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“No, I’m fine,” I said, my voice equally cool. “It’s so obvious, Melanie — you wanted a job here so you’d have easy access to Victoria’s studio and could put that atropine in the creamer. You knew Jeffrey would ask for it, and you knew he’d die quickly, before anyone could even try to intervene. But I’m curious why you would go to those lengths. Did you want a bigger cut of the money?”
She was shaking her head, still trying to look calm, but I could tell from the flash of panic in her eyes that I’d latched on to at least part of the truth. “You’re really talking crazy, Selena. Do you want me to call Calvin? It sounds like you need to lie down. Maybe all the fuss around Archie and Victoria’s wedding has been stressing you out too much.”
Oh, I was stressed, all right…but not because of the wedding. No, it was more that I’d really been hoping Melanie would drop the ball somewhere, would blurt out something that would be the one convincing piece of evidence that would tell Henry it was time to swoop in and slap the cuffs on her.
I smiled, doing my best to show that her little psychological jabs wouldn’t make a bit of difference. “And you knew about Sara Tilden and NancyAnne Nielsen, didn’t you? That’s why you wanted to make sure you used a poison that only someone in the healthcare field would have access to. I’m curious how you were able to get your hands on some, though.”
Melanie’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know either of those women. I don’t know — ”
She never got to finish the sentence, because Henry Lewis and one of his deputies burst into the store right then and made a beeline for her. I had to give her credit for fast reflexes — she took one look at them and knocked over a stand filled with postcards and pocket calendars, then bolted for the back entrance.
Luckily, though, Henry was able to dodge the postcard avalanche and caught hold of one of her wrists, yanking her back toward him. As she let out a little cry of pain, he pulled off the handcuffs hanging from his belt and slapped them on her.
“Melanie Knowles,” he said, “I’m arresting you for the murder of Jeffrey Sellers.”
17
Honor Among Thieves
“But how did you know?” I asked Henry, after his deputy had carted Melanie away to get booked at the police station.
The police chief was looking pretty pleased with himself, and I couldn’t really blame him. “It was when you mentioned Sara Tilden and NancyAnne Nielsen being in the healthcare industry. I ran a quick check on Melanie Knowles and discovered that she’s actually an RN who works at Chandler Regional Medical Center.”
“She’s a nurse?” I said, knowing how shocked I sounded. “But she told me she worked in retail.”
Henry’s gray eyes glinted at me, amused. “You’re a trusting soul, Selena.”
I hated the implication that I was some kind of naïve idiot who couldn’t even be bothered to check a prospective employee’s references. “I called the places she worked,” I told him. “They confirmed her employment.”
“They were probably friends of hers that she roped into pretending to be former bosses,” he said. “Did you actually cross-reference those numbers against the numbers listed for those stores online?”
Oops. That was something I definitely hadn’t done…mostly because it would never have occurred to me to take checking Melanie’s references to such lengths.
“It’s okay,” he went on, while I stood there in flummoxed silence. “Most people don’t go to that much trouble when checking references. On the surface, Ms. Knowles probably looked perfect to you.”
That was for sure. Should I be kicking myself for thinking no one could have been so exactly tailored to the kind of person I needed to take over at the store?
Well, I’d put aside the self-recriminations until later. Right now, I had more important things to worry about.
“So…what happens to Victoria now?” I asked.
Henry gave me a very small smile. “Oh, I’m going to go to the station and see if Ms. Knowles has anything she wants to tell me. Probably, she’ll clam up, but I’ll still see the D.A. and let him know we have a suspect in custody and that all the charges against Victoria Parrish need to be dropped. He might push back a little, but I’m pretty sure he’ll let it go, since he’ll have a much more viable prospect for prosecution in Melanie Knowles.”
Those words couldn’t make me relax all the way, and yet I had to believe Henry knew what he was talking about, and that now all any of us could do was wait to get the all-clear from the district attorney.
In the meantime, though, I needed to get back to Victoria’s house.
I was going to have quite the story to tell.
Hazel and Victoria — and Archie, too, since he’d returned from his trip to the tailor during my absence — listened to me, wide-eyed, as I explained why I’d taken off like that after delivering the plunger.
“You figured it out just by looking at a box of hair dye?” Archie inquired, sounding almost but not quite skeptical.
Since I’d been expecting that kind of response from him, I only shrugged. “Women’s intuition,” I said. “Well, that and realizing the woman we’d been looking for was blonde, but there weren’t any newcomers in Globe who fit that description. It made total sense to me that Melanie had been coloring her hair to throw people off the scent…but was also using a demi-permanent color that washed out easily so it would be easier to go back to blonde when she was done with all this. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have needed to re-color it again so soon.”
And that was probably why she’d also chosen a shade that would fade easily. If she’d gone for bright red or dark brown, it would have been a lot harder to go back to her original color once she was done playing shop assistant.
“I’m sure we’ll hear more of the story after Henry questions her,” Hazel said. “But for now, it looks like you’re off the hook, Victoria.”
