The Last Thing She Said Page 10

  “Where is your little brother?” Doris asked.

  “He’s in Mom’s garden.” Amanda led them into the kitchen that spilled into the family room. “He’s been taking care of it. I guess Mom hadn’t been feeling up to it.”

  “Shannon did love her roses,” Jacqui said in a soft voice. “She was very proud of them.”

  They stepped through the French doors onto the deck and looked over the railing to the garden below. The trees and rolling back yard offered the perfect setting for a variety of flora. Early in the season, the plants were still thinking of making their colorful entrance. From the stone patio, a walkway led down the hill to a firepit. Terraced with stones, each level was home to its own planting area.

  At the edge of the patio, William and Shannon’s youngest child was on his knees tending to seedlings. It was apparent by the young man’s button-down shirt and loafers that the yard work was impromptu. His long auburn hair fell in waves to his broad shoulders. A thick folder and coffee mug rested on the patio table.

  “Hey, Speare!” Erin called down to him. “Doris and a couple of ladies from the library are here.”

  Speare rose to his feet and looked up at them.

  Dr. William Blakeley Junior was the picture of contrast. Like his parents, he loved literature. Like his father, he was named after William Shakespeare. His nickname was derived from Shakespeare. He could read chapter books in the first grade. By middle school, he was devouring William Shakespeare’s writings. He admired William Shakespeare and yearned for the time that he lived—so much so that he had the great playwright’s image tattooed on his shoulder with “Speare” scrawled beneath it.

  He loved to read deep literature and then reflect on it for many hours—at the gym—which resulted in broad finely-toned muscles from his shoulders, six-pack abdominals, and muscular legs. At six foot, four inches, Speare towered over his big sisters.

  Between his long wavy hair, neatly trimmed beard and mustache, and tribal tattoos that adorned his muscular arms, shoulders, and back, Dr William Blakeley Junior was one of the most popular English professors at Shepherd University. His Shakespeare courses were always filled—mostly with female students gazing adoringly at him as he recited many of the Bard’s timeless writings by memory. It was no secret that the object of their adoration was happily married with three young children, but they could dream.

  “Doris!” Speare waved up at them. “I was going to call you. I’m coming up!” He picked up the folder and coffee mug and trotted up to join them.

  “Oh, what I wouldn’t give to be thirty years younger,” Francine told Jacqui in a low voice.

  “Total eye candy.”

  “It’s funny,” Erin said with a laugh. “Last year, he visited me in Philadelphia on his way to the Book Expo in New York. He was meeting with some agents to pitch his novel. I had invited him to join my friends for happy hour. They’d heard me talking about my college professor brother, a die-hard William Shakespeare fan and expecting—”

  “A bookish wimp,” Doris said.

  “I forgot to mention that his hobby was weight-lifting. He walked into the bar and the swoon from every female in the joint could be heard all the way to Pittsburgh.”

  “Doris, I’m so glad you’ve come.” Speare took all three women into a hug when he joined them in the kitchen. With his thick arms and broad chest, it was no problem for him to envelope everyone at once.

  “We are so sorry for your loss,” Francine said while going in for a second hug. She couldn’t resist stroking his muscular chest with her hand.

  “I found this folder sitting in the middle of the desk in the study.” Speare swallowed. “Mom did everything. The funeral home told me that she’d arranged her funeral and paid for it the same week as Dad’s service.”

  “A lot of people do that,” Jacqui said. “Especially older folks.”

  “And leave a folder sitting out on the desk with a check-off list of what I need to do as her executor?” Speare turned to Doris. “I’m assuming Helen Clarke is looking into Mom’s death since she wasn’t sick. Is she looking at suicide? We need to know for Mom’s life insurance.”

  “Mom was talking a lot about how she wanted to be with Dad,” Amanda said. “I kept telling her that she needed to stick around for our children.”

  “The medical examiner can’t find any physical evidence pointing to suicide,” Jacqui said. “He’s leaning toward a heart attack.”

  “There are poisons that stop the heart to make murder look like a heart attack,” Speare said.

  “A preliminary tox screen did not turn up any poisons,” Doris said.

  Speare stared at the folder in his hand. “Just last week, Mom told me to talk to Rosalyn about selling our house and buying out Amanda’s and Erin’s shares of this house because she wanted it to stay in the family. I was like, ‘Mom, you’re as sharp as a tack. You’ve got another ten years at least.’ She was like, ‘No, I want to go be with your father and I want the house to stay in the family. Talk to Rosalyn.’” He shrugged his shoulders. “I should’ve paid more attention.”

  Erin rubbed his shoulders. “This house is certainly big enough for you, Rosalyn, and the kids.”

  “My family is rooted in Baltimore,” Amanda said. “Both Steve and I work at Johns Hopkins. Erin’s career is in Philadelphia. Your roots are here, Speare. You should move in. That’s what Mom wanted.”

  “I don’t suppose she’d left a note?” Speare asked Doris.

  Doris, Francine, and Jacqui exchanged quick glances. The Blakeley children noticed.

  “Where’s the note?” Amanda asked. “What did it say? Don’t you think we deserve—”

  “She wrote a letter to Christopher,” Doris said.

  “Christopher?” Speare’s eyes narrowed. “Why him?”

  “She had one last request for him to do for her,” Doris said.

  “That’s actually why we came,” Jacqui said. “We didn’t want you to be blindsided.”

  “Blindsided by what?” Amanda asked.

  “I think it’s a little late to worry about blindsiding us,” Erin said. “We lost Dad two months ago, and now Mom seemingly commits suicide in some mysterious way. What more could happen?”

  “Maybe we should show them,” Francine told Doris in a whisper. “They’re not going to believe us.” She turned to Amanda. “Have you started packing up your mother’s room?”

  “Only her clothes.” Amanda pointed to the master suite on the second floor.

  Jacqui and Francine trotted up the stairs. Curious, the Blakeley children followed them, with Doris bringing up the rear. They filed down the hallway to the spacious bedroom and bath. The king-sized bed held a pile of women’s clothes with hangers still attached. The walk-in closet door stood open. Francine went inside.

  “I only just got started. Mom had a lot of clothes,” Amanda said.

  “What are you looking for?” Erin craned her neck to look over Francine’s shoulder as she stepped into the far corner of the closet.

  The treasure was hidden in plain sight. Surrounded by shoes, the unmarked box didn’t show any evidence of its value. The top flaps were folded over each other to seal it. Shannon’s children would assume the cardboard box contained nothing more than mementoes unworthy of seeing the light of day, but too valuable to discard forever.

  Francine tested the weight to find it too heavy to lift. She backed out of the closet to allow Speare to carry it out and deposit it onto the bed.

  After Speare stepped out of the closet, Francine noticed two photo albums drop onto the floor in the corner from where they had been tucked behind the box. Assuming they were family photo albums, she picked them up.

  Curious about what the Blakeley family looked like as children, she opened one to find it filled with yellowed pictures from long ago. She recognized the images as a young Shannon and Billy Blakeley.
In one picture, they were standing with an official looking gentleman. Shannon held a modest bouquet of flowers. It was a picture of their wedding ceremony.

  “I just found their wedding album.” Holding up the album for them all to see, Francine hurried out of the closet.

  “I remember that.” Erin took it. “Mom showed it to us when we were little. I’ve always wondered what happened to it.”

  While the Blakeley daughters flipped through the pages of the wedding album, Francine opened the other book, which was filled with newspaper clippings. The subject of this book was Lacey Woodhouse’s murder.

  Shannon never forgot her murdered roommate. Gone, but not forgotten.

  Speare yanked the flaps sealing the box apart to display stacks of hardback books with the familiar gold book jacket of Mercedes Livingston’s The Last Thing She Said inside. Speare took out one copy and opened the cover.

  Amanda asked, “What was Mom doing with a box of Mercedes Livingston’s—”

  “This is autographed.” Speare checked the copyright page. “And it’s a first edition!” He shook the book at his sisters. “Do you know how much this single book is worth?”

  Erin and Amanda grabbed copies of the books from the box and checked the autographs inside. With each discovery, they let out a shriek.

  “This handwriting looks like Mom’s,” Erin said. “Why would she do this? She must have lost her mind after Dad died.”

  Speare gazed at Doris. His brown eyes were wide with confusion. Overcome with disbelief, his sisters joined him in demanding an explanation.

  “Where would she have gotten a full case of first edition The Last Thing She Said?” Amanda asked.

  “Doris, what’s going on?” Speare asked. “What was in Mom’s letter to Chris?”

  Doris swallowed. “Do you know what day your parents got married?”

  Erin scoffed. “What does—”

  “March thirty-first,” Speare said.

  “It was a Monday,” Doris said.

  “They’d eloped,” Amanda said.

  “Your parents eloped and were married in Ocean City on Monday, March thirty-first. Forty years ago,” Doris said. “Mercedes Livingston disappeared two days earlier on Saturday, March twenty-ninth.”

  In silence, the Blakeley children exchanged puzzled glances.

  Amanda was the first to speak. Her question was filled with hysteria. “Are you saying that our parents kidnapped and murdered Mercedes Livingston and her husband?”

  “No!” Doris grabbed her by the shoulders. “Not at all!”

  “Then what would them eloping and getting married and having these books have to do with Mercedes Livingston’s murder?” Erin was in tears.

  Doris grabbed one of the books and opened it to show them the autograph. “Look at the autograph. It’s your mother’s handwriting because your mother was Mercedes Livingston.”

  Erin hurled the book onto the bed. “That’s impossible!”

  “No, it’s not!” Speare said. “Think about it. Everyone says Dad wrote the book on Mercedes Livingston, but I knew the truth. Mom was the one who wrote that book. I was little and saw her sitting at the computer writing that book while he was teaching during the day. He’d come home at night and edit what she’d written. She was the expert on Mercedes Livingston because Maisie was her creation. Why didn’t she ever tell us?”

  “Because someone had abducted George Livingston on the same day she walked away from her life,” Doris said.

  “When that happened, it made it impossible for your mother to reveal her true identity,” Jacqui said. “Everyone would assume she’d killed her first husband and extorted the ransom from her father.”

  “The truth is your mother had her own money,” Doris said. “She wrote in her letter to Christopher that she had transferred the royalties from her books into a secret account.”

  “Over a million dollars,” Jacqui said.

  Each of the Blakeley children’s eyes were wide with further shock.

  “What about the copyright for The Last Thing She Said?” Speare said. “If Mom wrote it—”

  “Christopher is looking into that,” Francine said while leafing through the pages of the scrapbook. “That could be a motive for killing George Livingston.”

  “The book is still making a ton of money,” Amanda said. “Just a few years ago, there was another remake of the movie. If our mother wrote it, then shouldn’t we be getting that money.”

  “Can you imagine what it would do for Speare’s career if the literary world knew that he was Mercedes Livingston’s son?” Erin said. “I bet publishers would sit up and take notice then.”

  “That’s why your mother wrote that letter to Christopher,” Doris said. “He and his friends are working on clearing her name as we speak.”

  “Did your mother ever mention a college roommate who got murdered?” Francine stepped between Erin and Amanda. She held the photo album she had found in the closet open for them to see an assortment of newspaper clippings sealed in the pages.

  All three of Shannon’s children shook their heads while stating that they had never heard any such thing.

  “Mom had a roommate who was strangled?” Erin said. “While she was living with her?”

  “She’d found the body,” Francine said.

  “Now I’m beginning to feel like the woman we had grown up with as our mother was a stranger,” Amanda said.

  Chapter Eight

  Located along Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, Maisie’s was a glitzy two-story club with floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall windows providing a glorious view of the harbor. Glass, crystal, mirrors, and everything shimmery provided a cosmopolitan techno atmosphere.

  The club’s sleepy-eyed staff was slow moving when Helen, Chris, and Sterling, clad in his service vest and leash, slipped through a side entrance while that night’s band was carrying in their equipment. They followed the musical group to find their way into the bar area. A dance floor encompassed the middle of the room with a stage on the opposite side. A sign next to a set of circular stairs indicated another bar and lounge on the upper level.

  “We’re not open yet,” a muscle-bound man wearing a sleeveless tank shirt snapped at them when they emerged from the employee area. He paused in taking an inventory of the liquor to glare at Sterling. “What’s with the dog?”

  “He’s my service animal,” Chris said. “We’re looking for Kyle Billingsley. Is he here?”

  “Who’s askin’?”

  “Friends of his late sister,” Chris said.

  The brute’s eyes narrowed. “Are you psychics with a message for Kyle from beyond or investigative journalists thinkin’ you can find her?”

  “Neither,” Helen said. “Just out of curiosity, what do you get more of? Psychics or investigators?”

  The bartender rolled his eyes. “Depends on which way the wind is blowing. They all want money. Kyle makes me toss them out on their butts.” He uttered a snarl. “So if you’re looking for—”

  With a shake of his head, Chris held up his hand. “I have a message for him, and this is completely free. But I need to deliver it to him personally.”

  “That’s what they all say.” The brute placed his hands flat on the bar. “Listen. If I go ask him to come out of his office to come talk to y’all and this ends up being a scam, he’s gonna be mad at me. And if he gets mad at me, then I’ll get mad at you.” He jabbed a thick finger in their direction and shook his head. “You don’t want to get me mad at you.”

  Chris replied, “Tell Kyle that Mercedes still hasn’t forgotten about him hitting her in the face with a shovel.”

  The bartender’s glare shifted to questioning. “He hit her with a shovel? In the face?”

  Chris nodded his head. Hesitant, the brute went through a door behind the bar. They climbed onto stools next to each other to wait. Squ
eezing between them, Sterling stood to plant his front paws on the bar.

  Taking in the overabundance of mirrors and glass surrounding them, Helen asked Chris in a by-the-way tone, “Can you see yourself walking away from your life—everything—to be with me?”

  His response was silence. He stroked Sterling’s soft fur.

  Helen turned to look at him, only to find herself eye to eye with Sterling, whose long tongue hung out the side of his open mouth.

  “I probably would have twenty-five years ago,” Chris finally said. “How about you? Could you walk away from your career—Sierra—to be with me?”

  Helen frowned. “Not Sierra.”

  “Mercedes satisfied her father’s demands by staying in her marriage until her mother died. Then she had no reason to stick around. I doubt if she would have left if she and George had children.”

  “She let her father die thinking she was dead.”

  “If he truly loved her, he wouldn’t have forced her to marry a man she didn’t love,” he said. “Billy was a good man. He treasured his family. He made Shannon happy. If you ask me, Horace Billingsley deserved what he got.”

  The door flew open and Kyle Billingsley emerged.

  Sterling jumped down from the bar.

  The sudden appearance caused Chris to start. He had to remind himself that Kyle Billingsley was in his mid-seventies. Subconsciously, he had assumed the rock and roll talent agent and club owner would be a timeless hipster—not unlike Mick Jagger.

  He was not mentally prepared for the elderly man who hobbled with a cane out of the back office.

  Kyle Billingsley looked nothing like his sister. His arms were loose flesh on bone. Tattoos etched onto his arms in his youth had sagged to create indistinguishable blotches. The largest part of him was a potbelly. His ears were adorned with pink earplugs to match the hair fin on the top of his head. He wore rings on every finger. Oblivious to the overabundance of wrinkles and flab, he wore tight jeans and a tank top.

  Leaning on his cane, Kyle shoved a thick cigar into his mouth and looked Chris up and down through rose-tinted eyeglasses. He then moved on to Helen and finally Sterling, who was looking at him with equal curiosity.