Page 45 of One Last Goodbye

“Thank you for painting that lovely picture for me,” I say drily.

“You have an odd sense of propriety, Mary. You don’t mind digging through the private lives of multiple people to solve a murder that you’re not qualified to solve, but if someone brings up sex, you blush. I wish I could live inside your mind for a day.”

“You couldn’t handle the shadows it contains.”

“How delightfully dark. And almost certainly accurate. My point is that…”

“Yes? Why are you hesitating?”

“I’m preparing to hear you dismiss my thoughts immediately.”

I roll my eyes. "Consider them dismissed. Now, what have I dismissed immediately?"

He chuckles. “The thought that the police might have had it right the first time. Maybe Frederick Jensen killed himself.”

“No. not possible.”

“Thought you’d say that. Thank you for a lovely conversation, Mary. Have a wonderful day. Or it’s night where you are, isn’t it?”

“Sean, don’t be an ass. But really, how can you say that it was suicide already? We’ve only eliminated two of our suspects. There’s still Catherine, who is also middle-aged and staring down a future with a man she doesn’t love after decades of denying a man she does love. There’s that man in question, Hugo, who strikes me as quite foolish enough to kill Frederick to be with his wife. There’s Veronica, who actually threatened to kill Frederick for considering ending their relationship.”

“She’s a foolish girl who let her emotions get the better of her.”

“Such people kill other people when they have access to loaded handguns.”

“Fair enough.”

“Anyway, I still think Catherine is the most likely suspect, possibly with help from Hugo. I just don’t know how toproveit.”

“If only you had a law enforcement agency there whose entire job was to solve crimes,” Sean says drily, “and a detective who’s waiting for information from you. You know, like the security footage you sent me that implicates Catherine?”

“So he can blow everything up by putting her on a defensive footing? The next thing you know, the family travels to America, and this dies in the courts over the next eleven years.” A thought occurs to me. “Why didn’t the police confiscate this footage, anyway? I overheard Dubois asking about security cameras. I can’t understand why they wouldn’t have already seen this and acted on it.”

“Maybe they’re afraid of the same thing you are, that she’ll jump ship.”

“Exactly. That’s why I can’t go to the police yet. I need more.”

He sighs. “Well, I walked right into that one.”

I bite my lip and think about what to do next. I have already stolen footage from her bedroom. I can’t rely on getting that lucky again. The same goes for Frederick’s study. That implicates Veronica, but I can’t range much farther to look into her either.

The problem is that I’m limited by my responsibilities to the children. The memorial is over. I will allow the children one more week off of school, but I will still be working full time to care for them and comfort them. I’ve already conspired with Sophie, and that’s ended with me assaulting an innocent woman—well, innocent of Frederick’s murder, anyway.

I have only one choice. “Sean, I need you here.”

There’s a shocked silence. Then he says. “Well, I definitely didnotwalk into that one. You want me to fly to Geneva?”

“Yes. Save your travel expense receipts, and I’ll reimburse you.”

“And how so I introduce myself? As your boyfriend, perhaps?”

I roll my eyes again. “I didn’t say drive to the estate, you nitwit. Fly to Geneva and stay in the city. Then you can do my digging for me.”

“Oh yes. There’s nothing I love more than doing your dirty work.”

“If you didn’t like the job, you shouldn’t have made a career out of it,” I snap. “Get here as soon as you can. The murder grows colder as we speak.”

“I thought you said he was cremated.”

---