“But he didn’t?”
“No, but that wasn’t the worst part.” Kelly audibly swallowed. “He had them put all the funds in accounts under the name he was using at the time. Which wasn’t Lincoln Delamont, by the way. He used another identity when he swindled my grandparents.” Kelly snorted. “He had a story all prepared—told them he’d legally established a new identity and wanted to keep it, rather than revert to his birth name. Due to business reasons or something. Of course, it was all part of his con, but my grandparents didn’t care what name he used as long as they had their ‘David’ back.”
“He got control of the inheritance in another name? Clever,” I said.
“Yes, then left again as soon as he had the money. According to the private investigator I later hired, Lincoln then transferred everything to new accounts under his real name and fled town. My grandparents were devastated.”
“I’m sure they were,” Ellen said. “He never contacted them again?”
“No, he just vanished.”
“But he was living under his real name, I mean, as Lincoln Delamont, at that point?” I asked.
“Yes, but I didn’t know that for some time. Not until after …” Kelly choked on the last word. She cleared her throat before continuing. “After my grandparents died. They were so broken by the second loss of their grandson, who they stillbelieved was the real deal, that their health declined rapidly. They died within months of each other, only a year after Lincoln absconded with the family fortune.”
Ellen made a sympathetic noise. “Leaving you alone.”
“Broke and alone.” Kelly’s knuckles whitened as her grip on the pistol tightened. “Some cousins took me in and raised me until I was eighteen. I handled everything on my own after that. College, my track career, everything.”
“That just proves your strength,” Ellen said.
Kelly’s arm wavered. She lowered the gun slightly. “But it shouldn’t have been that way. Lincoln Delamont stole my life. Not just my money, but my grandparents, and even the memory of my real brother. He desecrated that, with his selfish, criminal actions.”
A voice, amplified by a bullhorn, rang out just outside the carriage house. “This is the police. Release the hostages safely, and we promise we can discuss your situation.”
Kelly stiffened and pointed the gun back at Ellen. “How did they get here so fast?”
Ellen replied without hesitation. “I suppose they suspected someone from the party had committed the murder and were keeping surveillance on this week’s events at Chapters.”
I glanced over at her, amazed by her calm demeanor in the face of an unstable killer. But then again, perhaps she’d been caught in just such a situation—or worse—before.
“You said you didn’t plan to kill Lincoln,” I said, hoping to pull Kelly’s focus off Ellen. “But I assume you did know he’d be here this week?”
“Of course. I’d been tracking him for some time. Ever since that private detective I hired discovered that Lincoln Delamonttruly was the man who’d posed as my brother years ago. Anyway, when I found out that Lincoln intended to attend the Tey celebration at Chapters—I mean, the idiot put it on his Facebook page, so it was out there for everyone to see—I convinced Todd to register us as well.” Kelly tossed her head, loosening one of the braids. It flapped down onto her shoulder like a whip. “I wasn’t planning to hurt him, of course. I just wanted to confront him, once and for all. To let him know he’d never fooled me.”
“What happened?” I asked, as the request from the police boomed out again.
Kelly’s lips trembled. Widening her stance, she kept the gun raised. “He didn’t recognize me at first. Not until I talked to him at that welcome night cocktail party. Then he realized who I was, I guess. Or at least had some suspicion, even though he hadn’t seen me since I was a child. The next evening, after dinner, he said he wanted to talk to me in private.” Tears welled in Kelly’s eyes. “He demanded that I meet him. I was scared, to be honest. He seemed threatening. But I wanted to confront him, so I agreed to meet him at the carriage house during the party.”
“But you took a knife for protection.” Ellen did not frame this as a question.
Kelly bobbed her head. “I grabbed one from the kitchen and hid it in a pocket sewn inside my cloak. I guess Lincoln stole that key that went missing, because when I met him, the carriage house door was already unlocked and standing ajar.”
The pieces fell in place in my mind. “You argued with him. That’s what Tara Delamont overhead, before you both headed into the carriage house to continue your conversation. But then you stayed inside when he went out to talk with his wife.”
“Yes. Lincoln waited until she was gone, then came back into the carriage house to continue talking with me.”
“Did he attack you?” Ellen asked gently. “Because that would be a mitigating factor, you know. Self-defense.”
“Not at first. But when I threatened to expose his sordid past, to strip him of his ill-gotten fortune, he lunged at me.” Kelly lowered the gun. “I didn’t mean to kill him, but we struggled, and he was trying to grab the knife, and I just …”
“Defended yourself,” Ellen said firmly.
Kelly bowed her head and mutely nodded.
“But you should have just told the police all this right away,” I blurted out.
“How could I?” Kelly lifted her head. Her face, ravaged by grief and guilt, appeared aged by at least twenty years. “I had to consider Todd’s business interests. A scandal like that … well, I didn’t know what it would do to him. And I was scared. How could I trust that anyone would believe me, when they hadn’t believed me in the past? All those years ago, when I’d told them that Lincoln wasn’t David, when I’d sworn he was an impostor, no one believed me. Not my friends, not my extended family. Not even my grandparents.”
