Or that’s what she wanted you to believe, Stride thought.
‘We knew things were bad,’ Toiana went on, ‘but what happened next—’
She stopped.
‘Mrs. Pugh?’ Maggie murmured.
‘Not sure I should tell you any more.’
‘Do you want to talk to a lawyer?’
‘I don’t trust lawyers. Besides, I didn’t know a thing about what went on back then. I don’t blame Dr. Janine for what she did. Guess I don’t blame Seymour either. He felt he had a debt to pay. We owed her in ways you can’t measure.’
They didn’t press her, but they waited.
‘Dr. Janine came by our house,’ she told them. ‘This was a couple weeks before Christmas. It was a surprise. She’d never been there. Said she wanted to see how Al was doing. Me, I felt like it was a visit from the queen, you know? Everybody was so excited. And then she and Seymour — they went out and sat in her car. Talked. Must have been an hour or more. She left after that, and Seymour came back inside, and that man had some kind of big burden on his shoulders. I asked him what they talked about, but he put me off. Said it was nothing. The thing is, he was never really the same man after that. Never ever. He had secrets.’
It wasn’t hard to imagine how that conversation had gone. Janine asking for help to get rid of her husband. Seymour Pugh feeling like he had no choice but to do what she wanted. This doctor who had saved his son’s life wanted repayment in blood. A killing. A murder. And the next time Seymour Pugh was in Chicago, he bought a gun on the street.
‘After Jay was killed, did your husband tell you what happened?’ Stride said.
‘Eventually, he did. Like I said, it was after that cop came to see us. It all made sense then, how Seymour had been acting. I screamed at him until he told me the truth. Chilled my bones, that’s what it did. But would I have said no if he’d told me before he did it? I don’t know. Al was alive because of that woman.’
‘Did he tell you exactly how the plan worked?’
Toiana nodded. ‘It was supposed to look like a burglary gone bad. Kill the husband, steal some jewels. Dr. Janine didn’t want him to stay long, so she said she’d put some jewelry in a bag and leave it in the mailbox for him. She had a party to go to. That was when she wanted him to do it. She knew her husband would let Seymour into the house if he said our boy was one of Dr. Janine’s patients. It was all supposed to be done before she got home, but things went wrong. I mean, you can’t fool God, can you? She didn’t pull the trigger, but she went to prison anyway. Seymour wanted to help when they arrested her. Pawn the jewelry or something, or make sure the gun got found. I said no way. I mean, I felt bad for Dr. Janine, but I wasn’t going to let Seymour throw away our lives. He’d get caught. I knew it. And you people would put her in jail anyway. How was that going to help anybody?’
‘So what went wrong?’ Stride asked. ‘Janine was already back home when your husband arrived at the house.’
‘Seymour didn’t know that. He was real late getting there, and he thought about scrapping the whole thing, but he figured he’d better try to do it. He didn’t think he’d have the stomach to go back some other time. Her car wasn’t in the garage, so he thought she was still at the party. He figured it was safe.’
‘Why was he late?’ Maggie asked, and then she pounded the table. ‘The bridge.’
Stride looked at her. ‘What?’
‘The bridge! The bridge was closed that night. A semi overturned. We were up there for a couple hours, remember? Seymour Pugh must have been sitting there in his white Rav. Stuck. I bet if we grab the news photos, we’ll find his car. He was supposed to be at Janine’s house hours earlier, when she was at the party, but he couldn’t get there because of the bridge. So when it finally opened up, he drove to her house. He didn’t know that Cindy had already taken Janine home.’
Stride realized that Maggie was right. He also felt a new wave of resentment against Janine Snow, because he realized that Janine’s plan had relied on manipulating Cindy from the beginning. His own wife was supposed to be Janine’s alibi that night. The wife of the city’s chief detective — who could argue with that? Janine would ask Cindy to take her home, and they’d find Jay’s body together. Instead, Jay answered the door, alive, and the whole plan went to hell.
Janine must have figured that Seymour got cold feet. Except when she went to take a shower, Seymour showed up after all, took the jewelry out of the mailbox, shot Jay, and disappeared. Exactly as they’d arranged weeks earlier. And he could imagine Janine’s horror, discovering the body, and realizing that her plan for the perfect murder had made her the prime suspect instead.
‘Where is she?’ Stride asked Maggie. ‘Where’s Janine?’
‘Archie has her in a suite at Fitger’s.’
Stride stood up. ‘I think we should welcome her back to Duluth.’
60
‘I thought I was going to have to apologize to her,’ Stride said, as he parked on Superior Street outside Fitger’s. ‘For being wrong about Jay’s murder. For stealing eight years of her life.’
The three of them got out of his truck. Stride climbed the steps toward the hotel lobby with Serena and Maggie beside him. A bellman opened the door for them. The rich burgundy carpet, the grand piano, and the old-fashioned table lamps made him feel as if they were walking into the parlor of one of Duluth’s robber-baron estates. The hotel check-in desk, nestled behind iron grillwork, was like the teller window of a bank in the Wild West.
He saw carpeted stairs leading to the next floor. He knew where Janine would be, in one of the top-floor suites overlooking the lake.
Serena touched his elbow. ‘Are you okay?’
Stride shook his head. ‘This woman used Cindy. Cindy was her friend, and Janine deliberately tried to make her part of her plan to get away with murder. What’s worse is that she probably is going to get away with it. God knows what this does to double jeopardy. We convicted her of shooting Jay, but we were wrong. She never had the gun. And yet she was guilty of his murder anyway. I don’t know if we can ever put her back in prison for it.’
He started up the stairs.
‘She still got eight years,’ Serena pointed out.
‘Eight years of what should have been life without parole,’ Stride replied. ‘This was first-degree murder. Premeditated.’
He reached the hushed hallway of the hotel’s second floor. The Fitger’s manager, Tami, met him there, descending from the upper floors of the inn. They’d known each other for years. The petite blond’s normally ebullient face was serious. ‘Oh, Stride,’ she said. ‘That was quick.’
‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
‘I only just called your office.’
‘We’re not here for a call,’ Stride said. ‘What’s going on?’
‘We’ve got a disturbance upstairs. Screaming.’
‘Is it Janine Snow’s room?’ he asked immediately.
She nodded.
‘Who’s up there?’
Tami shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Archie Gale checked her in earlier this afternoon. She was shopping for a while, but for the last couple of hours, I thought she was up in her room alone.’
‘Stay here. We’ll check it out.’
The three of them headed upstairs. They were on the fourth floor when they heard the gunshot.
Stride broke into a run and took the steps of the last staircase two at a time. At the landing, he heard a second shot. He reached the fifth floor with Serena and Maggie immediately behind him. Janine’s suite was six feet away at the head of the staircase. Its door was ajar. He smelled the smoke of gunfire inside, and he drew his own gun. He listened, but the room was quiet now.