• Twenty-Five •

I finally found him downstairs, in the trap room—the room beneath the stage that can be used for storage, for trap doors, for access to the orchestra pit, for actors to move from one place to another, and for errant sound designers to hide out. I could never find the trap room easily and had spent five minutes wandering the downstairs halls. I was tired and confused, and couldn’t quite remember what I knew versus what I was supposed to know, and what I was at liberty to say. Brooke’s death was common knowledge at this point, as was Terry’s. I felt as though there were tumblers in my brain that should have been sorting the details into the truth, but something was stuck. Hopefully Frank would help loosen it up.

He was hunched over his laptop tapping away, oblivious to my presence. I watched for a few seconds.

Finally he noticed me standing in the doorway. “Sully,” he said, semi-lowering the lid of his laptop and turning it away from me.

“Hey Frank. Heard you had a conversation with the police last night? Sorry, that was probably my fault. I told them about the website.”

“It’s okay. They wanted to confirm that we saw Mr. Holmes going into his office, and to find out more about the new setup.”

Frank looked miserable, which, under the circumstances, was understandable. But he couldn’t look me in the eye. Again, could be understandable since I’d gotten him dragged into a police station, but he didn’t seem pissed. Just miserable.

“Did you hear about Brooke?” I asked gently.

“Yeah, saw it on the web.”

“You knew her, didn’t you?” I pulled up a rehearsal cube and sat down across from him.

“Yeah.” His voice caught.

“I’d heard that you knew her pretty well.” For the first time, Frank looked at me. I shrugged and smiled.

It was his turn to smile, or at least try to. “I didn’t know her that well. She, uh, tried to, uh … ”

“She made a pass at you?”

“Yeah, a couple of times.” He gave me a “can you believe it?” look. “But I didn’t, you know.”

“Why not?” I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders and looked down at the laptop. “It seemed wrong. She was pretty wasted half the time. And besides, I knew Mr. Whitehall and thought that sleeping with his wife wouldn’t be cool.”

That was one way to put it. “Did Peter know she’d made advances?”

“Not from me. I kinda felt sorry for her, you know? We got caught a couple of times. Mrs. Bridges walked in once, and Mr. Holmes walked in another time. After that, she stopped making passes. She even apologized.”

“She did?”

“Yeah, she said something like ‘Terry said it was unkind of me to put you in that position.’ Then, it was weird, you know, but she asked if we could be friends. So when I came over to do work, I’d make sure to check in with her, and we’d talk.”

“About what you were doing?”

“No, I’d promised Mr. Whitehall I wouldn’t tell anyone about that. Mostly about family, stuff like that. We both had family in Western Mass. She didn’t visit a lot, but I did. We’d talk about the kielbasa festival, polkas, stuff like that.”

It seemed Frank knew a Brooke that few if any other people knew. It was interesting that she seemed to be trying to reconnect to a part of herself that she’d tried, successfully, to ignore. I wondered if drinking her father’s hooch had been part of embracing her roots.

“You said she’d been drinking? Was it the stuff her father made?”

“The samogon? Yeah, mostly.”

“She spilled some of it on me once. Smelled like cough medicine.”

“It’s grain alcohol and raspberries. Takes a while to make, but it cures what ails you.”

Connie’s voice came over the loudspeaker that was piped into the trap room. “It’s four o’clock. Just reminding everyone we’re going to do a tech run with the Ghost of Christmas Future in fifteen minutes.”

“That’s me, Sully. I have to run a couple more tests.” Frank started to lift the top of his computer back to a viewable level.

“A few more questions first. I heard that Brooke came by the theater last night. Is that true?”

The lid was being lowered again, physically and emotionally.

“Frank, if I found that out, someone else will. With her accident—”

“So it was an accident?” Frank’s relief was palatable.

“So far as I know, it was an accident. Why?”

“I was afraid she’d done it on purpose.”

“Because of something she said?”

“No. I was worried, is all. Sorry, Sully, I really need to get back to work.” He turned back to his computer and away from me. I left the room to go up to the office. But we both knew I’d be back.

While producing a show, a creative set designer can, very early in the process, talk a director and general manager into a stylistic set enhanced by projections. Early in the process, this seems like a good idea. But so did hiring Patrick King. The projections weren’t going well, and there hadn’t been a run-through with them working yet. Instead, there had been slides with helpful descriptions like “cloud” or “sunny day.” Connie assured me this was the least of our problems, and that Frank was working with the images the set designer had created, trying to make them work with our projection system. I had no idea what that meant and wondered when Frank was finding the time. Or the mind space.

I grabbed a cup of coffee, a pad, and a pen from my desk and went into the theater. Dimitri and Connie were conferring with Frank, who now had his laptop sitting next to another laptop at the tech table. Connie called for quiet and they did a quick run-through of the first projection, which, to my untrained eye, looked pretty good. I walked toward them as they discussed the logistics.

“It does look much better, Frank, but are you sure it’ll run on the computer in the booth? Or does it have to run on yours?” Connie asked.

“I’m copying all my files to the booth computer, so it should be okay. I need to take my laptop with me to run the sound cue for … ” Frank was saying.

“Frank, Patrick can’t hear … ” Gabe called from backstage.

“Be right there,” Frank called back. “Connie, can you finish copying these files over? Just the ones in this folder.” Connie and I looked at where he was pointing, and she nodded. Frank picked up a box and headed backstage, Dimitri in tow, presumably giving more notes.

Connie was clicking the files over when her headset buzzed. She put it on and grunted a few times. “Sully, I need to go backstage. Don’t ask. Can you copy these? It takes a while, not sure why. And you need to do them one at a time.”

“Sure. Glad to be able to do something useful.” And I was. Almost as glad as I was to get a chance to look at Frank’s computer.

I selected the first file and started to copy it over. It was called CC_actI_scene4_ghosts. All of the files had similar naming patterns—Christmas Carol, Act I, Scene 4, Ghosts. Pretty easy to follow, which was good, depending on who was running the cues from the booth.

Connie was right; the copying was really slow. Thankfully it seemed that the booth computer was the slow one, not Frank’s, so I was able to look around while the files copied. I did a search; Frank’s naming convention seemed to hold true for everything—he clearly and concisely named files in an easily recognizable format. Given the number of projects he was balancing, it made sense that he kept things clear. And it was a break for me. I looked for files that were last accessed within the last twenty-four hours—ever since Frank and I had seen the feed showing Terry going into his office. Then I sorted the files by type and ran down the list, quickly. A couple were called TH_office. Terry Holmes? I copied those and a few others from yesterday to the booth computer, in a folder on the C drive.

I wasn’t sure how much more time I had, but I opened Frank’s web browser anyway. The wireless network he’d installed in the theater was up and running. I logged into my Gmail account and sent myself the TH_office files. I would have sent more if I’d had time. I copied another file for the show to the booth computer, and then went back to the browser. It was 25 percent done. My email was taking forever to go through, so I kept my pointer on the X on the upper right corner. Now 55 percent. I’d figure out how to get them off the booth computer later if I had to. Up to 70 percent.

Frank was coming through the curtain. Heading toward me. Did he walk more quickly when he realized I was copying the files, or was that my imagination? Up to 89 percent. Connie came out, called to Frank. He stopped, but he never stopped looking at me. Email sent. Sign out. Clear cache. Just like you taught me, Frank, I thought. I closed the search window and starting copying the last projection file as Frank and Connie walked up to the table.

“The last file is being copied now,” I said, getting up from the chair.

“Thanks, Sully. Gabe,” Connie said into her headset, “could you come out once Patrick is set? We need to run through a few things before we start.” She turned to me. “I called half hour,” she started to explain. “We needed to do a run through of the Ghost of Christmas Future graveyard scene, but we didn’t get to it.”

Half hour, the half hour before a performance, was sacrosanct. It was time for the actors to get ready to run the show.

“Not a problem.” I was careful to look Frank straight in the eye,and smile. “I’ll go check my email.”

I closed and latched the office door. It was probably paranoid, but I wanted to see what these TH_office files were in peace. Watching the projections on screen had got me to thinking. I clicked on the link on my email and was thrilled when the file picked a program to open automatically, rather than making me pick one. I hated it when my computer wanted me to think for it, since it was usually for something I really couldn’t figure out on my own. Sometimes new media made me feel old.

Frank and I had seen Terry going into his office over the web. Or had we? Frank had told me that we were looking at a live picture, and I took his word for it. Why wouldn’t I? But maybe … I watched as a small snippet of Terry Holmes walking down the hall to his office filled the web window. I tried to remember if it was the same thing I’d seen yesterday, but the lovely hand gesture at the end was absent. I clicked open the second file, and this one was what I remembered, complete with Terry flipping the bird at the end of the video clip. Was this a recording of the actual moment I’d seen? Or had I been watching a recording?

If so, that meant Terry could have been dead when I “saw” him flip the bird. The idea made my head hurt. If the timeline I was keeping was screwed up, the suspect list had shifted again.

At this rate, I was never going to see the last act of A Christmas Carol. I couldn’t decide what to do. Should I call Gus and give him a heads-up, or call Regina? A knock at the door prolonged my decision-making.

“Sully, you in there?” It was Regina. She won. But who, besides me, was going to lose?

I opened the door. “Do you want to come in?” I asked Regina.

“I came by to watch rehearsal for a while and get Gabe, but I had trouble focusing. Connie said you’d be in here.”

“Want some coffee? I have one of those cup-at-a-time coffee makers in here. Hot chocolate too.”

“Do you have decaf? I want to be able to grab some sleep tonight.”

“Grabbing some shut-eye between shifts?”

“More like dismissed, with thanks.” Regina sounded like she felt a mixture of incredibly pissed-off and hurt, in equal measure. I’d been there more than once, but I didn’t think camaraderie was the reason for her visit.

“Let me guess. The chief got a phone call—”

“Text.”

“From the mayor?”

“A state rep.”

“Who was worried about … ?”

“Oh, who knows? Whatever it was, my boss decided to take over the case, which is fine. But I guess he didn’t like hearing my opinions.”

“Which isn’t fine.”

“Which sucks.”

“Sure does.” I handed her a cup of coffee and watched her take a sip.

I figured I’d start with the files and go from there. I would take a risk and go for full disclosure. Regina would be upset, could even drag me over to the station, but the only way I would win her trust was by being honest.

So I told her about the flash drive and the note from Peter. As I told her the story, I handed both items over.

“I don’t suppose you have printouts?”

“I do, but not here. They were all PDFs. I could copy some out if you want.”

“Do you have the spreadsheets on your computer?” she asked, nodding toward the laptop on my desk.

“No,” I answered, patting my laptop. And I didn’t. This was my work computer. Technically, the Cliffside’s computer. The files were on my personal computer, which was in the knapsack under my desk. I’d learned long ago to keep work and my personal life separate. Even though the lines were blurry, I dedicated the office computer to accounting files and office correspondence. That way, if I ever left the theater for good, the work would stay. And if anyone wanted to check up on me, they could. Full disclosure, just not of my personal stuff.

“Tell me what they say.”

“Here’s what I was able to understand from the one I was looking at. They track money being shuttled from account A to account B for a short period. The principle would be shipped back to account A, but the interest stayed in account B. The money wouldn’t stay for long, but it was a lot of cash, so the interest seemed to add up.”

“To?”

“A couple million dollars.”

Regina whistled. “Any notes on who was doing the moving?”

“No, none. The more I think about it, the more I think it may not have been provable, at least not yet. I think the spreadsheets are the incredibly well-educated guesses of Peter Whitehall.”

“Which he sent to you because?”

“I think he’d asked around and knew he could trust me.” The story of Emma wanting to hire me was Emma’s story to tell, with Gus in the room with her. “I noticed the other note said ‘In the event of my death’ or something like that? Was that from Peter?”

“Yeah, it was. There also was a report and a bottle.”

“I saw the bottle. Was the report on what was in the bottle?”

Regina shook her head. “Sorry, I can’t go there.” She started to shift toward the front of her seat, ready to hoist herself up.

“Hold on. I have something else to show you.” She settled back in the chair and watched as I clicked on the two files I’d emailed to myself. She watched them each twice more before she turned to me.

“Tell me,” she said.

So I did. I told her about the projections for the show and how Frank had named the files. I told her about thinking back to the picture of Terry giving us the finger and how something seemed wrong. “So, if you’re using my statement that Terry was in the hallway at six o’clock, it doesn’t stand up anymore.

“I didn’t mean for you to be involved, Sully. Really I didn’t.” Frank had pushed the door open a little and was standing at the doorway. Who knew how long he’d been standing there. I looked at Regina, and she looked at me, shaking her head gently.

“Why don’t you sit down and tell me about it, Frank?” I asked, working hard to keep my voice gentle and forgiving.

Regina hauled herself off the chair and motioned for Frank to sit there. She stood next to me. The office was cramped, really cramped, but Frank closed the door anyway. I looked at her, and this time she nodded. If I asked Frank questions, it was one civilian to another. Technically she could ask him questions, but it would be less messy if I did it.

“Brooke came by the theater yesterday around five thirty. She was freaked. She asked for my help. She needed me to tell people she’d been at the theater earlier too, to give her an alibi. But I told her that I’d been with other people all afternoon and couldn’t give her an alibi.”

“An alibi?” I asked.

“She’d found Mr. Holmes … you know.”

“Dead?” I asked. Frank nodded and looked down at his hands, which he then wiped on his jeans.

“Did she kill him?” I asked. I was being obtuse, but I wanted to make sure to get the whole picture.

“No, man, no, she couldn’t.”

“What time did she find him, did she say?”

“Around four.”

“But you couldn’t provide an alibi for that time. So you couldn’t help her.”

“I couldn’t tell anyone she’d been at the theater. But I could figure out a way to make people think Terry had been alive later.”

“Other people being me?”

“Yeah. Gabe was supposed to come in before you. I figured he’d tell his mom, like he did with the other stuff. I had some footage I’d taped while we did a test run on camera locations a few weeks ago. I was getting ready to play it for Gabe when you came in.”

A faint buzzing sound interrupted the stunned silence that followed Frank’s admission. Connie’s tinny voice called out, “Frank? Frank, are you there?”

Frank pulled the walkie-talkie from his belt and considered it for a second before he pushed the talk button.

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“Could you come back in here? The computer is frozen again and we’re stuck in the future Cratchit house.”

“Be right there,” Frank said. “That’s how I knew you found the files, Sully. I had to go back onto my computer to reload the files, and went in to see if I could find an earlier file. Noticed that other things had been looked at, figured it was you.”

“It was her all right,” Regina said, sounding slightly disgusted. I wasn’t sure if it was at Frank or at me. “Frank,” she continued, “you need to come down to the station with me. And we should grab your computer.”

“Yes ma’am. Can I go and reboot the computer for Connie first? My laptop is in there. I won’t be a sec.”

“You have two minutes. And do not, I repeat, do not make me come after you, do you understand me? Do not leave the building. Do not take the wrong computer by mistake, because if you do, by God, I’ll take every computer in this building into custody. Am I clear?”

“Yes ma’am.” Frank ran out of the room. I had little doubt that he’d be back. Regina took her coat off the back of the chair and put it on.

“Regina, do you want me to come and make a statement?”

“No, let’s see what we have first. I know where you are. Besides, you may want to call that handsome ex of yours. Frank may need some help.”

“Frank definitely needs some help, but Gus can’t help him. Conflict of interest,” I said.

“Off the record, Sully, do you think Frank is mixed up in this?” Regina asked.

“Mixed up as in helping Brooke with an alibi? Yes. As in murder? I don’t think so. But I’ve got to admit, he makes a pretty good suspect, doesn’t he?”

“An excellent suspect,” Regina agreed. “He made an excellent suspect before, and this isn’t going to help his case. Yup, Frank will need some help.” Frank had taken Gabe under his wing, helping Regina navigate some pretty rough waters stirred up by her teenage boy. I knew she considered him a friend, as did I.

“I’ll call Freddy Sands and get someone down there. If you think it will help, I’ll come down to the station.”

Regina shook her head. “Sully, I appreciate that you’re not pushing me for more details. And for coming clean with information as you get it. I know that you understand, hell, you understand better than anyone what a bitch this job can be.”

I nodded.

“And you could have called in favors from me, gotten more details, played PI. But you didn’t,” she said. “At least not that I can tell. Not that knowing that the bottle Peter Whitehall had tested was full of ethylene glycol would have told you anything. Or that he was worried that a certain recently deceased son-in-law might be poisoning him. Nope, you didn’t push for any of that. I appreciate it. Call Freddy. Then call handsome Gus and let him know what’s going on. Keep in touch, okay, Sully?”

Ethylene glycol. Ethylene glycol. Ethylene glycol. I kept repeating it as I typed it into Google, or did the best I could. Fortunately, Google thought for me and let me know how it was supposed to be spelled. A toxin. Syrupy-sweet tasting. Death resulted from renal failure. According to the medical WikiDoc on the subject, “Symptoms of ethylene glycol poisoning usually follow a three-step progression, although poisoned individuals will not always develop each stage or follow a specific time frame.” I kept reading. “Stage 1 consists of neurological symptoms including victims appearing to be intoxicated, exhibiting symptoms such as dizziness, headaches, slurred speech, and confusion. Over time, the body metabolizes ethylene glycol into other toxins; it is first metabolized to glycoaldehyde, which is then oxidized to glycolic acid, glyoxylic acid, and finally oxalic acid. Stage 2 is a result of accumulation of these metabolites and consists of tachycardia, hypertension, hyperventilation, and metabolic acidosis. Stage 3 of ethylene glycol poisoning is the result of kidney injury, leading to acute kidney failure. Oxalic acid reacts with calcium and forms calcium oxalate crystals in the kidney.”

Neurological symptoms included seeming intoxicated, experiencing dizziness, slurred speech, confusion … I hadn’t seen Peter Whitehall in a while, so I didn’t know whether he’d showed those symptoms. But I had met someone who’d exhibited them—and she’d died last night in a car crash.

I drove to the Anchorage, my mind still in a muddle, but clarity was starting to prevail, at least a bit. And I had a good idea of someone who could illuminate things more. To what degree, was the real question. And the very real concern.

There was still a considerable army at the house, and I had to run a gauntlet again in order to gain entrance. I must have been on some sort of list, because they directed me to Gus without an escort. I found him in the dining room, hunched over an open laptop at one end of the long table. The cabinets still hadn’t been repacked from earlier in the day. There was caution tape all around the area, but the room hadn’t been cordoned off.

“Did you crash the crime scene?” I asked as I slid into the chair to his left.

“I couldn’t use Peter’s study or Terry’s office, and the living room and kitchen are taken over by various officials. This was the quietest place for me to work.”

“For a mansion there really isn’t a lot of practical space, is there?” I asked, looking around.

“Don’t you have a show tonight? What are you doing here?” he asked, ignoring my pithy observation.

“I came by to check something with Mrs. Bridges. Thought I’d check up on, um, everyone. How is it going? Is Emma okay?”

“For now. They’re being very careful and solicitous. Too solicitous, if you ask me. I’d feel better if they did something instead of stomping around, resentfully doing nothing.”

“I think that I’m getting a sense of what happened, but proof is going to be a problem. And without proof, this family is going to live under one hell of a cloud.” Someone walked by the door, slowing her pace when he realized that Gus wasn’t alone. I turned. Emma was hovering in the doorway.

“Sully, you came back?”

“I did, to talk to Gus, but I’m leaving again soon.”

“Not on my account, please. I came in to tell him that I’m done in. I don’t know the protocol. Can we make them leave soon? Do you think they’re going to make any of us go with them? Eric passed out an hour ago, and Amelia has locked herself in her room. Mrs. Bridges has run away to the greenhouse. Clive is still here, holding down the fort, but he’s pretty exhausted as well.”

“Let me go and speak with Lieutenant Black,” Gus said. “He’s the one in charge now, right?”

“I think so, I’ve lost track.”

Gus got up and crossed over to Emma, squeezing her arm before going into the hall. I led her back to the table, giving her my seat and taking Gus’s. I closed his laptop without reading the screen, a rare moment of decorum. But I didn’t want the distraction for Emma or myself. I had questions for Emma, and probably not much time to ask them.

“Sully, Gus is a wonder. He’s been a—”

“Emma, do you still want me to help you?”

“Of course. Anything you can do.”

“Emma, I wish there was an easy way to ask this, but I don’t have time and I don’t see how the effort could help. Who killed Terry?”

She had the good grace to look taken aback, and the better grace not to comment on it. “I honestly don’t know, Sully. We argued, I told Terry he needed to leave. He tried to talk to me about it, but I went into my office with Clive. He stormed into his office, and it was the last any of us saw him.”

“And your office is—”

“On the other side of Terry’s office. We made the old library into two offices. Had a wall built between them eventually.”

“Eventually?”

“Last summer. It seemed like a good idea. Daddy agreed. We put the telecommunications room between them. You know, servers, wiring.”

“Could Terry access the server from his office?”

“No, the only door is from my office. But Daddy had the only key.”

“So the only way into Terry’s office was … ?”

“The hallway. I didn’t hear anything, but then I couldn’t. The tech room is climate controlled, with thick walls. Terry and I couldn’t hear anything in each other’s offices.”

“Why did you go to his office?”

“Like I said, I was on the phone in the kitchen, on a call. I noticed that Terry’s line was lit up. I was angry that he was still there, and I went down to confront him.”

“What did you do?”

“I didn’t really see him at first, you know. I went in and only … only then I saw how he was … the blood, and his eyes. His eyes were wide open. It was awful. I screamed. And then turned and puked in the hallway.”

She looked over her shoulder and turned back to me, leaning over the table even closer to me. “I also found something in the office. It may have been there for days. Or maybe someone dropped it—”

“What was it?”

“Mrs. Bridge’s key chain. Only Mrs. Bridges and my father had keys to the entire kingdom. She never let the keys out of her sight. But there they were on the floor, next to Terry.”

Mrs. Bridges?

“What did you do with them?” I asked.

“I gave them back to her, of course.” And then Emma looked straight at me, daring me to say aloud what we both were thinking but couldn’t possibly be true.

I found Mrs. Bridges in the greenhouse, tying an apron around her waist and surrounded by a seemingly organized cacophony of pots, plants, soil, and gardening implements. “What a nice surprise,” she said. She didn’t bother to take her hands out of the dirt she was mixing.

I felt like a cad.

“Hello, Mrs. Bridges. I hope you don’t mind my coming over like this. Unannounced.”

“Surely we’re past formalities, aren’t we, Edwina? Do you think you could call me Clara?”

“I could try, but it’s going to be tough. Clara. Do you mind if I talk to you a bit?”

“No, not at all. If you’ll help me with these orchids. They haven’t been touched since Mr. Whitehall passed, and they’re in a sorry state.” She handed me an apron and a pair of gloves, both of which I took reluctantly.

“I’ll help, but I warn you, I’m not very handy with plants.”

“It isn’t that difficult. Just some separating and repotting that needs to be done. I’ll show you.” For the next few minutes she explained the procedure of taking the old plant out, dividing it, trimming the excess, and repotting. It didn’t seem difficult, but it did seem complicated, at least at first. After a while we developed a rhythm. Mrs. Bridges, her division-of-labor experiment quickly abandoned, took the riskier job of separating, and I took the repotting task.

After a few minutes of quiet work, she finally broke the silence. “You wanted to talk?”

“I do,” I said, taking my gloved hand out of the pot I was working on and placing it on her arm. “Please know that you don’t have to answer my questions, though. It’s all really none of my business.”

“Answering your questions will be good practice for others, who will likely be asking similar ones later.”

“Not all of them, I shouldn’t think. Like what your keys were doing next to Terry’s body?” I asked.

She paused and looked right at me. “So you’ve seen Emma? Good. That couldn’t have been easy for her, carrying that around all day. My keys. Edwina, I don’t know what they were doing there. I lay down after we got back from the reading, and when I got up, I couldn’t find them. I went looking for them, thinking I must have mislaid them, but had no luck.”

“Mrs. Bridges, did you know what we would find in the tea set?” I asked.

“Your tea set?” she asked innocently.

“Don’t,” I said, gently.

She smiled and shrugged her shoulders, as if to say, “It was worth a try.”

“I went into Brooke’s room to look for my keys. She’d been in such a state, I didn’t know if she’d left for a drive or gone for an overnight. Her room was a mess. I found some notes from Mr. Whitehall to myself, and to Emma. I barely had time to register their existence when I heard the scream … Emma had found Mr. Holmes. I went down to help with that and put the notes in my pocket. I didn’t even remember I had them until later that night.”

“What did the notes say?” I prodded gently. “Are you sure they were from Peter?”

“Oh, they were from him all right. His note to me was to let me know about certain arrangements he’d made in the event of his death.”

“That’s awfully dramatic, isn’t it? When was the note written, do you know?”

“Last summer, I’d imagine. A little dramatic, certainly. But he’d been under some strain. He had a heart attack around the 4th of July. Nothing he couldn’t get past, but it had made him feel vulnerable in a way that he wasn’t accustomed to. He started taking stock. That, coupled with Emma’s meeting with you about Terry. I think he wanted to get his house in order.”

“Did he know Emma thought Terry was having an affair?”

“Yes. And that she’d hired someone to follow Terry.”

“Who found nothing.”

“Found enough to get Mr. Whitehall thinking. And doing some investigating on his own. Prompted him to make some changes.”

“The will,” I said.

“And other things.” She went back to futzing with the plants but kept talking. “Sometimes I think his heart attack was one of the best things to have happened to him. It helped him realize what was important.”

More likely he got scared of the chains of hell that awaited him, I thought uncharitably.

“We had a long talk, Mr. Whitehall and I, around Veteran’s Day. He wanted to let me know about some changes that were coming up in the household. We hadn’t had a talk like that in a long, long time. He’d thought of himself for so long, he’d forgotten he had a family he could count on. Anyway, he told me that Mr. Holmes wouldn’t be living at the Anchorage much past the new year, if that long. He asked me to keep an eye out for Emma. And he asked me to clear out the guest quarters over the garage for after the new year.”

“For whom, did he say?”

“I asked, but he told me that it would all be dealt with after the new year.” Mrs. Bridges took off a glove and wiped at the tears running down her face. “Poor man. If only he’d let me know.”

“You know who it was for, don’t you, Mrs. Bridges?”

“I can guess now. For Brooke, I’d imagine.”

“Brooke?”

“I found out right after Mr. Whitehall’s death. You and Mr. Knight had visited. Brooke was distraught, even more than normal. Terry was trying to calm her down, but she kept screaming and crying. I finally went in to see what I could do, and she clung to me as if she were a child. I told Terry I’d take her upstairs and put her in bed. That perhaps we should call someone, but he told me no, she’d be all right. She started crying even more. I finally got her up the stairs. Told her I’d sit with her until she fell asleep. Just as I thought she’d drifted off, she said to me, ‘He killed Peter, you know, Clara.’”

I’d stopped repotting in the middle of her story, and she looked surprised when she handed me the next plant.

“He being?” I asked, going back to the task.

“Terry Holmes, of course.”

“How did she know?”

“He told her.”

“He told her? But why?”

“To keep her complicit, I’d imagine. Mind you, she was in quite a state, so it took a while for the story to come out.” She moved on to the next plant, and handed me a new pot.

I was losing my mind, controlling my urge to shake her until the truth rattled out of her. Breathe in. Breathe out. Soil in pots. Keep her talking.

“Mrs. Bridges, please tell me the story. It’s the only way we can figure out what to do. Time is of the essence.” I hoped I was keeping my impatience out of my voice.

“She and Mr. Holmes had become very close.”

“Very close?”

“Do you think I would have, for one moment in my house, allowed … ” As if to emphasize the point, she struck one of the pots too hard and it broke on the table. The ruckus seemed to calm her. “No, I can’t believe that. Terry had gotten Brooke on his side, against Mr. Whitehall. Brooke told me she’d tried to separate from Terry’s plans several times, but Terry was having none of it.”

As I’d seen, Peter had tracked his money carefully enough to follow it back to Terry. Most likely he assumed that Terry had a mistress and was getting the money for her. Or was the embezzlement the true crime in Peter’s eyes? The reason for Terry’s fall? Did I think so little of Peter that I believed his daughter’s marital misery weighed on him less than money? I’m afraid, being my father’s daughter, that I did.

“When you and Peter spoke, how much had he told you about the money?”

“The money? Nothing. When he told me that Terry would be leaving, I thought it was because of the affair.”

“But he wanted to wait until after the holidays to kick him out? I can’t imagine that was because of Christmas charity?”

“Why didn’t he kick Terry out earlier? Surely you would have,” I said.

“I did ask him that,” Mrs. Bridges confessed. “Apparently there was some business that needed to be finished up before Mr. Whitehall felt Terry could be let go.”

“Do you think Terry knew he was on his way out?”

“The night Mr. Whitehall died, he and Terry argued. Loudly. I couldn’t hear the words—they were in his study—but the door was slightly ajar and I heard the voices. Terry stormed out. I went into the study afterward, to check on Mr. Whitehall. He asked me to leave a note for Mr. Willis and Emma to meet with him first thing. I asked if he didn’t want me to call them in right then, and he said no, let them rest. It would be the last good night for a few. And so I said good night and left him. Poor man.”

We finished repotting the orchids in companionable silence, both lost in our own thoughts. I left her, at her insistence, to clean up the green house and went in search of Gus.

The process of clearing the cops out of the house had started, at the instigation of Clive Willis and Gus. The wing with the offices was closed off, with a police officer on duty. There were a couple other official-looking people hovering around. I decided that they were likely working for the Whitehalls when they pointedly ignored the police. Gus confirmed they would be setting up camp in the living room. Having spent a little time in the for-show-only room, I decided that the policeman sitting on the settee in the hallway was likely to have a more comfortable night.

Clive was going to stay at the house again, and he insisted that Gus leave and get some rest.

“It’s a long ride back to Boston. Be careful on Route 1. It’s a bear this time of night,” he admonished.

So really, it was only in the cause of public safety that I suggested Gus come back to my house.