Divas and Dead Rebels (38 page)

“Yes, and I’m sorry to intrude on you at this awkward moment, but I think you can help me a great deal if you’ll spare me just five minutes. It concerns your husband’s untimely death.”

Emily stared at me. It had seemed so much more sensible in the planning stages to arrive on her doorstep unannounced to interrogate her, but right now it only seemed rude. Finally she gave a curt nod and stepped back to allow us inside.

The living area was gloomy, shutters closed, furniture covered with sheets, and no sign of life at all. No plants, no photographs, nothing but a stillness that reflected a sense of loss. Despite Bitty’s insistence that Emily had a hand in her husband’s death, I didn’t agree. Maybe she was involved in a cover-up, but not the actual murder.

So once we stood in an awkward half-circle, with no invitation to sit or have tea forthcoming, I started with that premise in mind.

“I know what happened between you and Breck Hartford,” I said bluntly, and she didn’t turn a hair. She just lifted one eyebrow and seemed faintly amused, so I followed that with, “Is that the reason you haven’t turned him in for murder yet?”

My last question didn’t exactly bring the response I had hoped it would. Emily actually laughed.

“You must really think me foolish to believe I’d fall for this silliness. Did he send you here?”

“Why would Breck send us here?” I countered.

“Why not? He loves to play games, not me. And really, if this is what you came to discuss, I have no time at all for it. I’m about to bury my husband.”

“At least tell me what Montgomery Moore told Professor Sturgis before he died. I know he had to tell him something, because from what I’ve heard, your husband intended to use this information to ruin Breck Hartford.”

That last was a shot in the dark, but apparently I’m a pretty good marksman on the rare occasion. Emily bit her lower lip and looked down at her feet for a moment.

“He did tell you what Monty said, didn’t he?” I prompted as gently as possible. “And maybe that was part of the reason he was killed, too?”

Emily sucked in a deep, shuddering breath. Bitty made some kind of furtive sound so I nudged her before she became too vocal.

It was so quiet I could almost hear the house settling into the rich Mississippi dirt. A brisk November wind clacked elm branches together outside and soughed around the fieldstone walls.

Finally Emily looked up, and I saw a faint sheen in her eyes. “It’s my fault. All of it.”

“Aha!”
said Bitty at my side, and I grabbed her arm in a death grip to keep her quiet before she ruined a possible confession.

“I’ve known Breck since we met in Colorado one Christmas while I was still in high school,” Emily said as if Bitty hadn’t had a Charlie Chan moment. “We dated long-distance for a short time. Then we changed colleges, and by the time we met up again, he was married to Victoria, and I was married to Spencer. It was crazy, but the spark was still there. I know it was wrong, but I couldn’t seem to stop, and Breck . . . well, he didn’t stop either. Then Breck helped Spencer when he got into trouble at Harvard, and it seemed inevitable that we’d end up down here eventually. I wanted to, yet I didn’t want to. I knew what would happen again. Breck and I . . . Poor Spence. He didn’t suspect for a long time. Not until Victoria told him, anyway.”

The last was said with definite bitterness.

“What did Spencer do then?” I asked as gently as possible.

Emily crossed her arms over her chest as if chilled and looked past us to the closed-in windows. “He went crazy,” she said softly. “Ranting and raving . . . I thought he’d want an immediate divorce. But he didn’t.”

“He just wanted to punish you,” said Bitty.

Emily looked back at Bitty. “Yes. Basically. I should have left him then. I don’t know why I didn’t. Probably because it was my fault. I never meant to hurt Spence. And I never meant to keep on seeing Breck, not after . . . everything.”

“Did you know about Spencer’s forged credentials?” I asked, and she nodded.

“Yes. Oh yes. Spence threw it in my face that my lover had arranged for him to be a professor here just so he could see me again. That he’d done all that so we could sneak around and see each other behind his back.”

“Did he? Did Breck do all that to get you close again?”

She shrugged, a slight lift of her shoulders. “Perhaps. Oh, probably. I don’t know. You’d really have to ask Breck that question. He has all the answers anyway.”

“But you know why Monty Moore was killed.”

“Do I?”

“Yes. You do. He saw something he wasn’t supposed to see, and he was killed for it, just like your husband was killed because he knew too much.”

Shaking her head, Emily said, “No, Spence wouldn’t tell me exactly what Monty said to him, only that Monty had been part of a crime and couldn’t stand the pressure of knowing what had been done.”

“But you had your suspicions,” I said.

“Yes. I had my suspicions. There was a girl . . .”

There it was. Confirmation that I was right, that Catherine had indeed given me the information I needed to solve the murders. But the information was useless without proof. Evidence. Or a confession.

“And?” Bitty prompted when Emily paused. “What girl?”

“Trisha Atwood. She was a student here. Monty knew her. She died. An accident of some kind. Or supposed to be an accident.”

“But it wasn’t an accident, was it,” I said more than asked, and Emily nodded.

“Spence never came out and said it, but I knew that’s what it was. And Breck . . . he was involved somehow.”

“I’m sure he was,” Bitty muttered before I could elbow her into silence. “Up to his adulterous little eyeballs. A lot of that going around, apparently.”

I tried to step on her foot, but she was too quick for me and shuffled sideways.

Emily gazed at Bitty for a moment, then said curtly, “It’s not like Spencer was a faithful husband. He wasn’t.”

“I know,” said Bitty, and when Emily lifted a brow she added, “The professor and Victoria in the library.”

I thought but didn’t say,
“With a candlestick.”
Sometimes I can’t help what pops into my head. Old board games of
Clue
aside, it was obvious Emily Sturgis knew more than she’d told the police. At this point, she probably knew more than I did. I was still on my fishing expedition.

“So it’s true about Spencer and Victoria?” I asked. “They were having an affair?”

“More like a fling. It didn’t last long.” Emily shook her head. “It wasn’t a big deal at all. He made sure I knew about it, of course.”

“Of course,” said Bitty, nodding her head wisely. “Otherwise it wouldn’t have been revenge.”

A faint smile curved Emily’s mouth. “I suppose that was it.”

“Oh, that was it,” Bitty assured her. “It usually is. Not that I would know about it firsthand, but my late husband the senator used to always say revenge was sweetest when it was with an opponent’s wife. And he would have known, believe me.”

Before Bitty could quote any more wisdom from her dead ex-husband, I said quickly, “How was Breck involved with the dead girl?”

Emily gave me a wary look. “You’ll have to ask him about that. Now I must ask you ladies to please leave since I can’t miss my flight.”

And with that, we were quickly ushered out of her front room and onto the front stoop. The door closed behind us with a click of finality, and I still didn’t have all the answers I needed. I looked at Rayna, and she nodded as she pulled off her sunglasses.

“Okay,” I said, “on to the next victim.”

Rayna saluted me. “Off we go.”

“I wish you’d tell me what we’re doing,” grumbled Bitty as we walked toward Rayna’s SUV. “I would have brought my calling cards if I’d known we were going to visit half of Oxford.”

“How quaint,” Gaynelle remarked with a smile. “My grandmother used to have the prettiest calling cards with her name in a lovely cursive script. I think I still have some tucked away in a box. That was a much more genteel time period.”

“Genteel, maybe,” said Rayna, “but not nearly as enlightened in most ways.”

“True,” Bitty said. “Before we go on about missing the good ole days, we need to remember that it wasn’t that long ago that women didn’t have the vote, and there were no such things as microwave ovens.”

“Equally important, I’m sure,” Rayna remarked with a laugh.

“You bet,” said my cousin with a firm nod of her empty little head. “Try cooking a lasagna in ten minutes without one.”

“She means reheating,” I explained to Gaynelle, who also knew better. “If Bitty cooks, the fire department shows up.”

Rather irritated, Bitty said, “I declare, burn down a house just one time, and you never hear the end of it.”

A beep sounded as Rayna hit the remote to her car, and we all piled into it as before, Gaynelle in the front passenger seat, and Bitty and I in the back. When Rayna slid into the driver’s seat and started the vehicle, Bitty turned to fix me with a steady eye.

“Do you know what you’re doing here? Because if you don’t, pulling the tiger’s tail could get us all into a lot of trouble.”

“I assume you mean Breck Hartford?”

Bitty nodded. “That’s the tiger I mean, yes. I’ve told you how competitive he was in college, and I see no sign of him having mellowed. If anything, he may have perfected the art.”

“Of winning?”

“No, of stomping out the competition. He doesn’t like to just win. He likes to obliterate his opponents.”

“Interesting. Very interesting.”

“Don’t forget dangerous—very dangerous.”

“Really, Bitty,” said Rayna from the front seat as we pulled away from the curb, “you make it sound like Hartford has been running around killing people for years.”

“Maybe he has. I think he’s certainly capable of it if he thought the professor was important enough to kill.”

That made me rethink: Who would benefit most from Spencer’s death? The easy answer was his wife, Emily. But if events had happened as I believed Catherine tried to show me, it was indeed Breck Hartford who benefitted most. If he’d killed Trisha Atwood and Sturgis found out, then Breck could have silenced him. I just had to make that all-important connection between the dead student and Hartford.

Gaynelle turned in the passenger seat to look back at me. “So what do we do next, Trinket?”

I sucked in a deep breath. “We get a confession from Breck Hartford.”

“Then you’re convinced that he killed Spencer?”

“I think he was involved in the death of Trisha Atwood. I also think he enlisted the help of his son and Montgomery Moore to help him make it look like an accident. When Monty had an attack of conscience and wanted to go to the police, Hartford must have killed him as well. If Professor Sturgis found out somehow, he had to kill him, too.”

“Good gawd,” said Bitty in a shocked tone. “He’s a serial killer.”

“Not so much a serial killer as a murderer who has to keep silencing those who can betray him.”

Bitty flicked her fingers at me. “Same thing. Multiple murders by one person. So he must have killed Catherine, too.”

“Probably. She certainly thought him capable of it. The last time I talked to her I heard the terror in her voice.” My throat tightened at the memory. “No one would believe her, and she died for trying to tell people the truth. I didn’t even believe her . . .”

“Now, Trinket, it wasn’t your fault. I’ve already told you that,” said Gaynelle briskly. “And you’re certainly doing what you can now to find her killer. I’m sure Catherine would be the first to tell you that.”

I smiled. “Thank you for saying that, Gaynelle.”

Bitty huffed. “Well, I tell you that all the time, and you never thank
me
.”

“You’re family. I know you’re always on my side.”

Somewhat mollified, Bitty nodded. “That’s true, sugar. I am.”

“Okay,” Rayna said as she wheeled the big SUV around a corner, “we’re turning onto Jackson. Where do I go from here?”

“Jackson Avenue West toward the university,” I said, scrambling in my purse for the map. Since I wasn’t that familiar with Oxford, I’d downloaded and printed out a map on Bitty’s computer. “It’s past Country Club Drive, Parkview . . . off Troon Road, near a lake. Let me turn it this way . . . St. Andrews Drive, St. Andrews Circle . . . oh good lord.”

“What is it?” asked Rayna.

“You can’t get there from here.”

“Nonsense,” said pragmatic Gaynelle. “Give me the map.”

Rather grateful to be relieved of navigation duties, I gladly handed it over. It took Gaynelle a lot shorter time than it would have me to guide us from Jackson Avenue to Troon Road. The houses were very large and fairly new in an established neighborhood. One of Oxford’s nicest areas, I would imagine. Definitely a house suitable for an assistant coach at the university and his family.

“So what are you going to say?” Gaynelle asked me when we parked at the curb of a two-story house with a small front lawn boasting a fountain and half-circle driveway.