A MATCH MADE IN MURDER (The Wedding Planner Mysteries Book 5) (5 page)

              Grady was staring at Trudy so intensely it set Kitty’s teeth on edge. There was something about the guy, he was polite and polished and Sterling thought the world of him obviously, but it seemed like he wanted to be Sterling’s and her sole supporter in this crisis. He didn’t look very pleased Trudy had joined them.

              Sterling returned and Kitty reached for her cell.

              “I’m not sure it’s anything,” Trudy went on, making an effort to meet Grady’s eye before she directed her comment to Kitty and Sterling; Trudy was good at bonding with a stranger by simply meeting their gaze, exhibiting a sense of vulnerability, demonstrating that they were in this together, but with Grady it wasn’t landing quite right. “But I noticed a strange man in the field behind the house. He stuck out because he wasn’t an officer or detective. I could tell by the way he dressed.”

              “How did he dress?” Sterling asked, brow furrowing in understanding that this might be significant.

              “Plain clothes, tan slacks, loafer, a modest sports jacket,” Trudy listed. It sounded a lot like Grady, except that he was in the room. “Like an intellectual.”

              “What did he look like?” Sterling was in full-blown detective mode despite Lieutenant Harrison’s warning.

              “Dark hair. He was probably in his late fifties. He wore wire frame glasses and oh!” She suddenly remembered. “He had a cane. It wasn’t hooked around at the handle. It was just a piece of metal.”

              Kitty wracked her brain if anyone in her family had a cane like that, but she was coming up short. Sterling on the other hand appeared interested and recognition flickered behind his dark eyes.

              “Does that sound like Hollister?” he asked Grady.

              “Did you invite him to the wedding?” Grady asked as though that would surprise him.

              “No,” said Sterling. “But he’s still around as far as I know. He still teaches at the university.”

              “Who’s Hollister?” Kitty asked.

              “One of my old colleagues,” Grady supplied. “A professor. He was friends with Mary, but Steve wasn’t a fan of the friendship.”

              A man being friends with a married woman sounded like a recipe for disaster. “Friends? How’d they meet?”

              “Through me,” he said easily. “I was working with Hollister at the time. Mary enjoyed coming to various lectures at the university. She’d seen him speak. Talked to him after, once I’d introduced them.”

              “Hollister also taught Charlotte when she attended the university,” Sterling added, thinking this could be his man. “This was around the time I met her.”

              “Why would this professor be at our house?” she asked Sterling. “Why would he care about Layla?”

              “He teaches psychopathy pathology,” Grady explained, but Kitty didn’t have the first clue as to what that meant. “The study of serial killers.”

              Kitty’s heart skipped a beat. “Why would a person be interested in that?”

              Sterling held her gaze, but said nothing.

              “Why would anyone dedicate their life to understanding serial killers unless they were one?” she asked, pushing the point further.

              Sterling’s eyes told her he was wondering the exact same thing.

              Professor Kent Hollister lived in a charming bungalow on campus. Cypress trees flanked the one-story home and offered just enough shade to keep the glaring sunlight from roasting the living room where Sterling and Kitty were standing in complete awe that the aging man could survive without air conditioning.

              Sterling eyed the professor as he bumbled toward a modest liquor bar at the far side of the mantle. The rhythm of his gait, heavy, limping steps, and the thud of his cane, made for an odd symphony.

              “Whiskey?” He asked over his shoulder, smiling crookedly at them.

              “No, thank you,” Sterling stated.

              “But do you mind if I have a nip?”

              Sterling shook his head then glanced around the room, which was more a library than anything else.

              “What were you doing at our house?” he asked, as Hollister poured the caramel liquid into a glass.

              The man didn’t look much different than he had all those years ago except that he stooped at a sharper angle as though gravity had gotten the best of him.

              He hobbled toward them, whiskey trickling down both sides of his glass with every step, until he reached a leather chair set between the window and his desk.

              Sitting was a labored endeavor, which he used all his concentration on.

              “I couldn’t get inside the killer’s mind all those years ago,” he began then sipped his whiskey, punctuating the ambiguous prologue with a booming,
ah,
as the drink burned down his throat. “Like you, it wasn’t until Charlotte had been killed that I understood the murders were connected. Now that there’s a third, I know it’s serial.”

              “That doesn’t explain what you were doing there,” he pressed.

              “Trying to make connections, young man.”

              Sterling didn’t like how Hollister was able to speak so casually about the murders of two women who had been in his life. Hollister had known both Mary and Charlotte, not well, but enough that some genuine solace should shine through. The man was cold as a fish.

              “How did you know to go there?”

              “Police scanner,” he said easily. “I listen in. I like to keep up with the local crimes. So many murders go unsolved.”

              Sterling knew that wasn’t entirely accurate. Not to mention the fact that Greenwich was a relatively safe town.

              “Often the police miss things. They fail to make connections, because they don’t understand psychopathy. Yes, they gather clues, but only the ones that are obvious. They miss critical pieces because they don’t know where to look.”

              If anything happened often, it was that killers liked to return to the scenes of their crimes. It gave them a sense of pride. They liked seeing how their work affected the lives it had touched.

              Sterling tried to recall back to the time his mother had been found. Had Hollister shown up? Had he returned to the scene to see all the lives he’d damaged?

              “Did you find anything?” Kitty asked.

              She seemed interested.
Good.
Kitty had a knack for reeling information out of someone simply by acting as though she shared the person’s curiosity. She was on their side. She sympathized. It was brilliant.

              Hollister took another sip of his whiskey and said, “It would make more sense if Layla Cranston had been close with Sterling. Some psychopaths kill within their own tight circle. It’s rare, but it happens. I believe it was the same killer as the person who killed Mary and Charlotte, but it doesn’t make sense that they’d targeted Layla.”

              Sterling snorted. Hollister had told them nothing they didn’t already know.

              “The killer had meant to strike me,” Kitty explained.

              Hollister nodded slow and steady, working through the equation to see if it would add up.

              “Women tend to kill with more passive means, like poison,” he stated and took another sip.

              Kitty and Sterling exchanged a glance.

             
A woman?

              “That’s what fascinates me about this pattern. It was a woman.”

              “You can’t say that with certainty,” Sterling countered. “There’s no evidence to support that.”

              Hollister shrugged. “Statistics don’t lie.”

              Sterling narrowed his gaze on the old man. His gut told him Hollister was muddying the waters to throw suspicion off him. Something told him this guy had done it.
But why?

              “What was your relationship with my mother like?” he asked, but Hollister immediately waved his hand at them.

              “Would you please sit down, both of you? You’re making me seasick.”

              Sterling figured the whiskey was a far likelier culprit, but he took a seat on a ratty couch adjacent to where Hollister was seated. Kitty joined then crossed her arms and legs, a defensive stance that Sterling knew Hollister would pick up on. He discreetly tapped her shoulder and when she looked over Sterling shot a cross glance at her arms. Kitty opened herself up, unfolding her limbs so as to appear relaxed.

              “Your mother shouldn’t have been a housewife,” he stated. “She was far too smart for that kind of life. She was brilliant, in fact. Grady recognized it, as did I as soon as I met her, but your father didn’t see it. It annoyed him that she’d come to the lectures at the university. He wanted her home. He didn’t want her to shine.”

              Sterling didn’t like where this was going.

              “I asked you what
your
relationship with her was like, not about your opinion and speculation on my parents’ dynamic.”

              “Fair enough,” he said. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say we had a mentor - mentee relationship, but she came to several of my talks. I lent her books that interested her. We had coffee a couple times and discussed those books. Grady was often present. Grady supported her in that sense. They seemed very close.”

              Hollister had a gift for throwing suspicion on his family and Sterling was losing his patience because of it.

              “Where were you around the time Mary was killed?”

              Hollister chuckled as though the assumption he could remember his whereabouts twenty-eight years prior was an absolute joke.

              “Can you tell us anything about Charlotte’s murder?” Kitty asked. “You mentioned that by that point it was clear to you the same person did it. Sterling made the same connection, but perhaps you studied the facts from a different angle and got different insights as a result.”

              “All I can say is that at first I thought the killer wanted what Steve Slaughter had. But Steve never had Charlotte...did he?”

              “What the hell are you asking me?” Sterling snapped.

              “I’m asking if your deceased wife was sleeping with your father.”

              Sterling was on his feet, fists clenched into tight, angry balls in a heartbeat, but Kitty pulled him back, keeping her hands on him to calm him.

              “I think it’s safe to assume she wasn’t,” she said.

              “There are no safe assumptions,” Hollister countered, and then elaborated his original point. “I think the killer wanted what you have, Sterling. I think he still does.”

              “But he can’t have what’s dead,” he objected, desperate to shoot holes in the professor’s theories. Faulty logic was just that and a waste of time to boot.

              “What he wants is to replace these people,” he clarified. “He wants to be needed. He wants to be able to be there for you, because they aren’t.”

              “Tell me where you were for all three murders,” Sterling demanded.

              Hollister smiled easily then sipped his whiskey. “Certainly,” he said. “But it’ll take some time. I’ll have to dig out my old calendars.”

              “You do that.” Sterling had had enough and got out of the bungalow as fast as possible. “There’s something not right about that guy,” he said when Kitty stepped outside and joined him.

              “Take a breath,” she suggested.

              Sterling hadn’t realized he’d been heaving. He felt hot, more so than the weather could’ve caused. He felt just about ready to explode. Kitty guided him down the walk and when they reached his Jeep there was enough distance between him and Hollister’s nonsense that he found he was able to breathe normally.

              “The killer had access to the necklace,” she began. “Let’s think this through. Your dad gets the necklace, right? Then he gives it to your mother. The killer had to have laced poison onto it in-between those two events. Who had access?”

              Sterling couldn’t think straight.

              “Hollister?” She questioned. “Was he such a close family friend that he could’ve gotten into your house and had time to do that?”

              Her point was a good one. It was unlikely.

              “Then the necklace is in your possession until you gave it to Charlotte. Trace amounts of poison killed her.”

              “Or the killer knew where it was and laced it with poison again.”

              “Which would mean you probably indicated to the killer that you were planning on giving it to Charlotte. Did you tell anyone?”

              Sterling rubbed his forehead. “It was so long ago.”

              “Ok,” she said, easing off the pressure. “The same person was able to get the necklace out of the police evidence room—”

              “Police storage,” he corrected. “Which has virtually no security.”

              “Fine,” she said, working with him. “So who had access to your childhood house, the house you shared with Charlotte, and also the police storage unit?”

              Sterling thought so hard his head hurt. Then he shook his head.

              “I can tell someone came to mind, Sterling, just tell me.”

              “It’s not the right fit,” he said.

              “Just say it.”

              Sterling’s voice hitched in his throat so he swallowed hard and tried again.

              “My lieutenant,” he stated regretfully. “Harrison.”

              Kitty stared at him.

              “But it’s not a perfect fit. Harrison didn’t know my dad or mom. But he could’ve gotten into my house. I’d told almost everyone in the department I was going to give the necklace to Charlotte that night at dinner. Harrison had never met you. He could’ve easily confused Layla for you. And he’d easily have access to police storage.”

              “Why would he want to hurt you?”

              “Honestly?” Sterling sighed. “There are so many reasons...”