Walt and Danielle sat at the kitchen table on Saturday evening, each having a slice of chocolate cake, when Ian walked into the room.
“Those were some wild pictures Marie took,” Ian told them as he grabbed a cup from an overhead counter and then filled it with cold water.
Concerned the camera might get wet before they could remove the images, since it no longer had a cover, Marie hadn’t returned it to the roof. Instead, she’d flown it to Marlow House, like a witch without a broom, in broad daylight, moving fast enough that if anyone noticed something overhead, they would assume it was a bird.
“Where is our photographer?” Danielle asked. “Did she ever come back?”
“Since I can’t see Marie, I have no idea.” Ian laughed. “But Connor hasn’t acted like she’s here.”
“Oh dear. You said the photos were wild. How wild?” Danielle asked.
“It’s pretty obvious Marie wasn’t paying a great deal of attention to what she was taking pictures of. There are a lot of shots of the back room of the florist shop, with a random elbow or some body part in the picture’s corner. In some shots, you could see they were getting down to business, but there was no way to tell who they were.”
“So we didn’t get anything?” Danielle asked.
“Fortunately, there was one good picture. It’s a little dark, but I don’t imagine there was a lot of light in the storage room. Despite that, you can clearly tell it’s Adrian getting friendly with a woman. I did a little photoshop to blur out the background so Bonnie won’t know it was taken in the flower shop. I also blurred the woman’s face. Like I said before, I don’t feel comfortable sending these types of photos out where you can clearly identify the woman or where she works.”
“How are we going to do this?” Danielle asked.
“Chris got her phone number,” Ian said. “So once we have the phone, I can send her a text message with a picture. I’ll write something like, Sorry to have to tell you this, but your fiancé is cheating on you. He is only after your money. You are better off without him.”
“How did Chris get her number?” Walt asked.
“From Adam.”
“When are you planning to send it?” Danielle asked.
“Chris is picking up the phone tomorrow morning. After he drops it off, I can send the message then.”
Adrian picked up Bonnie on Sunday morning to take her to brunch at Pearl Cove. On the way over to the restaurant, she told him, “I have a surprise for you.”
With his hands firmly on the steering wheel, he glanced over at Bonnie as they drove down the road. “Surprise? What kind of surprise?”
“Yesterday, the reason I was in Portland, well, I lied.”
“What do you mean you lied?”
“About why I was going.” She grinned at Adrian.
Again, glancing over to her, he furrowed his brows. “So why did you go?”
“I met with a lawyer, and I finally updated my will, adding you as my sole beneficiary.”
“Seriously?” Adrian smiled.
“I found this guy in Portland, and he works every other Saturday. So I made an appointment with him last month.”
“You never told me.” Adrian grinned.
“I wanted to surprise you. Consider it a belated engagement present. But I have a favor to ask you.”
Adrian pulled into the parking lot of Pearl Cove. “What kind of favor?”
“After breakfast, will you go with me to Aunt Cordelia’s house? Adam Nichols emailed me a list of repairs I need to do on the house before we list it. And I was hoping you’d help me go through it so we can decide which ones we want to do, and then I can send it back to him and get the house listed.”
“No problem, babe. Whatever you want.”
“I love you, Adrian.”
“I love you too, babe.”
After brunch, Bonnie sat comfortably in the passenger seat of Adrian’s car, looking out the side window as they drove to her aunt’s house. When Adrian pulled up in front of the property a few minutes later, he parked, turned off the ignition, and sat in his seat a minute, hands still on the steering wheel, making no attempt to unbuckle his seat belt as he looked out of the car at the two-story house.
“It’s weird I’ve never been in this house,” Adrian said.
Bonnie shrugged and then started to unbuckle her seatbelt. “I haven’t been in it since she died. Never saw the point. I never liked the house. Too dated.” While Bonnie had not been back in the house, she had hired someone to check on the property, which Adrian already knew.
Bonnie started on the first floor of the house, walking through each room, while Adrian stayed by her side, a pen in one hand while he carried the clipboard with the list of items Adam had recommended for repair or replacement in his other hand. When they finished on the first floor, they headed to the second floor and walked through each room. Before going back downstairs, they stopped at the top of the staircase while Adrian set the clipboard on the floor by the top step so he could inspect the railing, which Adam claimed was loose.
While Adrian examined the railing, Bonnie stood quietly about four feet behind him, waiting for him to finish, when her phone buzzed, signifying an incoming text message. Thinking it might be Adam telling her something he had forgotten, since she had mentioned they would be going over to the property after brunch, she pulled her phone from her back pocket and opened the message.
When Bonnie looked at her cellphone’s screen, she found herself looking at a picture of Adrian in an embrace with a woman who appeared to be missing some of her clothing. She knew it wasn’t an old picture, because the shirt Adrian wore was one she had bought him last week as a gift.
She froze in shock, staring at the image. But it was the message attached to the picture that served as a slap to her face, waking her from her momentary paralysis. Adrian, his back still to Bonnie, had just said something, but she could not process his words. Still talking, he turned to her, a smile on his face, and he knelt to pick up the clipboard he had set on the floor at the top of the stairs.
His smile felt like a million pins in her heart, and without thought, she let out a guttural scream and charged at Adrian, her hands extended. She shoved him off the top of the staircase.
He let out a scream and tried to grab hold of the railing, but his feet flew out from under him, and he tumbled to the first floor while screaming all the way. After he landed with a dramatic thud, his screaming stopped, and all was silent. Eerily silent.
Cordelia stood on the first floor, looking up at her niece, who stood silently at the top of the staircase, looking down at the man she had just shoved down the stairs. “What have you done, child? I thought you loved him.”
Cordelia heard a groan. She looked down at Adrian. Was he still alive? But then a second man stepped out of Adrian, whose body remained limp and lifeless on the floor. It took Cordelia a moment to realize what she was actually seeing. The second man was Adrian’s spirit. Bonnie had killed her fiancé.
“What the hell?” The second Adrian stumbled to his feet and then, as if regaining his balance, stood up straight and looked up the staircase, where Bonnie remained standing on the top step, still looking down the stairs. “Why did you push me?”
When Bonnie failed to answer his question, he shouted it again, this time louder.
“She can’t hear you,” Cordelia said in a calm, low voice.
Surprised someone else was in the house, Adrian turned abruptly and looked at Cordelia. “Who are you?”
“You’re dead, you know.”
He frowned in response.
Cordelia laughed. “I guess you didn’t know. But you are. My niece pushed you. Why did she do that? What did you do to her? Bonnie has always been quick to anger, unforgiving. Even vindictive.”
Adrian said nothing; instead he turned and stared down at his lifeless body.
Upstairs, Bonnie remained frozen on the top step, looking down at the carnage she had created. Minutes passed. Finally, she reached out to the rail with her right hand and slowly descended the staircase, taking one slow step at a time while her right hand remained holding the handrail. When she reached the first-floor landing, she knelt down by the body.
From Cordelia’s perspective, both Adrian and Bonnie knelt by the body, the tops of their heads practically touching. After a moment Bonnie reached out and pressed her finger along his neckline, testing for a pulse. As she did this, Adrian’s spirit looked up at her and asked, “Why?”
Bonnie could not hear the question. She sat on the bottom step, took out her phone, and called 911. Moments later someone answered the call, and Bonnie began a hysterical sobbing plea to the operator, a stark contrast to her calm demeanor before pressing “send” for the 911 call.
Word of Adrian’s death reached Marlow House before the first responders arrived on the scene. It began with the 911 call. Bryan was talking to Heather on the phone when the call first came in that something had happened at Cordelia’s house, and Bryan had to cut the call with Heather short. Heather then called Danielle, who told Marie, who then went to the house, but not before letting Eva know, who was talking to Wesley, which was why Marie, Eva, and Wesley all showed up at Cordelia’s house before the responders arrived, and there was time for Marie to pop back to Marlow House to tell the mediums Adrian was dead before she returned to the scene of the crime.
Albeit first stunned at being killed by Bonnie, the silent shock quickly turned into rage when Wesley arrived and greeted his brother with, “I had to stop you from marrying her. It’s for the best.”
After a brief greeting between Cordelia, Eva, and Marie, the three ghosts stood silently and listened to the exchange between the brothers, while in the background, the first responders filed into the house, and Bonnie began her telling of what had happened, telling Brian Henderson how Adrian had been helping her go through the house—with the clipboard with his handwriting as evidence—and how he had stumbled when checking the top railing, and had tragically fallen to his death.
But that was not the conversation Cordelia, Eva, and Marie found more interesting. Instead, they listened to what the brothers had to say.
“What do you mean it’s for the best? What did you do?” Adrian demanded.
“I had to find some way to break you up. I couldn’t let you marry her and then kill her.”
“Why not? You were going to kill her. Or should I say, you wanted me to do it for you.”
“But karma got to me first, didn’t it? I was wrong. And so were you.”
“Wait a minute, you were planning to kill your wife?” Marie demanded.
The brothers turned to the three ghosts. Adrian frowned at Marie. “Who are you?”
Marie waved her hand dismissively at Adrian while saying, “That’s not important.” She looked at Wesley and repeated her question. “You tried to kill her?”
When Wesley refused to answer the question, Adrian blurted, “He hired me to kill her. I was supposed to do it when he was in California on that business trip. We were going to split the money. But then he had that heart attack, and there was no point in killing her. I wasn’t going to inherit any money. Not unless I married her.”