Lurleen talked to Stephanie the next day. Police officers coming to her seance didn’t seem to change her plans. In fact, she seemed to think it was a good idea, which of course made us wonder what she was up to.
The gathering was scheduled to begin at 8:00 p.m. with the seance at 8:30. Danny, Lurleen, Mason and I arrived around 7:45 to get the lay of the land.
Stephanie greeted us in a long flowing gown and wore a turban on her head that hid her brown hair. “Appropriate to the seance,” she said. “I take this all very seriously and try to look and act the part.”
Jonathan sat in a wheelchair beside the door. He looked pale but appeared happy to see us.
“I’ll hold down the fort and welcome people as they enter,” he said. “Some of our neighbors heard about Josephine on the news and begged to come when they heard about the seance. I’m sure many of them are here for their own ghoulish interest in the macabre or to spread gossip about our family. The seance is nonsense, but if it helps Stephanie feel better I won’t stand in her way.”
“I told you he was a non-believer,” Stephanie said. She turned to him. “I don’t mind what you think. I’m just glad you’re home and safe.”
Dawn entered the house as Stephanie finished speaking. “Lurleen and Ditie, it’s good to see you here. We all need to support one another at times like these. My husband, Ralph, is at home with the boys, but I’m happy to do whatever I can to help.”
Lurleen introduced her to Mason. She shook his hand and turned to Danny.
“You’re the one who protected us from Ben Ash. I thought he was the person who killed Nicole, so of course, I was shocked when Josephine confessed.”
Dawn shook Jonathan’s hand and kissed Stephanie on the cheek. “Such sad times,” she said and seemed to mean it.
Stephanie hung up our coats and moved us away from the door. She introduced us to the few people who were neighbors and urged us all to get something to eat. “We won’t be starting for another half hour.”
We watched as people headed to the kitchen where I spotted a catering crew at work.
“I made it a virtual open house for the neighborhood,” Stephanie said, “in honor of Jonathan’s return home.”
“Jonathan made it sound as if he thought some people were here for gossip and the gory details,” Lurleen said.
“I don’t care why they’re here,” Stephanie said. “I want to help Aunt Josie, and I want the dearly departed to rest in peace.”
“You must be devastated about Josephine,” I said. It wasn’t the most polite thing to say but it was the elephant in the room.
“Of course I am,” Stephanie said, “but my aunt is strong, and she’ll survive this.”
I wasn’t sure what that meant, but it didn’t seem to be the right time to ask. A waiter whisked us into the dining room and offered us a brew.
He meant that quite literally as he tried to hand us a frothing black concoction in mugs. “Midnight Fog,” he said, “delicious.”
“We’ll take your word for it,” Mason said. “Any water available?”
“Or white wine?” I asked.
He gave us what we requested, and we walked into the kitchen to see a small group of caterers busy fixing finger foods.
Mason nudged me. One of them was Kevin Delaney. He’d hidden his trademark red hair under a cap and didn’t make eye contact with us. We passed through the kitchen without a word and onto the back deck. The house was a lot like ours, a bungalow with a deck added on the back. Danny, Mason, Lurleen and I found a wrought iron table away from the back door and settled around it.
“Do you think there is anything we should be doing?” I asked.
“We should stick together,” Mason said. “I still don’t know what this party is all about or why Kevin agreed to it.”
Two men, dressed as waiters, stood at either end of the deck. They nodded at Mason and he nodded back. We watched as one of them went inside and returned a few minutes later with a plate full of cheese and crackers, which he set on the table.
‘“I assume those are police in disguise, and I guess they’re expecting light duty,” I said.
“I hope they’re right,” Mason said.
We heard a bell ring at half past eight. This was how Stephanie had started our original book club meeting, with a bell, a dimming of lights and the lighting of candles. We went inside to see candles everywhere. Stephanie struck the bell once more.
“Please, may I have your attention?”
Everyone quieted.
“This is a celebration for the safe return of my husband from several days in the hospital and it is also a gentle farewell to our friend Nicole.”
She didn’t mention it was a forgiveness gathering for her Aunt Josephine. Perhaps that information was meant only for her inner circle.
Stephanie raised her foaming cup of Midnight Fog and others joined her.
“I know many of you never met Nicole. She was my ex-sister-in-law and I’ll admit we didn’t always get along. However, we reconciled before she died, and I’m grateful for that. We’ll be holding a small gathering in the den for those of you who knew Nicole. The rest of you should continue to enjoy the party.”
She motioned for Lurleen, Dawn and me to join her. We followed her down a hallway to an open door. Mason and Danny stayed close behind us as did several other people I didn’t know.
“Everyone is welcome in this room as long as you are respectful and silent,” Stephanie said. “Lurleen, Ditie and Dawn, I will ask you to sit at the table. I’m expecting Crystal and Nate to come momentarily. The rest of you may sit in the chairs lining the walls.”
The room filled quickly with people I didn’t know, most likely neighbors.
Lurleen and I sat side by side at a round table with seven chairs. I wondered who that seventh chair was for. Josephine was in jail, so it wasn’t for her. Maybe it was for Nicole in case she chose to appear.
Stephanie left us and returned a minute later with Crystal and a man I assumed was Nate. He wore a costume that made him look like Dracula.
“Nate?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Why the outfit?”
“Nate thought the whole thing was ridiculous,” Crystal said, “so he’s here under protest and only to support Stephanie and Jonathan.”
“I’m here, that’s enough,” he said. He spoke with a Bela Lugosi accent and let out a terrifying laugh.
Crystal and Nate—if it was Nate—sat in two of the chairs around the table.
Stephanie left the room and returned with Adeline on her arm. Adeline wasn’t smiling, but she took a seat beside Stephanie.
Mason stood and slipped out the door. He returned with one of the pseudo waiters. It appeared he expected trouble.
Stephanie closed the door after the ‘waiter’ entered. “This seance is primarily for my Aunt Josie. As I’m sure everyone in this room knows, my aunt confessed to murdering Nicole. She’s asked me to raise Nicole’s spirit if we can do that and beg for her forgiveness. We owe this to Nicole and to Josephine. ”
She lit a large candle in the center of the table. She asked Mason to turn off the overhead lights, which he did. He remained standing near the closed door.
“Now,” Stephanie said, “those of us around the table will hold hands. We’ll take a minute to breathe deeply and leave the outside world behind. If any of you at the table wish to speak, please do so. It might be something you remember about Nicole or even something you wish you could forget about her. All comments are welcome but only from those of you seated at the table. I will ask the rest of you to remain silent. While this is not a formal seance with a trained spiritual guide, I have seen instances where the presence of the deceased is felt and the words of the deceased come through the voice of another.”
Okay, this was getting weird. We waited in silence.
“I will start,” Stephanie said. “I met Nicole in college and we had a long and sometimes difficult relationship. Nicole could be charming and warm. That’s what I thought when I introduced her to my brother, and he was as taken with her as I was. Over time I began to see how two-faced she could be. She claimed to adore my brother when she was in his presence, but when she was away from him, she’d bad-mouth him, call him spineless and unable to stand up to my father.”
“Some send-off,” Lurleen whispered. “Don’t let Stephanie do a memorial service for me if I drop dead.”
“Hush,” Stephanie said. “Even the quietest murmurs can upset the spirits.”
She waited a few seconds. “As I said, I began to realize Nicole could not be trusted. I began to see her as a gold digger. I tried to warn my brother not to marry her, but Don Junior refused to listen.”
Lurleen started to whisper something else to me, but Stephanie stopped her.
“I expected this kind of disrespect from a non-believer, perhaps Dr. Brown, but I didn’t expect it from you, Lurleen.”
“I apologize,” Lurleen said, “but this doesn’t feel like a gentle send-off for Nicole. It sounds more like a blood bath for a woman who can’t defend herself.”
“You’re right,” Stephanie said, “but you haven’t let me finish my eulogy. I saw all the bad in Nicole and none of the good until much, much later.”
I did my best to show no emotion. As far as I could tell there wasn’t a lot of good to discover in Nicole, not that she deserved to die because of that.
Stephanie continued. “The good I found in her had to do with her love for my brother Luke who died so unexpectedly.”
Did Stephanie honestly not know that her Aunt Josephine was the boy’s mother? I couldn’t buy that. I looked at Lurleen and she seemed to be wearing the same expression, one of total disbelief.
“When Luke went into the hospital for abdominal pains, Nicole stayed with him. She stayed with him day and night until he died, and she was as crushed by his death as the rest of us were. That made me realize she had a good heart. Nicole took care of all of the funeral arrangements while the rest of us grieved. That’s what I know about Nicole.”
For a moment there was silence. Then Crystal spoke. “I had a similar experience to yours, Stephanie. Nicole and I were neighbors, as many of you know. Nicole told us what a hard time she had over Luke’s death and that her marriage to Don Junior couldn’t bear the strain of his death. I came to know her well after she married Ben Ash, and we became good friends.
“Then Nicole did something that I thought I could never forgive her for doing. She had an affair with my husband and broke up my marriage. She said she wanted me to see how bad he was and how untrustworthy. Nicole said I wouldn’t believe her if she simply told me about him. She had to demonstrate his betrayal. I found them together in our bedroom, and I thought that would be the end of our friendship. But gradually I understood that what she had done was really to save me from a husband I couldn’t trust.”
“None of that is true!” A voice seemed to come from nowhere. Then the voice began again . . . from Adeline of all people. Only it wasn’t her voice. It was softer with a Southern accent. It sounded a bit like Nicole.
“It was you, Crystal, who broke up my marriage to Ben not the other way around. It was you who tried to convince me Ben was bad.”
Crystal stared at Adeline.
“He was bad,” Crystal said.
“He was jealous, that’s all he was. When he saw me with someone else, he couldn’t stand it. That’s how much he loved me.”
Lurleen couldn’t seem to stay out of the exchange. “We saw the bruises on your arms, Nicole. He was abusing you.” She spoke as if she were speaking to Nicole, and Adeline responded in kind.
“That’s what men do sometimes when they really love a woman. It was Crystal who destroyed me.”
“Are you saying Crystal murdered you?” Lurleen asked.
“I don’t know,” Adeline said with her soft Southern drawl. “I fell asleep, maybe something in the wine, something Crystal gave me, perhaps. Maybe someone else killed me—I don’t know.”
Stephanie spoke up. “I was there, outside the house that night when it happened. I saw my aunt come and go and I worried she might return. I knew she thought Nicole might have caused Luke’s death, and I was afraid of what she might do. But she never returned. Instead, I saw two people leave the house around the time Nicole was killed. First, Crystal, and then a man.”
“It’s a lie,” a male voice said. “It’s all a lie. No one saw anything.”
This came from our masked man claiming to be Nate. Only now, he didn’t sound like Nate.
We watched as he overturned the table in what felt like slow motion. The candle slid to the floor and ignited the edge of the tablecloth as it fell.
Our masked man stood with a gun pointed at Stephanie. Big Tom came from nowhere, shrieking, and jumped on the man, clawing him in the face. He had to use both hands to push him away.
“Out now,” Mason roared. He found the light switch, opened the door and rushed everyone into the hallway. I waited just outside the door and saw Danny run into the kitchen and return with a fire extinguisher. Kevin Delaney was beside him. The fire was out in seconds.
It took a few minutes more for the police to get everyone settled in the living room, and it was only at that point we realized Lurleen and our armed man were missing. Kevin had stationed officers at the front and back doors. “No one leaves,” he shouted to the rest of us. “I’m with the Atlanta police.”
Danny and I ran through the house yelling for Lurleen. No answer. One of the police officers stationed at the front door assured us that no one left by that door.
We headed out back. A second police officer led the way, shining his mega watt flashlight in front of him. The two men on duty outside said no one had passed them to run down the stairs and into the yard.
“The basement,” I yelled. “If Stephanie’s house is like mine the basement has a door leading to the yard.”
I ran down the outside stairs to the yard and peered underneath the deck to the basement door. An officer was beside me and he tried the door. It was unlocked. He pulled out his gun and entered. The other officers rushed after him, and I followed behind.
The basement was pitch black and I had no idea where the light switch might be or even if there was one. Kevin Delany and several officers had joined us, coming from the stairs inside the house. Someone flipped a switch that bathed the basement in low light.
The basement floor was filled with boxes and old furniture. There were plenty of places for an armed man to hide. Officers shone their flashlights into all the dark corners. They found one door and opened it gingerly.
It housed an old toilet probably from when the house was built in the 20s. Inside was a small window.
Kevin and Mason crowded inside. “No one could squeeze through that window,” Kevin said. “She’s not here.”
“He didn’t take her out the front way,” Kevin said, “and the yard is fenced with no gate at the back. I checked that out when we first arrived. They couldn’t have left through the side gate. My men would have spotted them.”
“That means they’re still here,” Mason said, “hiding.”
He ran out the basement door to the yard. Kevin and Danny were right behind him.
“Stay put,” Mason yelled at me.
I did as he ordered. I stood beside the open door to the basement and watched as men scoured the yard. I heard something before I saw anything, a rustling beside me, coming from a sheltered area under the deck. A closed off space had been built near the stairs to the deck with lattice work, which presumably kept whatever was stored inside dry and hidden.
Lurleen appeared first with a gag in her mouth. Behind her came our masked man holding a gun to Lurleen’s head.
“One scream and she’s dead,” the man said to me, “and you will be next.”
I recognized the voice. It was Ben Ash.
Suddenly a flashlight was turned in our direction.
“Turn that off,” Ben yelled, “Turn off all the flashlights if you care about two lives.”
The flashlights went dark, but we could hear the sound of feet moving toward us.
“Go get a flashlight from one of the men,” Ben said to me. “Lurleen is my hostage, and I want to see what I’m doing. You make one wrong move and your friend is dead.”
I walked into the pitch-black yard. It was Mason who found me and gave me his flashlight.
“I have the flashlight, Ben,” I yelled. I wanted to say his name, so if anything happened to me and Lurleen, Mason would know who to look for.
“Get over here, fast,” Ben yelled back, “and don’t say another word.”
That made me slow down a little. It was dark and I didn’t turn on the flashlight to find my way. Ben wouldn’t kill Lurleen—she was his only hope for escape—and he probably couldn’t shoot me in the dark.
“It’s hard to see where I’m going,” I yelled, “too many weeds and uneven ground.”
I wanted to let him know what might be coming next, so he wouldn’t do something impulsive. I fell to the ground and screamed. Then I rolled away to one side. “It’s my ankle,” I cried.
“Stay back, all of you,” Ben yelled again. “Where are you?” he called to me. “Turn on the flashlight, so I can see where you are.”
I turned it on and played it over the ground. I had enough light to see he’d lowered the gun in order to find me, and that was all I needed to know. I shone the light in his face and someone fired, hitting him in his right side. He doubled over and dropped his gun. Lurleen grabbed it. After that I’m not sure what happened.
I heard a thunder of feet and Mason was at my side. “Are you hurt?”
He helped me stand up.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“Thank God you’re all right,” Mason said.
“How did you know what to do?” Lurleen asked. “You dropped and rolled away like you do if there’s a fire.”
“I have my secrets, too, Lurleen,” I said. “I’ve been to a few of Wendy’s classes.”
“You worked with my personal trainer?” Lurleen asked, “and you didn’t tell me?”
“Like you didn’t tell me about your tarot card sessions,” I said. “I went to a self-defense class she gave, and I didn’t want you to bug me about going to classes with you or working out every day.”
“Got it,” Lurleen said.
Mason, Lurleen and I walked up the outside stairs leading to the deck and into the house. We found a dozen people sitting in the living room. All of them were silent. A few of them held a hand over their mouths and looked terrified.
“The officers told us not to move, and then we heard the gunshot,” Stephanie said. “I’m so relieved to see you’re okay.”
“It wasn’t Nate in that costume,” I said. “It was Ben Ash.”
I suddenly had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Where is Nate?”
“They’re searching for him,” Danny said.
“And Crystal, where is she?” Lurleen asked. “She knew it wasn’t Nate beside her.”
“No worries about Crystal Lewis,” one of the officers said. “She’s in custody.”
Kevin Delaney joined us in the living room a few minutes later. He told the neighbors they were free to leave after the police got their names and addresses.
No one said anything as they filed out except for Dawn. “If you need me, Stephanie, call me.” I watched as her husband and two boys embraced her when she left the house. They’d obviously heard the gunshot and rushed over.
Kevin closed the front door after the neighbors were gone and stood with his back to it. He looked at those of us who remained standing near the door—Mason, Danny, Lurleen, Stephanie, Jonathan and me.
“Sit down, please. We might be here for a while.” He waited until we found a place to sit in Stephanie’s living room. “This could have ended in a tragedy,” he said, “but thanks to you, Dr. Brown, it didn’t. We knew Josephine’s confession had holes in it, but we hadn’t nailed down the real murderer. That’s why I went along with Stephanie’s seance idea.”
“So you’re saying Josephine didn’t kill anyone?” Lurleen asked.
“No, I’m not saying that.”
Stephanie burst into tears. “Aunt Josie did kill my father. She believed, wrongly, that my father could have saved Luke. Luke was Josephine’s son as some of you suspected, but my father loved him as much as he was capable of loving anyone. Establishing his financial empire was always my father’s first love. His second was to make sure his fortune was passed on and that’s partly why he established the trust for Luke. He could see Luke was the smartest of the three of us and the most likely to carry on his legacy.
“Josephine believed that another surgeon could have saved Luke and that being in a larger hospital might have save him as well. She was mistaken about all of that, but she was so consumed with grief she couldn’t think clearly. She thought it was her brother’s greed that had killed Luke, and she took revenge. The first heart attack my father had was no one’s fault, but Josephine saw how easy and fitting it would be to kill him on the anniversary of Luke’s death. She did it with poisoned tea and then refused to allow an autopsy. The doctor didn’t protest and the coroner was a friend of hers.”
“When did you find all this out?” Lurleen asked.
“I always knew Josephine was Luke’s mother. That was our sacred family secret to keep, but I didn’t know the rest until Josephine insisted on going to the police. I begged her not to go but she wouldn’t listen to me. She told me one murder was as bad as two, and she didn’t want anyone else to suffer for the actions she’d put in motion.”
“You don’t believe she killed Nicole?” Mason asked.
“I know she didn’t,” Stephanie said. “I told you I saw her come and go that night and never return.”
“You went to talk to Nicole after Josephine left?” Mason asked.
“Yes.”
“You were alone with her?”
“No. Crystal was there. I wanted to know what Nicole had seen outside the window. Nicole broke down and told me it looked like Luke staring at her with a grimace on his face. That made me wonder, and I asked her point blank if she’d had anything to do with his death. She said she loved Luke and she’d never have hurt him.”
“You believed her?” I asked.
“Nicole could always tell a convincing story and she had a way of pointing guilt in someone else’s direction. Manipulation and misdirection, that’s what she was good at. Making people believe whatever she wanted them to believe.”
Stephanie stopped talking and put her head in her hands. Jonathan put his arm around her. “It’s all right,” he said. “The worst is over.”
“We thought Josephine might be trying to protect someone,” Lurleen said, “when she claimed to be responsible for Nicole’s death and running Jonathan off the road. I wondered if she was protecting you, Stephanie.”
Stephanie’s head shot up. “You think I killed Nicole and ran my own husband off the road?”
“No,” Lurleen said, “but you lied to us and I assumed you lied to your aunt as well. So I thought Josephine might have thought you were involved.”
“I wondered if she thought that as well,” Stephanie said. “The next day when we heard about Nicole’s death my aunt seemed cool toward me and then she seemed worried. I had lied to her about many things but not about killing Nicole.”
Stephanie covered her face with her hands once more. “I lied to all of you, and I’m sorry. I thought I was losing Jonathan and I couldn’t bear it. That’s the real reason I went to see Nicole, to find out if she and Jonathan were having an affair.”
Jonathan pulled away from Stephanie. “I told you I hated Nicole. She admitted what she’d done to me in the hospital and tried to blame it on you.”
Stephanie dried her eyes and looked at Jonathan for a few seconds before she spoke. “That’s the one time Nicole was telling the truth. I was so worried. I had to find out if something terrible was wrong with you physically, and Nicole promised me that the medicine wouldn’t harm you. It would make you think you were having a heart attack and that would get you into the hospital for an evaluation. I’m sorry, Jonathan. I’ve mishandled all of this with my lies but only because I couldn’t stand the thought of losing you.”
Jonathan said nothing.
It took a while longer to understand what had happened during the seance. Stephanie had orchestrated things with the approval of Kevin Delaney. She knew her aunt wasn’t guilty of killing Nicole and she guessed that Crystal had to be involved, perhaps with the aid of someone else. She wasn’t certain who that person might be, but she suspected it could be Nate.
Adeline agreed to help at the seance for her own reasons. perhaps to prove she wasn’t the person who terrified Nicole or tried to run Jonathan off the road.
Kevin signed off on the plan that Stephanie put in motion. “I miscalculated badly,” he said. “I thought I could keep everyone safe with enough of my men present. I was wrong about that and I’m sorry. It’s going to be a long night for me, but the rest of you can go home. Any follow up we need to do, we can do tomorrow.”