Crenshaw smiled, displaying obscenely white dentures. “A name by any other name…”
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
The afternoon sun slanted through my lace curtains like an accusation, painting golden stripes across the murder board where Reverend Douglas Sutton’s name had been written. My dining room, which had hosted years of gentle tea conversations and genteel gossip, now thrummed with the electric energy of six people who’d just discovered they’d been played for fools by a man of God.
“Reverend Sutton,” Dash said. “Doogie was a nickname given to him at seminary, according to Crenshaw. Apparently he was something of a boy genius.”
“Boy sociopath is more like it,” Deidre said.
Walt’s pointer, which had directed us through so many theories, now tapped against the timeline with sharp, agitated beats. “That sanctimonious fraud has been conducting our investigation like an orchestra, pointing us toward everyone but himself.”
“To be fair,” I said. “Everyone in this case has been guilty of something. No wonder it was so easy for Reverend Sutton to throw suspicion at Reverend Pickering.”
“We should stop calling them reverends,” Dottie said. “I can think of a lot better names for the whole lot of them. Especially after what happened to Hank. And that poor Jane Sutherland. Did we ever find out why she was here?”
Bea cleared her throat and moved to the side bar. “She was here because of me. I’d finally gotten her to agree to meet with me.” Bea smoothed down a nonexistent wrinkle in her caftan. “I wish I hadn’t stopped smoking. Now would be an excellent time for a cigarette.”
“You could vape,” Walt said.
“I don’t know,” Bea said. “There’s something about smoking an actual cigarette. It lends itself to a certain panache. There’s an elegance to it.”
“You mean it looks cool,” Deidre said, rolling her eyes. “It also shortens your wind.”
“Which is why I no longer smoke,” Bea said shortly. “Who wants a sidecar?”
“I’ll take one,” Dottie said. “Hank’s kids are driving me crazy. Nervous Nellies if I’ve ever met them. It must be the generation. We were certainly made of stronger stuff.”
“Yeah, cigarettes and sidecars,” Walt said. “Bea, will you please get on with your story about Jane.”
“Oh, right,” she said, waving a hand dismissively. “Anyway, I can be rather convincing. And I told her that forty years had passed and all the original suspects were either too old or too dead for it to matter much. I even told her I’d come to her in Atlanta to hear what she’d uncovered during her investigation. I’m afraid I laid it on rather thick.” She sighed and squeezed a lemon into the shaker. “I mentioned justice and doing the right thing. And look where that got her. With a bullet in her brain.”
“It’s not your fault, Bea,” Dash said. “A man like Douglas Sutton has been playing chess for the last forty years. Don’t think he didn’t know exactly where she was all this time. He could have killed her at any moment.”
“Unfortunately I have to live with the fact it was the moment I brought her here,” she said. “And I feel guilty because I was supposed to meet with her in that very room. He killed her before I was able to meet with her, and what I felt was relief.”
Deidre went over and put a hand on Bea’s shoulder. “That’s a perfectly normal reaction, to be grateful you’re alive when the outcome could be so different. But don’t take the blame for something that lies completely at the feet of a madman.”
Bea nodded and looked down, trying to compose herself. I’d never seen Bea so emotional. She wasn’t the type to wear her heart on her sleeve. But in this moment, she looked every bit her age—and there was a frailty about her I’d never noticed before.
“He’ll pay for his crimes,” Walt said, nodding his head sharply
I stood at the head of the table, still in the silk dress I’d worn to Sea Pines, though it now felt wrinkled with revelations. The fabric whispered against my skin as I moved closer to study the board, trying to see what we’d missed all along.
“How did Sutton know everyone’s Achilles’ heel?” Dottie asked. “He was so young.”
“His office shared a heating vent with Pickering’s,” Dash explained. “Every private conversation, every confession—Sutton heard it all. Not through divine providence but through architectural coincidence and criminal intent.”
The room smelled of Earl Grey and betrayal, with undertones of Bea’s Chanel No. 5. Chowder sat at my feet in his book club attire—a hunter-green smoking jacket with a black velvet lapel—watching the proceedings with the patient dignity of a dog who’d seen enough human foolishness to no longer be surprised by it.
Dottie adjusted her purple cat-eye glasses, the late afternoon light catching the rhinestones and throwing tiny rainbows across the murder board. “Ruby cleaned both offices. She would have noticed discrepancies, found evidence. Not to speak ill of the dead, but she was an opportunist. She was looking for a way out. A way to support herself and her son. There’s no proof she was as enamored with Pickering as he was with her, but he was her ticket out of town. Poor woman signed her own death warrant with a mop and bucket.”
“Not to change the subject,” Deidre announced, checking her watch. “But it’s quarter to six. Book club is supposed to start in fifteen minutes, and I know Walt will start having heart palpitations if his schedule is disrupted.” She paused, looking around the room at our makeshift war council. “Though given the circumstances, perhaps we should postpone book club?”
“Postpone nothing,” Bea declared, shaking the tumbler aggressively before pouring it into her sugar-rimmed glass. “I figured out the killer within three chapters. That book was a real snoozefest. I motion we skip the book discussion entirely and focus on the real mystery.”
“I second that,” Dottie said immediately. “Hurry up with that sidecar, Bea. I’m dry as dust.”
