Peter nodded and paced, agitated. “The money’s been taken. Who else would have known about the payout?”
I shrugged. “Maybe it was just a coincidence. Like I said, a corrupt family member saw an opportunity and seized it.”
Peter clicked his tongue. “I don’t know. I had a weird feeling about whoever was staying with Opal. It seemed like she didn’t want us to go upstairs.”
I frowned as I thought about it. I’d felt the same way. Who would Opal have wanted to keep us from seeing? Ralph jumped to mind, especially since the pig had told us he had a predilection for affairs (even if I’d been wrong about him having one with Avery Ann). But Ralph was in jail—he couldn’t have been here the other night.
Daisy had sensed Opal was telling the truth when she said family was staying with her. Technically, Avery Ann would have been some kind of illegitimate niece to Opal, but I could see no reason for her to be hiding the girl. And as far as we knew, none of our other suspects were related to them. I bit my lip, lost deep in thought.
It seemed most likely that Pearl and Opal had a relative just as conniving and greedy as they were who’d seized the opportunity to kill Opal and steal the life insurance payout. But why had Opal seemed like she was hiding this family member from us? And what were the chances they had another family member as shady as the sisters themselves?
Icy dread crept in at the edges, my stomach seizing as a thought trickled in. I whirled on Peter. “You said, who’d benefit most from Pearl’s death?”
He startled. “Yeah…?”
My chest heaved as my thoughts raced. “That’s it!”
A light flashed in his eyes and he stepped closer. “You have it?”
I nodded. “I think so….”
29
SOLVED
“Talk it through with me. What if it was Pearl herself staying with Opal?”
Peter looked at me like I needed help. “Pearl’s dead, Jolene.”
I arched a brow, growing more confident as I thought it through. “What if she isn’t, though? What if she faked her own death.” Opal had been first on the body. “Her sister helped her.”
I snapped my fingers and turned to the bewildered German shepherd who was watching me, head cocked. “That’s why her body smelled of lies—she wasn’t really dead!”
Peter ran his tongue over his teeth, brow pinched. “How would she have faked that?”
I grinned as I thought back to the Potent Potions party at Heidi’s friend’s house. Sue had said that too much of one of the potions would make you sleep like the dead. “Opal might have been a hack potion maker, but she’d probably have known enough to concoct something that would send Pearl into a death-like sleep. That’s what Pearl drank that night on stage—she gave the vial to Ralph herself, he told us that. As soon as she collapsed, Opal jumped onstage and, in all the chaos, managed to switch the real vial for a mostly empty one containing poison.”
Peter nodded. “And that was the one our team found clasped in Pearl’s hand. And the poison on her lips?”
I shrugged. “Everyone panicked as soon as Pearl collapsed. Opal probably just smeared a bit of the poison on them while no one was looking.”
Peter’s expression darkened. “That way, we didn’t have to do an autopsy.”
I nodded. “And that’s why Opal was so protective of her sister’s body and so insistent we didn’t cut her open. Pearl was still alive.”
Peter shook his head. “With Ralph in jail, Opal was the one who checked her sister’s body out of the morgue for funeral preparations.” He glanced toward the stairs. “In reality, Pearl was staying here, recovering from the sleeping draught.”
I scoffed. “No wonder Opal didn’t want us going upstairs—we would’ve found Pearl, alive and well.”
Peter’s throat bobbed as he paced behind the chaise, and I tried hard not to look at Opal’s slumped body. “So Pearl faked her own death, with her sister’s help, for the life insurance payout. Why not just fake a boating accident or something more benign? Why fake a murder onstage at the annual summit?”
I leaned on the back of the sofa and drummed my fingers on the plush cushions. “Well… we arrested Ralph, right? Pearl gave him the vial to give to her, setting him up, and Opal hinted she thought he was guilty.”
Peter paused his pacing. “You think Pearl and Opal wanted to take Ralph down?”
I nodded. “Seems like it, right?” I thought of what the pig, Buttercup, had told me about Ralph putting her outside the hotel room when various women would come to visit him. “I’m 99 percent sure Ralph was being unfaithful—I even suspected Avery Ann of being his mistress. Turns out she’s the illegitimate daughter of an affair, but I’m not sure that’s a whole lot better.” I curled my lip. “I bet Pearl wanted to take Ralph down, and Opal agreed to help. They framed him for murder.”
Peter stopped dead. “The anonymous letters—I bet Pearl and Opal sent those, too. Opal sold her shares in the company, so when it went down, she wouldn’t lose all her money. They alerted the press, Madeline L’Orange, about the fraud, disgruntled employees, and bankruptcy filings and even got Carolyn Lopez and the other protestors together.”
I scoffed and straightened. “It wasn’t enough for Ralph to go down for murder—they wanted him to lose his company and fortune, too. Avery Ann said they hadn’t told Pearl about her real identity yet, but I’d bet you anything she found out on her own and wanted to spite Ralph. All while getting a huge payout from selling Opal’s shares and from the life insurance policy. They could disappear to start new lives over again somewhere else.”
Peter’s eyes darted to Opal’s dead body. “Why’s Opal dead, then?”
I bit my lip and tried not to look her way. “Maybe it was Pearl’s plan all along to kill
