This Old Homicide (30 page)

I hadn’t wanted to tell Jane who the killer was over the phone, but when she walked into Jesse’s house, I realized that I didn’t have to tell her a thing.

The killer was following right behind her.

My internal panic meter shot off the charts.

Maybe the killer was unaware that I knew. But then I shot Jane a wary glance and she returned it in triplicate. That was not a good thing. Now I understood why she hadn’t wanted to meet me here.

Never let them see your fear, my dad always said, so I straightened my shoulders and slapped a smile on my face.

“Hello, Althea.”

She nodded. “Shannon. Why don’t you two ladies have a seat?”

“I’d just as soon stand,” I said. “I’ve got to get back home to—”

“It wasn’t a suggestion,” she said, cutting me off. Pulling a small but deadly gun out of her jacket pocket, she waved it toward the two spindly wooden chairs facing the sofa. “Sit down.”

I didn’t budge, so Jane grabbed my hand and pulled me over to the chairs.

“Althea, you don’t have to do this,” Jane said. Her voice was shaking and I knew she was scared to death. I was, too, but I’d learned a few months ago that it was a good idea to try to keep someone talking if she was aiming a gun at you. Whatever it took to prolong the moment. I took a deep breath and plunged in.

“I’ve already connected some of the dots,” I said conversationally, “but maybe you can fill in a few blanks for me.”

“By all means,” she said acerbically.

“Did you kill Andrew Braxton?”

“Ah, my devoted stepson. He lost track of me when I changed my last name and moved up north. I should’ve changed my first name, too, because that’s how he finally found me. Through the shop.”

“Why didn’t you change your first name?”

“Because I love my name. It’s pretty.” Her bottom lip stuck out in a pout. “It was the perfect name for my shop.”

I’d never seen her narcissistic side until now. It was illuminating.

“Why was he trying to find you?” Jane asked.

Althea sneered. “He had this romantic notion that I had somehow coerced his father into changing his will and leaving me all his money. And then I killed him, according to Andrew.”

“Did you?”

“Harold was crazy about me,” she said, her tone blasé. “And his greatest wish was for me to be happy.”

“And once he was dead and you had his money,” I said, “his wish came true.”

“You’ve got a smart mouth,” she said.

“Are you going to tell me you didn’t have anything to do with Harold’s death?”

“He had a heart attack and died, boo-hoo,” she said flippantly. “I got the money and the boat and moved away. Andrew should’ve been happy to see the last of me, but no. He couldn’t deal with not getting any of Daddy’s money. He refused to let it go.”

As long as she was willing to talk, I had a few more questions that had come up when I was doing my online research last night. “According to some accounts, you slowly poisoned your first husband years before you met Harold. Was that true?”

“
Moi?
Poison?” She splayed her hands and shrugged to indicate she was clueless about any such thing. “Nobody could ever prove that.”

According to the old newspaper I found online, she was right. They never proved that she’d poisoned her first husband. But seeing her with a gun in her hand, I knew she’d done it. This would teach me to trust my first impressions. I’d been suspicious of her from the beginning and I should’ve gone with those feelings. Althea Tannis was a predatory psychopath, and now she didn’t care if we knew it or not.

“Harold died five long years ago,” she said easily as she walked over to the fireplace mantel and grabbed the roll of duct tape there. “I thought I was home free all this time, but eventually Andrew found me. I had no choice but to take care of him. He would’ve hounded me forever.”

She had just confessed to killing Andrew Braxton, but frankly I was more concerned that she’d known she would find a roll of duct tape on the mantel. I exchanged a furtive glance with Jane. Had Althea placed the tape there ahead of time? Was luring us here her plan all along? I suddenly felt as though I’d played right into her hands, but that was impossible.

“So you killed him,” I said, trying to keep the conversation going.

Her smile was crafty. “He had those drugs already in his briefcase. Who would’ve thought he was suicidal? But I guess he missed his daddy too much to go on living.”

“The police already suspect it was murder,” I said.

“Maybe so, but they don’t suspect it was me.”

“One of the hotel staff knew there was a woman in his room. It won’t take the cops long to narrow down the possibilities.”

She glared up at me. “That’s bull.”

“They smelled your perfume.”

“Oh.” She sniffed at her wrist. “I suppose it’s a flaw of mine, but I can’t help it. I do love my Valentino. Damn it, now I suppose I’ll have to stop wearing it.”

Althea handed the roll of duct tape to Jane. “Tear off four long pieces for me.”

“No.” Jane tossed the roll of duct tape across the room.

Without warning, Althea smacked her across the face. I screamed. The woman was horrible!

She retrieved the tape and handed it back to Jane. “You’d be smart to remember who’s got a gun pointed at you.”

Jane’s jaw was tighter than I’d ever seen it. I was feeling pretty tense, too, as Jane began ripping off lengths of duct tape and handing them to Althea.

“That’s better,” the woman said. Slipping the gun into her jacket pocket, she circled around Jane, grabbed hold of both her arms, and yanked them backward.

Jane let out a shriek, pulled her arms away, and jumped up from the chair. “What’re you doing?”

“Making sure you don’t go anywhere.” She yanked the gun from her pocket and shoved it in Jane’s stomach. “Now sit down.”

“You’re sick!” Jane shouted.

“Quiet, or I’ll shut you up permanently.”

“You’re going to anyway, so why should I care?” And Jane suddenly screamed louder than I’d ever heard her scream.

Althea smacked her face again. “I said be quiet!”

“Screw you!” Jane shouted.

Althea turned and pointed the gun right in my face. “Sit down, Jane, or I’ll kill your friend right now.”

I couldn’t breathe. I was frozen in fear, but I’d never been more proud of Jane. I prayed that we’d both live through this and make Althea pay for every hideous thing she’d done to us. I cringed as I recalled thinking that my dad might actually like to meet Althea Tannis. I really needed to work on my taste in people.

Grudgingly Jane sat and Althea wrapped Jane’s wrists together behind her chair. Then she knelt down and taped Jane’s ankles to the wooden chair legs. This time, she kept the gun on the floor right beside her knee. I knew that if I tried to make a move for the gun, she would be able to grab it faster. God only knew what she would do then.

“That’s a good girl,” Althea crooned.

“Oh, shut up,” Jane muttered.

Althea chuckled.

I wasn’t sure I could speak, but I had to try to distract her from hurting Jane further.

“I figured out last night that you were coming here by boat,” I said. “I went through the traffic camera reports and they’d never recorded your car coming or going from Lighthouse Cove. That’s when I realized I had never seen you drive up in a car.”

“Aren’t you clever?” She pointed the gun at my head and handed me the duct tape. “I’m going to need more tape strips.”

I had no choice but to start tearing off pieces and handing them to her.

“Now, hold still,” she warned, and knelt behind me. I couldn’t see her, couldn’t see where the gun was, but I felt her taping my right ankle to the chair. I thought she planned to ignore my comment about driving, but then she began to talk. “When I first heard that they were installing cameras on the 101, I stopped driving that route. Besides, it’s faster by boat. I pull in to the marina and—”

“It’s only a short walk to Jesse’s house,” I finished for her. Earlier I had driven to Blue Point to speak with the harbormaster, who had verified that Althea traveled by boat almost every day. And for the past three weeks, she had taken the boat out almost every night around sunset and returned sometime before dawn.

“Right again,” she muttered, clearly unhappy with me. She proved it by wrenching my left ankle painfully.

Instinctively I kicked back, hitting her hand.

“Watch it,” she snarled, standing up and slapping my ear hard enough to cause my eyes to cross.

“You watch it,” I snapped. It was a juvenile response, but I couldn’t help it. She was a nasty bully.

Pointing the gun at me, she snarled, “Put your hands behind the chair.” To help me along, she grabbed one of my arms and twisted it back.

I couldn’t help but jerk my arm away from her.

“I’m going to give you one last chance to avoid having me put a bullet in your head.”

I froze at her words, and she quickly wrapped the tape around my wrists. But she was agitated and in more of a hurry now, and I felt the tape give a little. If I could just squeeze one of my hands out, I could grab her gun…

Althea began to pace in front of us, waving the gun back and forth between me and Jane. “Andrew followed me to Jesse’s house one night and confronted me. I have to hand it to the little putz. He had some nerve. He told me he couldn’t prove it yet, but he knew I killed his father and he was never going to stop searching for evidence.”

“So you killed him,” I said.

“It would’ve been so perfect to kill him in Jesse’s house,” she said, “but in the middle of our argument, we heard someone scream outside and I ran out the back door. Andrew must’ve stayed inside, because I didn’t see him again until he checked into the hotel.”

I was the person who’d screamed, I thought in disgust. That was the night Andrew managed to snap a few pictures of Mac and me. So we had just missed Althea by seconds and it was indeed my scream that had alerted her, damn it.

“Why was he taking pictures?”

“He’s always got that stupid phone. He posts photos of every little detail of his life on social media. He followed me to Jesse’s house, but I got out of there before he could snap my picture. He was trying to build a case against me. And when he found out about Jesse, he figured I’d had something to do with his death. He followed me everywhere. He snuck into the memorial service and saw me talking to Jane. He checked her out and that’s when he made that reservation at the B-and-B. All in hopes of gathering evidence to prove I killed Jesse. If he could prove that, then he could try to connect it to Harold’s death. But he was too stupid to make it work.”

“Wait a minute,” Jane said. “Were you the one who canceled Andrew’s reservation at Hennessey House?”

“Why, yes, that was me,” she said smugly. “I was giving myself a little tour of your cozy little establishment and happened to take a peek at your guest list for the week. When I saw Andrew’s name, I had to do something, so I walked outside and down the street to make the call. I told your little helper that I was a doctor in the emergency room.”

“What good did it do to cancel his reservation?” Jane asked.

“It made me laugh,” she said. “It felt good to screw with his plans.”

She told us that she had showed up at Andrew’s hotel room the first night he was there and threatened to destroy him if he harassed her anymore. He threatened to call the police and unmask her, so she left. But she came back a few days later and cajoled him into letting her come inside so they could have a heart-to-heart talk.

“He believed me. What a sap. First thing I saw was his open briefcase. When he looked away for a moment to check a text message he’d received on that damn phone of his, I grabbed a syringe and shoved it into his neck.”

She didn’t even know what was in it, she said, but she knew Andrew specialized in the latest opiates and psychotropic drugs. It did the trick. He passed out.

She checked some of the other drugs in his bag and found some strong barbiturates. She injected those as well, and within minutes, he was dead from some horrible multidrug cocktail. She left the syringe in his arm, carefully wiping it clean, then typed out the suicide note. After that, she cleaned up any surfaces she might have touched, including the keyboard, and then snuck down the back stairway and exited through the alley.

Jane and I sat in stunned silence for a moment while she strutted in front of us like some kind of conceited rooster. I wondered why she didn’t simply use her gun to shoot us. Why bother with the duct tape? But in that moment I remembered what Mac had said about the deaths of Jesse and Andrew and the suspicious coma that Bob had slipped into. They were nuanced attacks, he’d said. She didn’t like guns, but apparently she would use them to get what she wanted out of her victims. So how did she plan to kill Jane and me? The question disturbed me a lot.

“Why did you kill Jesse?” I asked finally.

She stopped and considered me for a moment. “I honestly didn’t mean to. He was a sweet guy. And quite accomplished in bed.”

I glanced at Jane, who stared at Althea with absolute hatred. I’d never seen that look on Jane’s face before, but I didn’t blame her one bit. The woman belonged in hell.

But I was determined to keep her talking. “Did you really meet him in an exercise class?”

“Are you kidding?” she said, and laughed. “No, that was a good little lie. We met two years ago when he was trying to sell the necklace. He came into my shop.”

“But you sell clothing.”

“And vintage jewelry.”

Damn it! I’d seen the jewelry in her store and hadn’t even thought about connecting it to Jesse. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I’d been so suspicious of Althea from the beginning, but when I walked into her shop, I noticed the clothing. The antique jewelry was a mere sideline.

I was the worst amateur investigator on the planet.

“The minute I saw that necklace,” Althea said, practically crooning now, “I knew I had to have it. But I wasn’t about to give him money for it. No, in that very moment, I knew what I would have to do to get it. I used a little reverse psychology, told him not to sell it, but to give it to his wife. He told me he’d never been married and had no children, but he had a beautiful niece he could bequeath it to.”