Devil's Food Cake (34 page)

Josh looked stunned, his blue eyes almost vacant. Then he slowly shook his head. “Who told you about this meeting?” he asked.

“The reporter,” Sadie said, realizing she hadn’t introduced Jane and Josh. Maybe that was a good thing. “She’s been working several angles of this story for a few weeks, and when she confronted Mr. Ogreski about Damon’s book, he agreed to meet with her after tonight’s event. She believed he was going to confirm her suspicions.”

Josh shook his head. “I don’t believe it. She’s making it up. Mark would go to his grave before he’d admit to any of this.”

“Maybe he did,” Eric said.

Sadie and Josh both turned to look at him.

“What?” Sadie said, thinking she must not have heard him correctly.

Eric looked at Sadie. “A reporter is making noise about having proof of the fraud, and the book is going out of print.” He looked at Josh. “You say Mark didn’t know Thom was planning to break ties, but what if he did? He controlled Thom’s life, right? And Thom was a drunk. Are you sure he could keep the fact that he was leaving a secret?”

Sadie picked up on the conjecture even though it made her head spin. “If things were coming to a head—what with a reporter close and Thom breaking away—Mr. Ogreski would know he was out of time.”

“Especially if everyone found out about Damon’s teacher,” Eric put in. “He would be facing far more fallout than just losing his job.”

Sadie’s mind was racing. “And the chances of him silencing both Thom and the reporter—”

“And you,” Eric cut in, pointing at Josh. Then he waved Sadie to continue.

Sadie nodded. “Right, and you too, were slim to none. He was losing power, but he may have had just enough time to keep things on his terms. And, given all the medications the police found in his room, he wasn’t coping with all of this as well as you may have thought he was.”

“Medications?” Josh repeated. “You mean his sleeping pills?”

“And anxiety medication and antidepressants,” Sadie added. “He wasn’t a well man. What if he thought the bottom of this pseudo life he’d created was being pulled out from under him?”

They all fell silent. Josh looked slightly shell-shocked. “You think Mark could have done this to himself?”

It did seem a bit ridiculous, Sadie realized, reliving that shotgun blast. And yet, was it possible?

“He couldn’t have done it alone, though,” Eric put in. He looked at Sadie. “Didn’t you say Mark and Thom were late for the dinner because they drove up from Denver today? When would he have rigged the gun? Where would he have gotten the gun in the first place?”

Josh’s expression turned thoughtful. “Last night . . .”

“What about last night?” Sadie said, looking at Josh intently.

“Thom called me from the hotel,” he said. “He was really nervous about the presentation and couldn’t sleep. I told him to ask Mark for a sleeping pill.”

Sadie shook her head in censure. The man was an alcoholic and taking other people’s prescriptions was never a good idea.

Josh continued. “They had adjoining rooms—you know, the kind with doors in between?”

Sadie nodded.

“Mark had locked the door on his side and didn’t answer when Thom knocked. I told Thom to call him, and he did, on both the hotel phone and Mark’s cell phone. Mark never answered.”

“O-kay,” Sadie said, willing Josh to continue. So Mark was a sound sleeper, what else?

“I assumed Mark had taken a sleeping pill too, but what if he wasn’t there at all?”

“You mean, what if he came up to Garrison?” Eric put in.

“And rigged up the gun himself?” Sadie added.

“He’d spoken with the hotel extensively,” Josh said, leaning forward as much as he could, which wasn’t much. “He wanted to know the exact layout of the room and . . .” He trailed off, then looked at Sadie. “Could you please release my arm? It’s completely numb.”

Sadie glanced at Eric, who shrugged. She looked back at Josh and realized that this was the first request he’d made. And his legs would still be lashed to the chair. Hadn’t he also given them a great deal of information?

“Okay,” Sadie said. She pushed back from the table, but Eric put his hand on her arm to stop her.

“I’ll do it,” he said. Sadie looked at the hand on her arm. The man seemed to have a lack of appreciation for personal space, and yet . . . Sadie shut that thought down at warp speed, turning every bit of her focus to Josh. No “and yet”s allowed.

Eric removed his hand and walked around the back of Josh’s chair, squatting to undo the belt. A moment later, Eric dropped the belt on the floor and Josh brought his hand around front, wincing as he rubbed his fingers with his other hand.

“Thank you,” Josh muttered as he made a fist, then stretched out his fingers before making a fist again.

Sadie had to look away. She felt horrible that he’d been tied up at all and those feelings were increasing in direct proportion to how much information Josh was giving them.

“You were saying Mark had asked the hotel about the layout?” Eric prodded, back to business the second he sat down. He closed his laptop and kept his eyes on Josh.

“Right,” Josh said, nodding. He was still opening and closing his fist, his face showing that it was painful. “He wanted to know the exact layout of the room, audio setup, how many people would be there. I mean, he always did that when Thom was going to present somewhere. He always wanted to know exactly what to expect in hopes it would make Thom less nervous.”

“The rental car would show the miles, right?” Eric said.

Sadie nodded, thinking that would be a good way to verify the information. Then she was on to the next thought. “Could he get into the hotel?”

Josh shook his head. “I don’t know, but someone did, right? Someone got into the hotel and rigged up the gun.”

Sadie picked up when Josh paused. “If he drove up from Denver last night, there’d be a smaller staff at the hotel for the night shift, right? Doesn’t seem like it would be hard to get in and out.”

“Although he would still be dependent on things working out just right,” Eric added, looking between the two of them. “I mean, what if someone else messed with the podium?”

Sadie thought back to the pink Post-It Gayle had given her after the shooting had taken place. “There was a note,” she said. “It said the mic had already been tested and was ready to use once it was plugged in. ”

“It’s still relying on a lot of luck that whoever was really supposed to test the mic didn’t wonder why there was a note there in the first place,” Eric suggested.

Josh added his own thoughts as soon as Eric finished. “Unless the backup microphone was something Mark had insisted on and was not standard practice. Then it would be easily discounted or appreciated that it was ready to go, right?”

“But, why?” Sadie cut in, interrupting the pileup of ideas.

Both men paused.

Sadie leaned forward. “So Mr. Ogreski faces up to the fact that everything’s about to become common knowledge—why end it like this?” She spread out her one hand as if to encompass all the details. “He could have simply taken too many sleeping pills, or driven his car off a cliff.” She paused to remind herself that this was a man’s life she was talking about. She didn’t want to lose sight of that. “My point is that this particular . . . method took a lot of planning and the details had to fall in place just right. And at the end he was . . . well, dead. So there’s no payoff.”

They all sat there for a few seconds, looking at the one detail that made everything else look different.

Suddenly, Josh sat up straight. “The key,” he said, nodding toward the orange-capped key on the table next to Eric’s computer. “Thom called me tonight when they arrived at the hotel, and I went out to take their bags upstairs while they got set up for the presentation. When I got back to the ballroom, Thom was trying to get the wireless mic to work. I tried to help him for a minute, but then a hotel staff member took over. I stepped back, and that’s when Mark came up to me and handed me that key.” He nodded toward the key again. “He said Thom asked him to give it to me.”

“Why didn’t Thom give it to you himself?” Sadie asked. Eric had discovered it fit a storage unit here in Garrison. What was in that storage unit?

“I don’t know,” Josh said, shaking his head. “But things were crazy and tensions were high because they were running late. At the time I thought it was weird—I mean, why not give me the key later if Thom wanted me to have it? Or why didn’t Thom give it to me when I was helping him with the wireless microphone? But I didn’t think about it too much, just put the key in my pocket and hurried around to the back of the ballroom so I could start lining up my shots. I got back to my equipment, zoomed in on the stage, and then the gun went off. I forgot all about the key in the aftermath. Well, until you showed up with it.” He paused again, his expression becoming even more thoughtful. “But what if Thom knew nothing about the key? What if
Mark
was the one who wanted me to have it?”

Chapter 43

Things were just starting to sink in when Jane called out from the other room. “Found it!”

“Found what?” Josh asked as both Eric and Sadie stood.

“Diane Veeter’s file on Damon,” she said, heading toward the den. “I think he must have given her part of the original manuscript, which is the proof she claimed to have.”

Within a few steps, Sadie stopped and turned back to look at the man still strapped to the dining room chair. He looked so vulnerable, like a little kid sentenced to time-out. Had he earned his right to freedom yet?

“It really was inevitable, wasn’t it?” Josh said, obviously lost in his own thoughts.

“What was inevitable?” Eric asked, also turning.

“The truth was going to come out one way or another.” He looked a little overwhelmed by it all. “It’s so . . . surreal. After all these years of hiding it, it’s suddenly just—there. Everyone will know what Thom did.” His voice lowered. “Everyone will know what I did.”

Sadie didn’t know how to answer, but felt a wave of sympathy wash over her. “Would you mind undoing his feet?” she asked Eric.

Eric seemed to pause, but then he leaned into her. “Can I ask your son to keep a close eye on him?”

Sadie nodded, thinking that was a good idea. Despite the fact that she wanted to believe everything Josh had told them, she had no one to verify any of it.

As Eric moved toward Josh, she realized he had a new smell since the last time she’d been close enough to smell him at all—cologne. It didn’t mask the other smells completely, but it was an improvement. Glancing at him from the corner of her eye, she wondered why he’d bothered with cologne in the first place and when?

Shawn appeared in the doorway. “You want to see it or what?” He saw Eric undoing the belts around Josh’s legs and stiffened.

“It’s okay,” Sadie assured her son. “He’s on our side now.” Well, that might be coloring it a little too pink, she realized. However, he’d condemned himself with his confession, and he didn’t have to talk at all. She lowered her voice so that Josh didn’t overhear what she said next. “Will you keep an eye on him?”

Shawn wavered for a moment, but then nodded as Josh rose to his feet, lifting one foot and then the other to shake them out. Sadie wondered if they were numb too.

Josh and Eric joined them at the doorway leading to the den. Shawn stared Josh down while Josh tried to pretend he didn’t notice.

They entered the den, and Sadie saw that the pile of folders in the middle of the room was mostly depleted. The ones already sorted were stacked nicely against the couch.

Jane had a folder open on her lap and lifted her head to brush her sweeping bangs out of her eyes. She smiled at Sadie. “A bunch of the files were all mixed together,” she explained. “And his stuff was actually in a different folder so once we found one with his name on it, but nothing inside, we had to go through each one.” She handed the papers to Sadie. “It looks like you were right—Damon did write it.”

“Phew, what stinks?” Eric said, crinkling his nose.

“These files weren’t the only thing in the garbage can,” Jane said, pushing herself to her feet and stretching her legs. “Some of it came along for the ride.”

“And you brought them in here?” Eric said.

Sadie took a scan around the mess in the room that had nothing to do with the files. There were diet soda cans on nearly every surface, and newspapers, magazines, and socks were strewn about the floor. And yet, she had to admit it hadn’t smelled bad until she’d brought the files in.