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I stifle a harsh laugh.Innocentis the last word I’d use to describea woman who’s collected money for decades to stay silent about what she thinks was a quadruple homicide. Then again, that’s nothing compared with the crimes Berniece says her husband and Lenora committed.
“I was here asking about Ricardo Mayhew,” I say. “His wife thinks he did it, by the way. With Lenora’s help. And then she killed him.”
“And what do you think?”
I lean against my car, mulling over the question. “I think something happened that night beyond the murders of three people and the disappearance of another. Something that either instigated the violence or was the result of it.”
That Lenora was part of it is a given. What I struggle with is deciding how big of a role she played. Is it all her fault, as both Berniece and the mystery typist who came into Lenora’s room claim? Or was she swept up in events beyond her control? Did she toss the murder weapon to try to mitigate the damage but ended up being blamed for everything?
I hope it’s the latter. I fear it’s the former.
“What else did the police reports say?”
“They got a call a little after eleven p.m. on Tuesday, October 29,” Detective Vick says. “The caller told them two people were dead at Hope’s End.”
I cock my head. “Two?”
“That’s what the report says.”
But three people were murdered that night. The only way that can possibly be right is if the person who called the police did so after finding only two of the bodies.
“Who was the caller?”
“Lenora Hope.”
It makes sense she’d be the one to call the police. It’s naturally the first thing Lenora would do if she was innocent—or trying to make herselflookinnocent. But in both cases, she’d surely know the number of victims. Either Lenora lied to the police—or someone else was still alive while she was on the phone.
I reach into my memory, summoning the first few pages Lenora had typed. They’re easy to recall because she stressed how it was the moment she remembered most. The thing she still had nightmares about.
Her on the terrace.
Bloody knife washed clean by the rain before she tossed it into the ocean below.
Her sister screaming inside the house.
Virginia.
That’s who was still alive. And then Lenora went to the garage to fetch some rope.
I’m hit with a headache as I consider what that means. And it doesn’t look too good for Lenora. In fact, it looks like Virginia was collateral damage, stumbling into the wrong place at the wrong time. And someone decided she had to die, too.
That someone was most likely Lenora, who no longer had the knife that killed her parents and needed a new weapon. As for who did the hanging, maybe that was Ricardo, who either fled afterward or, if Berniece is right, was then shoved off the terrace by Lenora.
The same terrace Mary was pushed from.
“Police responding to the scene found the front gate open,” Detective Vick says. “When they entered the house, they discovered Evangeline Hope on the staircase landing. The officers then fanned out through the rest of the house, finding Winston Hope in the billiard room and Virginia Hope hanging from a chandelier in the ballroom.”
“Where was Lenora?”
“On the terrace.”
So she went back out there after Virginia was killed. My headache gets worse. Because the more I hear, the more I think that Berniece is right.
And that Lenora is guilty.
“Mr. and Mrs. Hope were declared dead at the scene. Virginia was taken upstairs.”
“Also dead,” I say.