A Reunion to Die For (A Joshua Thornton Mystery) (27 page)

Thinking that her husband had grown up, Phyllis chose to stay.

Rex got what he’d always wanted.

Here, his book could have ended, but it didn’t. He went on to tell the price he paid for killing Dan Boyd.

Rex did not have the heart of a killer.

Not a day went by that Dan Boyd’s killer did not think about his victim. He tried to drown with alcohol the image of his victim gazing up at him from his dental chair, asking him why he was doing this to him, and the sound of him drowning in his own blood.

His guilt over the murder he committed to save his marriage ruined it. In the end, Rex Rollins lost his family and his soul—he lost it all.

The fire in the fireplace was out when Joshua finished reading the last fragmented sentence of Rex’s masterpiece. He turned the page and rested his head back on the headrest of his wing-backed chair. He observed the time on the mantel clock. The next day was Thanksgiving, and the courthouse would be closed. He would have to wait another thirty hours to get the warrant for Margo Sweeney Boyd Connor’s arrest.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Joshua Thornton waited until he had all his ducks lined up before sending Sheriff Curt Sawyer and his deputies out to Margo Connor’s real estate office to arrest her for three counts of murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the deaths of Grace Henderson, Rex Rollins, and Bella Polk.

As he expected, Christine Watson had her client playing the mother in mourning to the hilt to the media in front of the courthouse after she was arraigned. She was dressed all in black with her bosom concealed behind a high collar. A wide-brimmed black hat adorned her head.

Joshua was cast in the role of the heartless politician.

She continued to play the victim when they met in the conference room in his office for what is called a discovery meeting, in which he told the defense attorney, as ordered by law, what he had against her client.

Christine scoffed at the two witnesses who were going to testify that Margo paid them, one with real estate and the other with jewelry, to eliminate the victims. It was their word against hers. “My client is a pillar of the community. She herself has supplied employment for hundreds of people. She is a generous contributor to local charities. Who is going to believe that my client is capable of, or would have any reason to arrange, the murder of three people?”

“Including her daughter’s teenaged rival,” Joshua said distaste.

“If anyone arranged for that girl to kill that cheerleader it was Heather, and she is dead.”

Margo didn’t flinch while her lawyer tossed up her dead daughter as a murder suspect to save Margo’s skin.

“We checked with your client’s secretary,” he told Christine. “Nicki Samuels did show up one afternoon with Heather. When your client came in that same morning, she was carrying a jewelry box. One day after Grace was killed; your client filed a report with the police and insurance company that her ruby ring was stolen.”

“Heather stole the ring and gave it to Nicki for killing Grace.”

“Why did your client show her the ring?”

“Because they asked to see it. She didn’t know what Heather was thinking,” Christine countered. “Face it, Josh, you can’t prove that a word of what Nicki says is true. They were fighting over this boy. Margo hardly knew him. Why would she get involved?”

“Because her daughter wanted something, and Grace stood in her way. Your client taught her that if something gets in your way, you get rid of it, even if that something is your husband.”

“Do you mean Rollins’ novel? Let me remind you of the difference between fiction and non-fiction,” Christine said with a smug smile. “By the time we are through in court, if you can even get that pack of vengeful lies admitted into evidence, the jury will surely know the difference.”

“Oh, I intend to prove that every word of it is true. Phyllis Rollins is ready to testify that she accepted your client’s extremely generous offer for her parents’ farm.”

Christine countered, “And years later my client made back that investment with a housing development she built on that land.”

Joshua said, “Your client also sold Rex Rollins a house for twenty thousand less than your client paid for it. Rex claims in his book that it was payment for killing Margo’s first husband.” He gestured toward Margo. “That is the motive for your client hiring Herb Duncan to kill Rex. If the book is a lie, why would Margo hire Herb to kill Rollins in exchange for the same deal: buying his property for well over its worth and selling him a new house in her latest development for a fraction of its value?”

He slapped the forensics accountant’s report onto the center of the conference table. “Our accounting people went back twenty years, before the time of Boyd’s murder. The only times your client ever lost money on a deal was when her husband died and when Rollins was murdered.”

Christine was unfazed. “Two mistakes, in all her years of doing business, are pretty damn good. Donald Trump has made more mistakes than that in his career.”

“I knew you were going to say that.”

Christine stood up. “Then I will be awaiting your dismissal of the charges.”

“That’s why I checked out every word of Rollins’ book . . . and I found his mistake.”

“His mistake? That proves the whole book is a lie.” She slung her purse over her shoulder.

“Pros make sure their victim is dead before they leave the scene.” Joshua turned to Margo. “Your husband was not dead when Rex left. That gave him the opportunity to tell us exactly who had him killed.”

Christine stopped and looked at him.

Margo’s expression of grief gave way to one of curiosity.

Her attorney lowered herself back into her chair. After regaining her composure at the announcement, Christine objected, “If Boyd left a dying message, why are you telling us this now? Why wasn’t Margo arrested when her first husband was killed?”

“Because no one bothered checking to see if he left a message.”

Joshua took the case file for Dan Boyd’s murder out of his briefcase. He laid out the crime-scene pictures on the conference table. The top picture was of Dan Boyd’s body lying behind the receptionist’s desk. The corner of the keyboard on the desk was in plain sight. There were also photographs of Margo’s wedding picture sitting on his desk. It was bloodstained. There were other pictures of blood splatters on the walls and a trail of blood on the floor and carpet.

“This murder happened in 1988. Forensics has come a long way since that time. The detective in charge of the case thought that your husband was trying to go for help when he died behind the receptionist’s desk. Rex said in his book that he was so anxious to get out of there that he didn’t think that your husband might be alive, let alone be able to say who did it.”

“Did he write a note?” Christine wanted to know.

“No,” Joshua answered. “Rex said in his book that he called to cancel his appointment, which was the last one of the day. Boyd was getting ready to leave. He had locked up his desk in which he kept prescription pads, thus, locking up his pens and pencils.”

Joshua paused to see how what he was telling them was affecting them. Silent, Margo stared at him.

“Your husband,” he said, “had a very short time to live and he was not going to waste it getting to the hospital to die without saying who was responsible for his murder.”

“Rollins killed him,” Christine argued. “He said so in his book. Why would he say my client did it if she was giving a dinner party at home?”

“Because Rex told him. He said so right in his book. It was the only conversation they had. Boyd asked him why he was killing him, and Rex said ‘your wife told me I had to do it.’ ”

Christine stated what they knew was not true, but salable to a jury. “Rollins was lying when he told Boyd that.”

Joshua shrugged and laughed. “Why would he? Rex was not a drug user. Drugs were stolen. He was never arrested for dealing. He was not known in the drug circles. He was a drinker. He had no beef with the victim, nor had he ever met Boyd.”

He pointed to Christine’s client while he told the lawyer, “Margo had a beef with the victim. Rex says in his book that she told him her motive for wanting her husband dead. He was going back to his wife and taking his money with him. Eve Boyd is available to testify that that was true. So—” He held up a finger to stop her before she could say it. “—when you try to make a case for Rex meaning Boyd’s first wife, she had no motive. We have witnesses to testify that Boyd had told them that he was leaving Margo.”

Putting on a face of determination, Christine gestured for him to continue. “Humor me! How did Boyd leave this dying message when he could not talk and had no pen or paper?”

Joshua gestured to the pictures of the crime scene. “Well, at first, I thought, like the original detective investigating his murder, that the blood splatters in the dental office were from the struggle. But then, using today’s knowledge and technology, we had an expert look at these pictures and got a different story, which Rex’s book confirmed.”

Joshua said, “The blood-splatter expert took up the story from when Rex left the scene after slicing through your husband’s throat in the examination room.”

While Joshua told the story, he pointed to each picture in the series. “Boyd got up from the chair and went into his office. If you look at the pictures, you see that the blood is shooting out, but not splashed against the walls, as it would be if there was a struggle going on at the time. He was alone and moving. In the office, he went to his desk.”

The prosecutor held up the picture of his desk. “Notice on the desk he has two pictures. One is of his son. There is no blood on that. The other is a wedding picture of his bride. Notice all the bloody fingerprints on that.”

“He picked up the picture of his wife while he was dying.” Christine shrugged. “How many soldiers on the battlefield clutch the picture of their wives to their chests as they die?”

“He knew you were going to say that!” Joshua smiled at Margo. “I realized what was going through your husband’s mind when I found out that he was an Agatha Christie fan. I had seen the pictures and couldn’t make any sense of it. Then Eve told me that he had all of Christie’s books. So I asked myself, ‘What would an Agatha Christie fan do in that circumstance?’ Boyd thought, ‘Get his bloody fingerprints all over her picture.’ But then, you have to remember that this case would go before today’s courts.” He gestured to the defense attorney. “You’d say his putting his fingerprints on her picture was an act of love. So he had to make his message crystal clear.”

More in an attempt to intimidate him than out of disgust, Christine rolled her eyes while Joshua, amused by her annoyance, reached down under the table and held up a bloodstained keyboard wrapped in a plastic bag.

Her face fell. “He sent an e-mail?”

“This was before the Internet,” Joshua said.

“He typed it out on the computer?” she scoffed. “If he did that then they would have arrested my client before now.”

“The computer wasn’t on.” He fingered the keyboard. “Luckily for us, every fingerprint he left on this keyboard, and each one was blood covered, was recorded at the time. However, it was not recorded the way he meant for it to read. Now—”

For the first time since the interview began, Margo spoke, “Dan didn’t know anything about computers.”

“But he could type.” In response to their looks of confusion, Joshua continued, “He typed out the name of his killer on the keyboard.”

Christine appeared to become curious. “How would it be read if the computer was not on?”

“Bloody fingerprints.” He explained, “Each one of his fingerprints, as the forensics report says, was blood covered, which means he touched the keyboard after Rex sliced his throat open and before his death.”

Joshua presented the report. “There was blood on the edges of the keyboard and some drops. What we are interested in are the keys upon which there are actual fingerprints and, since the report listed those keys alphabetically, then his message was not interpreted until I read this report knowing that he was a fan of whodunits.”

He laid a yellow legal pad on the table and flipped the top page to reveal a row of letters printed across the top of the page. The two women sat at attention to see what he had discovered.

“According to the report there were two partial thumbprints on the space bar.” He placed two upward pointing arrows in the middle of the page below the row of letters.

“There was also a right-hand fingerprint from the little finger and a left-hand fingerprint on the one key. Now the upper case one is the exclamation point. So, let’s say that he ended his sentence with the exclamation point.” He placed the punctuation at the end of the blank sentence.

“That leaves us with the letters he typed out.” He indicated the row of letters at the top of the page: A, D, G, I, M, O, R, T.

Joshua indicated each letter while he spoke. “Now, we know that he typed out three words because of the two space bars. We can’t say he was talking about his first wife because there is no E or V. He didn’t say Rex did it because there is no E or X. However, we have every letter we need for Margo.” He spelled out Margo’s name before the upward facing arrow. “That leaves us with D, I, and T. There are two fingerprints right on top of each other on the D and the I keys. That means he used them twice. There are two D’s in did and the I is used the second time and then we have the T.”

Joshua held up the legal pad for the two women to read Dan Boyd’s dying message: “Margo did it!”

Christine looked at her client who gave her a silent order in the form of a glare to fix the situation.

“You still have an uphill battle, Josh,” the defense attorney told her adversary. “My client is a pillar of the community, and Herb Duncan has been in and out of trouble since he was born.”

Joshua said, “He’s willing to testify against your client. The book will be entered into evidence because that is what he committed the murders for.”

“He committed two murders.”

“On your client’s orders.”

“Conspiracy. No jail time.” Christine snickered, “As for the cheerleader murder, drop that. My client will play the grieving mother to the hilt, and I’ll make sure the jury knows that your witness killed her daughter. The jury, even if they believe her story, will refuse to convict. Don’t waste your time.”

Joshua gave her a nod to acknowledge that she was right. "Okay, I’ll give you that.”

“Immunity?”

He said, “On Grace’s murder, if your client cooperates fully in prosecuting Nicki Samuels.”

“And for her role in Rollins’ and the old lady’s murders?”

Joshua chuckled. “Not total immunity.”

“Immunity from murder. My client is the only one who can tie this whole thing together. Face it. Between her public image as a successful businesswoman and the appearance that she is a grieving mother, and also the fact that she has never so much as laid a hand on any of these people, no jury will ever believe that she is capable of killing anyone.” Christine threw him what she painted as a gift. “Conspiracy and a sentence recommendation for parole. No jail time.”

“She’ll have to plead guilty to the conspiracy charges and tell the court everything,” he ordered.

“Only if you give her immunity from murder,” Christine threw in.

Joshua sat back and gave Margo a glare. “Your client will not be charged for murder in Hancock County.”

The women smiled triumphantly at each other.

At her sentencing hearing, Margo told the judge how, in her youth, when she was too young to know any better, she hired Rex Rollins to kill her husband. Then, years later, when he was going to use her mistake against her, she hired Herb Duncan to kill Rex and then his landlady.

Pleased with the deal that kept her client out of jail for the three murders she arranged, Christine Watson stood at her side at the defense table.

There were no smiles in the rows of seats behind the defense attorney. Eve Boyd sobbed while she watched her husband’s second wife tell about having her husband killed. Greg Boyd held her hand while trying to control his outrage that after years of seeking justice, finally, his father’s murder was solved, only for the killer to walk away.

Equally unhappy to see injustice done in the form of a deal, Dr. Tad MacMillan, The Review news editor Jan Martin, and Joshua’s children watched the county prosecutor pay for what some members of the media called the deal of the century.

The Vindicator’s editorial declared that Hancock County’s prosecutor had blown it. How can any elected official with an ounce of moral fiber make such deals?

“It was a mistake,” Margo finished her statement for the judge with the remorse of a woman who bought the wrong shade of nail polish.

With her statement completed, it was time for the judge to hand down his sentence. Instead, he had a few questions for the defendant. “Could you please tell the Court again why you conspired to have Rex Rollins killed so many years after he killed your husband for you?”

“Rex told me that he saw Gail Reynolds on television talking about a book she was writing about Tricia Wheeler’s murder,” Margo said. “He thought that if he wrote about killing Dan, he would get rich and famous.”

Joshua showed the copy of the manuscript to Christine and Margo before taking it up to the judge’s bench and handing it to him.

The judge flipped through a few of the pages. “Is this the book?”

“Yes, that’s the book,” Margo answered.

“Did Rex Rollins let you read it?”