The Heart of Lies (26 page)

She shook her head and waved off his apology. “No, this is all my fault,” she asserted in a weak and shaky voice. “I’m the one who brought Lucas to Paradise Valley. If I hadn’t met him on that dang datin’ site, none of this would’ve happened.”

“No, Maggie,” Emily assured her, putting an arm around her shoulder. “This is not your fault. Tell her,” she said, looking at Sully.

His eyes grew big and his face flushed, as she forced him onto the hot seat.

“Tell me what?” Maggie asked.

“No, Em, it’ll just hurt her more,” Sully pleaded, shaking his head.

“If she knows the truth, I think it’ll help her see him for who he was,” she insisted, “then she can stop blaming herself.”

Maggie waited with wide, expectant eyes and a straight face, as though she was bracing for the worst.

“Maggie,” he said, gazing at the floor and then off to the right, pausing as if he was struggling to find the right words to tell her what she needed to know, without divulging the entire truth of his indiscretion.

“I’m waitin’,” she said coolly, crossing her arms as she tapped her foot.

He slowly brought his eyes to meet hers. “I hate to tell you this, Sis, but Lucas told me he only responded to your dating site profile to get to me.”

“What?” she screamed.

“Keep your voice down,” Sully ordered, glancing up and down the hallway.

“What on earth does that mean?” Maggie demanded.

“Not that he wasn’t attracted to you, but he had this resort scam planned out for months and he needed an in with someone who could influence people in this town to invest in his project. He said he saw the advantages of your being the mayor’s sister, so he chose you. I’m sorry, Maggie. It kills me to have to tell you that.”

“Y’all knew about this scam and didn’t tell me?” she sputtered.

“I only knew because that SOB made it a point to tell me so he could blackmail me. It was after he asked you to marry him and after I had already invested in the project that he told me. He said I had to help him or he would ruin you and me both.”

Maggie seethed as she stepped close to her brother and poked a finger in his chest. “And y’all think this whole mess turned out better than if you’d been honest with me?”

Sully looked past Maggie to Emily, with a pained look on his face, as if pleading for her help. She shook her head, unwilling to rescue him.

Emily knew the whole story and she watched him squirm as he attempted to skirt around the truth of his embezzlement. Maybe he didn’t want his sister to know out of shame or maybe it was out of self-preservation. Either way, it was clear he was dancing around the issue, looking for a way out.

“Emily!” The familiar young Latina nurse approached, holding a large, beige leather purse.

Sully’s hunched shoulders relaxed, as he had been given a temporary reprieve.

“We finally found Mrs. Wakefield’s purse,” the nurse said, “but she checked out this morning. We tried calling her, but the phone rings in her purse. So I wondered, since you’re a friend of hers, could you make sure she gets it?”

“A friend?” Emily mumbled to herself, a bit taken aback by being called the old woman’s friend. “Sure,” Emily agreed. She was happy to jump at the opportunity to go through that woman’s things and find out who she really was. “I’ll track her down and make sure she gets it.”

“A woman’s whole life really is in our handbags.” The nurse laughed as she handed it over. “That one feels like it has everything in it but the kitchen sink.”

Emily grabbed it by the handle and her wrist strained under the surprising weight.

“Thanks, Emily,” the nurse sang as she hurried back to her station.

Emily tried to control the smile that threatened to break across her lips as she anticipated the opportunity to dig through the woman’s private things. “I need to go,” she announced. “You want to stay here with Sully,” she asked Maggie, “or do you want me to drop you off at home?”

“Uh, I’m going to be here for quite a while sitting with Carolyn, so you probably want to go with Emily,” Sully quickly suggested.

Emily understood his desire to end the painful conversation with his sister. He was probably worn out, she assumed, from all the fancy footwork.

“I’ll go with Em,” Maggie said, stepping toward her brother, standing toe to toe, “but don’t think for one single minute this discussion about Lucas is over, mister.”

“No, I know you better than that.” Sully sighed and backed toward the door, rolling his eyes as he pushed it open with his back and disappeared into his wife’s room.

The girls strolled to the elevator and boarded, watching the doors glide shut.

“What does that woman have in this purse? My gosh, it must weigh fifty pounds,” Emily complained, unzipping the top of it as the elevator floated down.

“Emily, it’s not nice to be goin’ through her purse. Isn’t that against the law or somethin’?” Maggie frowned, watching Emily open it.

“I hate to tell you this, Maggs, because you think the best of everyone, but Gloria Wakefield isn’t who you think she is.”

“What are y’all talkin’ about?”

Emily did not reply, but a wide grin spread across her face as she pulled out a white handkerchief wrapped around a hard object. The cloth was stuck to the crystal with dried blood. She held the thing out in her palm and peeled back the corners of the hanky.

Maggie gasped.

Emily had found the bloody mountain-shaped paperweight. She had found the murder weapon.

“Oh, my. There’s a gun in here, too,” Emily exclaimed.

~*~

Emily and Maggie drove directly from the hospital to the police station, phoning Colin on the way.

“I knew you’d figure this case out, Emily,” he commended her. “I’ll call Ernie and let him know you’re on your way to see him. Do you have any idea where Gloria is?”

“Not yet, but I think I know a way to find her. Just be aware, though, she may not have been the one who put the paperweight in her purse.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“The purse was out of her possession for days. Any one of our suspects could have taken the purse, tucked the paperweight inside, and hid it in an out-of-the-way place in the hospital.”

“You could be right. Ernie said Mrs. Wakefield was pretty out of it when the paramedics took her away.”

“And if the ER was busy that night, someone could have snatched the purse and not been noticed.”

“One of those people might have been Fiona,” he suggested.

“My thoughts exactly. I wondered why she was hanging around the hospital so much with a woman she barely knew. Maybe she hid the purse somewhere in the hospital and it got moved before she could retrieve it, so she had to stay at the hospital and search for it.”

“Besides, why would Gloria want to kill her own son?” Colin asked.

“I don’t know for certain that he was her son.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ll explain when I see you. You need to get off the phone and call Ernie. I’ll call you back in a bit with my plan.”

“Ay, ay, Captain,” he joked as he hung up.

“Maggie, I need to drop you at home.”

“No, I want to come. This sounds like it’s just gettin’ good,” Maggie exclaimed, rubbing her hands together. “Please let me stay, Em...please. I deserve to know.”

“That would save some time. All right, but you’ll need to stay out of the way, okay?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Do you have Fiona’s cell phone number?” Emily asked.

“I do, right here in my phone. Just a second and I’ll have it for ya. See, I can be helpful to y’all.” Maggie smiled as she searched her phone, probably the first time she’d smiled in days.

“All right, Maggie, don’t get full of yourself now.”

Maggie turned her phone screen to Emily and Emily punched the numbers into her own phone.

“Hello?” Fiona answered and Emily swore she heard a hint of suspicion in her voice.

“Fiona, this is Emily.” Emily worked to keep her own tone casual and upbeat.

“Hello, Emily. I’m surprised to hear from you.”

“I was at the hospital earlier and one of the nurses found Gloria’s purse. Isn’t that great?”

“Yes, Mrs. Wakefield will be thrilled.”

“The nurse said Gloria had already checked out and you were taking her home.”

“That’s right. I’ll let her know you have it.”

“I can drop it by your place, if you like, but it won’t be for a while, I have to go somewhere first. But then I can come by,” Emily offered.

“Hold on, let me ask Mrs. Wakefield what she wants to do. I’m sure she’ll want to get it back.”

There was a silent pause for a couple of minutes. Emily put her hand over the phone and whispered to Maggie that she was on hold. Fiona returned to the phone.

“We’re leaving for the airport shortly. Mrs. Wakefield wants to go home to recuperate in her own bed.”

“I don’t blame her. After what she’s been through, she probably wants to get out of here as soon as she can.” Emily tried to act natural and sympathetic, avoiding any sense that either woman was under suspicion.
 

Emily wondered how the woman could get a plane ticket and get on the flight without her driver’s license and credit cards that were still in the purse she’d lost. Then she realized Gloria and Lucas must have had someone who provided their fake IDs before and could easily have done it again over the last few days. If Gloria, or whoever she was, got on that plane with a new identity, the authorities may never find her again.

Perhaps Fiona bought the plane ticket. Maybe she bought two.

“Like I said, I have to make a stop first, but then I’d be happy to meet you somewhere.”

“Near the airport?” Fiona asked. “Mrs. Wakefield doesn’t have much time before her flight.”

“Sure.” Emily realized she only had a short window to catch them. “There’s a Copper Kettle Restaurant not far from the airport. Why don’t I meet you there in an hour, in the parking lot?”

Emily overheard Fiona whisper to Gloria. “In an hour at the Copper Kettle parking lot near the airport?” Then Fiona came back on the line with Emily. “Yes, that would be fine. We’ll see you in an hour.”

CHAPTER 26

Emily and Maggie rushed into Ernie’s office, finding Colin already there, perched on the corner of Ernie’s desk with his arms and ankles crossed. Emily had phoned Colin after speaking to Fiona and had alerted him to the time crunch and shared her plan to ensnare the killer, whichever one it turned out to be.

“We don’t have much time.” Emily breezed through the door first, carrying both her purse and Gloria’s handbag. “Here’s the murder weapon.” She dug the bloody crystal paperweight out of the older woman’s handbag, still wrapped in a white cotton handkerchief, and she slid it into a plastic evidence bag Ernie held open for her.

“I guess luck was on our side.” Ernie sealed the bag and marked it with black permanent marker, laying it in a drawer in his desk.

“We still don’t know for sure who put it in the purse, but when I reveal the paperweight, the reaction of these women should tell us if it was one of them. Have you got it for me, Ernie?”

He reached into the same drawer where he had placed the other one and pulled Maggie’s out. “Sorry about having to take it, Emily. You understand, I was—”

“Just doing your job, Ernie. Yeah, I know.”

He handed it to Emily and then locked the evidence drawer.

Emily pulled it out of the bag. “Do you have that ketchup and white hanky I asked for, Ernie?”

“Right here.” He handed the items to her and watched with interest, as did Colin and Maggie.

Emily smeared ketchup on the jagged tips of the mountain-shaped paperweight with her finger and set it on the desk in the middle of the hanky to dry. “Colin, can you wire me?”

Colin chuckled at Emily’s decoy murder weapon and pushed off the desk, grabbing the box of equipment from behind it. Emily lifted her blouse, with her back to Ernie, and Colin began taping the wire in place.

“Ernie will be in the van listening while you’re talking with Fiona and Gloria,” Colin said, “waiting for your signal to move in.”

“I have the surveillance van out back and I’ve already briefed a handful of officers on the plan,” Ernie explained, fastening his bullet-proof vest. “They’ll be in place around the restaurant’s parking lot, out of sight, before Fiona and Gloria arrive. As a matter of fact, they should already be on their way over there.”

“What about me?” Maggie asked. “I want to come.”

“It’s too dangerous,” Colin warned, continuing to affix the wire to Emily.

When he had to run the wire up through her bra, she slapped his hand away playfully. “I think I can manage the rest of it myself.”

She took the mic out of his hand and threaded it under the front of her bra, then taped it to her chest.

“She can keep you and me company in the van,” Ernie proposed. “She’ll be safe enough.”

Colin shot Emily a questioning look.