7b2696c981e3d60fa8abbc841c83ccf4

“Big words. My son is just trying to make the best of a difficult situation.” He wagged his finger in Odelia’s face. “Don’t you go making trouble for him, you hear? Danny’s got nothing to do with Dave’s death, and he’s got enough problems as it is without you lot piling on.” Chaseimmediately stepped up to the man and towered over him, and Eddie sheepishly retracted his finger. “You know what I mean,” he murmured.

One of the cops walked out and whispered something into Chase’s ear. Chase then gave Odelia a shake of the head.

“Looks like they haven’t found the murder weapon,” I told Dooley. “Or the turtle.”

“So Danny is innocent?” asked my friend.

“Looks like.”

“So Maybe Jayme did kill Dave?”

I heaved a deep sigh.“I’m starting to think that maybe she did,” I agreed.

“And she looked so nice.”

“Even nice people can be killers, Dooley.”

Odelia and Chase wrapped up their interview with Eddie before it got too contentious, and as we rode back to town, Odelia said,“I think I better call Hester and tell her the bad news.”

Chase nodded grimly.“Unless a miracle happens, looks like Jayme will go down for murder one.”

“I really thought she was innocent.”

“Me, too. Guess you never know.”

I noticed how Dooley was intently staring at me, and finally I said,“What?”

“Can’t you think of something brilliant, Max? You always do.”

“If Jayme is guilty, Dooley, there’s nothing you or I or anyone else can do about that.”

“But what if she is innocent, and someone is getting away with murder?”

I shook my head.“I very much doubt that that’s the case. All the other suspects, apart from Danny, have alibis, and so far we haven’t found anything to conclusively tie him to the murder. And let’s not forget that Jayme has the most powerful motive of all: a very large fortune that was coming her way, unless Veronica managed to put a stop to it. And if you look at things from Jayme’s perspective, murdering Dave may have been the only way to vouchsafe what she must have accepted as what was rightfully hers.”

“Money will make people do dumb things,” Dooley said, slumping a little.

“And lots of money will make them do even dumber things.”

Chapter 25

We were back in Odelia’s office, and in front of her, Hester Liffs was seated, pressing a paper tissue to her eyes and looking very unhappy indeed.

“It’s impossible,” said Jayme’s grandmother. “Jayme couldn’t possibly be guilty. I talked to her just now on the phone, and she said she doesn’t understand. She never even met Dave and now she’s supposed to have killed him? It’s all just so surreal.”

“There’s no way she could have known about the inheritance?” asked Odelia.

Hester shook her head decidedly.“Jayme and I have no secrets from each other. If she’d known about that new will she would have told me, I’m absolutely certain of that.”

“Maybe she kept it to herself, in case you wouldn’t approve.”

“And why wouldn’t I approve?”

“Because of your history with Dave?”

“Our history wouldn’t have made me jeopardize Jayme’s future. If Dave had decided she had the talent to follow in his footsteps, I would have been the first to congratulate her and to thank him from the bottom of my heart.”

“So there was no bad blood between you and Dave?”

“Oh, no, absolutely not. It happens, you know, that people lose their memories and forget all about the people they knew and loved. Just recently I read an article about a woman who was in a car accident and forget about her husband and her kids, even though she’d been married for years. It’sawful for the family, and it must be awful for her, but it’s not something you can blame her for. It just happens.” She looked up with tear-filled eyes. “Life deals us blows sometimes, Mrs. Kingsley, but you just learn to roll with the punches and move on. And that’s what I did. For heaven’s sake, it’s been fifty years. If I were still bearing a grudge after all this time I’d be a very unhappy person, wouldn’t you say? No, life has blessed me, and has compensated for the mishaps with moments of joy, like when Jayme came into my life, and then when her parents died it dealt me another blow, but it also gave me the opportunity to raise Jayme as my own. And that’s the balance of life, isn’t it? Sometimes it just knocks you down, and other times it lifts you right up. And that’s why I’m sure that even now, with Jayme, something will happen to make things right again. Because this is an injustice. A big injustice that’s being perpetrated here.”

“I’m sorry,” said Odelia. “I really am. I just wish there was something I could do.”

“I just wish I’d kept Jayme with me Monday night. But dogs need to be walked, and who would have thought that the monster who killed Dave would try to pin the murder on her?”

“So you think the person who killed him put that paper in Dave’s hand?”

“Of course. How else would Jayme’s name have come up in the investigation? She’s the scapegoat. That’s obvious.”

“If what you’re saying is true, then the killer must have known about Dave’s relationship with Jayme.”