“We’ve just learned that you were seen hanging around Jay Green’s apartment around the time this blackmail letter was delivered.” He held out his phone to show her the blackmail letter in person, but she merely shrugged.
“So?”
“So did you deliver this letter?”
She rolled her eyes.“Look, you already know I did, so just cut the theatricals, will you?”
“Why did you send this letter, Laney?” asked Odelia, adopting a more kindly tone than her detective counterpart. It’s called good cop, bad cop, and Odelia excels at being the good part of this gambit.
Laney studied her fingernails, which weren’t anything to write home about, I have to say. Apparently she’d done a lot of chewing on them, presumably because it’s a lot cheaper than visiting a nail salon and having a pro take a whack at them.
“Me and Dylon were counting on that money,” she now said. “But of course I should have expected Jay to double-cross us. That’s the way he rolled.”
“Jay double-crossed you?”
“Of course he did. When Dylon didn’t arrive home that night, I immediately knew something was wrong. And when it turned out he didn’t have the necklace on him, I knew that somehow Jay must have pulled a switcheroo of some kind. Keep the necklace and still collect that insurance money so he’d collect twice.”
“But Jay wasn’t home on the night your boyfriend burgled his apartment,” Chase pointed out.
She shrugged.“I don’t know how he did it, but somehow he did. He was devious like that, Jay was. Dylon used to tell me stories about him.”
“What stories?” asked Odelia. When Laney didn’t immediately respond, she added, “It’s important, Laney. What stories?”
“I remember one story very distinctly. Dylon told me several times. Back when him and Jay were still in school, they used to pull pranks on the other students. You have to remember that Jay was very competitive. He always had to win, no matter what, and so once when they all had to enter an assignment for some important project, one kid came up with something brilliant. Something so amazing that he was a shoo-in for the top spot. So of course Jay couldn’t have that. And so he roped Dylon into destroying that kid’s assignment. Really tearing it to pieces so on the morning of the big reveal, when they pulled back the sheets from their assignments, the kid’s assignment turned out to be just a pile of paper cuttings. Poor kid completely broke down. He even accused Jay and Dylon, but all they got was a slap on the wrist. I told Dylon he was a bastard for pulling such a stunt, and he agreed. Said he felt sorry for the kid, but Jay had such a hold over him that he just couldn’t say no. And that’s always been the dynamic between those two. Jay came up with something, and Dylon had to do his dirty work.”
“Which is why you think Jay pulled a fast one on Dylon,” said Odelia, nodding.
“He must have. What else could have happened to that necklace?” She idly played with the strings of her hoodie. “I guess I can tell you now. It doesn’t matter now that Dylon is gone. We weren’t going to deliver that necklace to Jay. Instead we were simply going to keep it and leave town. Dylon figured Jay owed him, and he thought it would net us a nice chunk of change. So when Dylon ended up dead, I just figured Jay owed me for what happened to him, which is why I ended up sending him that blackmail letter.”
“Who was the kid whose assignment was destroyed?” asked Odelia.
“I don’t remember. Dylon must have mentioned his name, but honestly I can’t remember now.”
CHAPTER 35
[Êàðòèíêà: img_2]
“I don’t think Jay was a very nice person, Max,” said Dooley, once we were back in the car.
“No, I don’t think so either,” I agreed.
“Maybe we should tell Laia. That way she won’t be so sad.”
“I don’t know if it works like that,” I said. “Even though her fianc? wasn’t a nice man, that doesn’t mean she will be less sad that he’s dead, Dooley.”
“Oh,” said my friend, giving this some thought. “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he said after a few moments’ reflection. “If you were murdered and later on someone told me you were a bad cat, I’d still feel very sad that you were dead, Max.”
“That’s… very gratifying to hear, Dooley.”
“It must have been Bronson,” said Odelia.
“There’s a very simple way to find out,” said Chase, and took out his phone.
“Who are you calling?” asked Odelia, but the cop held up a finger, then spoke into his phone.
“Mr. Servais? Jake Servais? I hope I’m not interrupting anything, sir. My name is Chase Kingsley and I’m a detective with the Hampton Cove police department. I was hoping you might remember an incident that took place several years ago. One of your students, Jay Green, pulled a prank on another student, destroying his assignment. This young man took this prank very badly. Oh, you remember it well? Would you also remember the name of the student whose work was destroyed?” He listened for a moment, then gave Odelia a knowing look, and said, “Thank you very much, sir. You’ve been a tremendous help.” After he hung up, he said, “It was Bronson Shagreen, all right. His parents even filed a complaint with the school board, and Jay and Dylon were suspended for two weeks for the stunt.”
“I think we better have another chat with Bronson,” said Odelia, buckling up. “Sounds to me like he hasn’t been completely honest with us.”
“Poor man,” said Dooley as Chase put the car in gear. “He must have been very sad when his work was destroyed.”
“Yes, but was he so sad that he decided, many years later, to murder his tormentors?” I asked.
[Êàðòèíêà: img_4]
When we arrived at Town Hall, we found Bronson in the same place as before: still working hard on his new art installation, as commissioned by Charlene.
“Mr. Shagreen!” Chase called out. Not too loud, of course. We didn’t want the guy to topple down from his scaffolding and break his neck.
“Oh, you’re back,” said Bronson. He didn’t look overjoyed.
“We have some more questions for you, sir,” said Chase.
“More questions?” Bronson grumbled. “It’s very hard for an artist to focus on his art when people keep popping up like this,” he said, but he still came crawling down to assist us in our inquiries.
“We just talked to your old school principal, Mr. Servais,” said Chase.
Bronson didn’t even flinch. “Yes?”
“And he told us that in your fifth year your assignment was destroyed by two of your fellow students. Jay Green and Dylon Pipe.”
Bronson nodded.“That’s right. Not one of my best memories.”
“Perhaps you should have told us when we interviewed you earlier?”
He shrugged.“I didn’t think it was relevant.”
“The two men who destroyed your work were both brutally murdered, Mr. Shagreen. And you didn’t think what they did to you was relevant?”
“Okay, all right. I should have told you. But you’ll understand that I didn’t exactly want to be reminded of such a traumatic event.”
“Oh, so it was traumatic for you, was it?”
“What do you think?” the young artist said with some vehemence. “I worked hard on that assignment. Weeks of late nights. I put everything—my heart and my soul into that assignment. Only to see it completely destroyed by those two idiots.”
“Your parents filed a complaint with the school board?”
“Yeah, they did. Not that it did a lot of good. They both got off with a two-week suspension, and that was it. Oh, they apologized, of course, but I could tell from their smirks that they were proud of what they did to me. And because I lost so much time, and my heart wasn’t really in it the second time, my replacement assignment got a low score, which caused Jay to get the top grade that year, which of course is what it was all about in the first place.”