Purrfect Alibi (3)

Chapter 21

Odelia didn’t like Gran’s latest obsession. This Desperate Housewives thing could jeopardize their entire investigation. Then again, Gran was a smooth talker. She could probably talk her way out of any jam. Years of diligently watching every single soap opera out there had equipped her with a battery of ready-made quips or strategems to get her out of trouble. At least Mrs. Ackerman had been so distracted by Gran’s filming that she probably hadn’t even noticed that Max and Dooley had inserted themselves into the room.

“Take a seat,” Mrs. Ackerman said, gesturing at two chairs placed near the window. “This won’t take long, I hope? I just lost my husband and I’ve got a funeral to plan.”

She didn’t exactly seem overwrought with grief. Then again, we all have different ways of dealing with loss, so maybe being businesslike about it was Mrs. Ackerman’s way.

“This definitely won’t take long,” Odelia assured the other woman as she took a seat. “So where is your son? I thought you said over the phone he’d join us?”

“Trey!” Mrs. Ackerman bellowed. “Get in here!”

A connecting door opened and a lanky young man strode in. He had a pale, thin face and a buzzcut and looked more like a drug addict than any drug addict Odelia had ever met.

“This is Trey,” said Mrs. Ackerman, indicating the young man. “Trey, these two are from the police, apparently.”

“Thank you so much for your time, Mr. Ackerman,” said Odelia.

“Have you found my father’s murderer yet?” asked Trey, giving them a glum look.

“My uncle does have someone in custody,” said Odelia. “My uncle is the chief of police.”

“You made an arrest?” asked Mrs. Ackerman. “Why weren’t we informed?”

“The guy didn’t do it,” said Gran, who’d placed her phone on the table, propped up against a potted mini-cactus, where it continued filming the scene.

Odelia gritted her teeth. “What Vesta means to say is that the person who was arrested denies all involvement. He does, however, admit that he stole certain valuables from Mr. Ackerman’s person.”

“Valuables? Like what?”

“Diamond watch, money, iPhone,” said Gran. “That kind of stuff.”

“The bastard,” muttered Trey.

“Yeah, he’s a piece of bad news, all right,” Gran admitted. “But as far as I can tell he’s not the killer.”

“That’s up to the prosecutor to decide,” said Odelia pointedly. “What we’re here to determine is if perhaps you noticed something last night when you went to visit your husband at the library?”

Mrs. Ackerman exchanged a quick glance with her son, who turned to look out the window, arms folded across his chest. His mother, meanwhile, plunked her heavy frame down on a settee and cast down her eyes. “You’ll probably know this already, but my husband and I… we were in the process of getting a divorce.”

Gran’s eyes went wide, and she quickly cast a look at her phone. This was the stuff she wanted featured on Desperate Housewives. “A divorce?” she asked. “You mean he was involved with another woman?”

Mrs. Ackerman frowned, and so did Odelia. “As a matter of fact he was,” said Mrs. Ackerman. “He was having an affair with his editor. She’d recently gotten a job at a different publisher and had enticed Chris to change publishers as well.” She heaved a deep sigh. “My husband was about to embark on an entirely new life, Miss Poole. Without his wife of thirty years, and without the publisher responsible for his success. And all over a woman.”

“Who’s this editor?” asked Gran.

“Her name is Stacey Kulcheski.”

“Is she staying in town?” asked Odelia.

“I don’t think so. At least I haven’t seen her.”

“So why did you join your husband at the library last night?”

Mrs. Ackerman briefly wrung her hands. “I—I decided—we decided to try and talk to him one more time. He didn’t even know we’d flown in. He was quite surprised when we suddenly turned up out of the blue. You see, my husband had stopped taking my calls.”

“Our calls,” her son corrected her.

“Our calls,” said Mrs. Ackerman with a vague smile. “Ever since he packed up his things and walked out on us we’d had no way of getting in touch with him. So when Trey saw he was scheduled to speak at your local library, we decided to confront him.”

“Talk some sense into him,” Trey clarified. He turned to face them. “My father was under a spell. He didn’t know what he was doing. This Kulcheski woman had hypnotized him.”

“She had?” asked Gran.

“Not literally, Gran,” Odelia murmured.

“Oh.”

“She had him eating out of her hand—doing her bidding at every turn. We knew that the only way to break the spell was to lay it all out for him. Expose the woman as the wily little gold digger she was.”

“And? How did he respond?” asked Odelia.

“Not well. He kicked us out. Said he never wanted to see us again.”

“After all I’d done for him,” said Mrs. Ackerman bitterly. “I stood by his side when he was a struggling author. I worked my butt off to keep our family afloat in the early years, when every submission ended in a flutter of rejection letters. If not for me he’d never have become a success. He’d have given up long ago. But I believed in him. I believed in his talent as a storyteller. It took him ten years to sell his first novel. And another ten to become a household name. And this is how he repaid me. By chasing the first skirt that came along.”

“She wasn’t the first skirt, Mom,” said her son. “There were others.”

“I could deal with that. We had an understanding. They were butterflies. I was his wife. The woman he came home to. Until he decided he no longer needed me.”

Gran cleared her throat. “Do you have any idea who might have killed your husband, Mrs. Ackerman?”

Mrs. Ackerman raised her eyes to Gran. “You think I did it, don’t you? And you’re right.”

Both Odelia and Gran held their breath. Was a confession coming?

Instead, Mrs. Ackerman said, “I could have killed him. I know I was hopping mad when I left that library. But I’m not a killer. Instead I was going to take my husband to court and clean him out. I was prepared to make sure that he was left with nothing. That would have been my revenge.”

“Very iffy proposition,” said Gran. “Better to kill him and collect the inheritance.”

Trey Ackerman’s eyes flashed dangerously. “Are you accusing my mother of murder?”

“Just throwing it out there,” said Gran. “If long experience as a homicide detective has taught me one thing it’s that it’s almost always the spouse that did it. So convince me otherwise. Prove your innocence, Mrs. Ackerman.”

A quick smile flitted across the woman’s face. “I don’t have to prove my innocence. There’s a man who can prove it for me. When Trey and I left Chris was still alive. Just ask Malcolm Buckerfield. He walked in as we walked out. And he had every reason to murder Chris. Without Chris, Buckerfield had nothing. Chris Ackerman was Buckerfield Publishing.”