Chapter Twenty-Nine

 

“Huh?” J.X. said, straightening.

“Yeah, you’re the killer,” I said. “Didn’t you know?”

“What are you talking about?” He was staring at me in bewilderment. So was everyone else.

Rachel said uncertainly, “But…but J.X. was hit over the head and thrown in the cellar.”

“He faked that.”

“I…w-what?” J.X. stammered.

“Sure,” I said.

“How the hell would I do that?”

“You’re a cop. You know all kinds of ways to do stuff.”

He was staring at me as though I’d gone insane. It was very satisfying.

“So what’s my motive?”

“Peaches was your first wife. You married her when you were both attending San Francisco State University. When you tried to divorce her to marry your brother’s girlfriend, she threatened to take half of everything you owned.”

You could have heard a pen drop. In fact, several pens did drop from the hands that had been busily scribbling notes.

I met J.X.’s wide gaze steadily. After a long stunned silence, he said quietly, “You shit.”

I shrugged.

“What happened to this isn’t a play, this isn’t a game?”

“I told you I didn’t want to do this.”

“So you accuse me of murder?”

“You accused me.”

“I didn’t accuse you. I locked you up for your own protection. I should have killed you myself.”

“Ha!”

“What the hell is going on?” Edgar asked grimly, rising. He looked from J.X. to me.

“Kit is trying to be funny,” J.X. said.

“No one’s laughing,” Edgar pointed out.

“No. Sorry.” I looked at him. “And I mean that. I am sorry, Edgar.”

He blinked, then lost color. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means, I can’t prove it, but I’m pretty sure you killed both Peaches and Steven Krass.”

Debbie gave a little scream. Her mother grabbed her, hugging her. Rita’s bleak gaze met mine over her daughter’s blonde head.

I said to her, “And I think if you didn’t know all about it, you suspected it.”

Her lips folded. She held Debbie closer.

The room was dead silent except for Debbie’s hysterical cries. I said to Edgar, “This is what I think happened. I think a long time ago, you and Peaches knew each other very well. I think she came back here, and there was still a certain amount of chemistry between you, and I think you allowed yourself to be seduced.”

And who the hell could blame him married to the unlovely and unpersonable Rita? But while Miss Butterwith could have said that aloud, I could not. Instead I said, “And I think Peaches, with her socio-pathological streak, threatened to go to Rita.” My gaze was drawn again to Debbie sobbing on her mother’s shoulder. “I think maybe Peaches had a particular ace up her sleeve—”

“Don’t,” Edgar said roughly. Rita was shaking her head back and forth over Debbie’s.

I stopped. So I was on the right track. I said, “And I think that knowing how jealous Rita is, you tried to reason with Peaches. But I don’t get the impression that Peaches was a very reasonable person, and at some point you lost control and hit her with a piece of firewood from that basket over there.”

Edgar looked at the basket on the hearth beside him.

“When you saw what you’d done, you carried Peaches down to the truck. Then you either told Rita—”

“Leave Rita out of it.”

“Or you went upstairs yourself and packed up Peaches’ belongings and carried her suitcases down to the truck. You or Rita are about the only two people who could move about the lodge at any hour without anyone questioning it, and naturally you have keys to every room and every cabin and every vehicle.”

He said nothing.

“I think you drove down to the shrine and dumped Peaches. I don’t think you had time for more than that, and I don’t think you had decided what to do yet. For obvious reasons you didn’t want her found on your property.”

Tentative sunlight was gilding the faces of everyone in the room. The storm had finally moved past.

“I think maybe I did hear a truck that night,” one of the pink ladies chimed in.

J.X. said, “And Steven saw what happened?”

I was watching Edgar’s face. “I don’t think so. I think if Krass knew for sure what had happened, he would have spoken up. But I think he knew what Peaches… I think he knew a fair bit of Peaches’ history, and I think he was drawing some natural conclusions. Did he arrange to meet you that night?”

Edgar said nothing. His eyes moved to Debbie and Rita. He looked at me.

I said, “If you tell me what happened, I won’t offer my theory on motive.”

When he spoke, Edgar’s voice was hoarse. “I didn’t arrange to meet him. I waited for him to go to bed that night, but he didn’t. He couldn’t sleep, I guess. He paced in his room for hours and then, finally, when the rain stopped for a little while, he went outside to smoke. I followed him to the patio, and I…shut him up once and for all.”

There were a number of winces and shivers from our spellbound audience.

“How did you get hold of my earring?”

His eyes met mine unwaveringly. “It was in the folds of her clothing. It must have fallen out of your ear when you bent over her body. It dropped on the truck bed when we lifted her in.” He shrugged. “I didn’t have anything against you, but you’d had a run-in with Krass that night, so I thought I’d use it.”

“Why did you attack J.X.?”

“I was snooping in the cellar,” J.X. said. His eyes met mine. “That much I do remember.”

Edgar nodded reluctantly. “You were snooping everywhere.”

“Why didn’t you kill him?” I asked.

Edgar scrubbed his face wearily. “Because I wasn’t sure we—I—was going to get away with it, and I didn’t want to make things worse for myself. Things were unraveling too fast, and there was no point killing a cop if I was going to be arrested anyway. I thought I’d wait and see what happened. If I could have made someone believe that he’d killed Patty, but…” He looked at me. “You kept insisting on all the reasons he couldn’t have.”

He could have killed me, of course, but that was veering into mass murderer territory, and Edgar wasn’t that kind of a killer, although as frightened and desperate as he was, he must have at least considered it while I was bending over that black pool in the icehouse. A shudder rippled through me as I remembered—

“There’s a plane coming,” George spoke suddenly, pointing at the long picture windows. “Helicopter, I mean.”

We all turned and stared out. Sure enough a sheriff’s copter was hovering over the vineyard, making its slow approach, scanning for a good place to land.

“I don’t think I should say anything more,” Edgar said.

I tended to agree with him.

Everyone was rising, crowding out through the meeting room doors, going to greet the sheriffs. Edgar went to Rita and put his arms around her and Debbie. The three of them stood there in a small huddle, holding tight.

There was a hand on my shoulder. I turned, and J.X. was behind me. Having to look up to meet his eyes gave me that funny fluttering feeling in my belly. He was shaking his head, but he was smiling too—wryly.

“Nice going, Holmes. Even if you did get sidetracked and accuse me of murder.”

“Elementary, my dear—”

He kissed me.