“What did you use for the body? I know it actually wasn’t your brother.”
A hint of the smile again. “A first aid mannequin I borrowed from the hospital. I’m strong. It was easy to pull it across the floor.”
“And easy for you to move Jeff,” I said. “When you did kill him for real.”
“You set me up to see the whole thing,” Rose said.
Nicole shifted a little, leaning forward so she was in Rose’s line of sight. I took advantage of her shift in attention to move a step closer to them.
“I’m sorry about that,” she said. “Jeff told me the story about you and your friend’s granddaughter and the cell phone. When he said he was having the candlesticks delivered—kind of a screw-you to Leesa—and was leaving her that night, I knew you showing up without a cell phone would help the plan. I told him not to hit you hard. I knew the methohexital would knock you out long enough for us to leave. I help out at a clinic once a month at a nursing home in Rockport. The dentist uses it with some of the seniors. I thought it was pretty smart of me to take some instead of something from the hospital. I didn’t mean for you to get hurt.”
“I know you didn’t,” Rose said.
It felt as though we were doing good cop/bad cop, with Rose in the role of good cop, except really she was just being herself.
“You came up with the plan to frame Leesa,” I said. I moved my feet a couple of inches closer. If I could get near enough to them, I was hoping I could knock the knife away from Rose’s neck.
“I told Jeff it would buy him some time and then in a few days he could get in touch with someone.”
“Leesa really was with you the night of the so-called murder.”
Nicole nodded, and it seemed to me she relaxed her grip on Rose just a little. “I put something in her coffee, and when she fell asleep I went over to the cottage.”
“You signed in to the hospital’s server from your laptop here and used a remote-access app on your phone to connect to the laptop.” Mr. P. had explained the process to me.
Yes.” Nicole nodded again.
“I don’t understand,” Rose said. “If you were setting up Leesa for your brother’s murder, why did you give her an alibi?”
“Because it also gave you an alibi,” I said, keeping my eyes locked on Nicole’s face. “In case anyone questioned whether or not it was actually you doing that refresher course.”
“And I needed everyone to think he was alive so I could figure out where he’d stashed Nana’s money. I needed to look around the cottage to see if I could find a clue,” Nicole said. “But his body turned up sooner than I’d planned for, and somehow Leesa started putting the pieces together.” She looked at me. “What was I supposed to do? I had to kill her.”
Silence hung between us for a moment. Nicole spoke first. “How did you figure it out?”
“Leesa was training to run a half marathon to surprise your brother.”
Nicole shook her head and gave me a wry smile. “She was always trying to do things to make him happy. He wasn’t worth it.”
“She called the trainer’s house looking for him that night. His wife said it was during the show Gotta Dance, but there were two episodes for the show that night—one early and one late, at the show’s regular time. She was half-asleep when the phone rang and she mixed up the times. When I realized she didn’t know there had been two episodes of the show, I remembered you saying that you and Leesa were watching a rerun of Murder Ink.”
“It wasn’t on.”
“No.” I shifted my weight again and managed to edge forward a little more. Then from the corner of my eye I saw something move in the hallway beyond the living room, a flutter of something pale yellow. Mr. P.’s golf shirt. Good Lord, what was he doing?
All I could think was to keep talking, to keep Nicole Cameron’s attention focused in my direction. I pointed at the front window. “The kids across the street were making a movie. In a couple of shots I could make out your sister-in-law’s car in the driveway. You drove it over to your brother’s house. The thing is, when you came back, you turned the front wheels hard to the right, the way you always do with your own.”
“I didn’t even notice,” she said. “We lived on a hill when I first learned to drive. It’s a habit I can’t seem to break.”
Directly behind Rose and Nicole, there was an opening to the hallway, right in my line of sight. Mr. P. appeared there carrying a large glass mixing bowl. He looked at the hand holding the knife to Rose’s neck. Then he looked at me. He held up three fingers.
It was crazy and foolish and dangerous and a whole lot of other words. I gave what I hoped was an almost imperceptible nod. Mr. P. held up one finger.
“I’m sorry I had to kill her,” Nicole said.
“We know that,” Rose said.
“She figured it out. She said she smelled antiseptic on her hoodie and I was the only person she knew who smelled like that.” Just the way I’d figured out that it was Jeff Cameron, not Leesa, who had attacked Rose because he smelled like the muscle rub, like licorice.
Mr. P. held up a second finger.
Nicole shook her head. She looked a little sad. “It was her or me and I picked me,” she said. “And I’m picking myself now.”
Mr. P. held up three fingers and launched himself forward, raising the glass bowl in the air. At the same time I lunged at Nicole. I grabbed the hand holding the knife as the mixing bowl made contact with the side of her head.
She swayed and I yanked the knife free and threw it across the room. Nicole’s eyes rolled back in her head and she crumpled to the floor. Mr. P. dropped the bowl and wrapped his arms around Rose.
Her scarf had fallen to the floor. I picked it up, hands shaking, knelt down and tied Nicole Cameron’s hands together behind her back using pretty much every knot I knew. I checked to be sure she was breathing and had a pulse. She did.
I got to my feet. My knees were trembling. “Good aim,” I said to Mr. P.
“You, too, my dear,” he said.
“Are the police on their way?” I asked.
He nodded. “They should be. I told Debra to call them if I wasn’t back in five minutes.”
I put a hand on Rose’s arm. “Are you all right?” I said.
“Of course I am,” she said, her smile encompassing both Mr. P. and me. “I told you everything would work out.”
Chapter 21
And just like that, it was over. Michelle arrived right behind the first squad car.
I was standing by the front door. She walked over to me. “Are you all okay?” she asked, searching my face.
I nodded. “We’re fine.” I cleared my throat. “Nicole Cameron killed her brother and faked his wife’s suicide.”
She looked around me into the living room. The mixing bowl was upside down on the floor. The box with the candlesticks was on its side on the coffee table. Nicole was sitting up, looking dazed, while a paramedic checked her head, her arms still bound with Steven Tyler’s scarf.
Michelle’s gaze came back to me. “So you decided to apprehend her with a mixing bowl, a set of candlesticks and a scarf?”
I laughed, partly because I was relieved that Rose was all right and partly because I realized how crazy this all must look to her. “I’m sorry,” I said. “The candlesticks were just an excuse so I could come take a look at how Nicole parked her car. And then I was going to call you.”
“Oh, well, that explains it all,” Michelle said. She sighed. “Don’t move. I’m going inside for a few minutes and talk to the first responding officer. Then I’m coming back out and you’re going to start at the beginning and tell me everything.”
I nodded.
It was lunchtime before we got back to the shop. We told everyone the short version of the story and Mr. P. was hailed as a hero, which in my book he was.