I froze at her words, and she quickly wrapped the tape around my wrists. But she was agitated and in more of a hurry now, and I felt the tape give a little. If I could just squeeze one of my hands out, I could grab her gun . . .
Althea began to pace in front of us, waving the gun back and forth between me and Jane. “Andrew followed me to Jesse’s house one night and confronted me. I have to hand it to the little putz. He had some nerve. He told me he couldn’t prove it yet, but he knew I killed his father and he was never going to stop searching for evidence.”
“So you killed him,” I said.
“It would’ve been so perfect to kill him in Jesse’s house,” she said, “but in the middle of our argument, we heard someone scream outside and I ran out the back door. Andrew must’ve stayed inside, because I didn’t see him again until he checked into the hotel.”
I was the person who’d screamed, I thought in disgust. That was the night Andrew managed to snap a few pictures of Mac and me. So we had just missed Althea by seconds and it was indeed my scream that had alerted her, damn it.
“Why was he taking pictures?”
“He’s always got that stupid phone. He posts photos of every little detail of his life on social media. He followed me to Jesse’s house, but I got out of there before he could snap my picture. He was trying to build a case against me. And when he found out about Jesse, he figured I’d had something to do with his death. He followed me everywhere. He snuck into the memorial service and saw me talking to Jane. He checked her out and that’s when he made that reservation at the B-and-B. All in hopes of gathering evidence to prove I killed Jesse. If he could prove that, then he could try to connect it to Harold’s death. But he was too stupid to make it work.”
“Wait a minute,” Jane said. “Were you the one who canceled Andrew’s reservation at Hennessey House?”
“Why, yes, that was me,” she said smugly. “I was giving myself a little tour of your cozy little establishment and happened to take a peek at your guest list for the week. When I saw Andrew’s name, I had to do something, so I walked outside and down the street to make the call. I told your little helper that I was a doctor in the emergency room.”
“What good did it do to cancel his reservation?” Jane asked.
“It made me laugh,” she said. “It felt good to screw with his plans.”
She told us that she had showed up at Andrew’s hotel room the first night he was there and threatened to destroy him if he harassed her anymore. He threatened to call the police and unmask her, so she left. But she came back a few days later and cajoled him into letting her come inside so they could have a heart-to-heart talk.
“He believed me. What a sap. First thing I saw was his open briefcase. When he looked away for a moment to check a text message he’d received on that damn phone of his, I grabbed a syringe and shoved it into his neck.”
She didn’t even know what was in it, she said, but she knew Andrew specialized in the latest opiates and psychotropic drugs. It did the trick. He passed out.
She checked some of the other drugs in his bag and found some strong barbiturates. She injected those as well, and within minutes, he was dead from some horrible multidrug cocktail. She left the syringe in his arm, carefully wiping it clean, then typed out the suicide note. After that, she cleaned up any surfaces she might have touched, including the keyboard, and then snuck down the back stairway and exited through the alley.
Jane and I sat in stunned silence for a moment while she strutted in front of us like some kind of conceited rooster. I wondered why she didn’t simply use her gun to shoot us. Why bother with the duct tape? But in that moment I remembered what Mac had said about the deaths of Jesse and Andrew and the suspicious coma that Bob had slipped into. They were nuanced attacks, he’d said. She didn’t like guns, but apparently she would use them to get what she wanted out of her victims. So how did she plan to kill Jane and me? The question disturbed me a lot.
“Why did you kill Jesse?” I asked finally.
She stopped and considered me for a moment. “I honestly didn’t mean to. He was a sweet guy. And quite accomplished in bed.”
I glanced at Jane, who stared at Althea with absolute hatred. I’d never seen that look on Jane’s face before, but I didn’t blame her one bit. The woman belonged in hell.
But I was determined to keep her talking. “Did you really meet him in an exercise class?”
“Are you kidding?” she said, and laughed. “No, that was a good little lie. We met two years ago when he was trying to sell the necklace. He came into my shop.”
“But you sell clothing.”
“And vintage jewelry.”
Damn it! I’d seen the jewelry in her store and hadn’t even thought about connecting it to Jesse. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I’d been so suspicious of Althea from the beginning, but when I walked into her shop, I noticed the clothing. The antique jewelry was a mere sideline.