Ornaments of Death Page 18

  “I don’t believe you. I’m betting you shared my jokes with the good police chief.”

  “I didn’t think you were joking,” I said.

  “So I gather. I take back my offer of a drink.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Me, too.”

  “Come on, Ethan,” Ellis said, grinning. “What’s the big deal? You’re going to be named acting principal investigator, is that right?”

  “Yes. And yes, it’s good news for me, career-wise, but it’s also good news for the program, the institute, the environment, the other scientists on the grant, the clams themselves, and all the businesses in Rocky Point we patronize while we’re up here working on it. Losing a grant is good for no one.”

  “Understood,” Ellis said. “Tell me about your relationship with Becca. Hot and heavy? Serious? Friends with benefits?”

  “Roommates. Co-workers.”

  “That’s it?” Ellis asked, his tone disbelieving.

  “That’s it.”

  Ellis jotted a note. “Were you in Rocky Point last Sunday?”

  “Why?”

  “Around four P.M. Where were you then?”

  Ethan laughed. “Do I need an alibi for something?”

  Ellis let the question hang for a moment. “Yes.”

  Ethan grinned and held out his arms, his wrists pressed together, ready for handcuffs. Evidently, he was amused that he was considered a suspect in some crime.

  “I did it. You’ve got me.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I killed him in the library with the candlestick.”

  “This isn’t a joke, Mr. Ferguson.”

  “The hell it isn’t. What happened Sunday at four?”

  “Ian Bennington was murdered.”

  Ethan stopped laughing. He looked at me, then back at Ellis. “And you think I did it?” he asked, sounding incredulous.

  “I’m following up on every lead. Where were you Sunday at four?”

  “I was in Boston.”

  “Will anyone be able to attest to that?”

  “No. I was alone.”

  “Thank you,” Ellis said, jotting another note.

  Ethan stood up and looked down at Ellis. “Someone in your department asked me about an alibi for yesterday, too, when Josie was attacked. I don’t know what’s going on, but I can assure you I’m not your man.”

  “Duly noted.” Ellis stood up. “Let me walk you out.”

  Ethan didn’t look at me on his way out. I sat there for a long time, staring at my lap thinking sad and lonely thoughts, until Ellis came back and told me my car was out front. He handed me the new key and the spare.

  “Are you okay to drive?”

  “A hundred percent. I can’t believe it’s done already.”

  “They rushed it,” he said.

  “Thank you, Ellis.”

  I left and patted my car hello, noting the small dent on the front hood where the tree limb had landed. As I turned onto Ocean, I smiled. I was glad to be behind the wheel, to be on my own, and to be away from the police station.

  I spent Saturday night and all day Sunday alone, never leaving my house. Zoë invited me for dinner, but I didn’t want to go. Instead, I cooked. I made a week’s worth of food, using recipes from my mom’s handwritten cookbook, freezing everything in individual portions. I made lasagna, and orange chicken, and thyme-infused pork roast with a wine-apricot-mustard sauce, and chocolate bundles.

  While my hands were busy, my mind was on Ian and what he’d told me about Becca, on Lia, and Ethan, and Pat Weston, and seventeenth-century miniature portraits. I reviewed every word and gesture, every call and hang-up, and every violent act. Mostly I thought about Becca, and the more I did, the more curious I became. I wondered what her relationship with her dad was like when she was a girl. I wondered what her mom had been like, and whether she had friends back home in England, or whether she was as self-contained and private there as she was here in a foreign land. I spoke to Ty twice, Zoë once, and when I finally feel asleep on Sunday, it was with the same nagging feeling I’d had before that I was missing something.

  At 2:58 A.M., I woke up with a gasp and knew with utter clarity what had been bothering me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  By 3:10 A.M. Monday, I was sitting at my home computer, waiting for it to boot up. I stared at the gray screen, but what I saw was the photograph in Becca’s Boston apartment. Becca standing next to an older man, leaning in toward him, just a little, their shoulders not quite touching. My dad and I used to stand like that.

  I turned toward the silver-framed photo I kept on my desk, my dad and me at my college graduation. His eyes crinkled with pride. My smile was off the charts, half because I’d graduated and half because I’d pleased him. I touched the glass with my fingertip, stroking his arm.

  I turned back to the monitor. Once the computer flashed to life, I Googled “Ian and Rebecca Bennington Christmas Common England,” and when the search results appeared, I stared at the top link in stunned silence. The teaser copy was dated two weeks earlier and read IAN BENNINGTON DEAD.

  I clicked through to an article in Christmas Common’s local paper, the Trumpet. The article included a standard-issue head shot, the kind of photograph that was used in passports. Even though it was grainy, I could tell that this was the man in the photograph in Becca’s room. Which meant the man I’d known as Ian was—I had no idea who.

  I leaned back and stared into space, seeing nothing. It made no sense. Why would someone pretend to be Ian?

  I continued reading. The real Ian Bennington had died of asphyxiation. He had, apparently, killed himself. His body had been found hanging from the rafters by his cleaning woman.

  The article referred to his daughter as Rebecca Lewis. Apparently, she’d gone back to using her maiden name—or maybe she kept her maiden name for work purposes.

  Ethan hadn’t mentioned a husband or an ex-husband, though. Dr. Bennett had, repeating gossip that Becca had been in a bad marriage.

  I Googled “Rebecca Bennington and Christmas Common” and learned more about Becca. She graduated at the top of her primary school class, was a nationally ranked swimmer at fourteen, had earned top marks in shooting competitions at fifteen, and by the time she went to university, her sole focus was on clams. She had married a man named Thomas Lewis in 2009. I scrolled down until I came to the wedding photo—and gasped, my eyes glued to the image. The blonde in the wedding photo was the same woman I’d seen standing alongside her dad in the photo in her room. Becca. Becca’s husband was the man I’d known as Ian.

  No wonder Ian—Thomas, I corrected myself—looked young. He’d said it was good genes, but the truth was he looked young because he was young. My instinct that anyone seeing Becca and the man I now knew to be Thomas might think they were a couple was on the mark—they looked like a couple because they were a couple. Or at least they used to be. Were they divorced? Separated? Why on earth had Thomas pretended to be Becca’s father?

  Completely befuddled, I continued my research.

  According to an article about debutantes who worked instead of living a glittery social life, published in London Society magazine in 2012, Thomas Lewis was a real estate developer, specializing in resorts. Becca and Thomas met in 2008 when she worked for an environmental consulting firm assigned to study the impact of one of his proposed seaside resorts. Thomas’s U.K.-based firm fell victim to the global recession, and in 2010, shortly after their June marriage, he sold it to a competitor at a fire-sale price.

  An article in New Hampshire Revealed profiling New Hampshire start-ups discussed how Thomas Lewis moved to New Hampshire to open a new business with funding provided by his father-in-law, the real Ian. The couple moved to the resort town of North Conway so Thomas could form a real estate development consultancy with a sixty-one-year-old American named Rupert Morrishein. Thomas’s consultancy’s goal was to invest in projects up and down the East Coast.

  Once she found herself i
n New Hampshire, Becca focused on finishing her dissertation. She connected with the Rocky Point Oceanographic Institute and used her preliminary research to win a grant to compare clam behavior at Reynard University’s two oceanside research facilities, one in Plymouth, England, the other in Rocky Point.

  I checked the North Conway Business Licensing Bureau’s Web site and discovered that the Lewis-Morrishein partnership did not go well. The firm filed for bankruptcy protection within ten months of opening its doors.

  “Yikes,” I said.

  Both men lost everything they’d invested in the business. To Thomas, the loss was disastrous, and mortifying, I should think, given that it represented his second business failure in as many years. This one must have been especially humiliating—not only did it represent a personal failure, but he cost his father-in-law millions. The firm’s collapse caught the attention of a reporter for Real Estate Fortune. “At least,” Lewis was quoted as saying, “I’m young enough to start over yet again.” In the accompanying photo, Becca beamed at him, a woman standing steadfastly by her man.

  A follow-up article in the same magazine reported that Rupert Morrishein had filed a lawsuit accusing Thomas of fraud. Before the case was adjudicated, only three weeks after the firm went out of business, Morrishein died from a massive stroke. The lawsuit, now spearheaded by Morrishein’s widow, Cheryl, was evidently still wending its way through the court system.

  I kept digging around and found a Reynard University newsletter from 2011 announcing that Becca had accepted a lecturer position at the university’s Plymouth campus in the United Kingdom. The reporter referred to Becca as Dr. Bennington.

  I leaned back, trying to understand what might have happened. I knew financial troubles wrecked a lot of marriages; witness Lia, although her ex’s wandering eye didn’t help. Had Thomas pretended to be Ian because he’d been trying to reconnect with Becca? How could such a pretense possibly help that cause? I shook my head. No. That wasn’t the answer to the mystery.

  I recalled how often Thomas had mentioned Becca’s miniatures. Thomas wasn’t looking for Becca. He was looking for her possessions. He wasn’t a romantic; he was a thief. A thief with a partner who killed him—and maybe Becca—then went on a one-man hunt for the paintings. Or one-woman. The woman at the window.

  I logged on to my company’s Web site and navigated my way to the security footage archives. Bringing up the shots of the woman peering in the window at my party, I studied the partial view. A woman in a dark cloche hat. A sliver of white skin. No sign of hair. Impossible to tell the color of her eyes. Her nose was hidden by her gloved hand. I didn’t recognize her, but neither could I swear I’d never seen her before. If that was Thomas’s partner, I had no clue as to her identity. I saved the image to my desktop and logged out.

  What if Thomas and his mystery partner had a falling-out?

  Had Thomas double-crossed him?

  Had Becca found out what was going on and announced a plan to go to the police?

  If so, how would Thomas’s partner react to the threat? He’d kill her.

  Oh, God.

  If Thomas had tried to stop him, to protect Becca, whether motivated by chivalry or greed, his partner might have killed him first.

  I shook my head. It was baffling.

  What the witness perceived as Becca saying no, no, might have been Becca expressing dismay and disbelief at the news Thomas was delivering, that her life was in danger. She heard him out, then ran for it. The disgruntled partner witnessed the scene from his car around the corner and interpreted it accurately. He mowed down Thomas and headed out after Becca. She made it to her car before he could catch her and sped away.

  No way the partner would give up anytime soon. Becca was the only thing standing between him and a fortune.

  “Oh, Becca,” I said aloud. “I hope I’m wrong.”

  Stop it, I chastised myself.

  Just because something was logical didn’t make it true. Maybe the attempts to steal the miniatures were unrelated to Thomas’s murder.

  If Ethan and Becca were romantically involved, it was possible that he got a glimpse of Becca and Thomas talking and went ballistic. If Ethan exploded and ran Thomas down in a fit of passion-charged rage, Becca, witnessing the horror, might well have fled, hoping to escape his wrath.

  Who knows? I e-mailed the photo of the mystery woman to Ellis. I explained what I’d discovered about Ian and where the photo came from.

  I got up and stretched—or started to. My shoulder and arm were still tender to the touch, and my muscles shrieked if I tried raising my arm. I paced, ignoring the discomfort, walking from my small study through the living room to the front hall and back.

  I returned to my computer and brought up Reynard University’s Web site. According to his listing on the Marine Biology faculty page, Ethan used two middle initials, K and Q. He’d graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, and done postdoc work at Tulane in New Orleans. I Googled his name, including his initials, and learned from his byline on an article about oyster propagation that he hailed from Andover, Massachusetts.

  From what I could tell from my checks of public records in California, Louisiana, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, he had no arrest record, he’d never been married, and he didn’t own any property.

  My fingers hovered over the keyboard, but I couldn’t think of anything else to research.

  I was out of ideas, so I e-mailed Wes.

  Hi Wes,

  I’m okay, and no, I didn’t take any photos of my bruises. ☺

  Can you find out the skinny on Becca’s roommate, Ethan Ferguson? His full name is

  Ethan K. Q. Ferguson. He’s from Andover, MA.

  Thanks!

  Josie

  I was tired, but not sleepy. I paced some more. Finally, I went to the kitchen and made myself a cup of pomegranate tea. I settled on the living room couch and read a chapter of my current Nero Wolfe novel, Rex Stout’s Over My Dead Body, ideas percolating on the back burner of my mind. By the time I finished the tea, I had a next-step idea.

  I needed to know more about the real Ian Bennington. I rinsed my teacup and placed it in the dishwasher. Back at my desk, I brought up the listing of all the Oxfordshire government offices.

  Using the time difference to my advantage, I decided to start with the police.

  A constable named Brewer answered with businesslike precision.

  “Hello,” I said, aiming to match his tone. “This is Josie Prescott, calling from America. I have a question about the death of Ian Bennington. Who can I talk to about it?”

  “Regarding what, ma’am?”

  “The details. I’m a relative.”

  “I see. One moment, please.”

  I heard papers being shuffled and the distinctive tap-tap of a keyboard.

  “Detective Higgins is assigned that case. Shall I ring him for you?”

  “Yes, thank you. Before you do, though, what’s his direct number, in case we’re disconnected?”

  He gave it to me, and I silently thanked my dad for the tip. A salesman always tries to gain direct access to the decision maker.

  Detective Higgins was brusque, impatient, and uninterested in talking to a distant relative from a distant land about an unimportant (to him) case.

  “Why haven’t you closed the case?” I asked, ignoring his attitude. “The newspaper said it was a probable suicide.”

  “It’s the coroner’s job to determine the cause and manner of death.”

  “And he hasn’t. Why not?”

  “You’d have to ask him. Dr. Glaskin.”

  “What’s the number, please?”

  A sigh of exasperation rattled across the miles, but he gave me the number.

  Dr. Glaskin wasn’t available, but his assistant, an elderly-sounding woman named Polly Davidson-Fox, was, and she was glad to talk to me.

  “I’m terribly sorry for your loss. We try to keep relatives in the loop as much as possible,” she explained. “I do
n’t see your name on our information sheet.”

  “Can we add me now?” I asked, avoiding the temptation to explain why I was coming late to the party. That was one can of worms I didn’t want to open.

  “Certainly.”

  I gave her my contact information. “Can you give me a status report?” I asked.

  “While we can’t release confidential information, of course, I can share what the detective assigned to the case has revealed to the media. Would that be helpful?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Mr. Bennington didn’t leave a suicide note. Many poor souls don’t, of course. But there was nothing to suggest the kind of despondency one expects to hear about with a suicide. He was in perfect heath, and Detective Higgins reports that he discussed his holiday plans with his neighbors the day before he died. He was looking forward to the trip, to meeting a relative he’d just located.”

  My throat tightened, and I couldn’t speak.

  “Would that be you, dear?”

  I nodded, still unable to speak. I knew she was more than three thousand miles away and couldn’t see my nod, but I did it anyway. I coughed, then tried again.

  “Yes,” I managed. My voice sounded odd, guttural and low.

  “What a tragedy.”

  “Thank you. So the coroner is waiting for … what exactly?”

  “More information.”

  “I know I’m probably sounding as dumb as a doormat, but what information is the coroner waiting for?”

  “You’re not dumb! Hardly. It’s a complicated situation. Dr. Glaskin hopes the detectives will provide some additional information, something that will shed light on whether Mr. Bennington killed himself. Until then, the case remains open.”

  “Thank you. That helps me understand what’s going on. I wonder … do you have a contact number for anyone? His daughter, maybe?”

  “Let me look.” Two minutes passed before she said, “Mr. Bennington’s solicitor, Marcia Earling, is the family representative.”

  She gave me her number, and I said, “I can’t thank you enough.”

  “You call me anytime, dear. I know how hard it is not to have answers. If I have no news to report, I’ll tell you so.”