And all eyes were on me as I entered the study.
“Dix!” Dylan had been sitting on a small sofa beside Mrs. Presley, but surged to his feet at the sight of Officer Lapp’s grip on my obviously cuffed arm.
“Hey, Dylan.” I smiled reassuringly. “Everything’s cool.”
Judge Stephanopoulos and Rochelle followed me into the room, and stood beside the door. And of course, Dickhead came to stand beside me, breathing down my neck.
I looked around the room.
Ned’s lawyer, Jeremy Poole, sat beside a nervous looking Elizabeth Bee on a matching sofa placed on the other side of the room. She looked from Dylan to me, then back to Dylan again with a confused, questioning look on her face. A tall, portly man completely decked out in baker whites stood between the two sofas. I knew this had to be Kenny Kent, the Weatherby’s caterer. Billy Star was there, standing beside Jennifer’s bookcase beside a rigid Luanne Laney. The latter had a steno pad and pen poised in her hands to take notes. Wow, that woman was efficient. Or psycho.
“Well, if it isn’t Dix Dodd! I haven’t seen you in ages,” Mrs. Presley shouted into the room. “Why when Dylan picked me up this morning and told me about the party, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.” Bless her little ass-covering heart. “And didn’t I see your picture in the paper the other day? Something about … some case you were working on or something?”
“Hello, Mrs. Presley,” I said. “Good to see you again. And yes, that was me you saw in the paper.”
She smiled and looked around the room. “You know, it’s just like old home week here — all these familiar faces.” Half the men in the room averted their gazes — looking up, down, sideways and everywhere, except at Mrs. Presley.
Detective Head just looked angry. “Let’s get this over with, shall we?”
I turned to expose my handcuffed wrists to him. “Can you remove these?” I had visions of dramatically pointing to the guilty party as I made my Sherlock Holmes-style speech.
“Not a chance,” he sneered.
Damn.
“Damn.”
“Please watch what you say, Ms. Dodd,” Pastor Ravenspire said. He was standing between Ned and his father, and all three stood over the chair where Ned’s mother sat behind Jennifer’s desk. “I’m not used to such language. And frankly,” he looked around the room — a little too quickly, a little too nervously. “I don’t know why I’m here in the first place.” He looked at his watch. “I … I can’t stay long.”
Mr. Weatherby Senior took off his glasses, wiped them, and put them back on again. “You … you look familiar,” he said to me. He turned to his wife. “Doesn’t she look familiar, dearest?”
“Yes,” the old woman said slowly, thoughtfully. “Yes, she does. Give me a minute … I’ll place that face.”
Oh great, that was all I needed for Dearest to recognize me. I’d have to do this quickly.
I drew a deep breath, expelled it, and began. “Each one of you has been called here today for a reason. Each one of you knew Jennifer Weatherby. Each one of you was close enough to murder Jennifer Weatherby. And one of you … one of you did just that.”
I waited a moment for the hands-to-heart dramatic gasp, but obviously no one was as impressed as I was by my theatrics. I cleared my throat and continued. “A little over a week ago, someone disguised as Jennifer walked into my office. This person told me that her husband, Ned Weatherby, was having an affair and she wanted me to trail him for a week and keep a record of his activities.”
Ned sputtered. “That’s … that’s preposterous! I wasn’t having an affair. Jennifer was—”
He paled. He looked at his mother, his father, then quickly to the floor.
“What is it, Neddy?” his mother asked, turning in the chair to look up at her son. “Jennifer was what?”
Loyally, Ned remained silent.
So I finished for him. “Jennifer was having an affair herself, wasn’t she, Ned?” I had no desire to bring this out into the open, but I had little choice in the matter. “She was having an affair, and you knew about it.”
He let out a shuddering breath. “Yes, I knew. She and Billy Star had been involved for some time. But was is the operative word, Ms. Dodd. Jennifer ended it.”
Billy hmphed loudly, but didn’t say a word.
“Still, that must have angered you, Ned.”
“Of course it angered me!” He looked at his hands and played a moment with the wide gold band he still wore. When he spoke again his voice was softer. “But I wasn’t always the best husband in the world. Jennifer deserved … more. More attention. More affection. More everything. I was so concerned about making money, growing my business, sometimes Jennifer felt … forgotten. I know she did. That’s why … that’s why that damnable Billy Star was able to seduce her.”
“Why didn’t you fire Billy?
“I couldn’t. When I bought him out—”
“—and you bought him just before stocks in the company skyrocketed, Ned?” I offered. Yes it was a dirty dig, but I wanted to gauge his reaction. I thought there might be a trace of guilt there, but Ned didn’t skip a beat.
“That’s right. When I bought the son of a bitch out, his continual employment was part of the agreement. I couldn’t fire him for anything short or embezzlement. Certainly not for … for having an affair with my wife.”
“Still,” I baited, “your wife turned to another man. That had to make you angry, and not only with Billy Star. But with Jennifer, too.”
“Jennifer broke it off with Billy. She and I … we were trying to work some things out.”
“What kind of things?”
“Everything!” Ned swallowed hard and wet his lips. He appeared to be on the verge of tears. “We were renewing our vows on the weekend. And … and we’d come to some understandings. She wanted to go visit her family in Toledo more, and I promised to go with her once or twice over the next few months. And she didn’t want me going to Pastor Ravenspire’s church so much. She didn’t trust him.” He glanced at Ravenspire, who himself squirmed in his chair. “Sorry, Pastor. That was a sore point between us. And Jennifer … Jennifer promised to stop seeing Billy.”
I’d glanced at Billy often through this exchange — his face grew redder, his fists clenched tighter. And now I redirected my questioning to him. “And did she stop seeing you, Billy?”
“She said … she said she wanted to break it off,” he admitted, “but … but I know she didn’t mean it. She couldn’t have meant it.” He began to cry. “I … I loved her. And I know she would have loved me if it wasn’t for Ned. Ned took everything from me with the business. I couldn’t … couldn’t let him have Jennifer too.”
“So you pursued things with her still?”
He nodded. “I did. Best I could. Quietly. But I would have shouted it from the rooftops if I could have. But, for Jennifer’s sake, I didn’t want anyone to find out. Not until I’d won her back.”
“But,” I continued, “Ned finding out was the least of your worries, wasn’t it.”
Billy’s sideways glance confirmed what I had suspected.
“Luanne finding out was.”
The pen stopped flying over the steno pad.
“Yes,” Billy said. “She scares the hell out of me.”
“That’s enough, William,” Luanne said crisply.
Apparently, Billy didn’t think it was enough. He ignored her warning. “Luanne found some letters I had written to Jennifer. I was trying to win her back, but … but Ned was doing everything he could to ruin that. Picking her flowers, wooing her. Working fewer hours so he could spend more time with her. So I wrote Jennifer, and told her how I felt. It wasn’t about the money! About the business! Not anymore and I told Jennifer this. Somehow Luanne ended up with those letters. How she found them, I’ll never know.”