“Her lawyer’s meeting us there?”
Harry shook his head. “No. The police.”
“What about Millicent?”
“She owns Amelia’s City.”
“You mean now that her husband is dead.”
“The painting was always hers. Van Pelt bought it for her before they were married. She’s the sole owner of record.” Harry pushed the coffee cup toward me. “Millicent’s lawyer said Selina Simon, the woman with the gallery on the bookstore’s block, has offered to buy Amelia’s City to help Millicent out. Apparently, she’s been a good friend of the Van Pelts’ over the years.”
I remembered the imperious gallery owner. “Is she offering a sum below its valuation?”
Harry smiled. “Ms. Simon is willing to effect the sale immediately. She has also assured Millicent she was willing to risk that the stepchildren might sue for the painting.”
“But there’s no risk?”
“None at all as far as I can see.”
We drove to Everything Old in Harry’s Town Car, which he parked in the alley behind the shop. The yellow crime-scene tape had been removed and Harry pulled out a key.
“We can go in this way,” he said, opening the back door, switching on a light, and disabling the alarm.
I followed him past boxes of books, through Paul’s office, and out into the store itself. Just as he flicked on overhead lights a bolt of black flew at my chest.
“Marlowe!”
“I thought he’d like to visit the shop,” Harry said. “I couldn’t catch him when I wanted to leave earlier in the day.” He lifted the cat off me. “That won’t be a problem anymore. The cat is smitten with you.”
I ignored Harry’s grin. “The police are done with the shop?”
“Yes. There’s nothing more to be gotten here.”
“You only brought me here to get the cat?”
Before Harry could answer there was a knock at the front door. He handed Marlowe to me, motioned me to be quiet, and disappeared back through the stacks. A few seconds later, I heard Lucy’s voice.
“What did you want me to come here for? You had to butt in.”
“Well, my dear, we have questions that need to be answered.”
While Harry’s voice sounded calm I could read the tension beneath.
“I suppose he told you.” Lucy didn’t sound like a college student.
“Who?”
“Your lackey.”
I felt hair bristle on the back of my neck. I might do work for Harry, but I was my own man.
“What would Jake have told me?”
“About the book, the one he looked through.”
I remembered her textbook in the sandwich shop and how I’d absent-mindedly thumbed through its pages.
“What about the book?”
“Paul’s pamphlet. I forgot I’d slipped it in there.”
I’d seen no pamphlet. I’d never told Harry about any pamphlet.
“The one with Amelia’s City on it?” Harry asked.
Silence followed. Slowly, I worked my way through the stacks with Marlowe glued to my chest. I almost gave us away when I caught sight of Selina, holding a knife to my cousin, but Lucy’s cold voice stopped me from speaking out. “The painting is mine,” she said. “Mom promised we’d get it back. But then she went soft on her stupid husband. Husband Number Two. Or Number Three, if you count my father.”
“You killed your stepfather?” I heard Harry’s surprise.
“It was easy. All I needed was to slip him the extra oxy, just like Mom showed me. She picked men with chronic pain, on prescription oxycodone. She shorted their pills. Sold them for inflated prices to college kids. When they got wise she killed them. But the last husband forgave her and she went all soft. I thought killing him would bring Mom back to her senses.”
“But it didn’t. And you killed her too?”
There was no answer.
“What I don’t understand,” Harry said to Selina, “is why you’re helping your niece. She is your brother’s daughter, isn’t she?”
I almost dropped Marlowe. I don’t know how I’d missed it. Of course. Lucy, really Elizabeth Simon, and Selina had the same last name.
“Liz needed my help. Isn’t that what family does, help each other?”
Her dripping sarcasm gave lie to the sentiment. I suspected Selina was in it for the tidy profit she’d reap when she sold Amelia’s City. I forced myself to remain quiet, grateful Marlowe was doing the same. I held him close to me, keeping him safe for Mrs. Griffin.
Harry looked at Lucy. “Why did you fake the changes in the will?”
“We needed to keep the pressure on. We needed to make Grogan look like he killed Paul. If we kept him busy Millicent’s HDC sale would fall through.”
“A will in Grogan’s favor would make him look like he he’d killed Paul,” my cousin said.
That was it. With the HDC sale falling through, Millicent would be forced to sell the painting.
I crept forward to get a better view. When we saw Lucy the cat dove into action, hissing as he launched himself from my chest down onto the floor and, in a few cat-bounds, back up onto the store clerk.
I took advantage of the ensuing chaos to grab a nearby broom and knock the knife out of Selina’s hand. As Lucy cried out in pain, Harry bounded through the storeroom. I heard him fling open the back door.
“Jake, how could you have doubted me?”
“How did I know you were letting in reinforcements instead of running away?” The sight of several policemen with guns drawn had been most welcome. With a macchiato in hand, I settled into one of the wingbacks in Harry’s study and eyed the plate of brownies in front of me. “Mrs. Griffin has outdone herself. These look spectacular!”
Harry agreed.
“What’s going to happen to Lucy?” I asked him.
“I don’t know. Her mother was a killer and taught Lucy, or I should say Elizabeth, how to be one too. They found a stash of empty oxycodone prescription bottles in her room. And they found hemlock leaves.”
“So Lucy taught her aunt how to kill Van Pelt. They framed Millicent, thinking she’d have to sell her painting at a loss, but then what?”
“I’m sure Lucy, or Elizabeth, persuaded Selina they’d resell the painting for a profit. It probably explains why the gallery was moving to a larger space.” Harry sipped his macchiato and reached for a brownie. “Long ago, Selina told Julianne the painting was valuable. She was angry when Julianne sold it for so little. When Selina saw that Millicent had it she thought she’d finally get a chance to make real money off it. That’s when she called Lucy.” He took a bite of the brownie.
“Do you think Lucy, er, Elizabeth, would have killed Selina after they got the painting?”
“Yes, yes I do.”
“But why did Lucy kill Paul? He was her cousin.”
Harry took a bite of his brownie. “Lucy enjoyed fooling Paul, thinking he didn’t know she was his niece. My best guess is he told her he’d found out who she was and she panicked.”
“Like she did when Louetta Pickens saw her leaving the shop after feeding Paul the poison?”
“Exactly.”
“And like she did when she came after me with a knife?”
“Yes, Jake.”
I looked around the study. “Where’s Marlowe?”
Harry grinned. “Mrs. Griffin took him back home. Said it would help her sister make up her mind about when she was leaving.”
Funny, I kinda missed the black furball.
The Keepers of All Sins
by Sharon Hunt
The Albrecht men had a habit of being found floating on water.
The habit began with the grandfather, Carl, in Vienna in 1944. Alcohol was given as the reason he was floating lifeless in a turquoise-tiled pool, although the fact that he was swimming naked at the house of a man who had disappeared the previous day and that the man’s wife had alerted police to Carl’s demise, her face bearing signs of a fresh beating, gave pause to the idea that his death was simple misadventure. Still, money and the power of Albrecht’s widow ensured that the death was quickly labeled as such. The woman who had alerted the police continued on in her house, draining the pool, then staying mostly in the kitchen where she made a bed next to the gigantic stove that gave off a fierce heat, saturating the air with moisture. Fifty years later she was found curled up next to that stove, her hair wet and dripping.