“No, not purely. I really do care about getting justice for Abigail. But I’m not going to lie to you. If we’re going to work together, we’ve got to have complete honesty.”
“And what sort of fee do you charge for your services?”
“No fee. Maybe if I prove to the police you didn’t murder Danny, you could come into the shop and buy a book?”
Beverly sighed. “Fine. What do I do?”
I pulled over a metal chair and sat down facing her cell. "First things first, tell me everything you know about your daughter’s murder."
Chapter Fifteen
Beverly took a shaking breath. “Abigail and I had a fight that afternoon. I was on night shift all week so I was sleeping during the day. I heard the front door open about one p.m. I went up to see who it was, because of course Abigail was supposed to be at school, wasn’t she? Only she was in her room, skipping school, pulling on a slutty outfit and tucking a pack of my ciggies into her bra. I had it out with her, told her she needed to stay in school, that she shouldn’t be hanging around with those boys all the time, that they were bad news. She told me I couldn’t do nothing about it. I threatened to kick her out of the house. She stormed out, slammed the door. Typical teenage behavior, but I did worry about her. I knew she was out there getting drunk, getting high, letting those boys touch her…”
After another ragged breath, Beverly continued. “I went to work, arrived home around two a.m. The light in her bedroom was on. I went in, thought I could apologize for yelling, maybe see if she wanted some ice cream. Instead, I found her…” Beverly’s jaw clenched. “She was on the bed, half naked, shirt open across her chest. She had this pretty silk scarf I got her for her sixteenth birthday wrapped around her throat.”
My heart went out to her. Even after fifteen years, I could hear the pain in her voice. “What did you do after you saw her?”
“I called the police. I thought they took ages to get to the house, but that might’ve been because I was holding my daughter’s dead body in my arms. They said she hadn’t been sexually assaulted, but that she had had sex recently, within an hour of her death. That’s what made them think it was a boyfriend, and the fact that there was no break-in, so it must’ve been someone she trusted. They got DNA from the semen, but it was corrupted in the lab and so they couldn’t use it.
“I told the police about Danny and Jim, and they tracked them down right away. Only it turns out, they were already in a police cell. So they couldn’t have been at our house the time Abigail was killed, so the police say. They started pursuing another lead – another girl was garroted a couple of years earlier in a nearby village. Inspector Donahue thought the two crimes were linked. Only they didn’t get anywhere with that, so they dropped the case.”
“Did you know about all of Abigail’s boyfriends? Did she have others?”
“If she did, she never brought them home.” Beverly’s shoulders shook. “They weren’t those kind of boys. I saw Danny pick her up a couple of times, and another guy, Jim. That’s the only reason I knew about them. Abigail kept a diary – it didn’t say much, just scribbles about how much of a cow I was and a list of nicknames, maybe they were lovers. Danny was ‘Stallion’ and Jim was ‘Crow,’ but the police never tracked down the rest of the names.”
“What happened after that?”
“They couldn’t find any other suspects. The killer had been careful – no fingerprints at the scene, no footprints in the mud outside. Every lead they followed came to a dead end, and the media was hanging around every day, hounding them for a result. They camped out in front of my house, making me out as this uncaring, incompetent mother because I couldn’t control her! Finally, Inspector Donahue called it. He said he’d never stop trying to find Abigail’s killer, but I knew they’d given up.”
“Why did you come to Danny’s reading?”
“Because I was sick of seeing that smarmy git in the papers, getting rich off all the wrong he’s done.” She hugged herself. “I heard he was releasing a new book where the victims are strangled, just like Abigail. And in the same month as the anniversary of her death! That’s just cruel for cruel’s sake. I’d been complaining to his publisher, trying to drum up support online, writing letters to the papers, trying to get someone to pay attention to my story. To Abigail’s story. But no one cares because Danny is this hotshot bestseller. So I decided I would go along and give him a piece of my mind.”
“Fair enough. Do you have any idea how your scarf ended up in the hands of the murderer?”
“I threw it at that plonker publisher, Brian,” she muttered. “He was yelling at me and going on about how it was just business and there were more important things than the death of a made-up character. He said Danny would always do whatever Danny wanted and I couldn’t change his mind and neither could he.”
I remembered seeing her toss something at Brian.Did he pick up the scarf? I didn’t see. If he didn’t, anyone could have picked it up off the ground outside the shop.
“Thank you so much. It can’t have been easy to talk about this—”
“Find the bastard,” Beverly’s eyes flashed. “If the same person killed Danny that killed my girl, find him and make him pay.”
Chapter Sixteen
Ispent the evening at my flat mulling over everything Beverly said. Her pain was evident in every word she’d spoken. I felt absolutely certain that she hadn’t killed Danny. If she’d killed Danny, she would have owned it, as the justice her daughter never had.
The next morning I pushed open the door of the bookshop. My back stiffened as I recognized a familiar voice echoing through the empty rooms.
“I’ve been made aware of your financial situation, Mr. Earnshaw. You can’t afford to keep this place open even another month. Your friend may have deep pockets, but much of his funds are frozen in a Cayman bank account.”
What? How does Grey Lachlan know about the state of our finances? And what is he saying about Morrie’s money?
I peered around the hallway into the main room. Heathcliff stood behind his desk, his fists clenched at his sides. Grey luxuriated in my favorite velvet chair, his shiny wing-tipped shoes crossed on the top of the desk like he already owned the place.
“If you know so much about our finances, perhaps you’d like to enlighten me why a property developer is interested in a rickety house filled with dusty books.” Heathcliff was just barely holding back his wild rage.
“My dear Mr. Heathcliff, I’m not here to tell you how to run your business. I’m here torescueyou. I’ll cut you a cheque for this dump right now, and you could be free. I mean, look at it. There’s not a customer in sight!”
