Amelia’s heart was pounding in her chest. She struggled against the man’s grip, wildly kicking her legs and scratching at his hands. What had she done? What was she thinking, breaking into someone’s house to go snooping around for something that didn’t even concern her? What would Dan think? What if he had to go to the coroner to identify her body? What about Meg and Adam? She reached behind her head to grab a hold of her assailant’s hair.
“Ouch!” he shouted before tossing her into the study where she fell to the ground.
“What is going on?” Rosa yelled.
“You two didn’t even think to check the house before you got started!”
Amelia looked up at the man speaking. It was Malcolm.
“You were here already,” Ronny said, smirking. “We didn’t think anyone would come in if you were here. Unless you had a girl or something up there. If anything, you should have been watching the house.”
“Who is she? One of your girlfriends?” Rosa looked like she wanted to kill Amelia. She stared at her, and for the first time, Amelia got a good look at the late Mrs. Sondra Hope’s maid. She was an older lady, who looked like she could be a mom at Meg’s school or a nurse at a hospital. Had her black eyes not been piercing into Amelia’s she could be anyone or no one depending on what her mood was.
“No. I’m not one of his girlfriends,” Amelia said. She was about to get to her feet when Rosa stepped forward, pulling a revolver from her pocket and pointing it at her.
“What are you doing with that?” Ronny barked.
“I told you to bring it, and you didn’t. Now we need it. So just say thank you, and let’s move on,” Rosa growled.
“Stop it. Jeez, if you two weren’t brother and sister, I’d swear you were married the way you fight,” Malcolm said, shaking his head.
“That’s gross, Malcolm,” Ronny said. “Can we focus on the task at hand? Where is this thing? Rosa says that this is the only room it could be in. If you hadn’t killed her with my garden tool, she’d have handed it right over to us.”
“Why are you talking about this in front of her?” Rosa asked. “How dumb are you both? She can’t identify all of us, but now you’re telling her why we are here.”
“She won’t say a word.” Malcolm took a step and towered over Amelia. “Say your prayers, Amelia Harley. You’ve got about ten minutes left to live.”
“Oh, the drama.” Rosa walked up and cocked the revolver, raising it level to Amelia before Malcolm stepped in the way.
“Are you crazy? You can’t kill her in the house. The blood will spray everywhere. Take her outside to the back of the barn. The weather and the bugs will do half the job for us before the cops find her. Besides, she’s just some snooping old biddy. They can’t even tie her to us.”
Rosa winced as if it was physically painful for her to lower the gun. She nodded and put it back in her pocket. Ronny reached down, grabbed Amelia by her sweatshirt, and yanked her to her feet. Her tailbone throbbed, and her left ankle twinged as though she twisted it when she went down. She couldn’t be sure. Everything was happening so fast, yet it felt like slow motion, and like she’d been stuck in this room, in this house, for hours.
“You won’t get away with this,” Amelia said. “I told everyone I know I was coming here. They knew I wanted to sneak into the house. They also know that I saw you at the Wedding Expo. So don’t think that if you kill me, you’ll get off scot-free. You’ll pay for what you do to me as much as you will for what you did to Sondra.”
“You don’t know anything about it,” Malcolm hissed as he stooped to get in Amelia’s face. “Do you know what she did? After these two people worked for her for years? She took them out of her will.”
“Her will?” Amelia had gotten it in her head that she was looking for something on par with the Hope Diamond or maybe a Mickey Mantle baseball card. Something that was really special. “You committed murder for the money from this place?” It wasn’t what she intended to do but Amelia had to chuckle. “I know this place makes good money, but split it up three ways, and I’m not sure you’ll be quite ready to retire on a tropical island.”
“This isn’t her only property. See, that’s the thing. She had Rosa and Ronny in her will, and it was for all of her properties. She’s got properties all over the country that add up to a little over ten million dollars. Split that three ways and I think we’ll all be very happy,” Malcolm said through clenched teeth.
“I’m getting tired of her wasting our time,” Ronny said.
“Wait, I hear something,” Rosa said, her eyes wide and nervous.
Amelia held her breath and listened. It was a car coming up the long driveway. Should she start screaming now or wait? She didn’t know what to do.
“We have every right to be here,” Rosa said. “We still have the keys, and we are still on the payroll. They can’t do anything to us.”
“What about her?” Ronny pointed to Amelia.
Before she could do anything, Malcolm grabbed her by the arm and yanked her toward him. “If you make a peep, I’ll snap your neck. Now move.”
Before she could make any sudden moves, Malcolm yanked open the closet door and pulled her inside with him. He held her tightly around the waist with one arm and his other hand over her mouth.
Amelia peeked to the left then to the right, trying to see anything in the closet that might help her. Reams of paper, stacks of old wedding and travel magazines were standing in plastic organizers, folded tablecloths, and an old sweater that Amelia figured was for those times when Sondra got cold in her office. Or maybe someone left it behind at some event, and she was waiting for them to come back and claim it. But there was nothing of any use to her. No samurai sword. No Louisville Slugger baseball bat. Nothing of use.
“Just calm down,” Ronny hissed.
“I am calm. You calm down. Who is it?”
Through the slats in the closet door, Amelia saw Ronny sidle up to the window and delicately pull the curtain aside. He was wearing big clunky work boots and blue jeans. Hardly a night prowler.
“It’s the police,” he whispered.
“What are they doing here? They shouldn’t be here. They finished their investigation. What are they going to do? Take more of the floorboards?” Rosa asked.
“Hit the lights,” Ronny said, quickly dashing to the other side of the room.
“What? Shut off the lights for what? That’s what guilty people would do. I suppose you want to just hide under the bed upstairs too,” Rosa argued.
“Knock knock!”
Amelia’s heart jumped as she heard the familiar voice of Detective Hobbs. In a matter of seconds, he was in the doorway of the study, and from the sound of it, he didn’t come alone.
“Well, what do we have going on here? Looks like you were right, Samuel. There was a party going on without you.”
“Mr. Hope. We were just… we were just here to collect some of our things,” Rosa said, smiling pitifully.
“What things would you have left in my wife’s office?” Samuel asked.
“Now, leave the questioning to me, Mr. Hope. Did you give any of your employees permission to come on the premises in your absence?” Detective Hobbs asked.
“I did not.”
“So as I see it, ma’am, you are trespassing. Now, I know that there are a lot of ladies who think that if they work at a place that entitles them to helping themselves to the petty cash drawer or some very bold women who think they should have access to the boss himself. Wife be damned. Which one are you?” Hobbs asked.
His question made Amelia roll her eyes.
“I’m not either,” Rosa started. “Like I said. I was just here because—”
“Look, Mr. Hope didn’t take our keys away. He said we were still to show up for work while the property was being sold.”
Amelia squinted through the slats and saw Ronny visibly sweating.
“You often work at this hour? You must be some kind of genius to do the landscaping at this hour in the dark.” Hobbs chortled. “You didn’t tell me you had a nocturnal gardener, Hope. That could have saved us a trip out here had I known he was just trimming the tulips.”
“Ronny, be quiet,” Rosa hissed.
“I don’t appreciate being accused of this,” Ronny said.
“No one’s accusing you of anything. Not yet,” Hobbs said as he started to chuckle. “I don’t know. He’s a rather nervous Nellie. I don’t know if I’d trust him with my garden tools, Mr. Hope. Ronny, when we spoke, you told me that you worked every day for the past seven years. You had a relationship with the Hopes. You’d never do anything to bite the hand that fed you for so long, now would you?”
Amelia could hear Ronny breathing. He was losing it. He was starting to pant like a cornered dog. She could hear him shuffling his feet. Behind her, she could feel Malcolm’s body tightening as Ronny continued to freak out. His grip around her was getting so tight she was finding it hard to breathe. He wasn’t leaving her enough space to inhale properly through her nose. If he didn’t ease up, she was going to pass out. Then, she realized she had one last option, and, hopefully, it wouldn’t result in him snapping her neck.
“Argh!” Ronny charged toward the open study door leading to the front door. Something was there that collided with the man, causing him to fall to the floor with a heavy thud.
Amelia bit down as hard as she could on Malcolm’s hand. At first, he clamped down harder on her, squeezing her around the middle, and smooshing her face. But she didn’t relent. Instead, she bit harder, and, within seconds, Malcolm was screaming.
“No!” Rosa shouted as Amelia felt Malcolm’s grip loosen. Without hesitating, Amelia pushed the door open and fell flat to the floor.
“What the heck is going on here?” Hobbs shouted, his weapon raised along with the other officers’, including the one that had stopped Ronny from escaping out the front door.
Amelia didn’t move, her eyes wide with her hands over her head.
“Why, Ms. Harley. What in the world are you doing here? Are you part of this?” Hobbs asked as he reached down, offering her a hand. “I’m going to have to arrest you for breaking and entering. Unless you work here too… at night… like the tree trimmer over there on the floor.”
“No sir. I did break in. Well, the door was open.” She nodded her head toward the French doors. “But I wasn’t invited or allowed to be here.” She got to her feet and looked at the bookcase. She spotted her favorite nook before turning to Samuel.
“So why are you here?” Hobbs asked. “And why were you in the closet with Mr. Universe?”
Malcolm was standing there with his hands up in the “I surrender” pose.
“Officer, I can clear this up,” Malcolm said while shaking his hand that Amelia had bit down on. “You see, Amelia and I have been having an affair and—”
“Oh, we have not.” Amelia laughed. “I’d rather go to jail.”
“Yikes, son. You might want to get your story straight before you start speaking for the lady. Some of them might really need a man to tell them what to say, but I don’t believe Ms. Harley is one of those women.” Hobbs chuckled without smiling.
“Mr. Hope.” Amelia cleared her throat. “On the day your wife died, I saw Rosa go to the smokehouse with a stack of papers. She burned something that was obviously important. I came back and sifted through the ashes and only found this tiny bit left.” She pulled the paper she’d found from her pocket and handed it to Samuel. “It looks like it’s from a will.”
“Our will? Rosa, is this true?” Samuel looked at the woman, who defiantly held her head up but said nothing.
“Then I was here again the other night when you had a fundraiser.” Amelia sighed. “I thought I might find something if I just had a chance to look around.”
“Wait. You weren’t the crazy lady running barefoot across the lawn who people were telling me about?” Samuel screwed up his face.
Hobbs remained stoic, and Malcolm shifted nervously from one foot to the other.
“Yeah.” She felt her cheeks heat up and was sure they were crazy red with embarrassment. “Anyway, Rosa and Ronny came in here and were saying they needed to find something your late wife had hidden, but they didn’t know where.”
“You have any idea what she’s talking about?” Hobbs asked Samuel, who shook his head before folding his arms.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know either,” Amelia said and looked around the room. But it was at the instant that Hobbs said he was going to cuff everyone and take them downtown that Amelia saw what had stuck in her mind for so long. She pointed to the nook with the books and the bell.
“What is it, Ms. Harley?” Hobbs asked.
“Mr. Hope. Your wife and I have the same dictionary.” She smiled broadly. “May I?” She pointed and slowly took a couple steps toward the bookshelf, keeping her hands raised.
When she pulled the book down, it was not nearly as heavy as a real dictionary. She flipped the book around and held it up for the detective and Mr. Hope to see. There was a lock on it.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Samuel said. “I didn’t know she had that.”
Rosa looked like she was seeing a ghost. She shook her head, and Amelia could see her jaw working as she clenched her teeth.
“Mr. Hope, would you happen to know where the key would be?” Amelia asked.
“Check in the desk.” He shrugged. “Everything that helped her run the business and stay organized was in here. I can’t imagine her keeping it somewhere else.”
“Hold on, Ms. Harley,” Hobbs said, waving her away from the desk. “Safety first.” He went to the desk himself and pulled the top drawer open.
“That’s it.” Amelia pointed to a little black key in the right-hand corner of the drawer. “It looks just like the one I have.”
Detective Hobbs took the key and opened up the box that looked like a dictionary.
“That’s just great, Rosa!” Ronny screamed.
“How was I supposed to know?” she screamed back. “Malcolm was the one in her pants. Why don’t you ask him why he didn’t know about this?”
Malcolm stood still, pale as a ghost, and not able to say a word.
“Now, let’s not use profanity about the deceased. Especially coming from a lady,” Detective Hobbs said, looking contemptuously at Rosa. “You want us to hold the door open for you, but you talk like that? Good luck. Here, Mr. Hope. Maybe you can make heads or tails out of this.”
He handed the box to Samuel, who unfolded what looked like the will.
“This is the will we did together when we first got married.” He swallowed hard as his eyes scanned the document before filling with tears. “At the time, she left everything to me. But she said she redid the will. When she told me she was leaving me, she said I’d never get a penny of the place.”
“That isn’t true. She changed her will,” Rosa shouted. “That will is outdated. There isn’t supposed to be any more copies. I burned them. I burned them all! It isn’t the most current one. Tell them, Malcolm. She left everything to you and the rest of the staff in her new will.”
“She didn’t make the new will, did she, Malcolm?” Detective Hobbs asked quietly. “That’s why you stabbed her with garden shears. It was the first thing you could get your hands on. Ronny had come into the house looking for her to ask about flowers for an event. He’d been trimming the rose bushes outside, and in your fit of rage, you tore them away from him and stabbed her. Then, when you stumbled on the porch after, you realized you had to explain the blood that had gotten on your own clothes, so you held her in your arms and tampered with the evidence, trying to rub off your prints at the same time and get as much of her blood on your clothes as possible.”
“She said she loved me,” Malcolm blubbered.
“You didn’t love her. You loved her money,” Amelia said. “And, Detective, there were also some checks missing from her checkbook after the day of Mrs. Hope’s death. You might want to see what was being charged on her credit cards and where checks were being cashed too.”
“You told me those checks were safe!” Rosa screamed.
“They were. I mean, I told you to wait to d-deposit them. D-did you w-wait?” Malcolm stuttered. “I told you they were good if you would just wait to deposit them.”
“Oh, Miss Rosa, were you cashing checks from the account of the deceased Mrs. Hope? That can be up to seven years for fraud. On top of conspiracy to commit murder, I’d say all of you are looking at a nice long vacation. Except you, Mr. Wayne. First degree murder is as bad as it gets. Hope you like the color orange,” Detective Hobbs said as he waved for his officers to cuff everyone.
“What about me?” Amelia asked sheepishly.
“I still don’t understand why you were doing all this?” Detective Hobbs asked, scratching his balding head.
“I was here that day to see about The Old Barn for my wedding reception. I felt so awful and thought a woman doesn’t just fall on a set of gardening shears. She helped people remember their special day. For all her flaws in her own life, she was helping people celebrate love. I guess that just meant something to me,” Amelia said.
“Mr. Hope. I’ll let it be your call,” Detective Hobbs said as he turned to the big brute, who was crying like a baby.
Amelia and the detective exchanged looks before Samuel spoke.
“My wife left a note in here dated just one month ago. It says she is sorry things didn’t work out and that it was nothing I had done. But she said, if anything happened to her, she wanted me to have everything because it was our wedding that made her first believe in love and continue to provide that kind of romance to our guests. Silly, right? I mean, she cheated on me, and we fought. But she didn’t completely hate me. Not completely.” Samuel sniffled but smiled through his tears. “No. I don’t want to press charges against Ms. Harley. If it weren’t for her, I would have never found this.” He waved the pretty little note on flowery stationery.
Amelia let out a deep breath and smoothed the hair on the nape of her neck. She stepped back as the officers cuffed everyone else and read them their Miranda rights. As she watched everything that was happening, she walked up to Detective Hobbs while he was mumbling and scribbling notes in his pocket notebook.
“Did Lucy like her cupcakes?” she asked.
“Well, let me just say that I didn’t have to sleep on the couch. For that, I thank you. I don’t think it’s so bad for a woman’s place to be in the kitchen, especially when she bakes like you. But I’m afraid I’m going to have to tell Dan about this,” the detective said.
“That’s okay. I hate to say it, but I think he’s used to it by now.” Amelia smiled and, after getting the green light to leave, walked back to her car and went home.