GUNNED (3 page)

“I can’t believe my father is dead. Again.” Millie dabbed at her eyes. “I never got to know him and now I never will.”

Sam and I exchanged looks.

“Millie, you do realize this is all a mistake,” I said. “You have a mother. Judith Chapman. Remember her? And a grandmother.”

“Then why does that woman think I’m her daughter? Huh? Why?”

“Yeah, Alex, why?” My sister wasn’t helping.

John, with Gerard hot on his heels, had taken Mrs. Spiegel to the station to try and figure out this whole mess. Marla and Sam had gone out for sandwiches, and we were now all gathered in my office, having some lunch and sharing a large pot of tea that Millie had made.

“There’s a perfectly good explanation for all of this. I just haven’t quite figured it out yet.”

“Well, there’s one way to find out.”

We all looked at Marla, the newest addition to Always Prepared, and a welcomed voice of reason in the chaos that can sometimes reign in my office. Like now.

“How?” Millie asked.

“Millie, you need to have a blood test. Your mother should get one, too, and that’ll confirm that Judith is your mother, not Mrs. Spiegel. Very simple and then you’ll know for sure.” Marla reached over and patted Millie’s hand.

“Oh, that’s a wonderful idea. I’ll call the doctor right now.”

Millie’s face scrunched up and her eyes filled with tears.

“Millie, are you okay?” I asked.

“That woman’s daughter is the same age as me. Mrs. Spiegel has darker hair, too, like mine, and my mom’s is lighter, almost blond.”

I waved my hand. “Look at me and Sam. The whole family has brown hair and Sam’s is light.”

We all turned to look at my sister, including Annie, who sat quietly off to the side eating her sandwich.

“What? It happens. I have light hair and look at my son. He’s got wavy, rich brown hair. And believe me, he’s mine. I was there when he popped out. Millie, hair color means nothing,” Sam said, though I could see that she was thinking about it. I should probably call my mother and tell her to dig out my sister’s birth certificate because I had a feeling Sam was going to want to take another look at it.

“But something had to lead that guy, and now his wife, to this office, to me. How do you explain that? I’m not sure I want to have any tests. Maybe it’s just better not to know.”

No one said anything. How did we explain all that had happened? Mr. Spiegel clearly came here looking for Millie. That’s why he was so vague about what he wanted from the agency. He didn’t want anything. He came just to see Millie, but she wasn’t here. How did his search for a daughter with the same DNA lead him to Millie Chapman? This wasn’t looking good.

I leaned on my desk. “Millie, John will find out what’s going on. And then we can go from there. And listen to me. No matter what happens, your mother and your grandmother are your mother and your grandmother. Nothing’s going to change that. If you found out they weren’t your biological family, would you feel any differently?”

“Of course not! You know how close we all are. It’s just been the three of us since my dad died. And now we have Reuben,” Millie said, referring to her boyfriend, with whom she now lived. “We’re a family.”

“Exactly. And nothing’s going to change that. So let’s wait to hear what John finds out before we do anything.”

We finished up our lunch and then everyone cleared out of my office leaving me alone with Annie.

“I’m so glad you’re here, but I’m so sorry all this happened and it ruined your arrival. We’ll do something fun tomorrow, and tonight we’ll have a lovely dinner and catch up,” I said to Annie in way of an apology. “Is there something special that you’d like to see or do?”

Annie Willix was a tiny woman with brown eyes and hair she had pulled back into a knot at the base of her neck. She adjusted a fashionable pair of eye glasses and looked at the jar of M&M’s on my desk. I pushed them toward her and watched her take a large scoop.

She took a couple into her mouth and smiled. “These are good,” she said. “I like them.”

“Compared to Belgian chocolate you probably find them bland, but I love them. Too much, unfortunately. So. What would you like to do? A few days in New York? Mystic Seaport? Shopping?”

Annie leaned forward, her eyes bright. “What I would really like to do, Alex, is help you solve this crime like you did the one in Belgium. It would be fun, no?

I leaned back in my chair and smiled. “It would definitely be fun.” And with her husband helping mine, there was no room for the guys to complain about the two of us sticking our noses in the murder.

“We are only here a short time, and Gerard,
mon Dieu
, he will be working hard on this. He is relentless. We need to find out why that man died before Gerard and John do. What is it the Americans say, game begins, or something like that?”

I looked at Annie. I had only met her once, as we were leaving for the airport to fly home. I knew next to nothing about this kind woman who was a nurse, helping others. She obviously had a bit of a competitive streak, and if solving a murder was what she wanted to do with her vacation, who was I to argue.

“Game on. That’s exactly what we would say. Game on.”

Annie and I decided to keep our plans to solve the murder to ourselves. No sense in upsetting the guys. I’ve heard all of John’s admonishments before and they haven’t done any good so far and wouldn’t change anything now. I just let him rant until he gets it all out of his system and then I go right back to solving the crime. And besides, I had a guest to entertain and this is what she wanted to do, and I was nothing if not a good host.

“John’s going to grill some steaks when he gets home,” I said to Annie. We were seated in my kitchen after I had given her a tour of the house and shown her to her room, where I let her get settled. “I’ve already made garlic mashed potatoes. I just need to sauté the Brussels sprouts with some onions.”

“It sounds delicious. And I love your home, Alex. It is very comfortable.
Gezellig
.”

“
Gezellig
?”

“It means cozy in Flemish.
Confortable
in French, but I have always liked the word
gezellig
.”

I poured some tea into Annie’s mug and then looked around my cozy kitchen. “
Gezellig
. I like it and we do have a cozy home. John put a lot of work into it, and then I added a few touches when I moved in. It is nice and we’re happy here. Of course, there was a murder in the library, but after my family helped John to redo the room for me, I feel okay about going in there now.”

“
Mon Dieu
! You had a murder in this house?”

I told Annie all about the party from hell I threw shortly after I moved into the house, and hoped she didn’t want to go to a hotel. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have told you. Are you okay staying here?” I asked.

Annie gave me the Belgian shrug. “It is nothing. I am a nurse. I have seen death many, many times. And Gerard? We must tell him. He will be thrilled. Did you solve that crime as well?”

I nodded. “Yes, I did. It was an interesting case and I’ll have to tell you and Gerard all about it one night.”

Annie took a sip of tea and then placed her mug back on the table. “Alex, how did this man, this Mr. Spiegel, obtain a sample of Millie’s DNA?”

I shook my head. “I have no idea. As far as I know he never met her. Maybe he followed her and somehow managed to get a sample off of a coffee cup or something. Millie stops a couple times a week at a coffee shop for one of those fancy drinks. They do this all the time on TV, though I’m not sure how well it works in real life.”

“He would have to follow her for some time, no, to understand her movements?”

“Yes, he would. And according to his wife, he hadn’t been in town long. I think I watch too much TV,” I said, as I put the sprouts into a large bowl. I love Brussels sprouts and with some onions and spices and a few pieces of chopped bacon, they’re one of my and John’s favorites. I admit the bacon helps. Everything is better with bacon. Maybe I should start adding some to our kale salads.

“And he would have to have access to a lab to run tests,” Annie continued. “They are not cheap and they take a long time.”

Annie’s accent was adorable and her English was perfect. She even pronounced the
th
sound correctly. I guess all those summers visiting their friends in Massachusetts must have helped. Once again I was amazed at the language skills of Europeans.

The door from the garage opened and John and Gerard walked into the kitchen.

“Sorry, we’re late,” my husband said, placing a kiss on my cheek. “After getting Mrs. Spiegel’s statement, we took her to the morgue for a positive identification.”

“Is she going to stay with her brother-in-law?” I asked.

“No. I don’t think she’s crazy about him. We dropped her off at the Indian Cove Inn.”

I tried not to smile. I didn’t want John to know what we were up to. With any luck he would think Annie and I were traversing Connecticut each day taking in the sights, but he just let me know where the widow could be found, and I planned on speaking with Mrs. Spiegel again soon.

I sent the guys off to clean up, and then they started on the steaks while Annie and I set the kitchen table. It was more
gezellig
than the dining room and I was glad my guests weren’t fancy people.

“You’re very good,” Annie said, while she folded napkins and placed one at each setting. “I saw how you got the location of the widow out of John. But now we must ascertain what else they found out. There must be more. Mr. Spiegel didn’t just show up at your office on pure luck.”

I glanced out the kitchen window to make sure the guys were still engrossed over the steaks, and then turned back to Annie. “No, he didn’t. Mr. Spiegel zeroed in on Millie for a reason and if nothing else, I need to find out why and get this all sorted out for Millie and her mother. You’ll meet Judith Chapman at a dinner party my parents are hosting for you. She’s a lovely woman, and I don’t know what she would do if she found out Millie wasn’t her biological daughter and that somewhere out there she had another child.”

Annie shook her head with a decisive manner. “It won’t make a difference to her. Not in the way she loves Millie. I know. I have a daughter and nothing could ever change how I feel about her. She is my daughter no matter what. But if it turns out some other young woman out there is the biological child of Mrs. Chapman, well, that will be difficult, no?”

“Yes, it would be a very hard situation for all involved,” I said to Annie.

John and Gerard came in with the steaks and I put the potatoes and sprouts on the table, and soon enough the topic turned to murder. And as I suspected, my husband wasn’t giving much up. But that was okay. I had a secret weapon and as soon as the men left in the morning, I would put my plan into action.

If I could do things differently, well, I probably wouldn’t. When I took a good look at my life I found that I liked things pretty much as they were. But still. It was only natural to let your mind wander once in a while about how things might have been if you took a different path. I always thought being a private investigator might be fun. In reality I think they spend a lot of their time on a computer or chasing down cheating spouses. But I would be the fun kind of detective. The kind you see in the movies. The ones that have an inside track and work on the really juicy cases. The murders and international jewel thief and art forgery cases. I’d work with Interpol helping them to track down the whereabouts of suspects with the moniker of
The Ghost
or
Le Voleur
.

But I wasn’t a detective. I could do some quick searches on the Internet the same as the next person. That was about the extent of my detecting gifts. But luckily for me, I had recently met a real-life PI. Her name was Shirley Reynolds, and Annie and I were meeting her for coffee this morning.

The two of us headed to Westport, and as I drove along I-95, I told Annie the story of how I met Shirley while working on another murder, and how at one point I thought perhaps she might be the killer.

“But she wasn’t, correct?”

I smiled. “No, no need to worry. She wasn’t. But you have to check everything out. Just because someone seems trusting and has a reputable job, doesn’t mean they can’t be a criminal as well. Once I knew I could trust Shirley, she helped me put a really good plan into action and together we caught the people involved and managed to get the whole story out of them before the police arrived. And it was a very good story.”

“You have such an interesting life, Alex. All these years I never understood why Gerard so much enjoyed his work. Spending his days with these horrible people. But I think I can see why now. I’m excited to find out what is going on with the Spiegel case.”

“It’s addicting,” I nodded. “But I only work the good stuff. I leave the everyday crime to the police. And I hate to say this, but people who kill aren’t who you would imagine them to be. They’re everyday people, like us. Of course, some of them are just evil, but a lot of them, well, they feel justified in what they’ve done. An eye for an eye type of thing. It can be fascinating to get a glimpse into their way of thinking.”

I took the next exit and made a left turn. Traffic was light and though the day was clear and promised to warm up, full springtime weather hadn’t yet arrived. Annie and I had grabbed our zip-up sweatshirts, and as we neared the water, I was glad we brought them along.

“I wonder how this crime will turn out,” Annie said. “Will we be meeting the evil person or the everyday one just trying to get justice?”

“That’s a good question and I’ve found that I really have no idea until the end.” I pulled into a small parking lot and found a space under a maple tree. “We’re here.”

Shirley Reynolds was already seated when we walked in. She saw us and waved, and then the waitress picked up three menus and Annie and I followed her to the table.