Pattern of Betrayal (Vineyard Quilt Mysteries Book 2) (23 page)

“What if there really are two?”

Two
what
? Julie studied his face, and his meaning finally registered. Two people involved in the murder. She hadn’t put much stock in the theory before.

But what if there
were
two criminals under her roof?

It was eight-thirty by the time Detective Frost escorted Carrie back into the room. She looked calm enough, as if she’d just had a talk with a good friend instead of a hardened detective on a mission.

“Time’s up,” Frost said, looking around the faces in the room.

“So that’s it?” Gregory asked. “We’re free to go?”

The detective nodded. “For now. But we may need to contact you in the near future as we continue the investigation. I expect you all to answer the phone when we call. I guarantee you it will make things easier for everyone if you do.”

“It’s about time.” Gregory stood and stalked out the door, presumably to pack his bags and get out of town. The tension in the room dropped after he was gone, but it didn’t go away completely.

“Would it be OK if we stayed until tomorrow?” Sadie asked
Julie. “It’ll be dark soon, and I don’t like driving in the dark.”

Joyce nodded her head in emphasis to her friend’s words.

“Of course,” Julie said. “We don’t have many bookings this week, so you’re in luck.”

Liam was already staying as were Susan and Kenneth. Julie felt her hopes about the dreadful weekend drawing to a close soon slip away. Half of her guests weren’t leaving when they were supposed to.

“What about you, dear?” Sadie asked Carrie. “Can you stay one more night with us?”

Suddenly the girl seemed very interested in her own fingernails. “I have my room booked for the whole week, but I don’t think I can stay.”

“You should call your manager,” Joyce said. “You have people missing you and wondering if you’re all right.”

Carrie nodded.

Sadie patted the girl’s knee. “You tell them you have people who are watching out for you. They can come and get you tomorrow, but for now you need one more night of rest.”

Carrie sighed. “I guess it’s about time I went back to my real life.”

Julie smiled reassuringly. “You can come hide out here anytime you want.”

Carrie’s eyes lit up like she’d been given the best gift on the planet. “You really mean that?”

Julie nodded, surprised the girl would even entertain the thought after the weekend they’d had. “You’ll always have a room here.”

Upon hearing it all, Detective Frost left, shaking his head as he went.

“I know Aston Cooper will be here tomorrow to check out the journal,” Daniel said as Julie unlocked the safe and took out the book. “But this can’t wait until then.” His eyes sparkled, and his hands shook with excitement.

“I can tell,” she replied with a laugh.

Daniel opened the book to the title page. “This is no ordinary book.”

“I thought we covered this,” Julie said. “It might have belonged to Mark Twain.”

“It’s a manual on how to play baseball.”

“Baseball?”

“Yeah.” Daniel grinned.

“Was it even a sport in 1861?” Julie searched her brain for everything she knew about baseball. There wasn’t much.

“It was a new game then. People were just starting to play it at the beginning of the Civil War. Some regiments received pocket manuals on all the rules.”

“But the notes in the margins?”

“Pure Mark Twain.”

“And this makes it more valuable?” Julie asked.

“There aren’t a whole lot of these left. The game evolves, you know. Rules change, and things like this get destroyed. It’s sad, really.”

“Yes,” she murmured. So much history tossed aside for the sake of advancement. “So, you’re saying once we get this authenticated as belonging to Mark Twain, there’s no telling what it’ll be worth.”

“I’m saying it will definitely be one of a kind,” Daniel said. “And one-of-a-kind items are generally worth a lot.”

Julie stared at the leather-bound book. Everything was falling into place, except …”It really bothers me that we still don’t know who the killer is.”

“Of course it does,” Daniel said. “It’s your nature. It bothers me too.”

Julie regarded him with curiosity. “About that note you wrote at dinner, when you said ‘two,’ I assume you didn’t mean Sadie and Joyce.”

“Nope.” Daniel sat down in the chair behind her desk.

“Who then?”

“Eric Rutherford, for one.”

“But how did he get in that night?” Julie shook her head. “No, I don’t think he killed Alice. In fact, her family said the two of them were dating. Why would he kill his girlfriend?”

“For starters, it’s not an uncommon scenario. Relationships turn sour. People get jealous. Who knows?”

“I don’t think so. That doesn’t feel like the right answer in this case.”

“But you do believe that she was here to steal the book,” Daniel pressed.

“Yes. I think Alice came to steal the book for Rutherford, and someone else wanted it and killed her for it.”

“And that person is most likely whoever Carrie met in the hallway Friday night.”

“Right,” Julie said. “Someone like … Gregory.”

Daniel rubbed his chin. “Aside from his
charming
personality, what makes you say that?”

“I’m being serious. Hear me out.” She tapped one finger against her jaw as she thought out loud. “Gregory was accused of stealing a rare baseball card years ago, right?”

“Right.”

“So, he’d probably know the worth of an antique baseball manual, say, one from the Civil War.”

“But the article that ran in the newspapers didn’t say anything about the journal being a baseball rule book.”

“No, but there were pictures,” Julie said. “Anyone looking close enough could see that.”

Daniel nodded. “Especially someone who specialized in baseball collecting.”

“We’ve been looking at this all wrong. It wasn’t someone interested in the fact that it could have belonged to Mark Twain. It was someone who wanted it for its value in the world of sports.”

“You should call Detective Frost right now—before Gregory can get too far out of town.”

Julie nodded and started for the phone.

“How about you sit back down instead,” an unfamiliar voice drawled from the door.

Julie whirled around.

Eric Rutherford stood in the doorway of her office holding a handgun aimed at her chest. He indicated the book with his free hand. “I’ll take that.”

Daniel’s frown deepened into a scowl. Despite the gun the newcomer held, the historian was reluctant to give up the book. “You killed Alice Peyton.”

Rutherford looked like he might come unglued. “I didn’t kill her! I loved her.”

“Against her family’s wishes,” Julie added, trying to figure out how she and Daniel were possibly going to get out of the mess alive. “I understand they didn’t care for you.”

Rutherford made a face to show exactly what he thought about Alice’s family. “We were planning to get married. That book was going to set us up for life.”

Julie thought about the bitter, sour-faced Alice and tried to picture her in love with the crazed man holding them at gunpoint. Even though Julie knew they’d been a couple, the image didn’t gel. But the emotion in the man’s words did. “You sent Alice here to steal the book from me?” she asked.

“Who’s going to suspect a middle-aged divorcée?”

“She wasn’t divorced,” Julie countered.

“You didn’t know that.”

True enough. Alice would have been the last person on the suspect list of thieves as far as Julie was concerned. She had no previous record.

“Other people know that I have the book,” Julie said. “If you try to take it, they’ll know you stole it.”

“You of all people should know there are other markets to sell such valuable items, Miss Ellis. Markets where buyers aren’t so stringent about details like proper ownership.”

Someone did their homework.

Rutherford took a few steps forward and waved the gun at Daniel. “Now hand it over.”

Julie caught Daniel’s eye, and she could see his resolve slipping. It was a valuable book, but not worth getting killed over.

“You lied to me,” Julie said, inching toward the phone. “You told me the book was nothing special.”

He shrugged. “Did you really think I was going to tell you the real value of what you have here?”

“Well, yeah.” Julie nodded. “You are a
consultant
, after all.”

The man laughed. “It’s worth a fortune. And I mean to have it. Hand it over now.” He cocked the gun. “Before someone gets hurt.”

“OK. We’ll give you the book.” Julie shot Daniel a pointed look. She would not allow him to get shot over a stupid book. “But will you at least tell me this: If you didn’t kill Alice, who did?”

“I did.”

Their gazes all swung to the doorway where Gregory stood, a gun trained on them—a gun larger and meaner looking than the one Rutherford held.

Julie held her breath. For a moment she thought Rutherford might try and shoot Gregory where he stood. The look in his eyes was pure evil and full of hate. Perhaps he was telling the truth about loving Alice after all.

“You can go ahead and toss that aside, Rutherford.” Gregory motioned with his own weapon for Rutherford to throw his gun to the ground. “Or I can shoot you where you stand. Your choice.”

The older man hesitated for a moment. Then Gregory cocked the gun and Rutherford pitched his aside, raising his hands in the air.

“Well, well. The infamous Ghost lives. If you wanted to steal the book so badly, why didn’t you just take it? Why did you have to kill Alice?” Rutherford’s voice was thick with emotion.

“Why did you send your beloved to do your dirty work?” Gregory sneered. “Never send a woman to do a man’s job.”

Julie bit her tongue to keep from responding to the comment. Her intended reply would only make the situation worse.

Rutherford moved toward Gregory but stopped when he received a gun in his face for his troubles.

“If she meant that much to you,” Gregory said, “you should have left her at home and come yourself. Of course, I would have simply killed you instead of her, but no matter.” He shrugged as if it were all in a day’s work.

A shiver ran down Julie’s spine. Rutherford had been a threat, but a mild one, all things considered. He was grief stricken and here to claim what didn’t belong to him. But Gregory was apparently a stone-cold killer.

She looked at Daniel and saw his expression was grim. All traces of hope had disappeared. After everything they’d
been through in their short time together, this was how they would meet their end—at the hands of a petty thief.

No.
Julie felt renewed resolve building inside her.

Maybe if she could keep Gregory talking about Alice long enough, Rutherford would eventually crack. If he rushed Gregory, then Julie and Daniel might have time to disarm him. Or at the very least, be able to overpower Gregory while he was busy fending off Rutherford. It was a long shot, but it beat doing nothing and becoming Gregory’s next victims. She highly doubted he’d let them live once he got the book.

“Why did you kill Alice?” she asked.

Gregory fixed her with a hard stare. “She knew who I was. And I knew why she was here.”

“And you murdered her without so much as a second thought?”

Gregory gave another of his devil-may-care shrugs. “I didn’t mean to kill her. It just happened. When the lights went out, I knew she was going to make her move. So I stopped her and made
my
move. If I hadn’t run into that crazy blonde in the hallway, I would have been long gone with that book days ago.”

“You were the one Carrie took the book from,” Julie said.

Gregory let out a bark of laughter. “Is that what she told you? Please. I
dropped
the book, but when I returned for it, it was gone. Then the lights came back on, and I had to high-tail it to the dining room before anyone realized I’d been gone.”

His story made about as much sense as the one Carrie had told. But Julie supposed the truth was in the voice of the teller.

“Now give it here.” He reached for the book. Daniel reluctantly handed it to him. “And you,” he pointed to Rutherford, “get over there with the rest of them.”