Fixing To Die

CHAPTER 33

An’gel was surprised when Alesha Jackson reacted to her words by laughing. She laughed so hard, in fact, that it took at least a minute for her to stop.

When she did finish, she shook her head at An’gel. “I think you need a serious reality check, lady. Where did you get the idea I’m related to Nathan Gamble? You’re out of your mind.”

Perhaps her grandmother had never told her father about his true parentage. Or her father never told her, An’gel thought. Or maybe she’s simply bluffing. Should she tell Alesha Jackson what Marcelline had confided in her?

“I’m serious, lady,” Alesha said, her tone becoming heated. “I want to know who’s spreading that kind of garbage about me and my family.”

An’gel reckoned she had little choice now. She had started this, and now she had to finish it, within limits. “According to my source, when your grandmother worked here, she became pregnant with your father. My source says that Marshall Turner Senior was the father. He’s Mary Turner’s grandfather and related to the Gamble family.”

“Your source is lying,” Alesha said. “I don’t know why this person made up such a story, but it’s absolutely not the truth. My grandparents were married two years before my father was born. That was after my grandmother worked here. I’ve seen their marriage certificate. No way was that old man my grandfather.”

An’gel was shaken. If Alesha Jackson was telling the truth—and An’gel was beginning to believe she was—that meant what Marcelline had told her was a lie.

“I apologize, Ms. Jackson,” An’gel said after she managed to gather her wits. “It’s beginning to sound like I was grossly misinformed.”

“It was the housekeeper, wasn’t it?” Alesha asked. “She’s the only one old enough in this house to have known my grandmother when she worked here. You tell her from me she’d better shut her mouth and stop lying. I’m not going to put up with crap like this about my family.”

“I certainly understand that,” An’gel said. “I will speak to her, I can promise you that.”

“If it’s family you’re worried about killing Nathan Gamble,” Alesha said, “then maybe you should start with his sister. Ask her what she and her brother were arguing about around eleven thirty last night.”

“Where was this?” An’gel asked sharply.

“Upstairs, in his room,” Alesha said. “I’ll bet she hasn’t told the lieutenant about it. Well, I heard them, and I know what time it was. I’m a night owl, and I didn’t go to bed until after midnight. I heard people going up and down the hall several times last night.”

“Do you remember the times?” An’gel asked.

Alesha thought for a moment. “Once around eleven, I think. Someone came down the hall, and then maybe two minutes later went back toward the stairs. Then maybe twenty minutes later, I heard someone walking down the hall again. I heard this person knocking on a door, and a few minutes after that, the argument. I don’t think the door was entirely closed.”

“How long did the argument last?” An’gel said.

“Not long,” Alesha said. “Maybe five minutes. It stopped, that’s all I cared about. I had to go to the bathroom right after that, and that’s when I spotted Serenity Foster coming out of her brother’s room. I don’t think she saw me, though, because I was in the bathroom closing the door when she went by.”

“Was that the last time you heard anyone in the hall?” An’gel asked.

“No, I heard someone else coming down the hall around midnight when I was on the verge of sleep. I drifted off and didn’t hear anyone go back the other way.”

“Did you tell Lieutenant Steinberg any of this?” An’gel asked.

“Yes, I did, all of it,” Alesha said. “Now I think we’re done with this. You remember what I said about my family.” She stood up and walked out of the room, obviously still angry.

An’gel couldn’t blame her. She herself felt horribly embarrassed now. The whole situation had woefully backfired, but she had only herself to blame. She should never have questioned Alesha Jackson about the story without having more information to back it up. Marcelline had seemed so sincere, so convincing, and An’gel had taken her at her word because she had known her for many years. But, she realized belatedly, not well enough.

Alesha Jackson could be lying, An’gel knew. Alesha could still be guilty of murder. Her father’s death was due to Nathan Gamble’s negligence, allegedly. Whether Alesha Jackson was related to the Gambles through Marshall Turner didn’t affect the woman’s potential motive. Denying the relationship made no difference in that respect. So why deny it? Because it wasn’t true. Marcelline had lied.

On the whole, An’gel believed Alesha’s denial of the relationship. If Alesha could prove that her grandmother had no contact with Marshall Turner after she left his employment and her son was born after her marriage to another man, that settled it.

Maybe Marcelline had simply confused Alesha Jackson’s grandmother with someone else. An’gel found it all so easy to believe that Marshall Turner had impregnated a servant. She wouldn’t have put anything past the old goat. At the distance of over fifty years, Marcelline’s memory could have failed her and she only thought the woman from the past resembled Alesha.

An’gel thought about it. Marcelline could have read about Alesha’s father’s death in the paper. She could have seen the obituary, and the name Arletta Jackson stuck in her mind, to be confused for that of another woman. That was too convoluted, An’gel decided. The simple answer was that Marcelline had lied.

An’gel was left with the question of why. Had she made up the story out of whole cloth to point suspicion toward Alesha Jackson? Away from herself?

Or away from someone she wanted to protect?

The one person who Marcelline would like to protect was Mary Turner. That thought chilled An’gel. Did Marcelline think Mary Turner murdered her cousin?

An’gel recalled how upset Mary Turner was earlier when she recounted her conversation with Serenity Foster and Serenity’s threat. If Mary Turner had really believed that Nathan Gamble meant to destroy her family, her whole birthright really, would she have been angry enough, desperate enough, to kill him?

That didn’t jibe with the Mary Turner she thought she knew. She recalled Henry Howard’s deep frustration with his wife over her devotion to the house. He obviously felt it was a threat to their marriage. Why else would he have tried such a bizarre scheme to frighten Mary Turner? And me, An’gel thought. He did get under my skin a little, I have to admit that. But she had never been frightened to the point—and never would have been, she thought—that she would encourage Mary Turner to let go of the house.

Had Henry Howard ever sat down with Mary Turner and shared all his frustration with her? Made her see clearly how it was affecting him, and thus their relationship? Henry Howard had never seemed the type to relish confrontation, in An’gel’s opinion, so it wouldn’t surprise her if he had been reluctant to force the point with Mary Turner.

Even if he had, An’gel wondered, would Mary Turner have believed him? Or was she so blinded by her obsession with the house that it didn’t matter? Obsession was a strong word, An’gel knew, and perhaps it was inappropriate and simply wrong in this case, but it was sounding more and more like Mary Turner’s sense of proportion was a little out of whack at the very least.

What about Serenity Foster? An’gel thought it was pretty certain what she and her brother had argued about. Money—the money Serenity evidently needed to help her in the custody battle. If Nathan continued to prove obdurate about helping her, Serenity might have decided that the only way to get the money was to get rid of her brother—permanently.

That only worked, however, if Serenity was Nathan Gamble’s heir. There was no guarantee that she was. Nathan could have left everything to his partner, Truss Wilbanks. The lawyer was still rather a dark horse in this matter. He might have become so bitter and enraged against his lover for Nathan’s treatment of him that he killed him in a moment of anger. Based on what An’gel had seen of the man since yesterday, she somehow doubted the man had it in him to commit a crime of passion.

An’gel ran through the list of suspects in her mind.

Serenity Foster—desperate for money, and her brother refused to help her.

Alesha Jackson—out for revenge for her father’s wrongful death, and also money from Nathan’s company.

Truss Wilbanks—out of passion from mistreatment by his lover, and perhaps for money as well from the business.

Marcelline Beaupré—in order to protect Mary Turner and her beloved house.

Mary Turner Catlin—out of fear of losing her family home and seeing it razed to the ground.

Henry Howard Catlin—for his wife’s sake perhaps, but if he didn’t know about Nathan Gamble’s threat, his motive was weak.

One of them did it, An’gel knew, but which one?

If Alesha Jackson were to be believed, Serenity had a loud, potentially violent argument with Nathan Gamble around eleven thirty last night. She could have killed him then. But how? An’gel felt incredibly frustrated by her lack of knowledge about how the man died.

He was either alive or dead when Serenity left him after the argument. Henry Howard was the next person on the scene. He had come upstairs from the library a minute or so past midnight to carry out his performance. He slipped into the room through the secret panel in the wardrobe and attempted to frighten the occupant of the room. He got little reaction, aside from a moan or two that he thought he heard.

Gamble might still have been alive, or he might have been dying. That was a horrible thought, and she hoped it didn’t occur to Henry Howard that he might have been able to save the man’s life. But Henry Howard, seeing his prank falling flat, had left the room the way he came in. He had gone to bed soon after that.

Had anyone else gone into the French room after Henry Howard?

An’gel had no way of knowing. She had slept through the comings and goings last night, and she had never heard the argument between the siblings. Neither had Dickce, or she would have mentioned it by now.

Any one of the five could have done it. Mary Turner could have slipped across the hall and killed Nathan, either after his argument with Serenity and before Henry Howard went in to play his prank. Or afterward, when Henry Howard was asleep, and the house was quiet.

Marcelline could have come upstairs at some point. She probably had a passkey, the same one that Henry Howard and Mary Turner had. She had to oversee all the housekeeping, so certainly she had one. An’gel hadn’t considered that before.

Last, but to her mind, least, Truss Wilbanks could have gone back to Nathan Gamble’s room sometime after midnight, after Henry Howard was in bed.

Any one of them could have done it. An’gel wanted to scream in frustration. If Lieutenant Steinberg had convincing evidence, he would have at least taken one of the five in for questioning at the police station, An’gel felt sure. He hadn’t, however, so she figured that meant he had no clear lead to the killer’s identity.

She wished she could persuade him to tell her how Nathan Gamble was killed. If he actually knew himself. Perhaps he did know, and had known all along, but was being cagey with all of them when he had originally said the cause of death wasn’t immediately apparent. She wouldn’t put it past him, nor could she blame him for doing so. It was a good tactic, to keep the murderer in the dark.

An’gel got to her feet. Time to find Dickce and Benjy and share the information from their separate interviews. Maybe Dickce or Benjy had picked up a clue from Marcelline or Truss Wilbanks that could be useful.

She pulled out her cell phone and texted both of them to find out where they were at present. Benjy responded right away to say that he was in his room, and that Dickce was with him. An’gel replied that she was on her way to join them.

As she stepped into the hall, the doorbell rang. An’gel answered it. Lieutenant Steinberg stood on the porch, along with two of his officers.

“I’m glad you’re here, Lieutenant,” An’gel said. “I have some things to tell you.”

“This may surprise you, Miss Ducote,” the policeman said as he stepped inside, followed by his men, “but I am eager to hear them.”