Eight

I started to walk away. I needed to process what the chief had just said. Murder? How could it be murder?

Detective Brandon’s hand shot out, and she grabbed me by the upper arm, pulling me back. Her fingers bit into my skin.

I wrenched my arm away. “What do you think you’re doing?”

The chief scowled at the detective. “No need to get rough there, Candy,” he said.

The detective’s first name was Candy? I had never heard a more inappropriate name for a person in my entire life. She was nothing close to sweet like candy.

I rubbed my arm. “We can talk in my office.”

Judy watched us. “Are you okay?” she mouthed at me before I turned to lead the officers into my private office. I didn’t bother to answer.

Inside my office, I sat in the chair behind my desk, which was a nineteenth-century partners desk far too large for the space. When I typed I had to hold my keyboard on my lap and it was completely impractical for the digital age. I adored it.

The chief sucked on his teeth. “You’re not under arrest or anything like that. You are welcome to have a lawyer present. Course that might make us think you have something to hide.”

I move a huge stack a papers from the middle of my desk onto the floor. “I don’t have anything to hide.”

“Good to hear.” He pointed at the wooden armchair across the desk from me. There was a pile of museum catalogs on it. “Mind if I sit?”

I jumped out of my seat and grabbed the catalogs off of the chair. “Please do.” I set the glossy magazine on another pile of catalogs behind my desk. The entire pile immediately toppled over like a waterfall tumbling over a cliff. I sighed and turned away from it. One of these days I would have to make the time to organize my office, but the day my benefactress’s heir died on Farm grounds was not going to be that day.

“Thank you,” he said as he eased himself into the chair. “Can you tell me where you were last night between eleven at night and three in the morning?”

I crossed my legs and shook my right foot under my desk. “Was that when Maxwell was killed?”

He nodded. “Yes. The coroner will be able to make a more precise time window after the autopsy, but that’s the window he gave me to work with.”

Detective Brandon stood in the corner of the office. When she leaned against the bookcase, the door to the metal key box attached to the bookcase swung open, and I saw all the keys to every door or gate on the Farm. She scowled at me as she closed the small door. If I were nicer, I would tell her the key box wasn’t her only concern and that the bookcase was unstable and might topple onto her, but after she nearly yanked my arm out of its socket, I wasn’t feeling helpful. I returned my attention to the chief.

“Maxwell died late at night,” I said, “but he died of bee stings, right?”

The chief nodded encouragingly. “Yes, he did.”

“That doesn’t make any sense to me. How? Bees are less active after dark. When we have a problem with a wasp nest on the grounds, we always wait until nighttime to deal with it.”

The chief smiled at me as if I were his star pupil. “I had wondered the same thing. Whoever knocked Maxwell out with the insulin was smart enough to agitate the bees so that they attacked.”

I splayed my hands on my desktop. “Insulin?”

“Your father is diabetic,” Detective Brandon said, not asking a question but stating it as a fact.

I looked from one to the other, from the chief’s placid face and Burnside sideburns to Brandon’s sleek hair and deep frown lines. I had made a mistake. When the chief asked me if I wanted my lawyer present, I should have said yes because as far as they were concerned, they had the murderer in their sights, and it was me.

“Kelsey?” The chief asked, “Is your father diabetic?”

“Yes, type one.” This was bad. This was very bad.

“And he lives with you?”

“Uh, only during the summer. During the school year, he’s a college drama professor and lives in housing near campus.”

“But he’s living with you right now?” This came from Brandon. The tiniest of smiles curled the corners of her mouth. I wished I could smack the expression off her face.

I uncrossed my legs and sat up straighter. “Yes, he’s living with me at the moment.”

Detective Brandon all but rubbed her hands together. “So you have access to his needles and insulin.”

“Yes, but I would never kill anyone. That’s what you want me to confess, isn’t it? That I shot Maxwell with insulin and let the bees finish the job?” I stood up.

Detective Brandon pursed her lips. “We will have to search your cottage and interview your father to see if any of his insulin is missing.” She paused. “You aren’t the only suspect from your house.”

I put a hand on my desk to steady myself. “My father? That’s the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. My father had never even seen Maxwell until yesterday, and as far as I know, the two men weren’t even introduced. He would have no reason to hurt him or anyone else.”

Detective Brandon pushed off of the bookcase. It wobbled for a few seconds but held. “Not even to protect his daughter from losing her job when the museum closed?”

“He doesn’t know about the conversation I had with Maxwell. I didn’t tell him or anyone else. If you don’t believe me, ask him. He won’t have a clue what you are talking about.”

“We will,” the detective promised.

“I think that’s been enough questions for the moment. The reenactment opens in few hours, and I have a lot of work to do to make sure we’re ready for the crowds.”

Detective Brandon frowned. “You still didn’t answer the chief’s original question, Ms. Cambridge. Where were you between eleven p.m. and three a.m. last night?”

I glared at her but knew that it would only look worse for me if I refused to answer. And the truth really was that I had nothing to hide. “I returned to my cottage for the night close to eleven fifteen. Usually I get home long before that, but this is an unusual weekend with nearly a hundred and fifty reenactors, including their families, camping out on the grounds. I waited to go home until most of them had retired for the night. Although when I walked to my cottage, there were several who stayed awake late into the night talking around their respective camp fires. I hope you question the reenactors to find out if anyone saw anything suspicious in the middle of the night.”

“I already have officers talking to them.” Chief Duffy pushed himself out of his chair as if he was ready to leave.

Detective Brandon wasn’t as eager to go. “Did anyone see you at home?”

“You mean an alibi?”

“Yes.”

I frowned but answered her question. “By the time I got to the cottage, Hayden was asleep, but my father was up practicing his lines for his next performance. He has a part in the local community theater.”

The chief gave a sideways smile. “What’s the play?”

“Hamlet. Dad’s playing the ghost of Hamlet’s father.”

The chief chuckled. “If I know your father, that’s a role he can really get behind.”

I found myself smiling back. “My father hopes to come back as a ghost himself someday and haunt the valley. He thinks it will be great fun.”

“Then what happened?” Detective Brandon asked. Clearly, she wasn’t a patron of the arts.

I stooped to pick up some of the fallen catalogs. I dropped them on my desk. “I went to bed and fell right to sleep. I was exhausted. The first day of the reenactment drew a much larger crowd than we expected. The bugler woke me up in the morning close to five. I decided to get up and take a walk around the property. Not long after I crossed Maple Grove Lane, I found Maxwell in the brick pit with that EMT leaning over him.”

I couldn’t help but notice that Detective Brandon sneered when I mentioned Chase. My eyes slid to the chief.

“Candy doesn’t care much for my nephew,” the chief said under his breath.

The detective snapped her notebook closed. “We’ll need to talk to your father as soon as possible, Ms. Cambridge.”

“He’s with my son. I’d rather you not talk to him about murder in Hayden’s presence.”

“We would never,” the chief said.

Maybe the chief wouldn’t, but I wasn’t so sure about the detective. Would it work in my favor that she didn’t like Chase?

The chief’s cell phone rang. He removed it from his belt. “Duffy. Right. We’ll be right there.” He slid the phone back into his general’s jacket. It wouldn’t do for any of the reenactors to see him with a cell phone, but I supposed his job required him to be reachable at all times. “The medical examiner wants us back at the scene while he loads up the deceased.”

I winced. Loads up sounded like the chief was ready for a cattle drive, not to move a dead body.

The chief stepped through my office door. Detective Brandon hesitated before she went through. “I will get to the bottom of this murder, Ms. Cambridge. It would serve you well to either help me or get out of my way.”