Detective Rappaport’s phone buzzed. He picked it up and listened. After he was finished, he told Daisy and Jonas, “Zeke took a few days’ personal leave. The police captain is interrogating Ward Cooper at urgent care. From what I understand, he needed a few stitches. You’re lucky the chandelier stunned him and pinned him down.”
From the expression on Jonas’s face, he looked relieved that he didn’t have to face Zeke or speak to him here.
“Bart Cosner is with the chief at urgent care . . . or rather he was,” Rappaport explained. “He just got back. Apparently, Cooper didn’t ask for a lawyer and he spilled his guts. I’m going to go out and see what he’s learned.” He looked at Daisy. “You have a right to know. Do you want to stay or do you want me to give you a call later?”
Daisy straightened her spine. “I’ll stay. I want his story. I want to know exactly why Margaret died.”
Rappaport nodded and left the office.
Sitting quietly together for a few minutes, Daisy and Jonas didn’t speak. Finally, he leaned back in his chair and sighed. “I know why you didn’t contact me when you went to the theater. It’s because I hadn’t been in contact with you. If I had been with you, Ward wouldn’t have tried what he did.”
Daisy placed two fingers on Jonas’s lips and shook her head. “Don’t do that. What happened certainly wasn’t your fault. Jonas, I know when you’re upset, you need time alone. I was giving it to you. Even if we had been in contact, you can’t be with me every minute. You can’t stop me when I want to explore. As I told the detective, all I wanted to do was speak with Rowan and try to dig a little deeper into the beginning of his relationship with Margaret. That’s all I wanted. When I learned Ward was the second heir, I was pretty sure he was the murderer. After talking to Rowan, I intended to call Zeke. If I couldn’t get hold of him, I would have asked for Rappaport. But plans can get derailed, and so can relationships.”
Jonas looked as if he was about to say something, but Detective Rappaport returned to the room. With a sigh, the detective sat down heavily in his chair and lowered his elbows to the table. “This is one of those stories that is so senseless and makes you want to cringe when you hear how foolish people are . . . or maybe how fake people can be.”
He looked at his notebook, where he’d scribbled notes. “Apparently, Margaret thought Ward Cooper was over his snit that she’d inherited from his uncle. She’d worked for Conrad Eldridge for a year. But she’d not only worked for him, she’d taken care of him until he died.”
Rappaport glanced up at Daisy, then back at his notes. “Apparently, Margaret had been devoted to him. Ward knew he couldn’t contest the will for alienation of affection or something like that because it simply wasn’t true, and too many people knew it. All of Conrad’s old friends thought Margaret was an angel. Ward thought her break with her own father had always affected her, and Conrad became that father figure she’d never had.”
“I wondered what happens when children leave the faith like that, especially if they’re shunned or cut off. It’s so sad,” Daisy said.
“It is sad,” Rappaport agreed. “The problem was—Margaret thought Ward didn’t resent her any longer. She hadn’t done anything wrong, but she’d wanted to smooth things over. That’s why she invited him to join the staff at the theater, hoping they could erase any bad feelings that might still be unresolved.”
“And Ward pretended to go along?” Jonas asked.
The detective checked his notes again. He squinted at them as if he’d written in a hurry. “You have to understand from what Ward said, he’d only pretended to care for his uncle in the few visits he’d paid him. Ward had never put in time with him because he was on the road. So he pretended to go along with Margaret in a similar way. But he was looking for revenge.”
“How was he going to get revenge? Had he planned to murder her?” Daisy wanted to know.
“I don’t think he thought it would go that far,” Rappaport said. “But that’s for somebody above my pay grade to decide. From what he says, revenge consisted of revealing Margaret’s past as a stripper. He’d decided to blackmail her. They argued about what she should pay him more than once.”
“They must have argued the day Tamlyn told me Margaret was in a bad mood. Margaret had argued with someone before I had a meeting with her.”
“Ward was frustrated with Margaret putting him off. The day of the tea, he came in the back door of the house at the butler’s pantry. He planned to barge in and tell everyone assembled there that Margaret was a stripper, not an actress. He knew she’d be embarrassed. But their argument in the butler’s pantry got out of hand. His anger boiled over. When she wouldn’t give in to his demands, he stabbed her. When he realized what he’d done, he’d gotten even more enraged. That’s why he’d tossed the clotted cream over the brooch. He’d pulled the tennis bracelet from her wrist but dropped it and didn’t have time to retrieve it. My guess is he’ll be arraigned on the second-degree murder charge for Margaret, and an assault charge and attempted murder charge for Daisy. By the way, he said something about pushing over those trees on you at the theater. And something odd.”
“What?” Daisy asked.
“Something about damaging flour and cherries?”
Daisy explained what had happened to the supplies at Thanksgiving.
After making a few final notes, Rappaport shuffled papers on his desk, signaling the end of the conversation.
Jonas must have realized it too. “I have something to ask
