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Margot’s eyes narrowed. “You know something. I know you know something. Just tell them!”
Josie said, “This is the question that’s plagued us since day one of this investigation. How did the killer know that Claudia would be utterly alone for that half hour?”
She let the question hang in the air.
Margot pressed a fist to her mouth. From behind it came a muffled, “Oh my God.” She fell onto the couch beside Beau and stared at him. He wouldn’t look at her.
Josie and Noah let the silence do the work, waiting patiently, unmoving, eyes locked on Beau.
Margot said, “I know you never tell the truth. You’re like, allergic to it, or whatever, but Beau, please. Look where all this lying has gotten you. It’s literally destroyed your whole entire life. Your marriage. Your show. Your practice. Your publishing career, podcast, all of it. Everything. Even your mistress is dead. If you did what I think you did, I get that you don’t want to go to prison. I really do. But without anyone in your life, who cares about that? Living alone as the most hated man in this city is a prison all its own.”
His head swiveled in her direction. He took one of her hands. Josie expected her to snatch it away, but she didn’t. “I have you.”
“No,” said Margot. “You don’t. Not if you refuse to take responsibility for anything in your life, ever. What you did for Jasmine when Sam was born—providing for him but staying out of their lives because that’s what she wanted, that was good. What you did for Brooke—establishing that trust, that was a start, but it’s not enough.”
“But Margot,” he said, voice husky.
“Don’t ‘but’ me,” she said. “Here’s the thing: I know there is some good inside you. Whether it comes from a place of actual virtue or from a place of self-preservation, I’m not sure yet, but I’ve always wanted to find out. All my life, I dreamed of who my dad might be. When I found out it was you, I was ecstatic. You were a superstar. You had it all, and on top of that, you were kind. Now I know none of that was true. You can never give that to me. There is only one thing that you can give to me, as my father, and that is to take responsibility for the worst thing you’ve ever done. If you do that, I promise to stay in your life, to be here when you get out. If you don’t, I walk out this door today and you will never see me again. You will be alone forever, for the rest of your life, if you don’t start taking responsibility now and telling the truth.”
Slowly, Beau’s resolve crumbled. His shoulders shook. He covered his face with his hands. Sobs erupted from his throat. No one spoke. They simply waited for him to collect himself. Then he said, “Okay. It was me. I called Archie Gamble the afternoon of Claudia’s murder to tell him she would be alone until six thirty. I had made sure that everyone would be late.”
Noah said, “Why would you do that?”
“Because I hired Archie Gamble to kill my wife.”
Tears rolled down Margot’s face, but she didn’t leave.
Beau continued, “Things were never the same after she found out about Brooke. I had had lapses in judgment before that. I think she knew but she didn’t care enough about them to say anything. I wasn’t lying when I say that I cared for Brooke. I was genuinely considering leaving Claudia and trying to make a go of it with Brooke, but then the more I thought about it, about how disruptive it would be, how much it would cost—how much I would lose—I balked. The day of the accident, Claudia convinced me to walk away, to focus on our future together, and I did. But she was never happy. Not with the show or the book or the podcast or me. We were living two separate lives. In fact, I suspected she might be having an affair. I was so angry. We were about to go national. I was going to break it off with Eve, and Claudia seemed like she was going full throttle with someone else. She was going to ruin everything.”
Noah said, “You didn’t think that your wife, who hosted your couples’ show with you, being murdered would ruin everything?”
“I could have spun it,” Beau said. “All the focus groups liked me better than Claudia anyway. I could have grown the show—from widowhood to finding love again. I had the star power to do that. She didn’t. I couldn’t see any other way out of it that wouldn’t result in everything we had worked for going down the toilet permanently. If you get divorced, the audience will blame you. If your wife is killed, that’s out of your control.”
Josie had had an inkling of what they were going to hear from him if their interrogation was successful, but still, the loathing she felt for the man was hard to quell.
Noah said, “The thirty thousand dollars was for Gamble?”
“Yes, but Claudia caught me with it and confronted me. I made something up—about a charity—but she didn’t buy it. She could always see right through me. She took it. She said she’d return it to our account, but she didn’t. I didn’t ask about it because I didn’t want the subject coming up again. So I had to take out another thirty to pay him. Thirty to hire him. Another thirty when he completed the job. He followed her and at a certain point he told me that he was ready whenever I was, but I had to make sure she was alone. So I did. I didn’t think that all of this would…happen.”
Raffy had been waiting in the woods outside. He’d told them that after Gamble came and went, he’d come into the house to see what had happened and found Claudia dead. He was frustrated but it was as good a time as any to begin his game. He moved her and left the puzzle box.
Noah said, “After he killed Claudia, you owed him another thirty grand.”
Beau nodded. “But then Eve was killed, and I didn’t know what was going on. I had no chance to contact Gamble. The next thing I knew, you had his name. You knew his name. I was terrified. He called me on this ‘burner’ phone he’d given me to get in touch with him. He was so angry. He said he had nothing to do with Eve’s murder. He just wanted his money. I told him I couldn’t get it for him until the investigation was over. He wasn’t happy. He threatened to kill me! I had no idea what was happening or who was behind the murders of Eve and Trudy—or who was leaving the puzzle boxes. Then Raffy came to the hotel. He told me the truth. I had no idea he was Brooke’s husband. He looked so different. All those years he’d worked at the station, and I had no idea. He was with my daughter, for God’s sake. I had no idea he had been tracking us, worming his way into our lives, and following Claudia. That was when he told me that he knew about Archie Gamble—not that I’d hired him but that he’d been following Claudia. He’d seen him come into this house and leave covered in blood. He knew Gamble had killed her—he just didn’t know why.”
“You lied to us a few minutes ago,” Noah said. “It wasn’t Raffy who told you to call Gamble from the hotel, was it?”
“No, it wasn’t. It was my idea to call him. I was trying to buy time, distract Raffy.”
“What do you mean?” asked Josie.
“Raffy wanted to know who he was and whether or not I knew that Gamble had been the one to kill Claudia. I told him I knew Archie Gamble, but I didn’t say more than that. Raffy still didn’t put the pieces together. He couldn’t figure out how I knew Gamble or why Gamble had killed Claudia, but he wanted to know—badly. He felt one-upped by Gamble.”
Josie knew this to be true. When she and Noah questioned Raffy in the hospital, he had told them the same thing. “Gamble had ruined his plan.”
Beau shrugged. “Sort of. I guess. Anyway, yes, I lied before. Like I said, it was my idea to call Gamble. Raffy wanted me to leave the hotel with him. I didn’t know why at first, but I knew it couldn’t be good. I was sure he was going to kill me even though he seemed much more concerned about exposing all my secrets.”
“Lies,” Margot corrected.
