Dylan handed me Jennifer’s journal. Or rather tried to, but with my hands cuffed behind my back, that wasn’t an easy task. I looked at Detective Head. “Things would go a lot easier from here detective if you’d let me out of these handcuffs.”
He stared at me hard for a long minute, then moved to unlock the handcuffs.
“Don’t make me regret this, Dix,” he said as he removed the bracelets. “Because if I do, I guarantee you will too.”
“Understood.”
More out of reflex than because of any soreness, I rubbed my wrists quickly before I held up Jennifer’s journal. I read from the homemade jacket of the book. “The Secret Life of the Bombay Dung Beetle, by Elizabeth Bee.”
Loudly, Elizabeth hmphed.
“This is Jennifer’s journal,” I explained. “Her secret journal.”
“I never knew she kept one,” Ned said.
“No, she hid it well. But as we already established, you knew she kept it, didn’t you, Luanne?”
“Once or twice a week I’d let myself in … when Ned and Jennifer were out of the house. Yes, I’d read it. I needed to know everything to protect Ned.” Guilt free, she answered. “That’s how I was able to inform Ned of the affair between Billy and Jennifer. Once I put all the notes and pieces together.”
“But you didn’t tell Ned how you came by that knowledge, did you?”
“No,” she admitted.
“And,” I continued, “usually you just read Jennifer’s journal, said nothing, did nothing and put it back where you found it. Right?”
She sucked in a breath. “Yes. But the last time … the last time Jennifer made an entry, I … accidentally did something.”
“Because the last entry Jennifer made angered you so greatly that you wrote a comment back. Didn’t you, Luanne?”
“Yes!” she shouted. “I couldn’t help myself.” She looked around the room, as if seeking an ally for her behavior. “Jennifer wrote ‘J cancelled caterer.’ After all Ned was doing for her, she was canceling the caterer and thus I assumed she was canceling the renewal of the vows. That she was going to hurt Ned all over again. I just lost my temper. I just snapped! That’s why I wrote what I did.”
Kenny Kent, really interested now, shifted from foot to foot.
“The ‘NO WAY IN HELL’ written in the journal, Luanne?” I asked. “That was yours, wasn’t it.”
“Yes.” She lowered her eyes. “I know it was stupid! Very stupid! But I was just so angry!”
“This is ridiculous,” Jeremy Poole said. “It proves nothing whatsoever about my guilt. If you ask me, it’s Luanne Laney you should be pointing a finger at.” He stretched his arm and shook a pointing finger himself for emphasis.
I pretended to mull that over. “Ummmmmmm … no,” I said. “You see it wasn’t the person who wrote the NO WAY IN HELL that killed Jennifer. It was the person who cancelled the caterer.”
“Oh for Heaven’s sake!” Jeremy said. “It’s Jennifer’s journal. She cancelled the caterer. Obviously, her intention to renew with Ned was false. She was using him, again. Still.”
“No, Jennifer didn’t cancel the caterer. Jennifer always wrote in the future tense when she entered her plans; never what she’d done. Ever. This note was a done deal. This note wasn’t on her to-do list. This note was something else. This ‘J’ wasn’t for Jennifer.”
“I took that canceling call myself, and I was surprised to receive it,” Kenny spoke up nervously. “I always handle the Weatherby business personally.” He smoothed a nervous hand over his baker’s jacket. “Mr. Weatherby had been planning this event for weeks. It meant a lot to him. We’d gone over the menu a half dozen times. We had the ice sculpture ordered; the Cornish hens set to be flown in. And all of a sudden, I get this call canceling from a woman claiming to be Jennifer Weatherby.”
“And so you scrapped everything? Just like that?”
“Of course not! I called Mr. Weatherby’s office, he was tied up in meetings. So I called Mrs. Weatherby back. I wanted to tell her that she’d still have to pay the bill. I mean, after all, we’d gone to a lot of expense and trouble for this event.”
“And what did Jennifer say when you called her?”
Kenny ran a hand through his hair. “She assured me the job was still on. Assured me that it wasn’t her who’d called. And she … she also told me she knew damn well who’d called to cancel, pretending to be her. She was really, really angry.”
“Do you remember the date, Mr. Kent?”
“Of course. It was the 30th of May. I remember precisely because that’s the day I did inventory.”
I held the journal up for everyone to see the date. “It was a week before Jennifer was killed. And I’m betting ‘J’ who cancelled the caterer killed her.”
“That ‘J’ was for Jeremy. Not Jennifer.” Ned spoke slowly, disbelievingly. “You killed my wife.”
“Ned,” he said. “You … you have to understand. As your lawyer, I have to protect you. As your friend, I have a duty to not let you make such a big mistake as renewing your vows to that … that—”
“She was my wife!”
Detective Head was getting antsy. “Canceling a caterer is hardly evidence of murder, Dodd,” he said. “I suspect you have more.”
I caught it as he said it — the subtle nod to two of his uniformed officers to advance in Jeremy’s direction. Not so subtly, they did.
“Oh, do I ever have more. You see, someone tipped me off that the murderer was Jeremy Poole.”
“Do tell, who was that Ms. Dodd?” Jeremy was trying to act cool — trying to remain calm. He failed miserably. “A little birdie?”
“Well as a matter of fact, you told me Jeremy. You tipped me off.” I was smiling now. Okay, it was more like I was smirking in an I’m-so-smart kind of way. I held up the newspaper — the one that Mrs. P had provided the morning I went to break into the Weatherby house, the one with that horrible picture of me splashed all over the front page. “I have here proof positive that it was Jeremy Poole that killed Jennifer and set me up. The interview he gave to the reporter. The one where he so gleefully trashed me.”
“I read the interview,” Detective Head said. “I read it a few times. There’s nothing in there pointing to Poole as the murderer.”
I looked at him as if he were an idiot. Mostly because I enjoyed looking at him as if he were an idiot. But also for the dramatics of the thing. “Wrong again, Detective. Jeremy Poole is a pretty smooth talker. Pretty good with the lawyer-ese. I’ll give him that. But there’s one word — one particular word that gives him away. He used it in this newspaper interview and he used in when he posed as Jennifer in my office.”
“What would that be, Dodd?”
“The f word.”
“Oh for f—” Detective Head stopped mid rant as he glanced toward the judge. “I don’t think Jeremy Head is the only man to use that f word, Dix Dodd. If that’s all you’re going on, you’re pretty much f’d yourself.”
I shook my head. “That’s not the f word I’m referencing.”
“Tell him, Dix,” Dylan said.
“Floozy,” I blurted. It took every bit of restraint I had to bite down on an inappropriate laugh. “Jeremy used the word floozy when he was in my office posing as Jennifer Weatherby. And he used the word floozy again in the newspaper interview. Nobody uses the word ‘floozy’ anymore. Certainly not that much.”
“So you have a coincidence, Dodd,” Dickhead informed. “Nothing more.”
“I do have more.”
“I … I have to go to the bathroom,” Jeremy said. Judging by how pale he now was, I believed him. He stood, wavered sideways, stood straight.
“Oh no you don’t, Poole,” Dickhead said. “I’m not falling for that one again.”