Death on the Rocks--A Short Read Read online

  “Can I help you?” A tall and statuesque woman of around sixty, with ash blonde hair and strident tones, marched towards Miranda as she got out of the car. Without a word, Miranda clicked her fingers and Butter came jumping down out of the car to join her. The older woman wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Oh dear Lord, that dreadful woman’s mutt. Why is it here? Get rid of it.”

  “Dreadful woman?” Miranda could hear Kyle talking to Alice. “Why is she so cross with you?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am, but my name is Miranda Wylder and I live just down the coast. Butter here made his way to my home last night, and I followed him down to the beach where I found the body of his owner.”

  “Body? His owner?” The woman seemed entirely surprised. “You mean Alice Gill?”

  “Yes, I take it the police have yet to inform you?” Miranda felt suddenly very awkward. “Oh dear, I really am terribly sorry.”

  Miranda supposed that made sense. The Crenshaw’s weren’t Alice’s family. If she was having some sort of relationship with Terence Crenshaw that was all well and good, but with him dead as well, Detective Jack Travis may not have even known to come and inform these people about Alice’s death.

  “You mean she’s dead?” The woman seemed more surprised than upset, and Miranda’s initial awkwardness was replaced by her customary sense of inquisitiveness.

  “I’m afraid she is dead,” Miranda confirmed.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw Alice float in closer.

  On the older woman’s face, a little smile came and went that spoke of a perverse sort of pleasure at Miranda’s news. It was an odd sort of reaction.

  “Well,” the woman preened. “I’m Eleanor Crenshaw. Terence’s second wife. We don’t want that dog here but it was just so nice of you to make the effort. Won’t you come in, and have some tea?”

  Second wife? Miranda tried to catch Alice’s reaction but she couldn’t turn that way without being obvious. “Well, how kind, Mrs. Crenshaw. I certainly would like a cup of tea. Please, accept my condolences for your loss.”

  She was digging, for sure, but she figured it couldn’t hurt to push things a bit.

  Eleanor sniffed. “That woman was really no loss to me, I’m afraid. She was nothing more than a ridiculous infatuation of my husband’s.”

  “Oh, you’re still married?” Miranda said, realizing that her questioning had become almost as blunt as Kyle’s.

  “Married yes, but separated,” Eleanor explained, seemingly untroubled by Miranda’s intrusion. “Leave that mutt in the car for now, please. We’ll have some tea and get to know each other before you leave.”

  Apologizing to Butter as she shut the car door on him with the windows open enough for fresh air, she hurried after Eleanor. The house was immense. Two stories of sprawling rooms that seemed to grow organically from the large foyer inside the double front doors. The marble floors echoed with their footsteps. Somewhere a clock loudly ticked away the seconds. Natural sunlight fell inside through floor-to-ceiling windows.

  “And you live here?” Miranda asked, looking around her. “It’s absolutely beautiful.”

  “I used to live here, but I moved away when Terence and I split. Only Terence lived here, although I’m fairly certain that Alice Gill was a regular visitor,” Eleanor snorted.

  “So, you were just down for the funeral, I take it?”

  “The funeral, yes. That was three days ago, and then the reading of the will was yesterday afternoon. The attorney came out here to read it, and it seemed a little late in the evening to be setting off for home afterwards. Still, I shall be on my way at some point today with any luck as will, I’m sure, everybody else.”

  “Was Alice here too, then?”

  “Not sure how that’s your concern, Miss Wylder.”

  Miranda knew she’d pushed too far, and quickly tried to think of a way to redeem the conversation. “Well, I suppose it’s not… but I’m curious what sort of a hussy this Alice Gill was.”

  “Hey!” Alice snapped immediately. Miranda gave her a look that she hoped would convey that she was just trying to play on Eleanor’s emotions, and didn’t mean what she was saying.

  She could see by the gleam in Eleanor’s eye that she had, indeed, struck the right cord. “Oh yes,” Eleanor said, moving off down a hallway and expecting Miranda to follow. “Alice Gill stayed for the entire three days. That little minx wasn’t going to go anywhere until she’d heard exactly how much money she’d managed to shoehorn out of my husband. When she didn’t come back last night, I thought she’d skipped town with her inheritance in her back pocket.”

  “So, she inherited, did she?” Miranda said, keen to find out exactly how much.

  “Yes, my husband’s twenty-something lover seduced him into changing his will so that she might inherit almost all of his money. She will even get something from the sale of the house. At least, she would have if she were still alive.” Eleanor almost spat the words in her anger. “Anyway, I hope they’re happy wherever they are. Wherever it is that sinners end up.”

  “Well, she must have been working on your husband for a long time, then.”

  Again, Miranda saw Alice’s reaction. She stomped her foot in a huff and crossed her arms over her chest.

  Kyle leaned in to her and whispered. “Don’t worry. It might not look it, but Miranda knows what she’s doing.

  “Long?” Eleanor echoed. “No, she hadn’t been here long at all. Six months. That’s all it took for her to use her nubile body to sucker my poor husband in.”

  Miranda winced at the direct way Eleanor talked about it. “Is that when you moved out of town?”

  “No, no,” Eleanor said, shaking her head. “I moved out years ago. Terence really was a waste of space. There were so many investments he could have made, and so much more money he could have thrown into this place, if only he would have listened. He was going nowhere, and I’d had enough of it.”

  “Oh dear,” Miranda said, a little lost for words. “Had you been married for very long?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Eleanor said, leading them into the kitchen. “I married Terence when his granddaughter Olivia was three. She’s twenty-three now, so I suppose it was twenty years ago.”

  Miranda was reeling; how could a person not remember when it was they got married? She was certainly not warming to Eleanor Crenshaw and began to silently congratulate Terence for finding himself a little love and happiness in his last few months, whatever the age gap.

  “Well, I’m very sorry to hear of your troubles,” Miranda said, as sweetly as she could. It paid dividends since Eleanor Crenshaw seemed to thaw visibly. She obviously liked people who sympathized with her.

  And, Miranda was willing to bet, she didn’t like people who crossed her.

  “Do come in and take a seat.” She said to Miranda before she walked through the door on the opposite side of the kitchen into a living room. “I’ll just be one moment to fetch the tea.”

  Miranda took this moment to admire the room around her. A huge landscape painting hung on the wall opposite the floor to ceiling window and dozens of ornamental trinkets sat above the fireplace which was currently unlit. She suspected there was more wealth in this one room than she had ever owned in her life.

  A moment later, Eleanor returned with a silver tray of tea clinking in her hands. “Please do forgive me for being quite so terse with you.” She said as she placed the tea tray onto the ornately carved coffee table. “I’m afraid I never liked Alice, especially after she broke her promise. I’m sorry, I just don’t seem to be able to hide it. But, I shouldn’t have been quite so short with you.”

  “Oh, please don’t worry about that, Mrs. Crenshaw. I understand entirely.” Miranda took the opportunity to sneak a look over at Alice while Eleanor was busy pouring tea. She raised her eyebrows, and Alice simply shrugged, clearly unable to remember the promise she had broken.

  Looking back toward Eleanor, Miranda noticed a rather large safe embedded in the
wall in the corner. It was uncovered, and Miranda could see no hook or nail above to indicate that a picture or painting might have been hung in front of it at any time.

  “Oh, that’s unusual,” Miranda said, nodding in the direction of the safe. “Shouldn’t that be covered up with a painting or something?”

  “See, I thought the same,” Eleanor beamed. “We’ve been trying to find a way to open it since we arrived. I feel sure that it will contain something important. Or at least important to Terence, at any rate.”

  “We?” Miranda said, keen to know who else had wanted the safe opened.

  “Oh, just Joel, Olivia and I. Olivia, as I think I’ve already said, is Terence’s granddaughter.”

  “And Joel?” Miranda said, hoping that she did not sound like the nosiest woman on the planet.

  “Joel Stephens. He was Terence’s attorney, and he’s been gathering up the paperwork to determine who is owed what in all of this. He read the will, in fact.” As Eleanor explained, Miranda heard footsteps in the corridor outside. “Oh, that’s probably Joel now, would you excuse me for a few minutes?”

  “Of course,” Miranda said.

  When she was gone, Alice floated about the room, looking at the photographs and the furniture and everything else. “I think I might have lived here for a little while, but I’m not sure.”

  Suddenly, the door flew open again, and Miranda fully expected to see Eleanor and the attorney. Instead two very pretty young women strode in. They looked nearly identical. Long brown hair fell over their shoulders. They were wearing matching blue dresses that showed off flawless physiques. They were both in their early twenties, Miranda guessed.

  Both of them stopped short when they saw Miranda. “Who are you?” one of them asked. Miranda could see now that the likeness between them was only superficial. The woman who had spoken wore a scowl that marred the perfection of her face.

  Miranda smiled at them. “Hello. My name is Miranda Wylder. I’m the person who found… well…” She did not want to say any more. Eleanor had been unaware of the death of Alice Gill, and Miranda did not want to make the same mistake twice.

  “Oh, you’re the one who found Alice,” the same young woman said, without any hint of being upset.

  Miranda added two and two. “You must be Olivia.”

  “Yes, I am. How did you know that?” Olivia asked. The young woman with her simply stood at her side, silently.

  “Your grandmother was just telling me about—”

  “Eleanor Crenshaw? She is not my grandmother. She was my grandfather’s second wife,” Olivia said with that sort of clipped politeness that was designed to be surreptitiously rude. Already Miranda did not like the young woman. “Do forgive me, but if you are Eleanor’s guest, why don’t you go find her and join her? I need a few moments with my friend to speak in private.”

  There’s a huge house all around us, Miranda thought to herself, and she can’t find another empty room somewhere? “I don’t mind at all,” she said out loud. Then she gave Kyle a very purposeful glance.

  He caught on immediately. “Go ahead, Miranda. Alice and I can listen in on these two.”

  Miranda made her way out of the room, relieved to be away from the piercing gaze of such a thoroughly unpleasant young lady.

  Once she was in the corridor outside, Miranda had no idea which way to turn. She remembered her way back to the kitchen, and all alone like this she had a very good opportunity to have a little snoop.

  Despite the age of the building, it was clean and the antique furniture all looked very sturdy and functional. The floors throughout the corridors were highly polished wood, and huge vases and urns were strategically placed for decoration.

  She passed rooms that were either locked or empty. Aside from a few paintings on the walls that she was certain were original works by painters she had actually heard of, she didn’t find anything of interest. Finally, Miranda thought she could hear voices in the distance. Slowing down to carefully place each step noiselessly on the wooden flooring, she crept along to a partially open door. She peered in as far as she dared. The only view she had was of the great fireplace, but there was an enormous mirror hanging above the mantel shelf, and in the reflection she could see Eleanor standing on the other side of the room.

  Miranda was surprised to hear a flirtatious little giggle coming from Eleanor. Into the reflection stepped a man in his late fifties wearing sharp business suit. He had hawkish features and a severe hairline, and Miranda had no doubt that he was Joel Stephens, the family attorney.

  As she watched, he stepped closer to Eleanor, and then took her into his arms.

  They were obviously more than friends.

  As Miranda was getting over her shock at this revelation, she heard Eleanor speaking. “I know I was rude to you yesterday during the reading of the will, Joel. I was a bad girl… can you ever forgive me?”

  His smile was hungry as he traced a finger down her cheek. “How can I stay mad at you?”

  “Mmm. Then we can go back to our original arrangement.”

  “Of course we can,” he promised. Then he leaned in, and kissed her.

  Forgetting her investigative intentions in the face of such an intimate moment, Miranda backed away from the door and began to make her way back along the corridor.

  She was undone by one of the many side tables. It seemed to jump out into her path and catch her hip with its corner. The sound of it bouncing against the wall echoed loudly.

  Not waiting to see if Eleanor or her new lover would poke their heads out to see her, Miranda rushed down the hallway, desperate to return to the sitting room.

  The problem was, she’d lost all sense of where she was.

  She ran down corridor after corridor and, in the end, drew up to a halt in front of a tall, beveled window. At least if she could see outside, she might be able to get her bearings.

  Peering out into the morning light, Miranda was able to figure out she was in the deepest part of the house, far away from the sitting room she had intended to return to. So, if she wanted to get back then she needed to go this way…

  The corridor she tried turned out to be a dead end.

  A row of doors met her, and the one closest to her was unlocked and opened. Inside she could see a bedroom. Well, she decided, she was already here, it couldn’t hurt to have a quick look around.

  As soon as she entered, Miranda knew that she was in the master bedroom. It was done in masculine décor with dark colors and heavy furniture. The bed was made up with creased lines and obviously hadn’t been used in days. Surely she was in Terence Crenshaw’s very own bedroom.

  As she pushed the door closed behind her and walked further into the room, Miranda found herself hoping that Alice would appreciate just how much Miranda was risking to help her. But of course, Miranda was also helping herself. She needed Alice to move on. One ghost in residence at Ragged Rest was more than enough!

  Miranda made her way to the bedside cabinet and opened the little drawer. There was a pile of neat paperwork inside, and she lifted it out all together before placing it on the bed where she could sit down and look through it.

  At the very top of the paperwork was some sort of medical report, indicating that Terence Crenshaw needed a kidney transplant rather urgently.

  She gasped as she read through the page. Although she could not take in a lot of the technical medical details, Miranda rather thought that the gist of it was that Terence would die without such an operation.

  So, was Kyle right? Alice was missing a kidney. Terence needed a kidney to live. Only… Terence had died days ago. Why murder Alice for her kidney now if it was meant for Terence?

  Miranda shuddered, remembering Alice Gill’s lifeless body and bloodstained appearance. Who on earth had cut a kidney out of the young woman in so brutal a manner?

  Shaking off her disgust, Miranda kept searching. She found a rough photocopy of a will, and took her time absorbing the information from it. She found the provisions grantin
g a sizeable portion of the estate to Alice, including much of the proceeds from the sale of the house. However, there was a provision that Alice’s inheritance in its entirety would revert to Eleanor Crenshaw should Alice pass away before her.

  “Interesting,” Miranda said, under her breath. “Money does make for a great motive.”

  Miranda continued to leaf through the paperwork until she found an unsigned release form for a donor kidney. The name of the proposed donor was printed on the paper, but she couldn’t make it out. There was an enormous brown stain on the paper, like from a coffee spill. Damn it, she thought. That was a key piece to this puzzle!

  That was all there was to see. As Miranda hurriedly replaced all the paperwork just as she had found it, she heard tires on gravel. Hurrying over to the bedroom window, she saw a police car pulling up the drive. At the wheel was Detective Jack Travis. In a little panic, Miranda rushed back out into the hall, praying that she would find the sitting room this time.

  She did, more by fluke than by purposeful exploration, and when she got there Miranda found that Olivia Crenshaw was gone. Her friend sat there, all alone. She lounged on the couch, one leg crossed over the other in that amazing dress.

  Kyle and Alice were standing off to the side, both of them with anxious expressions. They had something to tell her. Briefly Miranda considered stepping back out in the hallway again and having them follow her, but Olivia’s friend was already watching her. No reason to make herself look even more suspicious.

  “Would you mind if I sat?” Miranda asked, hoping that the woman was a little friendlier than Olivia had been.

  The woman smiled at her vaguely, as if it didn’t matter. “Sure. Go ahead.”

  “Thank you, Miss…?” Once again, Miranda was fishing for a name.

  “I’m Faith Wood.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Faith. I’m Miranda—”

  “I know, you told us earlier. You’re returning the dog or something, right?”

  “Well, I was trying to.” Miranda said with a shrug, wondering exactly how it was that Faith Wood fitted into things. She was just as rude, and she acted like she owned this place. “Where did Olivia go?”