“Men don’t manipulate Hadley,” I say. “And, reminder, she was in Kosovo the night Isaac Haviland was killed, so she wasn’t here to hide my father, no matter what she felt about him.”
“She could have flown home without telling anyone.”
“Hadley flies halfway around the world, rents a car, drives to New Hampshire to ... what? Seduce my father?Andshe manages to fake a photo showing her surrounded by eyewitnesses who can attest to her being in Kosovo. I mean, did Photoshop exist in 2001?”
“Believe me, Photoshop existed long before 2001. The producers used it on my publicity stills all the time.”
“Well, that’s a pretty far-fetched scenario, even forScene of the Crime.”
“My show wasnotfar-fetched. And you’re pretty protective of Hadley.”
“What can I say? She’s my cool aunt. And she makes me feel special.”
“And she’s my cool friend, so I’d be glad to clear her name, but didn’t you tell me Hadley came home from Kosovo as soon as she heard what happened here, and stayed all summer? Even if she’d been out of the country on the night of the murder, Mark could have found her after she returned. Maybe she helped him get set up in a new life.” Freya returns Hadley’s name to the grid. “Who’s left?”
“Paul Burke,” I say.
“How well do you know him?”
“How well doyouknow him?” I ask.
“Are you asking if we dated?”
“It could be an interesting plot twist.”
“Paul and I have a professional relationship, and I suppose we’re friends, too,” Freya says. “But that’s all. I mean, I’ve known him most of my life. He handles my relatives, making sure they stay happy and out of my hair with about a thousand trusts he manages.Scene of the Crimewas good to me. The residuals roll in, and my money rolls out. You wouldn’t believe how much it costs to be rich. He’s helped me with some thorny issues over the years, too, especially my divorce. It was rough when those photos of my ex-husband hit the tabloids—they were pretty racy—and I had to be on set with him until we killed off the character. Paul was there, watching out for me. We used to spend a lot of time together before I met Duncan, especially after I leftScene of the Crime. So that’s my relationship with him. What’s yours?”
“He stepped in with my father being gone,” I say, adding his name to the grid.
“Motive?” Freya asks.
I add a question mark as I review the conversation I had with Paul earlier. I have a loyalty to him like I do with Hadley, but he was alsokeeping something from me when we talked. That thing—the loan to Mrs. Haviland—had more to do with the past than the present. “We keep asking if there could be a connection between Isaac Haviland’s murder and what happened to my mother,” I say.
“Two violent deaths in one tight-knit group,” Freya says.
I add Isaac Haviland’s name to the grid. “Paul lent Isaac fifty grand.”
“That’s not chump change,” Freya says.
“Paul wasn’t at Idlewood when my father stabbed Isaac Haviland. It’s in the police reports. He’d gone to a party his parents were throwing at Burkehaven, and there were witnesses who confirmed he was there the whole time. But the two properties are connected through the woods, and it only takes two or three minutes to run the path from Idlewood to Burkehaven. I do it most mornings.”
“So, questionable opportunity,” Freya says. “But if Paul killed Isaac Haviland and framed your father, why would your mother have covered for him?”
And why would Reid have told the police my father killed Isaac? It’s the same argument I made to Mrs. Haviland earlier.
“We could add Duncan to the mix, too,” Freya says. “He was the responding officer at the Haviland murder, and now he’s working this case years later.”
“I don’t see a motive,” I say.
“That’s big of you.”
Score one for Charlie Kilgore.
I smile at Freya, forgetting for an instant that these aren’t storylines, and this isn’t a TV episode. But that grief comes out of hiding all over again, nearly knocking me off my feet. I rest my palms on the stone wall and gasp for breath. “Wow,” I say, the smile gone.
“Let’s take a break,” Freya says. “Duncan has a whole team working on solving this case. We don’t have to do this.”
We do, though. Or I have to.
