The Double Cross (12 page)

Susanne looked at me as if she were waiting for the punch line of a very bad joke. When she saw that none was coming, she just shook her head and moved back, leaning against the wall. “That can’t be. He was with Bernie,” she said, then clasped one hand over her mouth.

Bernie was now the only one of our group not accounted for. “Where is she?” I asked urgently.

“Where’s who?” I turned to see Bernie walking down the steps from the bedrooms.

“Where were you?”

“Upstairs, taking a nap.” Bernie pointed up the steps. Her face was flushed and her eyes were red. I wondered for a second if she too had been drugged, but she didn’t give me a chance to ask. She walked past as if I wasn’t there. “What are you doing here, Jesse?”

Jesse hung up the phone and moved in close. “Bernie, where were you just now?”

“I was upstairs.” For the second time she pointed up the stairs.

“Nell looked upstairs,” Jesse said.

I shook my head. “Before I fell asleep. She could have come in afterward. We didn’t check the rooms. We came straight downstairs.”

“What time did you go to your room, Bernie?” Jesse leaned closer to Bernie, who stared at him. I could see that she was about to cry, and when she looked to me for help, I grabbed Jesse’s arm and forced him back a few steps.

“Give her a minute,” I said.

“We don’t have a minute. McIntyre’s on his way.”

Bernie looked from Jesse to me. “What’s going on?” she asked. Her voice was raised and shaking. I wanted to bring her into the living room and have her sit down, but Jesse shook me off. He moved closer to Bernie and blocked my access to her.

“Were you with George today?” he asked.

“Yes, earlier. We went for a walk.”

“Where?” Jesse moved closer.

“In the woods.”

“What time?”

I could see fear spread across Bernie’s face, and I could see that it was Jesse’s doing. He was going into full police-chief mode. But this wasn’t his town, and she wasn’t his suspect. I pushed back toward Bernie.

“Don’t answer that,” I said. I grabbed her arm, ignoring the look of annoyance from Jesse, and took her into the kitchen.

Bernie resisted my pushing, but I didn’t let up. Once we were alone, I let go of her arm.

“What are you dragging me in here for?” she asked.

“I just need you to take a deep breath and tell me everything that happened this afternoon. And quickly, before the police arrive.”

“The police are coming?”

“What were you doing with George this afternoon?” I asked.

Something changed in Bernie’s face. The fear and confusion left her and she seemed, instead, to be offended. “Look, I know you guys think I’m crazy, but he’s an old friend and I will do what I like.”

“What time did you leave him?”

“Nell, I’m a grown woman. I don’t have to account to anyone for my time.”

“Humor me.”

“Maybe two or three hours ago.”

“And you went to your room right after you last saw George?”

“Yes. What is going on?”

“That isn’t true, Bernie. I went into everyone’s room a couple of hours ago, and you weren’t in yours.”

“I was . . .” She stopped. “What are you asking me, Nell?”

“I want to know where you were this afternoon.”

“Why?”

I took a deep breath and said as calmly as I could, “George is dead.”

Bernie froze. Finally she said, softly, “That’s not possible. He was fine an hour ago.”

“Is that the last time you saw him?”

She didn’t seem to hear me. I waited for an answer. Instead I got a question.

“How?” she finally asked, her voice so soft it was almost a whisper.

“Jesse thinks he was shot.”

Her eyes widened and she seemed about to collapse. I reached out to her, but she waved me off and, instead of getting support from me, leaned against the kitchen counter. “You think I had something to do with it?”

“I don’t know what to think. All I know is that we found him in the woods, just off the hiking trail. He was covered with one of the quilts Susanne brought.”

“The double cross.”

I took a deep breath and asked a question I didn’t want to ask. “How do you know that?”

“We took it from the studio. George asked me to go for a walk and he’d brought a bottle of wine and some food. I thought he wanted to have a picnic, so I grabbed the quilt. It is mine, and I figured Susanne was done showing it to the class. It was harmless. Just two old friends.”

“Having a romantic picnic?”

“Something like that.”

“Bernie, he’s someone else’s husband.”

The door opened behind me.

“Not anymore, he’s not.” I recognized the voice as belonging to Jim McIntyre, the local police chief. “Ma’am,” he said to Bernie, “would you mind answering some questions for me?”

CHAPTER 16

The storm was over. It was, strangely enough, a beautiful spring night, with thousands of stars stretching out across a deep blue sky. Eleanor arrived back, and after hearing the news, she did what any practical woman would do: she set to work on dinner. Susanne took her lead and, despite being very shaken, set the tables.

Pete had gone home to get out of his wet clothes but had promised to check in on us later. I think he was more shocked than the rest of us that Bernie had spent the day picnicking with a married man. I assured him that, no matter what it looked like, Bernie hadn’t done anything wrong. He didn’t seem convinced, but, then, he didn’t know Bernie. Of course, neither did Chief McIntyre, and he was alone with her, asking questions. After pacing the living room floor for half an hour, I went outside and waited nervously for McIntyre’s ’s interrogation to end.

“What are you doing out here?”

I looked over at Jesse, who handed me a hot cup of tea. “I was trying to make sense of it.”

“It’s too early for that. There are too many questions.”

“There’s one very big one,” I pointed out. “Where’s Rita?”

Jesse nodded. “McIntyre said she was upstairs, resting. I asked him how she sounded and he said ‘not normal.’ ”

“What does that mean?”

“I’m not sure. Either she didn’t sound normal because her husband has been murdered, or she didn’t sound the way a woman whose husband was murdered should sound.”

“I don’t know if he’s up for this kind of thing. Solving a homicide,” I said. “He seems every bit the small-town cop.”

Jesse smiled. “That’s what I am too.”

“You were a police officer in New York City before you came back to Archers Rest.”

Eleanor once told me that Jesse had worked in New York City for several years before his wife, Lizzy, was diagnosed with cancer. He and Lizzy returned to Archers Rest, their hometown, so their families could be nearby to help with their daughter during Lizzy’s illness and, eventually, after she died. Jesse didn’t often talk about his days in the big city, and I always wondered if he missed them.

“Detective,” Jesse said. “I was a detective in vice.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

He shrugged. “Never came up. Not a lot of vice in Archers Rest.”

“Isn’t that a shame?” I smiled.

He blushed.

“Maybe you could help McIntyre,” I said. “I have the feeling he thinks Bernie is involved.”

“
I
think Bernie is involved. And so do you.”

I wondered if we were talking about the same thing. “I think,” I said carefully, “that she may be involved in a way, but I am sure she didn’t kill him and I don’t want to see her railroaded for something she didn’t do.”

“Then tell me what you know.”

I took a breath. “If I tell you, you have to promise not to share anything I say with McIntyre. I don’t want him getting the wrong idea.”

“I won’t say a word. Mostly because I trust your instincts.”

That made me smile. “And the other reason?”

“I agree with you.”

Jesse leaned against a fence and looked up at the sky before turning his gaze to me. His voice was quiet, and his expression had the same earnest seriousness I’d seen the night we first met, but there was a strength to his face and a kindness in his eyes that I’d only recently come to see. Standing there, I realized how much I liked that face.

“Bernie wouldn’t kill anyone,” Jesse continued. “I’ve known her for years. She plays cards with my mom every week and babysits for Allie when my mom can’t. I wouldn’t trust her with my daughter if I thought for a moment she had an ounce of violence in her.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll tell you everything.”

“If we’re going to find out who the killer is, then you have to.”

I smiled. “We?”

He nodded. “We.”

So I told him about seeing Bernie and George in the kitchen. Even as I spoke, I knew how it would sound. The picnic, the kitchen, and George’s comments about Bernie marrying a millionaire—it added up to a pretty good motive. A lonely woman reconnects with her lost love only to find out his sole interest is her back account. Angry and hurt, she shoots him. A lazy or inexperienced cop would have her arrested in the time it takes for a batch of scones to come out of the oven.

I could tell by the expression on Jesse’s face that he thought the motive was pretty compelling, but instead of saying so he shrugged his shoulders. “It’s going to be fine,” he said quietly.

I smiled. I was glad, for once, to be on the same side of an investigation as Jesse. I’d gotten used to getting help from the other members of the quilt club, and I knew they would be willing to do anything, but knowing Jesse was there as well almost made me confident that we would find the killer. Almost, because I had the odd and uncomfortable feeling that I had lost a normally reliable ally in Bernie. From the moment George’s name was brought up back in Archers Rest, she had become unusually secretive, and without her telling the whole truth, I wasn’t sure there was anything we could do to help.

We ate dinner in silence. Once McIntyre had finished with Bernie, she sat at a table by herself, nursing a glass of wine. Any attempt to comfort her was brushed off, and after we all had failed, we gave her the space she seemed to want. I watched her for any hint of, I don’t know, guilt, remorse—anything that would tag her as the killer—but all I saw was the blank expression of shock. As we ate, Rita walked downstairs but went straight into the kitchen with McIntyre, without even looking toward us. There was no guilt on her face either. Just tiredness and tears.

Halfway through dinner the silence turned from awkward to unbearable, but none of us seemed to be able to figure out what to say. Susanne started to say something about the class, and then stopped. The only words my grandmother spoke were to Barney, who sat at her feet. Jesse and I watched the kitchen door for any sign of Chief McIntyre.

As soon as I finished eating, I used my dirty dish as an excuse to interrupt. Not that there was much to walk in on. Rita stood by the sink, drinking a glass of lemonade, while the police chief sat at the small table on the other side of the room.

“I hope it’s okay to come in here,” I said as I placed my dish on the counter. I waited for a moment to see if their conversation, whatever it had been, would continue, but neither Rita nor McIntyre spoke.

“I’m so sorry, Rita. We all are,” I eventually said. “If there’s anything we can do.” I looked for a reaction, but she wouldn’t look at me. “Maybe it would be best if we cleared out. Since the rest of the week is canceled . . .”

“Why?” Rita’s head swiveled and her eyes met mine.

I was taken aback. “Because you must want to be with your friends and with your daughter. You can’t want strangers in your house.”

“My daughter won’t come,” she said.

Even though I didn’t like Rita, I found it hard to imagine what she could have done that would keep her daughter away at a time like this. But this wasn’t the moment to ask.

“I’m sure you don’t want us here,” I said, even though I didn’t want to leave the inn. More than anything I wanted to stay and find out who had killed George, but I needed to get Bernie away from this mess.

“I don’t care if you stay.” Rita’s face was blank. She raised one of her perfectly manicured hands to her face and wound a flyaway strand of hair behind her ear. “In fact, I see no reason why the class shouldn’t continue. People signed up to take it, and you have driven all this way. I really would prefer it if it went forward.”

“If I have a vote, and I hope I do, I’d rather none of you ladies left,” McIntyre said. “I’d like to keep everyone here until I get full statements, and that may take a day or two.”

“None of us knows a thing about why this happened,” I said firmly. “We barely knew him.”

“That isn’t true for all of you,” he countered.

“Bernie hasn’t seen him since high school,” I shot back. “She hadn’t a reason in the world to want George dead.” I was proud of just how certain I sounded, even though I knew it wasn’t entirely true.