“He said Jackie was never really after him.Said Henry was who she wanted all along.Bringing meals by his house, showing up dressed a certain way whenever Henry was around.”Walt set his glass down.“Said she used him to stay close to Henry.”
A pregnant silence filled the room as we processed Walt’s news, and then Bea broke the silence and said, “Well, see if you can top that.”She waggled her eyebrows.“Spill it.”
So we did.
Dash started with Lila Mae.The video call that morning, the Sunday routine she’d kept for fifteen years, the coffee she’d put on before she realized he wasn’t coming down.I let him set the scene and picked it up when he got to the study.
“The decanter and both glasses were on the desk when she found him,” I said.“One glass empty, one glass full.But the crime-scene photographs show them back on the bookshelf where they belonged.We can assume Milton moved them.”
“Because two glasses on that desk told a story he didn’t want to tell,” Hank said.
“Or was paid not to tell,” Bea said.
Nobody disagreed with her.
“So we have a confirmed visitor the night Henry died,” Walt said.“Someone he poured a drink for.Someone he was comfortable enough with to invite up to his study late on a Saturday night in the middle of a storm.”
“Someone who left a full glass of whiskey behind,” Deidre said.“They didn’t drink it.”
“Because they didn’t need to,” Dash said.“The drug was already in the decanter.They just needed Henry to drink it.”
“Which raises the question of access,” Dottie said.“Someone had to get to that decanter before the visit.Before Henry poured from it.”
“Josephine said Henry always had a nightcap before bed,” I said.“Lila Mae confirmed it.One glass, every night.It wasn’t a secret.”
“So the killer knew the habit,” Walt said.“And knew the decanter.”
“Anyone who’d been in that study would have known,” Hank said.“Henry wasn’t exactly hiding it.Lila Mae said people were in and out of that house all the time.”
“Saturday was Lila Mae’s day off,” I said.“No housekeeper, no patients on a weekend.And Henry himself didn’t come home until sometime Saturday morning after his night at the Wentworth with Serena.The killer had the run of the place.”
Bea refilled her glass.Nobody rushed to fill the silence.
“There’s more,” I said.“Wait until you hear what we discovered from Byron’s daughter.”
I picked it up with Serena.
“She’d known Henry her whole life,” I said.“Her father brought her to every foundation event from the time she was a girl.Henry was just always there.And then one day it turned into something more.She was twenty-two.He was in his mid-fifties.They both knew what people would say, so they kept it quiet.Hotels in Charleston.Weekend trips out of state.He drove her home before sunrise so the neighbors wouldn’t see.”
“And he asked her to marry him,” Dash said.
Nobody moved.
“He’d proposed,” I said.“They were engaged.And he was planning to tell her father himself before anyone else found out.”
“Lord have mercy,” Bea said softly.
“Her father knew about the affair,” Dash said.“Serena was certain of it.”
Deidre set down her fork.
“She said when he came home with the news of Henry’s death, something in the way he looked at her told her everything.He never confronted her.Never said a word about it directly.But she knew that he knew.”
Hank pushed his plate aside.“Byron Jameson finds out his oldest friend has been carrying on with his daughter in secret.A man with that kind of temper.”
“If he did kill Henry, it wasn’t in a rage,” Bea said.“A staged suicide takes planning.That’s cold.”
“Grief does strange things to people,” Dottie said.“So does betrayal.The two together can make a person very cold indeed.”
