The next morning at seven, I found myself alone in the house. Derek had spent the night, ostensibly to make sure I was all right and that my coughing didn’t get worse, but more, I think, just to be next to me and to know that I was still alive and breathing. I didn’t complain; I wanted to be next to him, too. I had that near-fatal accident response that Josh and Shannon probably had, where they realized how close they’d come to losing everything, and they wanted to keep the other person as close as possible every second.
He headed out at a few minutes before seven, and I got ready for the day, and for Brandon. Wayne would be meeting Derek at the house on Cabot to tell the television crew what had happened last night and that I’d be staying home today. He’d also be making comments about how busy he himself was and how he’d have to go to Portland for a few hours in the morning to testify in court. That way, whoever the guilty party was would think the chief of police was safely out of the way. When the whole crew was present at Cabot Street, Wayne would give Brandon the signal to come to my house, since he’d know that none of them would be watching. Cora and Beatrice had agreed to spend the morning at Cabot Street with Derek to get the last of the work done and also so our bad guy or girl would know they weren’t with me. Kate had already told everyone she’d be at the hospital with Shannon this morning, getting ready for Shannon’s release, and Josh was supposed to have been there for breakfast, too, saying the same thing. For all the arsonist/killer knew, the coast would be clear, and he or she could hightail it over to my house with nobody being the wiser.
All I had to do was wait.
Brandon arrived just before seven thirty through the back door. I let him in and then peered left and right before I closed and locked the door behind him. I knew the whole crew was supposed to be at Cabot Street, but it was automatic.
Not that there were a lot of places left where someone could hide and watch the house. The shed, obviously, was gone, reduced to a still-smoking pile of ashes and debris. A shiver crept down my spine when I realized, again, how close I’d come to being part of that pile.
There were the rows of raspberry bushes and the occasional fruit tree, which may be where the bad guy or gal had hidden last night. I’d walked all around and through the raspberry patch, and no one had been there, but if he or she had been crouched in an apple tree, I might not have noticed. There were several fruit trees within easy striking distance of the shed; luckily none of them had been touched by the fire.
Brandon went straight upstairs and made himself comfortable with a thick book on the history of fingerprinting. I stayed downstairs and made tea with lots of lemon and honey to soothe my throat.
Time dragged by. We had discussed the possibility of Derek calling me, or texting, when someone slipped away from the house on Cabot, but we’d decided it was too risky. Just in case the first person to leave had a legitimate errand, we didn’t want the real culprit to notice Derek’s warning to me and to realize that something was up. I was sure the situation was as difficult for Derek as it was for me, but unfortunately, that didn’t make it any easier to deal with.
A few minutes after nine, the doorbell rang. I made my slow way down the hallway, pulling my terrycloth robe around me—I was still in my pajamas and robe to make it look like I was resting and not expecting company—and peered out.
And saw . . .
Adam?
Yep, definitely Adam. Wearing a big grin, along with another pair of tight jeans and another formfitting T-shirt, holding a bakery bag aloft.
Well, hell, this wasn’t going according to plan at all, was it? Adam wasn’t supposed to be here. He had nothing to do with this. And what would happen if the real bad guy showed up while he was here? Would Real Bad Guy kill Adam, too?
But wait . . . Real Bad Guy wouldn’t kill anyone, because Brandon was upstairs ready to save the day. I could hear stealthy steps at the top of the stairs, but I didn’t think I’d better turn and tell him to stand down because it was just Adam. Instead, I opened the door and smiled.
“Hi, Evie.” Adam gave me his trademarked melting grin. It didn’t do anything for me this time, either, especially when coupled with the wrong name. “I brought you a scone.” He brandished the bag. “Can I come in?”
I hesitated. It’d probably be safer—for Adam—if I said no. Just because Brandon was here to save the day didn’t mean that accidents couldn’t happen. If the killer showed up and Adam accidentally got hurt in the melee, I’d feel horrible. Although not too horrible, since I didn’t really like him that much. And besides, if he went back to the house on Cabot and told everyone I had refused to let him in, they might suspect that something was going on. So I stepped aside and waved him inside.
He walked through the door looking around before turning to me. “Deke told us what happened. You lost your voice, huh?”
I nodded. Couldn’t do anything else, since I didn’t want him to go back to Cabot Street and tell everyone that Derek had lied.
“Wow, that’s too bad. Are you all alone here?” He looked around again. “Where’s the cat?”
Jemmy and Inky had left earlier for their usual amble through the neighborhood, and Mischa was, in fact, upstairs where he could keep an eye on Brandon. He—Mischa—had attacked Brandon when he walked in, the same way that Mischa used to attack Derek. At the moment, he was crouched halfway up the stairs, tail twitching while he thought about attacking Adam. Poor kitty, he couldn’t seem to make up his mind which was the bigger threat to me at the moment: Brandon or Adam.
I pointed to him. Adam looked in the direction of the stairs just as Mischa hissed and launched himself from the fifth step. Adam stumbled back with Mischa attached to his leg, and dropped the bakery bag, which landed on the floor with a
thunk
.
I was tempted to giggle, but I remembered I wasn’t supposed to be able to use my voice. So when Adam grabbed Mischa and yanked him off his leg, and then sent him skidding down the slick hardwood floor of the hallway, I managed to hold back an outraged scream. Mischa didn’t; he squealed in pain and anger at the rough treatment. He landed on his feet, though, and hit the wall with a slap, before he did an about-turn and came running back for more. Obviously he hadn’t been hurt by Adam’s callousness. I scooped him out of the air in midleap and cradled him to my chest. Adam couldn’t be trusted to treat him with consideration.
“Damn cat,” Adam grumbled, pulling up his jeans leg to look at the damage. “Shit, I’m bleeding.”
He was. Mischa had sunk those little claws straight through Adam’s jeans and into the skin below, and tiny trickles of blood were running down Adam’s muscular leg. Right next to—my eyes popped—a pawful of tiny puncture marks, partially scabbed over. As if he’d gotten them earlier. Say . . . yesterday?
“Damn,” I said.
Adam narrowed his eyes at me. “Oh, you
can
talk.”
“A little. My voice is hoarse and my throat hurts.”
“You should have been dead,” Adam said, dropping the pants again.
“You should have hit me instead of just pushing me inside the shed. I broke a hole in the wall and got out.”
Adam smiled unpleasantly. “Deke said he rescued you.”
“I would have made it out on my own,” I said, since it was true. Although being dragged through the door was a whole lot more pleasant than having to squeeze through the tiny hole surrounded by flames would have been, so I wasn’t complaining.
“You won’t make it out this time.” Adam scooped up the bakery bag, which I should have realized didn’t have a scone in it as soon as it hit the floor. Scones don’t
thunk
. Adam pulled out a gun instead.
I stared at it. “Where did you get that?”
“It’s Wilson’s,” Adam said. “The big boob supports the NRA.” He shrugged. “You don’t seem surprised.”
“About the gun? Oh, I’m surprised.” Not to say shaking in my boots. It was the third time someone had held a gun on me in the past six months, and I’d survived the other two times, but there was something about staring into that black hole that still gave me the jitters. “But I’m more surprised it’s you. You’re the only person I didn’t suspect.”
“Of course you didn’t,” Adam said.
“So why did you kill Tony? And try to kill me?”
He stared at me. “You mean you don’t know?”
“Of course I don’t know,” I said. Duh. Would I really be asking if I did?
“You threatened me yesterday.”
“What? No, I didn’t!”
“Sure you did,” Adam said. “When we were talking about Nina and Tony and Ted and Fae and that girl who died. You said, ‘You’ve done things you don’t want anyone to know about.’ ”
Or something like it. I remembered the gist of the remark if not the exact wording. I was pretty sure I hadn’t put it quite that strongly, but it didn’t seem worth arguing about.
“So?” I said. “Hasn’t everyone? You looked like you were thinking of blackmailing Nina into letting you keep your job, and . . .” I trailed off.
“I need this job,” Adam said. “I’ve tried theater, and movies, and now TV. If this doesn’t work out, I’ll have to go back to valet parking. This is my last chance to be somebody!” His eyes gleamed fanatically.
“So was it you who put Stuart in the hospital? You turned the electricity back on and electrocuted him?”
Adam nodded. “I figured if he was out of the way, Nina would give me a chance.”
“I guess she didn’t realize you wouldn’t be able to do the job.”
“I can do the job!”
“You can’t even remember my name!” I said. “It’s Avery, Adam! Not Ivory, not Ivy, not Evie. Avery!”
“I would have gotten it right,” Adam said sulkily.
Maybe not soon enough for Nina,
I thought. “So you got rid of Stuart. I guess it was just pure, dumb luck that he didn’t die. Did you even care one way or the other?”
Adam shrugged. Probably not.
“What about Tony? Why did you kill him? He wasn’t a threat to you.”
“Nina was having dinner with him,” Adam said. “She told me to stay home and practice, to write down everything I wanted to say on camera the next day and memorize it all while she went to dinner with Tony. I thought she was going to offer him my job. She kept talking about how great he was on camera.”
“So you killed him?”
“It made sense at the time,” Adam said.
“What were you even doing at the house that night? You couldn’t have known that Tony would be there.”
“I waited,” Adam said, “outside the B and B until he’d dropped Nina off after dinner. And then I flagged him down. I made nice-nice and asked him to help me out. Asked him if he’d mind driving over to the house and going through it with me to help me come up with some patter that would impress Nina. I laid it on thick and told him how great he was and how much I admired him. He lapped it all up. When we got there, I used the key to open the door and then, when we got into the kitchen, I stabbed him with the screwdriver that was lying there.”
His voice was chillingly indifferent, as if he were talking about swatting an insect that was buzzing around his head. It was as if the only thing Adam cared about was what happened to Adam; everyone else was of lesser importance. A lot lesser.
“And then you took the tools because you thought it’d make it look like someone had broken in to steal them?”
Adam nodded.
“Where are they? Surely you didn’t carry them all the way back to the B and B on foot. Did you?”
“They’re in the Dumpster,” Adam said. “Under some wood. I figured nobody’d think to look there.”
And no one had that I knew about. The old “Purloined Letter” trick; hide something in—almost—plain view and watch everyone ignore it.
“What about Melissa? Did you text her? Or was that Tony?”
“Thought she might go down for it,” Adam said with a shrug.
Right. So Adam had texted Melissa. I focused on keeping my voice steady. “What about Shannon and Josh? The car accident? What happened there?”
“I thought he’d be going out with Fae again,” Adam said.
“And why would you want to get rid of Fae? Did she know that you’d killed Tony? Did she see you go outside that night or something?” She might have, since her room was downstairs close to the back door.
He looked incredulous. “Of course not. Wilson was filming her goofing around for the camera and saying how great she was, and I thought maybe he’d tell Nina to let Fae do my job instead.”
“So you almost killed two innocent people because you thought Wilson might suggest that Fae take over your job? She’s a summer intern, Adam! In another month, she’ll be back in college.”
“If she got my job, she might not go back to college,” Adam said stubbornly. “Who would?”
It was clearly a rhetorical question, so I didn’t bother answering. He was way beyond reasoning with, anyway. Through all this, the gun in his hand hadn’t wavered, and I hadn’t heard a sound from upstairs, either, where I was pretty sure Brandon was hanging over the railing, waiting for an opportunity to fell Adam. But it was a tough situation. Adam had a gun, too, and if Brandon shot him, Adam might shoot me. If Brandon so much as made a sound, Adam might shoot me.
Hell, Adam might shoot me for any reason, or no reason at all, anytime he wanted. So far, his reasons for killing, or almost killing, everyone else hadn’t exactly been well considered.
So I tried to keep him talking, hoping that something would happen to tip the scales in our favor. “And yesterday you decided to get rid of me. Because you thought I knew that you’d killed Tony.”
“It made sense at the time,” Adam said again. “You know, Evie, you shouldn’t go around threatening people if you don’t want them to come after you.”
“I didn’t threaten you, you dipstick! You were the one person I absolutely didn’t think could be guilty. Until I saw the scratch marks on your leg just now.”