A MATCH MADE IN MURDER (The Wedding Planner Mysteries Book 5) Page 5

  Sterling turned stiff then grabbed the receiver.

  “Hello.” His eyes snapped to Kitty, who couldn’t hear the caller. Sterling covered the mouthpiece and said, “Grady.” Then spoke into the phone again. “Yes, he’s my uncle. You can send him up.”

  “How did Grady know to call here for us?” Kitty asked as soon as Sterling had lowered the phone.

  “I have no idea.”

  When Grady entered the room his steps were soft and his hands were clasped together in a tight ball, which told Kitty there was more bad news in store. He looked concerned and had trouble meeting their gazes.

  If Kitty noticed his pained demeanor, Sterling didn’t. He seemed to relax in his uncle’s company and wasted no time offering Grady a chair in their small room.

  “How did you know we were here?” Kitty asked him when he’d settled by the window. He was wringing his hands, but looked up at her finally.

  “Penny,” he stated. “We were coming out of our rooms at the Delamar at the same time. She mentioned.”

  Sterling seemed satisfied with that, and Kitty supposed it was certainly possible, but the timeline struck her as too fast to be realistic. She glanced down at her cell to see if it had enough juice to call her mom then realized there’d be no way of doing that without Grady knowing she didn’t quite believe him.

  “Grady, what’s going on?” Sterling asked. “What’s wrong?”

  He shook his head, drawing in a deep breath, while he gathered his thoughts. Kitty and Sterling exchanged a quick glance that helped Sterling decide he ought to sit on the edge of the bed to be at eye level with his uncle.

  “Grady?” he said softly to draw the issue out of him.

  “It’s nothing.” It clearly wasn’t nothing. “I’m just so sorry this is happening around your wedding. In light of the funeral and all the arrangements, are you going to postpone the wedding?”

  It was like a punch to Kitty’s already sore gut. Her mother had delivered the first blow and she didn’t appreciate that everyone was likeminded that her wedding should be put on hold.

  “If we postpone the killer wins,” she said sternly.

  For the first time since he’d entered their room Grady looked at her. He worked some words up his throat, objections she presumed, but they didn’t make it out of his mouth.

  Finally, he said, “Anything I can do to help.”

  Sterling beamed at the offer as though he’d just witnessed his uncle part the Red Sea.

  “Actually,” Kitty started, considering that she honestly found his offer halfhearted. “I think we can all agree Layla’s killer is the same person who killed Charlotte and Mary.” Mary was Sterling’s mother, the first to die with the antique necklace around her neck. “The only common denominator is Sterling. It’s safe to assume someone out there is trying to destroy Sterling.”

  She let that hang for a moment, as she studied his face. His expression shifted. His eyes narrowed on her, but it might have only been that he was concentrating.

  “Can you think of anyone who was around the family back then who had it in for Sterling?”

  It was a bold question.

  “Can I think of anyone who would want to break an eight-year-old boy’s heart?” he challenged. “No. I can’t.”

  “Was Mary involved with anyone?”

  The question offended Sterling as much as it did Grady.

  “My mother wasn’t having an affair,” he snapped.

  “Do you realize that anything can help?” she countered, annoyed that he was offended. “Please, Grady, think. Did she spend time alone? Did she ever sneak off? Did she have friends that seemed odd?”

  “Steve would know better than I would.”

  “He might not,” she went on, using an appealing tone this time. “Was there anyone who was in Mary’s life that also had a presence in Charlotte’s life?”

  Grady held her gaze and she could see in his eyes that he didn’t appreciate the conversation.

  Then Sterling aided in the effort. “I wouldn’t remember. Like you said, I was only a boy at the time. But you might’ve noticed someone, Uncle Grady. Anyone.”

  “Let me think,” he said under his breath.

  Grady’s gaze softened and lolled, as he wracked his brain, traveling back in time over two decades. He worked his fingers along his jaw then rubbed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose.

  The inn phone rang loudly on the nightstand.

  “Yes?” Kitty asked into the receiver.

  “It’s Annabelle at the front desk,” she stated. “A woman named Trudy is here to see you.”

  “How does everyone know we’re here?” she grumbled under her breath then added, “Send her up.” How many people had her mother run into at the Delamar?

  “Who is it?” Sterling asked quietly so as not to disturb Grady’s concentration.

  “Trudy,” she said.

  Sterling looked perturbed, but it wasn’t as though Kitty had invited her here. Word was getting around that Layla had been killed.

  “I really don’t know,” Grady concluded. “Mary was one of the sweetest women I’d ever known. Charlotte had the same sweetness.”

  He glared at Kitty in such a way as to indicate, perhaps, that she didn’t share the same brand of saintliness that the other women in Sterling’s life had embodied. Well, if that were the case, it might just give her a fighting chance at staying alive.

  Again, Sterling acted as though his uncle was the voice of God. Luckily, Kitty didn’t have time to dwell. Trudy was knocking.

  “Hey,” Kitty breathed the word in a sigh of relief, as she threw her arms around Trudy for a big hug.

  Her best friend had done solid work of gaining back all the weight she’d lost for her own wedding, so the embrace felt as pillowy as a cloud. When Trudy released her and looked into her eyes it was just enough comfort and concern that Kitty finally broke down.

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” Trudy whispered, hugging her again. “You’ll get through it. I promise you.”

  Sterling eased the door wider, inviting them to step inside, as Kitty sniffled her tears back and allowed Trudy to help her to the foot of the bed. They sat and Sterling closed the door.

  “This is my Uncle Grady,” he told her when Trudy stared at the man in the chair.

  “Trudy,” she stated with a sad smile. “I heard about Layla on the news.”

  “It’s on the news already?” Sterling questioned and immediately claimed Kitty’s cell phone from the nightstand. “I have to call Harrison.” Then he clarified for Grady’s benefit, “My lieutenant.”

  “Is something the matter?” Grady asked.

  “The department would’ve never released information this early. It would compromise the investigation. Someone leaked it.”

  “The hiking trail is public,” Grady offered. “Anyone could’ve seen and alerted the media. These days the local news channels include a tip line for this very reason.”

  “But homicide was on the scene,” he countered. “Harrison should’ve barricaded reporters.”

  “The report didn’t say much,” Trudy mentioned. “There were no details.”

  Sterling wandered into the bathroom to make his phone call.

  “How did you know we were here?” Kitty asked her.

  “I called around. Your mother told me.”

  That’s what Kitty had expected. It worried her. The killer was someone who had to be close with Sterling and anyone that close who asked her mother where they were staying would have no trouble finding out from Penny. Kitty eyed Sterling through the crack in the door. He was straining to hear his lieutenant. As soon as he got off the phone, she’d call her mother, just to be on the safe side.

  “I went to your house first,” she added. “I’m not sure why I thought you’d still be there. Then I went to the Delamar. I stopped by the William Wallace yacht out back on the pier. Then I gave your mother’s cell a ring.”

  Grady was staring at Trudy so intensely
it set Kitty’s teeth on edge. There was something about the guy, he was polite and polished and Sterling thought the world of him obviously, but it seemed like he wanted to be Sterling’s and her sole supporter in this crisis. He didn’t look very pleased Trudy had joined them.

  Sterling returned and Kitty reached for her cell.

  “I’m not sure it’s anything,” Trudy went on, making an effort to meet Grady’s eye before she directed her comment to Kitty and Sterling; Trudy was good at bonding with a stranger by simply meeting their gaze, exhibiting a sense of vulnerability, demonstrating that they were in this together, but with Grady it wasn’t landing quite right. “But I noticed a strange man in the field behind the house. He stuck out because he wasn’t an officer or detective. I could tell by the way he dressed.”

  “How did he dress?” Sterling asked, brow furrowing in understanding that this might be significant.

  “Plain clothes, tan slacks, loafer, a modest sports jacket,” Trudy listed. It sounded a lot like Grady, except that he was in the room. “Like an intellectual.”

  “What did he look like?” Sterling was in full-blown detective mode despite Lieutenant Harrison’s warning.

  “Dark hair. He was probably in his late fifties. He wore wire frame glasses and oh!” She suddenly remembered. “He had a cane. It wasn’t hooked around at the handle. It was just a piece of metal.”

  Kitty wracked her brain if anyone in her family had a cane like that, but she was coming up short. Sterling on the other hand appeared interested and recognition flickered behind his dark eyes.

  “Does that sound like Hollister?” he asked Grady.

  “Did you invite him to the wedding?” Grady asked as though that would surprise him.

  “No,” said Sterling. “But he’s still around as far as I know. He still teaches at the university.”

  “Who’s Hollister?” Kitty asked.

  “One of my old colleagues,” Grady supplied. “A professor. He was friends with Mary, but Steve wasn’t a fan of the friendship.”

  A man being friends with a married woman sounded like a recipe for disaster. “Friends? How’d they meet?”

  “Through me,” he said easily. “I was working with Hollister at the time. Mary enjoyed coming to various lectures at the university. She’d seen him speak. Talked to him after, once I’d introduced them.”

  “Hollister also taught Charlotte when she attended the university,” Sterling added, thinking this could be his man. “This was around the time I met her.”

  “Why would this professor be at our house?” she asked Sterling. “Why would he care about Layla?”

  “He teaches psychopathy pathology,” Grady explained, but Kitty didn’t have the first clue as to what that meant. “The study of serial killers.”

  Kitty’s heart skipped a beat. “Why would a person be interested in that?”

  Sterling held her gaze, but said nothing.

  “Why would anyone dedicate their life to understanding serial killers unless they were one?” she asked, pushing the point further.

  Sterling’s eyes told her he was wondering the exact same thing.

  Chapter Six

  Professor Kent Hollister lived in a charming bungalow on campus. Cypress trees flanked the one-story home and offered just enough shade to keep the glaring sunlight from roasting the living room where Sterling and Kitty were standing in complete awe that the aging man could survive without air conditioning.

  Sterling eyed the professor as he bumbled toward a modest liquor bar at the far side of the mantle. The rhythm of his gait, heavy, limping steps, and the thud of his cane, made for an odd symphony.

  “Whiskey?” He asked over his shoulder, smiling crookedly at them.

  “No, thank you,” Sterling stated.

  “But do you mind if I have a nip?”

  Sterling shook his head then glanced around the room, which was more a library than anything else.

  “What were you doing at our house?” he asked, as Hollister poured the caramel liquid into a glass.

  The man didn’t look much different than he had all those years ago except that he stooped at a sharper angle as though gravity had gotten the best of him.

  He hobbled toward them, whiskey trickling down both sides of his glass with every step, until he reached a leather chair set between the window and his desk.

  Sitting was a labored endeavor, which he used all his concentration on.

  “I couldn’t get inside the killer’s mind all those years ago,” he began then sipped his whiskey, punctuating the ambiguous prologue with a booming, ah, as the drink burned down his throat. “Like you, it wasn’t until Charlotte had been killed that I understood the murders were connected. Now that there’s a third, I know it’s serial.”

  “That doesn’t explain what you were doing there,” he pressed.

  “Trying to make connections, young man.”

  Sterling didn’t like how Hollister was able to speak so casually about the murders of two women who had been in his life. Hollister had known both Mary and Charlotte, not well, but enough that some genuine solace should shine through. The man was cold as a fish.

  “How did you know to go there?”

  “Police scanner,” he said easily. “I listen in. I like to keep up with the local crimes. So many murders go unsolved.”

  Sterling knew that wasn’t entirely accurate. Not to mention the fact that Greenwich was a relatively safe town.

  “Often the police miss things. They fail to make connections, because they don’t understand psychopathy. Yes, they gather clues, but only the ones that are obvious. They miss critical pieces because they don’t know where to look.”

  If anything happened often, it was that killers liked to return to the scenes of their crimes. It gave them a sense of pride. They liked seeing how their work affected the lives it had touched.

  Sterling tried to recall back to the time his mother had been found. Had Hollister shown up? Had he returned to the scene to see all the lives he’d damaged?

  “Did you find anything?” Kitty asked.

  She seemed interested. Good. Kitty had a knack for reeling information out of someone simply by acting as though she shared the person’s curiosity. She was on their side. She sympathized. It was brilliant.

  Hollister took another sip of his whiskey and said, “It would make more sense if Layla Cranston had been close with Sterling. Some psychopaths kill within their own tight circle. It’s rare, but it happens. I believe it was the same killer as the person who killed Mary and Charlotte, but it doesn’t make sense that they’d targeted Layla.”

  Sterling snorted. Hollister had told them nothing they didn’t already know.

  “The killer had meant to strike me,” Kitty explained.

  Hollister nodded slow and steady, working through the equation to see if it would add up.

  “Women tend to kill with more passive means, like poison,” he stated and took another sip.

  Kitty and Sterling exchanged a glance.

  A woman?

  “That’s what fascinates me about this pattern. It was a woman.”

  “You can’t say that with certainty,” Sterling countered. “There’s no evidence to support that.”

  Hollister shrugged. “Statistics don’t lie.”

  Sterling narrowed his gaze on the old man. His gut told him Hollister was muddying the waters to throw suspicion off him. Something told him this guy had done it. But why?

  “What was your relationship with my mother like?” he asked, but Hollister immediately waved his hand at them.

  “Would you please sit down, both of you? You’re making me seasick.”

  Sterling figured the whiskey was a far likelier culprit, but he took a seat on a ratty couch adjacent to where Hollister was seated. Kitty joined then crossed her arms and legs, a defensive stance that Sterling knew Hollister would pick up on. He discreetly tapped her shoulder and when she looked over Sterling shot a cross glance at her arms. Kitty opened hersel
f up, unfolding her limbs so as to appear relaxed.

  “Your mother shouldn’t have been a housewife,” he stated. “She was far too smart for that kind of life. She was brilliant, in fact. Grady recognized it, as did I as soon as I met her, but your father didn’t see it. It annoyed him that she’d come to the lectures at the university. He wanted her home. He didn’t want her to shine.”

  Sterling didn’t like where this was going.

  “I asked you what your relationship with her was like, not about your opinion and speculation on my parents’ dynamic.”

  “Fair enough,” he said. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say we had a mentor - mentee relationship, but she came to several of my talks. I lent her books that interested her. We had coffee a couple times and discussed those books. Grady was often present. Grady supported her in that sense. They seemed very close.”

  Hollister had a gift for throwing suspicion on his family and Sterling was losing his patience because of it.

  “Where were you around the time Mary was killed?”

  Hollister chuckled as though the assumption he could remember his whereabouts twenty-eight years prior was an absolute joke.

  “Can you tell us anything about Charlotte’s murder?” Kitty asked. “You mentioned that by that point it was clear to you the same person did it. Sterling made the same connection, but perhaps you studied the facts from a different angle and got different insights as a result.”

  “All I can say is that at first I thought the killer wanted what Steve Slaughter had. But Steve never had Charlotte...did he?”

  “What the hell are you asking me?” Sterling snapped.

  “I’m asking if your deceased wife was sleeping with your father.”

  Sterling was on his feet, fists clenched into tight, angry balls in a heartbeat, but Kitty pulled him back, keeping her hands on him to calm him.

  “I think it’s safe to assume she wasn’t,” she said.

  “There are no safe assumptions,” Hollister countered, and then elaborated his original point. “I think the killer wanted what you have, Sterling. I think he still does.”