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I’d smelled the pipe tobacco and smoke combo in Haywood’s study the day after he’d been killed.

I blinked at Doc Gabriel. He had to have visited that study a short time before I did for me to have picked up the pipe tobacco scent.

Had he been the one to burn the letters? After all, he carried matches to light his pipe.

Was
he
the blackmailer?

“A stress reaction. It’ll grow back, good as new. Mine did.” He smiled and patted his hair. “And this is just a couple of months’ worth. I was bald as cue ball last spring, remember?”

His hair
had
grown in full and thick, with a little wave to it, too, which I heard was common after losing hair due to cancer treatments. Before he’d lost it all, his brown hair had been thin and limp.

Wait a sec.

He’d been bald as a cue ball last spring.
I thought back. Yes, he’d been bald in May. My brain raced, trying to connect random dots. I didn’t like the picture they created.

I abruptly stood up. “I should get going. Louella’s in good hands with you. Thank you so much for treating her tonight. It’s late. Dylan’s waiting on me.”

He tossed his gloves in the trash. “I thought the theory you told Barbara Jean about Doug killing Haywood was a good one.”

Warning tingles went down my back. “Well, thanks. You’re the only one who thinks so.”

I reached for the door, and he grabbed my arm. “You just had the wrong man.”

I glanced at his arm. “What’re you talking about?”

He let go of me, but blocked the door.

“I think you know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s written all over your face.”

I swallowed hard.

He said, “I killed Haywood, a terrible mistake on my part, really, but there it is.”

I was barely able to breathe as my heart slammed around inside my chest.

He’d killed Haywood. He’d. Killed. Haywood.

“It all started on Founder’s Day,” he said. “When I drove Hyacinth home and accidentally ran over Virgil Keane.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. I needed to sit down. “I don’t understand. Why are you telling me this?”

“You would have figured it all out soon enough with the way you’re asking questions. Many people saw
me
, not Doug, leave the Harpies’ Founder’s Day event with Hyacinth. Your questions are too pointed.”

I couldn’t look away from his eyes. The blue eyes that had always seemed so kind.

They remained kind, and I couldn’t understand how he was a murderer.

I suddenly recalled how stricken he’d looked when I mentioned Louella’s name, and now understood why—he’d run over her master. “Why did you keep Louella?” I asked, pieces of my heart breaking. He was a good man . . . I’d always believed so. Felt it. Trusted it.

Knowing he wasn’t made me feel as though he’d just run
me
over.

“Guilt, mostly,” he said, watching Louella’s chest rise and fall. “It was my fault she was in this situation.” His gaze shifted back to me. “I didn’t know I’d hit Virgil at first. I’d been driving Hyacinth’s car, and it wasn’t until I’d dropped off Hyacinth and started walking home that I saw the emergency crews at the corner and realized what must have happened.”

“Had you been drinking?”

He smiled a humorless smile. “There’s the irony of it all. I was chosen to take Hyacinth home because I was the only one who hadn’t been three sheets to the wind that night. I couldn’t mix alcohol with my cancer medication. At that point, my double vision was just beginning to become troublesome, especially at night, but I thought I could manage the short ride just fine. I’d been wrong. I knew I’d hit something, but I thought it was just the curb, not Virgil Keane.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

He dragged a hand down his face and his fingers lingered on his beard. “I planned to. I didn’t sleep at all that night, and in the morning I was going to march myself straight to the sheriff’s office. But when the news made it clear that there had been no witnesses to the accident, I . . . chickened out.”

My God.

“Why does Hyacinth believe
she
killed him?” I asked, my voice strained.

“She came to Idella and me a couple of mornings after the accident, panicked about the damage to her SUV. She’d seen the news reports about Virgil and wondered if there was a link. I lied and told her I dropped her off safe and sound, her SUV intact, and hinted heavily that she must have gone out again after I dropped her off. She had no memory of the night at all, so it was easy to plant the seed.”

“Why?” I asked, trying to ignore my witchy senses going berserk. I wanted answers. “Why do that to her? You had to know she’d believe she hit Virgil.”

“Because by then I’d concocted the blackmail plan,” he said simply. “In her letters, I threatened to reveal to the public that she’d killed Virgil.”

Holy hell. Who was this man? Had I known him at all? “But Idella’s being blackmailed about her family money being linked to the brothel in New Orleans . . .”

I’d managed to surprise him by revealing the information. The shock shone in his eyes, and his chin jutted as he nodded, seemingly impressed. “Yes, she is.” He tipped his head. “Or she was, rather. With Haywood’s death, I decided to stop the letters, hoping he’d take the fall for them.”

“You blackmailed your own
wife
?”

“You didn’t dig deep enough, Carly. If you had, you’d know that Idella’s trust fund ran out years ago. This practice is thriving and brings in a lucrative income, but that’s split between me and Dr. O’Neill, and the upkeep of the clinic. Yes, there was enough remaining to support the lifestyle Idella and I had become accustomed to, but then I was diagnosed with cancer. My medical insurance covered very little, which is entirely my fault. I chose the most affordable coverage for the practice, and it was entirely a case of getting what you paid for. Bills piled on faster than you could ever imagine. Idella and I drained our savings and went deep into debt.”

I thought about the day I had seen him with the shopping bags that looked like they were dragging him down . . . His woebegone appearance probably hadn’t been because Idella was punishing him for snapping at her—it was because she had just spent a ton of money they apparently didn’t have.

“We needed money,” he confirmed. “After I hit Virgil and framed Hyacinth, blackmail seemed the next logical step.”

“Logical? In what world?” I scoffed.

“In the hellish place I was living in,” he said matter-of-factly. “My whole world was falling apart around me. One bad decision led to another, then another. Not only was I fighting for my own life, my reckless actions had taken Virgil’s life, and in a sense, Hyacinth’s. Everything Idella and I ever worked for hung in the balance—a weight that was squarely on my shoulders. It was my fault we were in this situation. I had to do something drastic. I saw a way out, and yes, I took it. I had no other choice.”

“You could have told the truth.”

A wry smile played on his lips. “Right. The truth shall set me free,” he said drolly.

“Yes,” I said. “Exactly. People have the capacity to understand the truth. It’s lies we have issues with.”

“No, Carly. The truth would only have caused more pain. I had no other choice.”

He believed what he was saying, which I was actually grateful for. Because otherwise, I was dealing with a sociopath. He wasn’t that. He was just a desperate man.

A desperate man who’d already killed two people.

“Once I came up with the blackmail plan, I had to include Idella. It would be suspicious if all the Harpies but her received letters.”

“You purposely misled me when I asked you about the blackmail on Monday.”

“What else was I supposed to do?” he asked. “Confess?”

That would have been nice. “Does Idella know about all this?” I realized suddenly that she was the only one of the Harpies I hadn’t questioned about the blackmail. Haywood, yes, the blackmail, no. Was she in on it, too?

“No, she doesn’t, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

He spoke the truth, but my witchy senses were making me fidgety.

“How’d you pull that off?” I asked. “She has to know about your financial situation.”

“She’s old-fashioned, believing that the man of the house should take care of the money. I pay the bills. I do all the banking. She has no idea how big of a hole we are in. So she wouldn’t become suspicious about what I was doing, I went so far as to give her the cash to pay off the blackmailer using money I’d received from the other blackmail victims.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “And Haywood?”

“I told you your theory about the blackmailer killing Haywood was a good one,” he said. “You were dead-on, pardon the bad pun. Just substitute the gambling reference for medical bankruptcy.”

My theory.

Let’s say your wife’s a gambler. Maybe she’s racked up some debts, and you’re having trouble paying them off . . . You need cash quick. Your friends are loaded but you just can’t ask for a handout straight-out. Pride’s on the line. So you concoct a plan to use some secrets you know to bring in some money. No harm. No foul. Except what if one of the people you’re blackmailing suddenly stops paying? And threatens to track you down and expose your identity? Your house of cards is about to collapse. You panic. And you kill him.

“You thought Haywood knew who you were and was going to announce it that night at the ball,” I said.

“I’d been nervous about the announcement all week, wondering. It wasn’t until I overheard Haywood and Patricia arguing about Avery’s presence at the ball that I truly panicked. I thought Haywood had told Patricia about his plan to expose the blackmailer. I thought he’d uncovered that I had sent the letters, and I had to make sure he never revealed my identity. I grabbed the closest thing to me—a candlestick—wrapped myself in a dark curtain from the hallway, and waited until Haywood was alone . . . It wasn’t until you told me the following day that he’d been planning to announce his connection to the Ezekiel house that I realized I’d killed him for no reason at all, and I felt truly ill about it. My intent with the blackmail was to never physically harm anyone. I needed money. That is all. Those bills were my cage.”

I recalled the conversation yesterday afternoon.

“Louella shouldn’t have to spend her life in a cage. It’s not right.”

Softly, he said, “No one should. Especially when it’s not a cage of your own making.”

But, I noted that he said he hadn’t wanted to
physically
harm anyone with the blackmail. He obviously knew the emotional pain he had caused.

“And the fire?” I asked.

“Again, a moment of panic. I spotted you with Mr. Butterbaugh and followed the two of you. I’d bumped into him just before the murder near the restrooms, and I was afraid he would eventually realize I was the killer.”

Aha! The fire
had
been about Mr. Butterbaugh, after all. I couldn’t wait to tell Delia and Dylan.

And hoped I’d have the chance.

“He has no clue you’re involved,” I said.

“That’s good to know now, but on Sunday I didn’t want to take that chance. When I saw the two of you go into the basement, I threw together a plan on the spot.”

Desperation breeds desperation. He was on a downward spiral and only making matters worse for himself.

“Two birds with one stone,” Gabriel said. “I knew it was only a matter of time before your questions turned toward me. You’re too tenacious. Too smart. I saw the kerosene, I had the matches in my pocket . . .”

Apparently not as smart as I would like to be, as I had called
him
tonight for help . . . and there were some things I still hadn’t figured out. “You blackmailed Hyacinth about Virgil, Barbara Jean about her gambling, and Idella about her embarrassing family history . . . How did you know about Avery Bryan?”

“I dug a little into Haywood’s past. I recalled how suddenly Twilabeth had fled town after their divorce, and I hoped it would lead me to some dirt on Haywood. It did.”

“And Patricia?” I asked. “Were you blackmailing her about her relationship with Dylan?”

“About how he was secretly adopted, you mean? Yes, all the Harpies know. It’s old news.”

“Do you know who Dylan’s parents are?” I asked, curious if he knew the whole truth.

“Don’t know, don’t care. All I cared about was that Patricia was willing to pay to keep Dylan from finding out.”

Buying time, I asked, “Did you burn the letters at Haywood’s?” I suspected he did because I had smelled that pipe tobacco, but I wanted confirmation.

“Yes. I slipped out of the ball during all the commotion of the emergency crews arriving and used the key hidden in his mailbox to go inside. I found them rather quickly in his office. I had to get rid of them before anyone else found them. I wanted the Harpies to keep on believing he was the blackmailer.”

My witchy senses were acting up a storm, which meant there was danger in the air. After revealing all he had to me, I couldn’t imagine Gabriel would simply let me walk away. I just hadn’t quite come up with a way to get out of here yet.

“Why not take the letters with you?”

“I had to get back to Idella at the ball,” he said simply, “and I didn’t want them on me. There was no time to take them home to shred.”

“But—”

“No more questions, Carly. Please. Now, I hate to do this,” he said solemnly, “but I have no choice. You know much too much.”

I was confused for a moment until I saw the syringe he’d prepped earlier in his hand. He lurched forward, intent on stabbing me with the needle, and I dropped and rolled out of his reach just in time.

“You’re just delaying the inevitable,” he said, his voice cracking a bit. “It will only hurt for a second. Then you’ll just go to sleep and not wake up.”

“Dylan knows I’m here,” I said, scrambling to my feet. I glanced around frantically for something to use as a weapon, but there was nothing. Nothing at all. Only a very sick little dog, and my wits.

Both of which were virtually useless.

“I’ll say you left after dropping off Louella,” he countered.