We filed out of the house, and once outside, Mason and Danny agreed to call one another if they heard anything more about Nate. He was our biggest worry.
Mason and I were home and in bed when Kevin called. They’d found Nate in a locked shed on the Strout estate. He was coming around after being knocked unconscious, but he didn’t know who’d hit him. It looked as if he had a concussion but was otherwise unharmed.
Mason hung up and called Danny.
That was a great relief for all of us, but it was only one answer to a dozen questions we still had. Nate might not know who had assaulted him, but the rest of us had a pretty good idea. It had to have been Ben Ash, the man who impersonated him at the seance and the same person who most likely killed Nicole. That meant Crystal must have been involved.
The whole story surrounding Nicole’s death took another twenty-four hours to emerge. In the meantime I tried hard to get back to normal life. Melissa offered to take the kids to school the next morning and Lurleen would pick them up as usual. That bought me some time although it didn’t save me from a difficult phone conversation with Lucie.
I had no idea how much she might hear during the day about what had happened, so I told her a little, that there had been a problem at the party, that the police were there and that no one had been hurt except for the bad guy.
Lucie begged me for more, and I told her we’d discuss it in the evening. Jason seemed oblivious when he got on the phone and spent a few minutes telling me what a good time he’d had at the sleepover.
I drove to the refugee clinic and did my best to shift into doctor mode. Vic knew something was wrong.
“Are you all right?” she asked. “I heard a little on the news.” Vic insisted on hearing every detail.
“Should you even be here today?” she asked when I’d finished.
“Being here is the best place for me,” I said. “No one was hurt except for Ben Ash. He’s in custody along with Crystal and Josephine, so there’s no more danger, thank goodness.”
Vic nodded along as I spoke. She hugged me when I finished talking. “Thank heavens you’re all right. I’ll keep you on light duty today if I can. I’ve got an eager new doc here, so I’ll keep her busy. You and I both know about post traumatic stress disorder, so if you need to go home, let me know, that won’t be a problem.”
“Thanks, Vic.” I settled into the day and it kept me occupied enough not to relive the events of the previous night, the ‘what ifs’ that would likely haunt my dreams for a while.
I got home at five thirty and found everyone, including Danny and Lurleen, gathered at my house, our house now that Mason was on board.
“We are fixing you the best dinner, Mama,” Lucie said. “Danny has a recipe for grits and shrimp. He says there is nothing like it for Southern comfort food. I made dessert, gingerbread and homemade ice cream. Jason helped with the ice cream.”
“You’re treating me like I’m a princess,” I said and smiled, “or an invalid. I’m neither, but I appreciate the care.”
“Uncle Mason told us some of what happened,” Lucie said. “He said you saved the day.”
“The police did that,” I said.
Mason hugged me and settled me in the big chair by the fireplace. Lurleen sat across from me.
I looked at her to see if she was okay. She was the one who had suffered far more than I had. She gave me a thumbs up and a smile.
Jason climbed in my lap, something he hadn’t done in ages. He didn’t say much but he clearly wanted to be close to me. We sat together until Lucie announced dinner.
For the next hour, we talked about school and upcoming events. There was a chess tournament in two weeks that Jason would participate in. It was to be held in an Atlanta private school near our home. Lucie was signed up for the debate team and they would have their first meeting the following week.
Lurleen did her best to keep things light. As always, she had a funny story to tell, which was completely unrelated to the events of the previous night. I wondered how she did that given the trauma she’d been through. I guess it was her coping mechanism.
After dinner, we took longer than usual to put the kids to bed.
When I entered Lucie’s bedroom I found her crying and noticed her notebook in the trash can.
“What’s this, Lucie?” I asked, picking up the notebook.
“I don’t want to be a detective anymore, and I don’t want you to be one either.”
“Last night was scary, but we’re all safe, and you will always have a village around you to help keep you safe.”
“You mean you, Daddy, Lurleen and Danny?” Lucie asked.
“Yes. And Hannah and Hannah’s grandfather and Melissa and Noah and everyone at school. It’s a big village, Lucie.”
Lucie nodded. “Daddy loves his job, and he wouldn’t be happy doing anything else.”
“Daddy?” I asked.
Lucie smiled at me. “He’s my first real daddy who is around and loves me.”
“That’s true, and you’re right that he wouldn’t love any other job as much as the one he has.”
“I don’t really want to stop being a detective,” Lucie said, taking back her notebook. “I can’t run away from problems. That’s what my teacher Mr. Aggson says. He says when you see a problem, like with our climate, you need to try to fix it. Otherwise you make the problem worse.”
“I agree with Mr. Aggson.”
I kissed Lucie good night and went to see Jason. He was sitting up, clutching his beloved teddy bear and smiling at me. “Mommy, you and Daddy are very brave. Lurleen said you kept her safe.”
“Daddy is a very good detective.”
“I might be a police officer when I grow up. Daddy says it runs in the family.”
I kissed Jason and tucked him in bed. Then I left, closed the hall door and found Danny, Lurleen and Mason waiting for me in the living room.
“You are a wonderful husband and father,” I said to Mason. I hugged him hard.
“We are a good team and that includes Danny and Lurleen,” he said and sat me down beside him. “Now, are you ready to hear the rest of the story?”
“More than ready,” I said, “but first I need to hear how you’re doing, Lurleen.”
Lurleen gave me a wan smile. “Sometimes I forget how precious life is. I got scared last night, but I realized I had so many people trying to save me. I knew I’d be all right. Before, when things got bad, I had no one to turn to. Now I have all of you. I’m good, Ditie, and I want to hear how this story turned out.”
“Kevin let me know what he found out after interviewing Crystal and Ben,” Mason said. “He said I could share it with all of you, but it can’t go beyond this room.”
“Understood,” Lurleen said. She was pretty sure Mason was talking to her, and I thought she was undoubtedly right.
“Crystal and Ben were in it together,” Mason said, “although Crystal claims she had no idea Ben was going to kill Nicole. She said she thought he only meant to talk to Nicole and get her to agree to a more generous settlement.”
“Does Kevin believe that?” I asked.
“It’s not clear,” Mason said. “It seems Crystal and Ben became very close after their respective marriages broke up.”
“They became involved romantically?” Lurleen asked. “Who would have anything to do with that low-life Ben Ash?”
Mason shrugged. “Crystal claimed they bonded over wanting to make Nicole suffer for what she’d done to both of them. She came up with the idea of terrifying Nicole with the tarot card reading, which said Nicole was in danger and shouldn’t trust men who were supposed to protect her. That was meant to get Nate out of the house and it worked.”
“Did she also frighten Nicole with someone or something outside the window?” I asked.
“She denied it,” Mason said, “the same way she denied knowing what Ben might do when he was alone with Nicole.”
“Why didn’t she tell the police the truth when she found Nicole dead?” I asked.
“Crystal realized she would be seen as an accomplice,” Mason said. “That’s when she came up with the October 26th scheme.”
“The October 26th scheme?” Lurleen asked, and Mason continued.
“Crystal knew that the police would look for the most obvious murderer, Ben Ash. After all he’d threatened Nicole at the party and everyone knew he was a hothead and violent. If the police arrested him, Crystal realized he’d throw her under the bus, maybe even accuse her of committing the crime. That’s how the October 26th idea was born. Crystal had heard the story of Luke’s death on October 26th and Mr. Strout’s death a year later, same date. It would be simple enough to add Jonathan to that list. Maybe not to kill him but at least to throw suspicion off her and Ben. It would make it seem that all recent and past events were related, and that the murderer was out for revenge over what happened to Luke. Ben was more than agreeable to the idea. He used one of the trucks on the Strout estate in case anyone spotted the vehicle that hit Jonathan.”
“Wow,” I said. “How in the world did Kevin get this information out of the two of them?”
“Kevin told me it didn’t take much to make their stories collapse,” Mason said. “All he had to do was suggest that each of them was claiming the other was the real culprit, and that made them both talk.”
“That clears up most of my questions,” I said.
“But not all of them,” Lurleen added. “It doesn’t explain Adeline’s role in all of this. It doesn’t say who tried to frighten Nicole in the window or how they did it.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Mason said, “but Kevin’s job was to find a murderer and he did that.”
“Two murderers,” I said, “if Josephine did, in fact, kill her brother.”
“It seems she did,” Mason said.
“But even so,” Lurleen said, “it doesn’t explain why she’d confess to the rest of it—killing Nicole and running Jonathan off the road.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Mason said.
Lurleen looked at me and smiled. “Then that’s the rest of the story that you and I will have to figure out, Ditie.”
Danny started to protest, but Lurleen stopped him.“There’s no danger in this, Danny. Josephine is in jail. I think we can safely visit her there.
And that’s what we did.
Josephine was happy to see us. She greeted us like long-lost friends, and she thanked us for all we’d done. “I heard about what happened from Stephanie. You could have been killed.”
“But we weren’t,” Lurleen said. “We’re really here to talk to you.”
“You admitted to so many things you didn’t do,” I said, “and we want to know why.”
Josephine looked at us and nodded. “You deserve an explanation. I did kill my brother and for that I deserve whatever punishment I get. I can’t feel more guilt or regret than I already do, and I don’t care if I spend the rest of my life in jail. But I couldn’t bear to have that happen to anyone else, not anyone else I loved. Stephanie was acting so strangely lately that I got very worried about her. I knew what it was like to feel you’d lost the one person you loved most in the world.
I’m speaking about Luke, my son. It makes you crazy, and I could see that Stephanie thought she was losing Jonathan. I didn’t know what she might do. She seemed to suspect him of having affairs, and when Nicole died, I didn’t know what she might have done. She lied to me about so much. I never knew when she was telling me the truth. Then, when Jonathan was run off the road, I started to panic. I thought I had to take matters into my own hands and stop things before they got worse. That’s why I confessed to everything. I wasn’t sure what Stephanie might have done, and I needed to protect her. Or I thought I did.”
“You know the truth now?” Lurleen asked. “That it was Ben Ash who committed both crimes.”
“Yes,” Josephine said. “And I’ve apologized to Stephanie. Thank you both for finding out what really happened.” Josephine smiled at us, and it was a stunning transformation. Her hard edges softened, and I could imagine her as a loving aunt and a loving mother.
I asked about that. “How could you have given up your son?”
“It was the hardest decision I ever made,” she said. “I didn’t think I could be a decent mother and I knew how much my sister-in-law wanted another child. It seemed like the best solution at the time. It’s another decision I regret deeply, but I no longer think I could have saved Luke or that anyone contributed to his death. For a while I thought his death was retribution for what I’d done.
“I never believed in the New Age stuff Stephanie got caught up in, but when Crystal offered me a reading I took it. The first one seemed to absolve me of my sins. She said people I’d harmed in the past were now fine and forgave me. Later, at a second reading, she said I needed to acknowledge my sins to find true peace. That’s when I started thinking about a confession. Particularly when I thought I might save Stephanie in the process.”
“And now?” Lurleen asked. “How do you feel now?”
“It’s all out in the open now, what I did and didn’t do. I no longer have to lie. And I can continue to try to help Stephanie not make the same mistakes I made. If I have to spend the rest of my life in jail, I can handle that.”
Lurleen and I thanked her, and I said we’d visit her again if she’d like that.
“I would,” she said. “Lurleen is one of the few people who can make me laugh, and you, Ditie, you seem so unafraid of the truth. That gives me courage.”
“What’s left for us to do or find out?” Lurleen asked when we were driving home.
“I think we should have a visit with Stephanie and Adeline, don’t you?”
“Bien sur. How about a nice lunch at La Brasserie, my favorite restaurant in Atlanta. We’ll schedule it for next Wednesday, your half day at work, Ditie.”
“That suits me,” I said.
Stephanie invited us to her house for lunch instead of a restaurant, so we could talk more freely.