Greer nodded.
“So who are you?”
“Reid’s sister.”
“What was he being blackmailed for?” the sheriff asked.
Greer’s eyes widened. “I don’t know. He and Rachel were a couple, but that doesn’t seem like blackmail material.”
“Did he ever have a big fat emerald ring?”
“Not that I know of,” Greer said. “Was it stolen?” She looked at Kate. “Rachel may have done it. She—”
There was a loud knock on the door, the kind that said that if no one answered immediately, the door would be knocked down.
Jack got there first and opened it. Randal and the sheriff were behind him. Men with a stretcher were outside. “Let’s go around the side.” Jack led and the others followed.
When the women were alone, Sara looked at Greer. “I want to go to Alish, but I don’t want your brother there. He’s too protective of her. It’s the ‘old people are fragile’ syndrome.”
At the mention of her grandmother, tears came to Greer’s eyes. “I want to go with you,” she whispered.
Sara was seeing this as a writer, playing it forward in her mind. “That won’t work. You’re dead.”
“Twice,” Kate said. “You’re dead as Rachel and dead as Greer. You don’t exist in any form.”
Greer grimaced. “This isn’t what I thought would happen. I thought the murderer would be revealed, then Rachel and I would stand together. We’d astonish everyone. It would be a good laugh.”
“In this fantasy of yours, who was the murderer?” Sara asked.
“Barbara. She would put on the most wonderful performance as she was taken away in handcuffs. Flashes would be going off.”
“Billy could do that,” Kate said.
“They’d go together.” Greer stood up. “Remember how the two of them used to do scenes from movies? My favorite was the one where Barbara wore pants and pulled her hair back to be a man. Then she killed Billy. ‘You have stabbed me in my heart,’ he said. ‘But I go to Valhalla and I will wait for you there.’” Greer put the back of her hand to her forehead, and fell onto the couch.
Sara and Kate were staring at her.
“I don’t remember seeing that,” Kate said.
“You were probably in bed.” Greer was looking at their expressions. “What did I say?”
“Why Valhalla?” Sara asked.
“I don’t know. Back then, I thought he was saying vanilla. Years later I saw a Viking movie, heard the term, and realized that’s what Billy had been saying. He was dying and going to Valhalla heaven. You two are looking at me very oddly.”
“It’s just that we’ve been trying to find an old movie about a murder and we haven’t found it yet,” Sara said.
“I assume Billy would know,” Greer said.
Sara looked at Kate. “But he hasn’t told us. How interesting. Mr. Tennis Champion with a violent temper when someone crosses him didn’t tell us about playacting a movie death scene.”
“Especially a scene that sounds just like what we asked him to find,” Kate said.
Sara gave a little smile. “I think we should ask Billy about what he hasn’t told us.”
“I agree,” Kate said.
They heard voices coming from down the hall. It looked like the men had finished their task of removal. There’d been no sirens so maybe the death was to be kept a secret—for a while anyway. Kate and Sara braced themselves for what they knew was coming. They were going to be bawled out by the sheriff. He was fed up with murders in his town.
