Nightshade on Elm Street: A Flower Shop Mystery (33 page)

After a split second’s hesitation, she lifted her chin. “Waiting for Pryce to get home.”

“With your car keys in your hand?”

She glanced down at her hand, opening her palm as though she was surprised to see them there. Instantly, her fingers tightened around the key ring. “I was going out to my car to get something.”

“I didn’t see your car out front.”

“It’s in the garage. Pryce gave me the code for the door, if it’s any concern of yours.”

“In case you’ve forgotten, I’m still helping with a murder investigation.”

“So,” she said slyly, “are you here to meet with Pryce or is that a ruse so you can spy on me?”

I quickly countered her question with, “Both.”

Melissa studied me for a moment, as though deciding whether I was serious; then she walked over to her purse and slipped the strap over her shoulder. “Well, good luck with that.”

“And good luck explaining to Pryce what you were doing here,” I said, as she headed for the sliding door.

Melissa stopped short, her back toward me. After a moment, she turned and sauntered toward me, her sly smile back. “I have every right to be here. Pryce and I are going to be married. In fact, we’ll be announcing our reengagement tomorrow.”

My turn to be stopped short. Despite everything that had happened between them, Pryce was still going to marry her? How could he have made that decision so soon after Lily’s death? Didn’t he have any heart at all?

So I was right to doubt Jillian’s gossip…not that I’d ever trusted it. And yet I couldn’t help wondering what would’ve happened if Pryce
had
left that note for me. What if he’d wanted to test the waters before he committed to an engagement with Melissa?

Ridiculous, Abby.
Pryce couldn’t be delusional enough to believe he had a chance against Marco. I
mean, seriously, Pryce versus Marco? Comparing the two was basically comparing money with love. I already knew what it meant to marry into the Osborne family and I wasn’t about to head down that path again. Maybe Jillian was happy living the life of a pampered wife, but I wouldn’t be.

“Well, then, good for you,” I said to Melissa. “But how do you think Jake will feel when he hears the news?”

Melissa’s lips flattened into thin, hard lines and when she spoke, her voice was brittle. “Jake has nothing to do with this.”

“That’s not what it appeared to me just a few minutes ago. When I looked through the window, I saw some steamy passion between the two of you.”

She shrugged. “So? Jake is fun. He’s been a great diversion. But Pryce?” She tossed her keys into the air and caught them. “He’s my future.”

“You haven’t told Jake about your upcoming reengagement, have you?”

Her gaze grew guarded. “That is also none of your concern.”

I circled around her, watching her expression closely, trying to make her uneasy. “Are you in love with Pryce?”

She shrugged again. “Doesn’t matter.”

“Why? Because he doesn’t love you?”

“He loves me,” she said in a defensive tone.

“Pryce loved Lily. You’ve known that for a long time. And if you weren’t sure of it before, you were when you found his love notes to her.”

Alarm flared in Melissa’s eyes but she quickly doused it, putting on an air of indifference. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about the notes Lily had hidden in her overnight bag. You had one of them in your purse. I saw it when we were at your office.”

“How dare you snoop through my purse!”

“How dare you snoop through Lily’s bag.”

“I did
not
snoop through Lily’s bag. That was Orabell. I found a note tucked away in a bureau drawer in the bedroom upstairs. I didn’t want anyone else to see it, so I tossed it in my purse.”

“Or how about this? You waited until Orabell left Lily’s bedroom, then took one of Pryce’s love notes from her overnighter so you could confront Pryce with it. Were you hoping to shame him into marrying you?”

She folded her arms tightly across her shirt. “That is so ludicrous I’m not even going to defend myself.”

“Sometime after you found those love notes, Pryce broke off your engagement, and you knew it was because of Lily, didn’t you?”

Tears filled Melissa’s green eyes. One spilled onto her cheek and she brushed it away with the back of her hand. “That’s not true.”

“Oh, boy, is it true. And it was the last straw, wasn’t it? That was when you knew you had to take action so that Lily couldn’t come between you and Pryce ever again.”

She laughed through her tears. “Oh, my God! You really think I killed Lily. Are you out of your mind?”

She was trembling all over now, as though she were freezing. With a little more pressure, I felt I could get her to crack. “Seeing proof that Pryce loved Lily must have devastated you, Melissa. But it also became clear that as long as Lily was around, you’d never have a chance of marrying Pryce. And if you did, you would never be sure of his loyalty. So the only way to get Pryce back was to eliminate Lily.”

Melissa’s mouth was agape, so I pressed on. “All those dreams of living a pampered life, of being the beautiful wife that everyone admired, of attending all those social
functions, of never having to worry about your business failing?
Pffft.
Up in smoke.”

I saw the intense pain in her eyes as she stared at me. It was easy to see that everything I’d said had hit home. She was ready to confess.

To my amazement, Melissa swiped the tears away with the backs of her hands, then merely shrugged and started toward the door. “You know what? You can stay here and spout your silly theories all you want. I’m going to the Burches’ to have a drink.” She removed the Piaget and tucked it into her purse. “If you get thirsty, come on over.”

I wasn’t about to let her walk out that door without confessing, but how could I stop her? What would Marco do?

“I know how you murdered Lily,” I blurted.

As though she hadn’t heard me, she reached for the door handle, and I felt my heart sink.

But then, as though my words had sunk in, she stopped. She was definitely hearing me now. “What did you say?”

“I said, I know how you murdered Lily. You used Pryce’s note to lure her out to the water. Then you pushed her into the lake and held her underwater until she drowned.”

She swung to face me, her eyes narrowed in anger. “You are out of your mind. I was up in Michigan the night Lily drowned.”

“No, you weren’t. A cop friend of mine verified that with the hotel manager.”

Melissa opened her mouth to reply, then pressed her lips together, clearly deciding it was better to keep quiet.

“You were right here in town when Lily drowned.”

She blinked rapidly, as though trying to figure out a defense, so I reached into my purse and took out my cell
phone. “Time for me to call the detectives to come out here for a little chat.”

“No!” she cried. “Wait. Please, don’t call.”

I closed my phone calmly, not wanting her to see how excited I was. “Because?”

“Because,” she hesitated, “I can prove where I was the night Lily drowned.”

“Sure you can.”

“I have a receipt from the motel where I stayed. If you don’t believe me, follow me to Pisces and I’ll show it to you.”

“Why don’t you save me time and tell me the name of the motel?”

“It’s the Sandman Motel. You know the old place on Route Twenty, don’t you? You passed it on the way here. Call them up. Give them my name. Then you’ll see.”

Could she be telling the truth? I did a quick calculation and came up with the answer. “Sorry, Melissa. If that’s your alibi, it still doesn’t work. The Sandman Motel is within five miles of here. You could have driven there and back in twenty minutes.”

Melissa closed the door, as though afraid someone might overhear us, and said in a hushed voice, “I swear to you I never left my motel room that night.”

“The only way that’s going to work as your alibi is if you had someone who could swear under oath that you were at the Sandman at the time of Lily’s death, which was between eight p.m. and midnight.” I paused to let that sink in. “Got anyone in mind?”

She nibbled her lower lip, clearly nervous. If she wasn’t ready to confess, I would give up sleuthing forever.

“Okay,” she said with a sigh. “I have someone who will swear to it.”

So much for my sleuthing plans. “Who?”

“You know, I think I’ll save that for those cops you’re going to call, because I really need a drink before I meet up with Pryce this evening. Oh, wait. I forgot about your little meeting. You did say you were meeting him this evening, right? So I guess you can both come over to the Burches’ for a drink.”

Using one of Marco’s favorite tricks, I said, “Are you sure you want to save your alibi story for later? If you hold back now, the detectives will think you have something to hide. If you give me the witness’s name, though, I’ll let the cops know you’re willing to cooperate, and that will make things go easier on you.”

“Right. As if you could do that.”

Right. As if I couldn’t. I opened my phone and pulled up my contact list. Holding the screen out so she could see it, I said, “What name do you see there?”

She glanced at it with great reluctance, reading aloud, “Reilly.” She sighed, added in a bored voice, “Sean,” then, as if the next word suddenly leaped off the screen, said, “Sergeant.”

“Now you know I have friends in high places who I can ask to help you. So what will it be, Melissa? Let the cops take you away in handcuffs or tell me the name?”

Her eyebrows drew together as her gaze searched mine, as though she was trying to determine how much pull I had. Then, after a long hesitation, she said, “You’re right. What do I have to lose if I tell you now? It’s Jake.”

Wait. What? Jake! “Okay, now it’s your turn to back up. Are you saying
Jake
was at the motel with you?”

“Like I said, Jake’s a diversion.”

And there went my brand-new theory, which meant I hadn’t solved the case at all.

Hold on, Abby. Think about it. Jake was with Melissa. That doesn’t mean they didn’t commit murder together.

“See you later,” she said.

“Hold on, Melissa. Just because Jake can verify you were at the motel doesn’t mean you or Jake is innocent. All that means is that you can verify Jake’s alibi and he can verify yours. The cops wouldn’t buy that for a minute, especially since Jake lied about being here all night. In fact, they’d accuse you of being in on the murder together.”

Melissa opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

And I’d just come up with the best theory yet. “Now I understand why you’re being so cavalier about your affair with Jake. You needed someone to do your dirty work, and there sat poor, lonely, gullible Jake, all worried about Lily leaving him for Pryce.”

Melissa tossed her hair back. “You think having an affair with Jake makes me guilty of murder?”

“No, but it can make you coconspirators in murder. All you had to do was convince Jake that Lily was ready to leave him”—at once the rest of the theory fell into place—“and that’s why you took that note! You showed it to Jake when you had breakfast with him Sunday morning so you could manipulate him into helping you.”

She laughed harshly. “You are so wrong.”

“Making him your ally was easy, wasn’t it? You only had to scare him into thinking he was about to lose his wife and meal ticket, assure him that you’d be there for him, then convince him that he needed Lily out of the way so the two of you could be together. That was a brilliant play, Melissa. You were solving both problems, his and yours.”

“You really are crazy, aren’t you? It’s no wonder Pryce dumped you.”

“I may be crazy, but you’re the one who has Orabell’s watch. Who do you think the cops will believe?”

“The watch you saw isn’t Orabell’s,” she said.

“Then let’s take it over to the Burches and show her,” I said. “Or maybe I should call the cops after all.”

Melissa stared at me but said nothing until I pressed 911 and held the phone to my ear. “All right,” she cried. “It
did
belong to Orabell, but I didn’t steal it. I got it as a gift.”

“Was that before or after you and Jake drowned Lily?”

“We didn’t murder Lily,” she said. “Stop saying that.”

“Prove it.”

She dug through her purse and found her cell phone. “I think it’s time to call my lawyer.”

Great. If she lawyered up now, I’d never solve the case.

As she scrolled through her phone book, I said, “I don’t think Pryce is going to be making any kind of engagement announcement tomorrow if there’s a conspiracy-to-commit-murder charge hanging over your head, Melissa.”

She paused.

“Maybe you can prove your whereabouts with a receipt, but once I tell the cops about Jake being at the motel, too, don’t doubt for a moment that you and Jake won’t be their prime suspects. It already looks suspicious that you’ve got a stolen watch in your possession.”

“You’ve got everything wrong,” Melissa sneered. “Do you want to know the absolute truth about the watch? Here it is. I got it as a gift from Halston. Now chew on that!”