Gail Beaudry cocked her head, like a dog who’d heard a whistle. “Wendell’s—what?”
“Your brother is dead. He died this morning. In the last few hours.” She reached out and touched the woman’s arm. “I’m very sorry.”
The woman needed a moment for this to sink in. “How do you know? Is he here? Where did it happen? At home? Did he have a heart attack? Oh God, he probably had a heart attack. Is that what happened? Was it a stroke? That’s probably what happened. The stress of all this, of not knowing what’s happened to Ellie, oh no oh no . . .”
“It wasn’t a heart attack,” Wedmore said gently. “And it wasn’t a stroke. Your brother is a homicide victim.”
“He’s—he’s a what?”
“Someone killed him, Mrs. Beaudry.”
The woman put her hand to her chest and gasped. “Dear God. First Ellie disappears, and now Wendell is dead?” A flash seemed to go off in her head. “Does this mean—oh no—does this mean Ellie’s been murdered too?”
Wedmore hesitated. “In fact, we believe so, yes.”
Gail struggled to comprehend the news. That two members of her family were dead. She took several seconds to catch her breath. “So there’s someone roaming around out there, someone who’s killed Ellie and Wendell?’
Wedmore steeled herself. She was going to have to get to it sooner or later. “Whoever killed your brother, yes, that person is still out there.”
“I don’t . . . I don’t understand.”
“The facts we have so far suggest your brother and sister-in-law were killed by different people. In totally separate circumstances.”
“Different people?” Gail Beaudry was starting to put something together. “You said whoever killed Wendell is still out there, but you didn’t say that about Ellie. You have the man who killed Ellie?”
It struck Wedmore as natural that Gail Beaudry would assume a man had killed her sister-in-law. Most killers were men.
“Mrs. Beaudry,” Wedmore said, “we’re going to be charging Melissa with your sister-in-law’s death. The reason you can’t see her is because she’s in custody.”
The woman took no time at all to react to this. “That’s ridiculous. That’s not true. That’s absolutely preposterous.”
“I’m afraid not,” Rona Wedmore said.
“She’d never do such a thing. Never! Melissa and her mother were very close. I’ve never heard anything so outrageous. For heaven’s sake, whatever evidence you think you have, I’m sure there’s an explanation. Talk to the girl! She’ll set you straight.”
“Melissa has confessed,” Detective Wedmore said. “She came in here of her own accord.” Gail was speechless, so Wedmore added, “But she was here, in this building, when her father was killed. We don’t know what the connection is.”
“This is crazy, insane. I have to . . . I have to call someone.” Gail Beaudry fumbled in her purse for her phone. “And my husband, I’m going to have to call my husband.”
Wedmore excused herself. She had to go back and see Melissa again.
*
The girl howled like a wounded animal.
She threw her arms around Detective Wedmore, put her face on her chest and sobbed. “No, no, no.”
It wasn’t, strictly speaking, procedure to take murder suspects into one’s arms and comfort them, but Wedmore found herself doing just that. She placed her hands on the girl’s back and patted her ever so gently, thinking to herself what a pathetic gesture it was. Might as well be saying, “There, there.”
“Daddy,” she whimpered. “Daddy.”
“I have to ask you some questions, Melissa,” Wedmore said.
But the girl continued to weep, and it was ten minutes before Wedmore could get her back into the chair in the interrogation room. Instead of facing her from across the table, she brought her own chair around next to Melissa’s and allowed the girl to hold onto her hands.
“Someone killed him?” Melissa asked disbelievingly. “Are you sure?”
Wedmore thought back to what she’d seen. “Yes,” she said with certainty. “What haven’t you told me, Melissa? What aren’t you telling me?”
“I’ve told you everything, I swear.”
“Who would want to hurt your father?”
“No one. Nobody.”
“Did someone else help you, Melissa? Was there a third person involved in getting your mother, and the car, up to the lake?”
“No, I’m telling you, it was just me and Dad. And he didn’t even hurt Mom. That was me, that was all me.”
“What about the man who’s the father of your child?”
“Lester?”
“That’s right. Did he and your father get along? Is it possible they could have had some kind of argument?”
“My parents liked Lester,” Melissa said. “They were mad at me because I didn’t want to marry him.” She put her face in her hands again and wept.
Wedmore sighed, and got up.
This was the damnedest thing she’d dealt with in a while.
She was just leaving the interrogation room when her phone buzzed. It was a text, from Joy.
It read: “Got something. Call me.”
Twenty-two