Billy’s expression remained dour. “Here’s what we’ve got. Laura was on the porch. Darwyn Jack was down in the yard. Laura saw somebody and now we know it was Tommy. She didn’t see anyone else until Richard Jamison came in from his jog. He found Glen and immediately raised the alarm. Laura said she didn’t see Elaine. If she’d seen anyone besides Tommy, she would have told us long before now. That leaves us with Kit and Laura in the house and Tommy crossing the backyard. Why would Kit or Laura come outside? No sense to it. And Tommy crossing the yard lets out the cousin, too. Darwyn told us Richard ran through the yard and out the road by the cottage around eight-thirty. Kit saw her father alive after that. By the time Richard came back from his jog, Tommy had already hurried to his aunt’s cottage and given her the gun and the shirt stained with his dad’s blood. You saw Elaine at the marsh before Richard returned.”
Annie tried to sort out the timing in her mind. Kit and Laura in the house. Tommy in the backyard. Her lips felt stiff. “The murderer has to be Tommy.” Blood on the blue polo . . .
Billy slammed a hand on his desk. “I’ve been a cop for a long time.” He looked angry and frustrated. “I never thought Elaine was the killer. Now we have Tommy in her place. But you know what, the murder of Darwyn Jack knocks everything screwy.”
Annie was puzzled. “He must have seen Tommy.”
Billy nodded shortly. “Right. The easy answer is that Tommy killed him because Darwyn tried blackmail, though I don’t know how much money he could get out of a high school kid.” He waved a hand. “I know, Tommy inherits, but I doubt he can get his hands on big money.” His mouth twisted in a wry smile. “Even semibig money. So now, and I’m saying it like the circuit solicitor will see it, the easy answer will be that Darwyn tried to blackmail Tommy and Tommy killed him. The easy answer before that, and the circuit solicitor was hot for me to arrest Elaine, is that she killed Darwyn. But I don’t believe either one of them cracked his skull. Darwyn’s murder was planned down to the last detail and that includes Elaine’s golf club. He was lured to the gazebo—the prosecution will argue he was there for a payoff—and what happened? Darwyn came to the gazebo. He sat on the top step. The killer then moved behind him and picked up Elaine Jamison’s five iron and gave an almighty swing.” Billy leaned forward and his words came in a staccato rush. “That doesn’t play with me. Let’s take Elaine Jamison. Tuesday, when her brother was killed, it’s obvious she threw the murder weapon in the marsh. Smart move, right? We still haven’t found the gun. We can’t drain the marsh. My guess is we’ll never find that Colt. Someday we may have a force-three hurricane and nature can play some tricks and a rusted pistol might be found wedged in a live-oak tree. Stranger things have happened. For now, we don’t have the weapon. Fast-forward to Thursday night. The murderer used Elaine Jamison’s five iron, which we later find in her golf bag. The club face wasn’t even wiped off after it struck him. We had plenty of tissue to test. The lab results are back and her club was the murder weapon.” He looked disgusted. “Does that make sense? She had the smarts to throw the Colt into the marsh and she was under pressure because she knew any minute Glen’s body would be found. So I’m supposed to believe that Thursday night she takes her own five iron with her fingerprints all over the shaft, tucks the club away in the gazebo where it will be handy, meets Darwyn, cracks his skull, then marches back to her garage and puts the dirty club in her bag? Baloney. I didn’t believe it then. I don’t believe it now. Besides that, you know what we found hidden up in a crook of a tree near the gazebo? Her gardening gloves. Now, why would she wear gardening gloves and not wipe off the fingerprints from the club? She had all night to throw that club in the marsh and put the gloves away in her gardening basket. We might have checked her bag and discovered the five iron was missing and been able to prove the wound was consistent with having been made by a five iron, but that doesn’t compare to finding her club and proving it was the murder weapon.”
“None of it makes sense.” Annie thought of murder deep in the night, Darwyn lying facedown at the base of the gazebo steps. Elaine would have been a fool to keep the club. And there was no point in hiding the gloves up in a tree.
Billy was gruff. “You bet it’s screwy. She’s cool and smart and quick Tuesday morning when the pressure’s on, but she panics and shoves the stick in her bag when it’s the middle of the night and no one else is around, plus scrambles up in a tree to tuck her gloves in a crotch. There’s a lot to be said for MO. People act the way they’re going to act. You can’t have smart-as-a-whip and dumb-as-a-post in the same person. That’s what I told Brice.”
Brice Willard Posey, the circuit solicitor, rarely heeded advice.
Billy shook his head. “Brice never met a fact he’d pay attention to. He was hell-bent to arrest Elaine. I staved him off, at least until after tomorrow. She and her lawyer will show up here at nine. Now the solicitor will switch horses and ride Tommy. He’ll say I was right on the button and the club in the bag was a trap for her. He’ll say Tommy Jamison used the club and hid the gardening gloves and left his aunt holding the bag. The solicitor will love it: deranged teenager from old island family guns down father, knocks off a blackmailer, and frames his aunt. Do you know why that scenario stinks?”
“Not the same MO?”
He shook his head. “The MO’s the same. The key to the gun safe disappeared before the murder. That shows planning, just like Darwyn’s murder shows planning. This time it has to do with character. Tommy Jamison’s got a reputation for a bad temper. A couple of fights after football games, sometimes some rough stuff in the locker room. Apparently, he loses his cool, then pretty quick snaps out of his rage and is an all-around good guy. If he’d shot his dad, then had been stricken with remorse, that would be one thing, but Glen’s death was planned down to the last detail. For example, Darwyn only worked there on Tuesday mornings. That’s when the leaf blower would hide the sound of the shots. Lots of planning, so same MO. That doesn’t sound like Tommy Jamison. Besides, when he found his dad dead, if he was dead, who did Tommy run to? His aunt. She came through for him big-time. Unless he’s like Rhoda in
Annie remembered that moment when the bloodhound loped up to Tommy and began to bay and when the shirt was identified as his, how Tommy had begun to speak but Elaine cut him off. His instinct had been to tell the truth and save his aunt.
Billy glanced toward a gray folder that sat by itself near his in-box. He reached out, tapped the cover. “And there’s Pat Merridew. We’ll never prove she was murdered, but too much has happened in the Jamison gazebo to act like that picture in her BlackBerry didn’t mean anything.” He gave Annie a wry glance. “You kept telling me, right?”
Annie felt as if she’d planted a flag atop a mountain.
Billy gave her a thumbs-up. “Counting her as another murder victim makes it clear that the crimes were carefully planned. Admittedly, we have three deaths from different means—poison, shots, and a blunt instrument— but if the deaths are linked, somebody’s thinking on all cylinders. There’s no way Tommy Jamison can figure for the Merridew death. Was Pat Merridew going to invite a teenager over for Irish coffee? I don’t think so. That puts it back on Elaine, but Laura didn’t see her cross the backyard plus Elaine was off-island when the BlackBerry pic was made.”
Billy shoved his hand through his thick short hair. “It’s an almighty mess. I don’t believe the murderer is Elaine or Tommy. Yet somebody close to Glen Jamison shot him. Only someone with access to the house could have obtained the Colt. But when we look, we eliminate suspects one by one. The wife was in Savannah. The cousin left
