Page 50 of She Doesn't Have a Clue
Kate had just snagged his phone and dropped it in the pocket of her cardigan when he looked at her over his shoulder. His gaze traveled up and down her simple attire, making his opinion of her fashion choices apparent.
“Will your, uh, friend be there?” Kate asked. “The lawyer, Steven?”
“Okay, you two are asking a lot of weird questions,” Richie said. “And unless you’re a hot FBI agent or my fashion-challenged parole officer, I don’t have to answer them. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get ready. This hair doesn’t coif itself.”
“Oh, well, don’t let us keep you,” Kate said.
“Yeah, I’m gonna need the two of you to leave this hallway with me,” Richie said, shooing them both along. He muttered to himself as they reluctantly followed in his wake. “Auntie R had a point about not letting commoners in the Manor. Atrocious manners.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Richie abandoned them at the bottom of the grand staircase with another muttered complaint about letting “the plebes” into the Manor, but Kate was already taking the stairs toward the fourth floor two at a time before Richie could finish his classist argument. Jake trotted after her, catching up to her at the third-floor landing.
“Kate!” he called, snagging her sleeve and forcing her to slow down. “Where are you headed now?”
“To the murder board!” Kate said, before remembering nobody else in the house knew about the murder or the murder board. She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “To the murder board. We have a whole new set of suspects to investigate, remember?”
“What was that with Richie back there?” Jake asked as they made the climb to the final floor. The lights buzzed and dipped low before struggling back to a soft yellow glow, yet another indicator that time was not on their side. “What was I distracting him for?”
Kate looked both ways down the hall before hurrying toward the golden pull and the attic room beyond, slipping Richie’s phone out of her pocket and holding it up triumphantly. “Richie’s phone. I swiped it when he wasn’t looking.”
“Should I even bother to ask why?” Jake pulled the cord and waved for Kate to climb up first.
“Evidence, Jake.Evidence.When Richie was checking what time his aunt left the pool room, I saw a bunch of pictures on his phone from last night. It will give us an idea of what he was up to and who he was with when his aunt was killed. Maybe he’s a real sicko and documented the whole thing.”
“Again, so gleeful,” Jake murmured, pulling the stairs up after them.
“Because this is the second body drop!” Kate said, as if that explained everything. When Jake gave her nothing but a blank stare, she sighed impatiently. “Every good mystery has it. You have your first body drop—Kennedy—and it sets our detective off in one direction. But then you get the second body drop, and it changes up the whole investigation! See, that’s why our suspect list wasn’t working, because we were investigating thewrong murder. For all we know, Kennedy’s poisoning was a distraction so the killer could deal with the real target—Rebecca Hempstead. We’ve got a whole new set of suspects to consider, with a whole different set of motives and alibis to line up. This is the break we needed. I can feel it in my sweater.”
Kate scratched fiercely at the soft insides of her elbows as if to emphasize the sleuthing sweater in effect. Jake shook his head.
“Are you sure you aren’t just itching because that wool is scratchy?” he asked.
“Don’t be a Geoff,” Kate muttered, turning toward the list of suspects taped up all over the walls.
“Did you just accuse me of being aGeoff?” Jake asked, sounding truly offended. “The buzzkill boss who never believes in Loretta but whom she inexplicably keeps dating even though he’s a complete twat? When I’m so obviously the Blake in your life? The hot wakeboarding British bartender who would follow Loretta to the ends of the earth if she said there was a murderer to catch there.”
“Yeah, well,bea Blake, then,” Kate said, pulling a Sharpie from her bag and thrusting it at him. “Start listing new suspects.”
“I will,” Jake said, taking the pen decisively. Here he was again, sowilling to play the Blake to her Loretta, encouraging her wild hair to investigate instead of castigating her like Spencer would have done. She hadn’t realized how alone she’d felt the last six months, and really the last two years, without him. And now that she’d had him around, even for a weekend, she wasn’t sure how to let him go again. The thought of it made her stomach rumble perilously.
“Richie Hempstead obviously goes on the list,” Jake said, oblivious to her fraught epiphany as he wrote out Richie’s name in big, bold print. “He admitted to being in the pool room with his aunt last night, and apparently, only family members have a key to access the room. And he was pretty upset with Rebecca over the trust announcement. Plus, did you see his hand?”
“The blister!” Kate exclaimed, happy to lose herself in the investigation and ignore those pesky feelings trying to get in the way. “You saw it, too?”
“He’s obviously our saboteur,” Jake said sagely. “That’s the kind of blister you get from working a handsaw without proper gloves. I’d put good money on Richie being the one who cut the generator line.”
“If you want to put good money on someone, put his lover on there, too,” Kate said, stepping up beside Jake and writing/Steven Moyersbeside Richie’s name. “He was there last night, too. Plus, he was trying to convince Rebecca to make some shady real estate deal. They’re obviously in on it together. If Rebecca’s dead, there’s no one to complete the petition process for historical designation. The island is open for business again.”
“You think he killed her over a real estate deal?” Jake asked.
“People have been killed over a lot less,” Kate reasoned. “And we’re talking about a multimillion-dollar deal, which means Steven’s cut, if he manages the sale, would be astronomical. For all I know, the guy could have a gambling problem. Maybe he likes the ponies but the ponies don’t like him.”
“That guy didn’t look like he had a problem with the ponies,” Jake said. “He looked like his wallet has a padlock on it. Though it would make sense if both of them tried to kill Rebecca and Kennedy, since that would put Richie next in line to inherit, right?”
“Good point!” Kate said, waving at the sheet. “Add it to the motive. Whoever killed Rebecca could easily have targeted Kennedy as well, and Richie is a prime suspect in that regard.”
“But we still don’t know how Steven would have gotten into the bridal suite or gotten Kennedy down to the wine cave without being spotted.”