“And you killed him!” a woman screamed.
We both turned and saw Mrs. Sweet standing in the doorway. Edward’s housekeeper looked enraged enough to murder, and it didn’t help that she was holding a gun pointed directly at us.
“Mrs. Sweet,” Edward said nervously. “We were just talking about you.”
“Don’t you think I know? I was watching the security cameras and heard you say you were calling the police. People are stealing the silver downstairs, by the way.”
“That’s to be expected,” Edward said reasonably.
She shook her head in disgust. “People suck.”
This was not the happy-clappy housekeeper I’d met the other day. No, this woman wore a black taffeta party dress that showed off a mighty amount of cleavage. She looked like a Mob queen, large and in charge, ready to mow down her enemies with that semiautomatic weapon in her hand.
I heard heavy footsteps out in the hall and dared to hope it was Derek.
It wasn’t.
Grizzly stopped short of knocking over his mother. “Mom, I told you I’d handle this.”
Mom?
Mrs. Sweet was the mother of those two criminals? But it made perfect sense in a horrible, twisted way.
“You?” She smacked Grizzly’s arm and he cowered. “The last time you handled things, you got your brother killed.”
He hung his head in shame. “Sorry, Mom.”
“Worthless brat.” She looked over at me and shrugged. “But what’re ya gonna do? We love our kids, right?” She rubbed Grizzly’s arm where she’d just punched him and his lower lip trembled.
Was he going to cry? Good grief, the man could crush her with one fist. But mothers held strange and mighty power over their kids.
“Mrs. Sweet,” Edward said, his tone all saccharine and syrupy. “Why don’t we go to the kitchen and talk about this over a nice cup of hot cocoa?”
She snorted. “Why don’t you just stick a sock in it, Eddie? You and I have nothing to talk about, and there’s no way you’re calling the police.”
“Really, Mrs. Sweet,” he began.
“Enough with the Mrs. Sweet crap. We both know I’m not married and I’m not sweet.” She glanced at me. “He likes to pretend I’m a servant and not his sister. It’s always amused me enough that I played along. Until now.”
They were brother and sister?
Edward gulped, but didn’t speak. It looked like this household was even sicker and more twisted than I’d thought. And if she’d heard us talking about the police, then she really had been monitoring the security cameras.
Since she was pointing a gun at us, I didn’t have a whole lot of choice here. But I wasn’t going to go down without a fight, and I wanted to find out exactly what had happened.
“Were you friends with Vera?” I asked the housekeeper.
She nodded. “Oh yeah, she was a good girl. She brought flowers every day, and not just for the house. She brought them for me, too. I guess she wormed her way into my little heart and I ended up trusting too much. I confessed to her that Grizzly had taken the book and was going to sell it to add to our little nest egg.” She cast a damning look at Edward. “I’m pretty sure this genius here will leave all his money to a cat hospital or something. And no way am I living on skid row in my golden years.”
I glanced at Edward and figured his long-suffering housekeeper might be right. He did seem fond of his Siamese cat.
“My Prinny has been loyal to me,” Edward insisted, then sniffed. “Unlike you, Mrs. Sweet.”
“I told you to drop the act, brother dear.”
I was still shocked that Edward made his sister work as his housekeeper. Was she working off some loan or something? No wonder she was so filled with anger!
Ignoring Edward, Mrs. Sweet—or whatever her name was—continued. “Vera always had a soft spot for my boys, and she wangled her way into Luggy’s heart. He had a gentle one.” She sniffled and patted her chest in fond recollection. “Not much of a brain, though. Anyway, Vera convinced Luggy to give her the book because she wanted to get back at Edward for dumping her. She promised Luggy she would finagle another book for us to sell, but, obviously, she never got around to it.”
Luggy? I figured she was referring to her son Lug Nut, of blessed memory.
“When I found out the book was gone,” Mrs. Sweet said, her voice growing colder, “I was angry. And when I get angry, things go downhill.”
“Did Luggy, er, Larry kill Vera?” I asked.
“Oh no, miss. You don’t know my boy, but let me assure you he could never harm a fly. He might scare a fly, but . . . no, it wasn’t him.”
Actually, I did know her boy, and he was a vicious slug. But I let that go for now.