Page 70 of Death in the Family
Leaning over the gunwale.
Reaching for my hand.
THIRTY-TWO
So when you left the house to go after Norton, you knew. Norton had an accomplice. The killer was Miles.”
Lieutenant Jack O. Henderson folded his hands on his desk and awaited my response. My direct superior’s fingers were thick, his knuckles swollen. They were hands that could crush a windpipe like a straw. I pulled my gaze away from them and looked up.
“I knew there were two people involved in Jasper’s murder,” I said. “Tough to get a grown man’s deadweight out of the house without help. I suspected Norton early on, but narrowing down the others to find his partner was harder. Abella’s death sent me back to the beginning of the day, and my dominant memories of our suspects. In those first minutes I spent on Tern Island, Norton explained how the family searched for Jasper. Flynn, Bebe, and Ned looked in the house. Norton took the grounds, with Miles.
“It was their chance to get their stories straight and confirm their game plan. Norton would point the finger at the trapper. Miles would make a case for Ned. The more suspects, the better—and they had plenty of blameworthy people to choose from. Miles must have thought he hit the jackpot when Flynn came after Abella, and again later on when Ned assaulted me and Flynn went after Ned. They all played right into Miles’s hands. His plan was ambitious on every level, but so much worked in his favor.”The only thing Miles didn’t account for, I thought,was Tim and me.
“After everything I learned about the family’s financial situation and Camilla’s attitude toward Jasper and Norton, I was pretty sure Norton was in the will as the beneficiary of the island. I just didn’t see him stabbing someone. As for Miles, he grated on me. He’d made numerous comments about Bebe’s dubious financial state. At one point Bebe even accused him of marrying her for money. They were through well before Bebe slept with Ned, yet Miles stuck around and even came out to the island for what should have been a family affair. Miles was stalling. Waiting for something. I just didn’t know what.”
I wiped my palms on my pants and was startled by the fine wool twill I found covering my thighs. I’d splurged on a new outfit for my visit to the New York State Police Troop D headquarters, the command center for my county and six others. If ever there was a day when I needed to look professional, this was it.
The BCI lieutenant watched me, unblinking. “You gleaned a lot of information from stories and interactions most people would consider irrelevant.”
“Women’s intuition?” I offered, smiling.
He didn’t laugh.
“There was something else,” I said. “It was obvious Jade hada close relationship with Jasper. The prior day, during cocktail hour, Miles watched Jasper ply his smitten daughter with wine. When I questioned Miles in the kitchen, Jade implied she planned to continue seeing Jasper even after Miles and Bebe divorced. I don’t know any father who’d be cool with his teenage daughter doling out that kind of attention to a twenty-six-year-old man, let alone one related to a wanton soon-to-be ex-wife. But Miles never said a bad word about Jasper. The man exhibited heroic restraint. That didn’t sit right with me. Plus, there was the issue of where he slept.”
The lieutenant raised a bristly gray eyebrow, and I went on. “Ned told me he’d bunked in the library. But when I pressed Miles about his sleeping arrangements with Bebe, he claimed he did the same thing. Miles was quick to accept my suggestion that he’d been downstairs, far away from the murder scene. He knew Norton would corroborate his story. What he didn’t know was that Ned already occupied the library couch. Guess they didn’t notice him when they moved Jasper’s body out of the house in the dark. Once I concluded Norton and Miles were covering for each other, I put the rest—their past, their relationship—together from there.”
I told Lieutenant Henderson everything I knew, including what I learned after Maureen McIntyre pulled me and Jade out of the river. Norton contacted Miles two years ago, hoping to make amends. Miles was still furious, but when he heard about the Sinclairs and Norton’s life with Camilla, it got him thinking. It was easy to track Bebe down in the city. Miles couldn’t compete with her wealth, but a lawyer with a beautiful teenage daughter was a respectable choice for a middle-aged woman who’d never been married, and Bebe bit. Miles convinced Norton it was better notto tell Jade who he was until she got older.Best not to upset the child.Let her get to know you first, he said.
Miles and Jade fit right into the Sinclair family. Jade got close to Jasper, who treated her like a peer and not the child she was, while Norton got to know his granddaughter after years of estrangement. Miles assured his father all was forgiven. But it didn’t take Miles long to discover Sinclair Fabrics wasn’t the cash cow he believed it to be. He made his move when his daughter finally spilled a secret worth knowing: Jasper was worried his grandmother was too close to Norton and feared Norton would take advantage of her trust.
It never occurred to Norton to manipulate his situation with Camilla. But Miles made sure to explain how much was at stake. If the business went down, the island would go with it. As a lawyer, however, Miles could help Norton retain his access to the land. If Norton could convince Camilla to will the island to him, he could protect it from Bebe and Flynn. The place Norton treasured, which he’d come to think of as home, would be safe. Jasper was the only thing standing in their way. Norton was understandably reluctant. He told Miles he had no intention of signing up for bloodshed. But as his young granddaughter’s infatuation turned into a serious obsession, it was decided. Jasper had to go.
“I know men like Miles,” I said. “He used Norton’s love of the island and guilt about abandoning his son to twist his thoughts. Jasper may have been a great guy, but he was still a Sinclair, and that made him everything Norton could never be—wealthy, privileged, able to provide for a family. Meanwhile, Norton had just gained a son and granddaughter. His luck had finally changed. He didn’t want Jade to end up pregnant and jilted any more than Milesdid. Norton isn’t entirely heartless. It was his idea to hide the body so Camilla would be spared some heartache. By the time Jasper disappeared, the will had been changed. The island was his.”
“I’ve seen that will,” the lieutenant said. “It was amended on Fourth of July weekend to name Norton as sole beneficiary of the entire estate.”
“Camilla trusted him. She knew he’d take care of Tern. I’m sure she had visions of life carrying on there the way it always had. Camilla thought she was doing her grandson a favor by taking the estate out of the equation. Money was tearing the family apart, and she didn’t want Jasper caught in the middle.”
Tap. Tap. The tip of the lieutenant’s pen struck the cover of a fat manila folder on his desk. “As you know,” he said, “a team of forensic analysts have been out to the island. They found ketamine in what remained of Camilla’s wine, and also in Norton’s belongings. We’re looking into how he obtained it. Probably off some city kid who summers up there.”
“Norton lived in A-Bay for a long time. I’m sure he’s got connections,” I said. “There are a couple of vet offices in the area, and ketamine’s used as a sedative. Maybe he got it there.”
My knowledge of date-rape drugs caused the lieutenant to quirk his eyebrow again. I didn’t bother to explain I had a personal interest in finding out where that shit came from.
“As for the blood on the sheets,” he said, glancing down at the folder, “the medical examiner collected family reference samples from Jasper’s siblings. It was a match for Jasper, and your initial visual analysis was right. Based on the amount of blood found at the scene, the medical examiner believes Jasper’s condition was grave. That said, we had search parties all over Tern Island, divers in the water, and found nothing.”
Aside from Miles’s body. He didn’t say it. There was no need. Mac had been keeping me abreast of all new developments since the second we got back to shore. Miles tried to save his daughter, but it was too late for redemption. I’d heard Jade was in California now, living with her mother. With Philip Norton at the Clinton Correctional Facility, there was nothing left for the kid in New York.
In the end, it wasn’t Jasper’s body that intruded on my dreams in the nights after I left Tern Island, but Abella’s. The girl had been so inconsequential to Miles and Norton’s plan, but she’d been targeted anyway, and that made her death all the more painful to swallow. The day before I met Lieutenant Henderson to go about the painful task of explaining how a missing persons case became a double homicide, I’d pilfered the Beaudry family’s phone number from the station’s digital files and called Abella’s parents. Their English wasn’t as solid as their daughter’s, but there was no misinterpreting the sentiments they wished to express to the investigator who allowed their child to die.
Surreptitiously, the lieutenant checked his watch. “Well, Merchant, that really only leaves Flynn Sinclair. Wellington says he threatened you.”
There were plenty of excuses to choose from. Tim’s official account made it easy to cover my ass. He’d back me up, no matter what I said. But what I said was, “I don’t know why I shot him.”
“I think I do.” The lieutenant pursed his lips. Again his pen whacked the file—my file—resting under his large hands.
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