and withdrew two stacks of documents—one of too familiar envelopes, the other of file folders.

“Iced tea?” Aggie asked.

Hunter nodded.

I shook my head. “Tab. I’ll get it.” I opened the refrigerator and closed my fingers around a pink can.

With drinks in front of us, there was no avoiding discussing the envelopes. I still tried. “I really ought to head up to the farm.”

Hunter shook his head. No way was he letting me off the hook so easily. “Do you know Rand Hamilton?”

We belonged to different country clubs. Our children went to different schools. I’d seen his envelope in Henry’s safe and wondered how their paths had crossed. “Not well. I knew Rebecca a bit from the tennis league. She was nice.”

“She died.”

I nodded. I hadn’t known her well enough to take Rand a Bundt cake. Instead, I’d sent a note and a check in her memory to a local charity. “She’d been drinking and she went swimming alone. She drowned.” Almost like Madeline. My mouth went dry and my heart beat faster.

Hunter picked up the envelope with Rand Hamilton’s name on it. “What if I told you Rand killed her?”

My stomach dropped to my skinned knees. Rand had murdered Rebecca? What the hell was in that envelope? “I’d tell you my husband was a bigger idiot than I thought.” I’d thought Henry had limited his blackmail to upstanding citizens eager to keep their sexual exploits quiet. Instead, he’d blackmailed a murderer. No wonder he was dead.

Hunter’s lip twitched. Once. Twice. Then it curled into something resembling a sneer. “Idiot isn’t the word I’d use to describe your husband.”

“Maybe not,” I ceded. But calling him a moron in front of Aggie seemed harsh. Almost as harsh as adding that if he wasn’t already dead, I’d kill him for endangering Grace. What had he been thinking? It wasn’t like we needed the money. I took a slow sip of Tab to relieve the dryness in my mouth. There was nothing I could do about the racing of my heart. Maybe it hadn’t been about money. Maybe Henry had blackmailed his peers to feel powerful.

Rand Hamilton.

Respected stockbroker.

Perennial runner-up at the Worm Burner Tournament as a guest player at the club.

Murderer.

“What’s Hamilton’s middle name?” I asked.

Hunter opened a slim file folder. “Butler.”

“What about his wife?” I asked. “What was her maiden name?”

Hunter lifted a brow. “Why do you ask?”

“The golf club,” Aggie said. “The one that killed Mr. Russell. It was engraved with initials. R.A.H.” She shrugged and offered me an apologetic smile. “The police were talking about it.”

No flies on Aggie.

Hunter opened the file folder then pulled out a news clipping. “Rebecca Hamilton née Alling.”

R.A.H. No one moved. We watched the condensation run down the sides of Hunter’s glass and considered the possibility that Rand Hamilton had killed Henry with his dead wife’s golf club.

I broke the silence. “It looked like a man’s club.”

Hunter nodded as if he agreed but said, “Plenty of women play with men’s clubs.”

Maybe, but I was having a hard time imagining Rand Hamilton with his paunch and his comb-over and his stick legs whacking Henry over the head with a golf club. Then again, by all accounts he had a nice backswing. I shook my head. It didn’t feel right. “I’m not sure Henry’s victims knew he was the blackmailer.”

Hunter’s eyes narrowed. I’d asked him to put in an unconscionable amount of work researching a potential murderer, he’d seen things in those envelopes he could never unsee, and now I wasn’t sure the murderer was one of Henry’s blackmail victims.

It was Aggie who spoke. “Why do you say that?”

I took another sip of Tab, ignored Hunter’s dire expression and said, “Barb Evans.”

“Barb Evans?” Hunter repeated.

Aggie went digging through the pile of envelopes. “She’s the one who embezzled from the Junior League.”

I choked on my soda. Barb Evans had embezzled? From the League? Was she insane? No more so than Randall Hamilton, and according to the information Henry had collected he’d killed his wife. And to think, I’d assumed all the envelopes contained pictures of sex acts.

“How much?”

Aggie pulled the papers out of the envelope and looked. “Ten thousand. She put it back, but borrowing without permission is still stealing.”

Borrowing without permission versus allowing someone to spank you until your ass was the color of a brick sidewalk. All things being equal, I was more willing to accept embezzlement. Other league members might not be as forgiving. I put my elbows on the counter then dropped my face to my hands so the heels of my palms pressed into my eyes. Embezzlement. Kinky sex. Murder. What else did the envelopes hold?

I took a deep breath then raised my head to gaze at Hunter. His expression was serious and lawyerly. He looked smart and competent and utterly sure of himself.

He’d decided Rand’s guilt. Rand might have access to a golf club engraved with R.A.H. If Rand knew Madeleine and Henry were the blackmailers, he had an excellent reason to kill them. Even if Rand hadn’t killed Madeline and Henry or tried to kill Roger, he’d still killed his wife. How in the hell was I going to turn Rand in without revealing Henry’s blackmailing?

“Why did he kill Rebecca?” I asked.

“Insurance money,” said Aggie. “You always got to look at the insurance policies. Tell us about Barb Evans.”

“She brought a Bundt cake to Mother’s.”

They both stared at me as they were still waiting for an explanation.

“I’d swear she didn’t know Henry was the one who was blackmailing her.”

Aggie reached across the counter and pulled the remaining stack of neatly labeled file folders toward her. She opened one and shuffled through a stack of papers. “Barbara Evans was the president of the thespian club her junior and senior year of college.”

“You think she was acting?”

My ersatz housekeeper nodded.

I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

Hunter frowned at me. “No one thinks Barb Evans murdered your husband.”

“If Barb didn’t know Henry was the blackmailer maybe Rand didn’t either.”

“Or maybe he did,” said Aggie.

I rubbed the back of my neck. “Or maybe it was someone else.”

“You offered us twenty potential killers.” Hunter’s frown darkened to a scowl. “Are there more?”

“I think maybe it could be Kitty Ballew or Prudence Davies.”

“Who?” Aggie asked.

Hunter held up his hand to stop us from following the tangent I’d introduced any further. His right hand.

I stared at his fingers. There was an easy way to settle this. “Was Rebecca Hamilton right-handed or left-handed?”

My question required more searching of papers in the file. After a moment, Hunter gathered all the sheets in his hands then tapped them against the counter until they were in perfect alignment. “I don’t know.”

Neither did I, but I could figure it out. “I played tennis with her once or twice. Doubles matches. She wasn’t very good. I remember Rebecca and her partner tripping over each other for balls in the center court. They both favored their forehands.”

Aggie grinned at me like I was a precocious child. “The golf club they found was left-handed. Was Mrs. Hamilton?”

“I don’t remember. I just remember her running into Lilly Greyson.” Who’d been the left-handed player? For the life of me, I couldn’t remember.

“Call her and ask.” Hunter’s voice brooked no dissent.

I held out my hands with fingers spread then shrugged. “I can’t. Now that her kids are grown, she’s summering in France. I have no idea how to get a hold of her.”

Hunter’s jaw, always square and firm, tightened as if he was gritting his teeth. The expression in his eyes was as hard as granite. “Aggie, would you give us a moment please?”

Aggie took one look at Hunter’s jaw and hurried out of the kitchen in a swirl of purple muumuu.

“Someone has killed two people and tried to kill a third.” He stood, circled the counter then stood behind me to rest his hands on my shoulders. “You have to take this seriously.”

I twisted on my stool to look at him. “I am.”

He shook his silver head, the expression in his eyes softened, and he squeezed my shoulders gently. “Not seriously enough. I’m worried you’ll be next.”