The Marsh Madness

“Upstairs? Why would I go upstairs? All right, I did touch the statue. I couldn’t resist it.”


Knowing Kev, he’d given a bit of thought to liberating it from Summerlea.

He decided this would be a good time to get on his high horse. “I didn’t see a ‘DO NOT TOUCH’ sign, Jordie. That little thing was just sitting there on this little table. I’m surprised you didn’t touch it yourself.”

“Then the cops would have found both our fingerprints on the murder weapon, wouldn’t they?”

“That was the murder weapon?”

“That’s right.”

“Maybe it would have been better if I had taken it, Jordie.”

I tried not to sigh. It was getting to be a habit. And Kev is, in case you haven’t worked this out, like the world’s largest and most dangerous child. We all love him, but there’s always a lot of sighing when he’s in the vicinity.

Still, there was a big difference between Kev being typical Kev and Kev committing murder. And this thing with Kev’s prints on a murder weapon was really bizarre. If the police were telling the truth about the weapon. A big “if.”

“Wait a minute. Did anyone see you?”

“Nobody. Well, that butler, What’s-his-name.”

Ah. That probably explained why the statue wasn’t residing in Kev’s quarters above the garage as we spoke.

“Thomas. They said his name was Thomas. And then what happened?”

“He just touched his nose like this.” Kev tapped the side of his nose.

“Uh-huh. Well, there’s a few other things you need to know.”

“Like what?”

“Well, there was no butler.”

“Yes, there was.”

“Apparently, there was not. No butler, but Chadwick had a housekeeper.”

“But we saw that Thomas guy.”

“We saw someone who wanted us to think he was the butler. And someone else who said she was Lisa Troy.”

Kev nodded. “Pretty lady. Real nice too.”

“Except that she wasn’t Chadwick’s assistant. We don’t know who she really is, but she wasn’t who she said she was.”

A pained expression of confusion clouded Kevin’s face. “I don’t get it, Jordie.”

“Join the club.”

“Why would they fake it?”

“A really good question. I wish I knew the answer.”

“They were nice to us. They invited us. They served us that awesome lunch.”

“Yes.”

“But they weren’t who they said they were.”

It always takes a while for things to sink in with Kev.

He scratched his nose. “And we don’t know why.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, Chadwick must have known who they were.”

“If they were conning us, then they must have found a way to con him too.”

“Why? Right, you don’t know. But, Jordie . . .”

“Yes, Kev.” I needed him to get the still out of there, but with Kev, you have to wait until he gets his head around things.

“Well . . .”

“Out with it, Kev.”

“Anyways, was Chadwick really Chadwick?”

“Of course, he was—”

I felt a wave of dizziness as the significance of Kev’s question hit me. I grabbed a tree trunk to steady myself. It’s bad when Kev introduces the one piece of information you need to make sense of what’s going on.

“Jordie? Are you all right?”

Of course I wasn’t. Why hadn’t I thought to ask that most important question?

Was Chadwick really Chadwick?





CHAPTER EIGHT