Page 22 of The Highland Heist
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not fully certain.” He kept his attention on the road. “But I feel as if she’s hiding something.”
Which was a thought Grace had had during Detective Johnson’s questioning. Her sister’s reticence at times hinted to something more than just grief and shock over her husband’s death. Something else wasn’t quite right. Was it that Lillias didn’t want to confess the difficulties in her marriage? Admit the financial fall?
Or was there something else she hid?
Grace opened the short letter, hoping to find Lillias begging Miss Steen to return to her duties, but she instead discovered Lillias’ begging for something completely different.
I need you to tell the police I was with you on your walk this morning. I’ll pay you a handsome sum if you do. You owe me for even giving you this job when you had no references. I’m counting on your cooperation, Louisa. Telling them otherwise would not bode well for either of us.
“She was bribing her for an alibi,” she murmured, looking over at Frederick before reading the note aloud to him, her stomach knotting tighter with every word.
“Nothing is certain, Grace,” he said, his voice softening. His gaze flicked to her, the tenderness there threatening to undo her entirely.
But Grace knew her fiction—and her facts. And in every genre she could think of, the clues pointed to the same devastating conclusion.
“No,” she said, the words trembling on her lips. “But there’s a very real possibility my sister murdered her husband.”
Chapter 6
The Dixon house carried a strange sort of silence, as if the walls themselves mourned and shuddered at the events they had witnessed. Grace had recovered a sliver of composure on the ride back from Miss Steen’s house, thanks to Frederick’s steady reassurances and a good dose of silent prayer. But the very idea that her sister might hang for murder left her insides in an ongoing tremor.
“I don’t envy the prospect of confronting Lillias about all this, Frederick,” she admitted, pausing just inside the front entrance of the townhouse.
Frederick stopped beside her, his hand brushing her arm as his dark eyes searched hers. “Do you feel unsafe with her?”
Did she? Unsettled, perhaps. But unsafe? She shook her head slowly. “I can’t believe she’s capable of something so horrific. But the way the knife …” Her voice faltered.
He gave her arm a reassuring squeeze. “If you’d rather wait—”
“She needs to be prepared for the detective’s questioning tomorrow, especially now that we have evidence she tried to buy an alibi from Miss Steen.”
“Let’s have a think first on our own. Then we’ll speak to her. It will give you time to check on Zahra, and I can send a message to Mr. Barclay at the Clarion. Unless, of course, you’d rather draft it yourself?”
“Do you mind? I think it would be good to get some answers, don’t you?”
“And perhaps a needed distraction?” he replied, a hint of a grin tugging at his lips.
“You know me too well.” Her smile spread despite herself.
“Don’t forget, darling.” He straightened, adopting a mockingly serious expression and sending her a wink. “Iama detective, after all.”
Grace nearly swooned. Words directly to her heart. Without another word, she rocked onto her toes and pressed a kiss to his lips. For all his cleverness, it was his calm strength that was the distraction she felt most at the moment.
He lengthened the embrace for a moment longer and then drew back. “Do you know where the kitchen might be?” He looked about the room with one brow playfully raised, continuing the needed levity of the moment. “I need to track down Lillias’ errand boy, and I fear I’m terribly lost in this house.”
“I think your detective skills will come in handy for that too.”
His grin split wide before he turned and walked down the nearest hallway. Grace stood in the middle of the room, the presence of the police officer outside the front door only adding to the strangeness of the situation.
But was it strange? Truly.
She’d spent her entire marriage embarking on unexpected mysteries, and if something devastating could happen in Frederick’s family, why not her own? It was a grim, equal-opportunity disaster.
Her shoulders tensed at the thought, but she drew in a deep breath and lifted her chin. If she’d learned anything through their adventures, it was that while she might have a knack for fictional mysteries, she wasn’t too bad at solving the real ones, either.
And this mystery involved people she loved the most.
