been on one of the top floors of the house. But they had yet to find James Ross. This detail hadn’t rested well with Lydia, and in thinking of it, a couple of other details weren’t sitting so well, either. That’s why they had come today to talk to Ford.
“So when’s your last day?” asked Lydia, looking at him guiltily.
“Tomorrow,” he said, turning his cop’s eyes on them, his voice shading suspicious. “Why?”
“There are just a couple of things nagging at us,” said Jeffrey, giving Ford an apologetic look.
“Man, you guys need to learn how to let things
“Yeah… but there are just a few things that don’t add up,” answered Lydia, sitting down. “If you can put them to bed for us, we’re on our way to Hawaii to meet my grandparents and to get married.”
He leaned back and looked at them, scowling, but Lydia could see the gleam of curiosity in his eyes.
“Like what?”
“Like where did he get all that money? The money to buy the Lexus and the new clothes? Presumably, now that you mention it, to pay Maura and Annabelle Hodge for their services. Remember he’d been declared dead. He had no funds, no assets.”
Ford nodded, seemed to consider the question. “What else?”
“Don’t you think it’s an awfully big coincidence that Julian Ross would wind up living in a building that had one of those Prohibition tunnels, convenient to her crazy tunnel-dwelling twin who happens to be stalking her?”
Ford shrugged. “What else?”
“That night in the house,” said Jeffrey. “I shot James in the foyer. He had a choice to run from the burning house, hop in his Lexus, and take off with the twins. But instead, he turned and ran up the stairs… into the flames. Why didn’t he just take off? Our car was all the way down on the street; he knew I wouldn’t leave you and Lydia in the house to chase after him. He would have had a clean getaway.”
Ford seemed to think about it. He leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. “Well, the police were heading up the drive at that point, right?” said Ford, hopeful.
“And the other thing,” said Lydia, “may be the most important. James told us he took the twins so that he could reclaim his family and his fortune. But how would kidnapping the twins accomplish the recovery of his fortune? There was no way for him to claim their money when he was their
“So what are you getting at?”
“Now Julian, miraculously recovered, her evil twin dead, is cleared of her husband’s murder and reunited with her children,” said Lydia, mimicking a society column entry. “Even more fabulously wealthy than ever before, she’s about to embark on a new life, in a new country. She leaves for Switzerland next week, where her dear friend Orlando has a villa where she’ll stay until she and her children have found appropriately luxurious accommodations.”
They were all quiet, listening to the bustle of the busy precinct outside the office. Lydia looked at Ford and saw that none of what she’d said surprised him, that he’d been turning over the same questions in his mind. He shook his head slowly and closed his eyes.
“You remember Julian’s shrink, Dr. Barnes?” Lydia said. “Something she said keeps coming back to me. She said about a year before Stratton was murdered, Julian ended her therapy. She told the doctor that she’d decided to ‘surrender’ to her true self. And that fits with something James told us. He said that he’d been sent to Fishkill because Eleanor believed they had an incestuous relationship. Not because he’d tried to set the house on fire. When he found Julian again, he said she didn’t love him anymore. And that all this time, he’d been stalking her trying to convince her that they belonged together.”
She stopped and looked at Ford as he tried to connect the dots.
“Lydia, just what are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking,” said Lydia, “maybe after all these years of being apart, maybe after all these years of ‘trying to have a normal life,’ Julian gave in to James. Maybe Julian and James finally found a way to be together.”
The Park Avenue duplex was a bustle of workers, covering furniture and carrying boxes out the doors and to a waiting freight elevator. Some of the windows were open, Lydia assumed to air out the place, but she shivered against the cold. Julian Ross didn’t seem to notice the temperature, even though she wore only jeans and a thin white silk turtleneck. Looking fit and healthy, her cheeks a robust pink, her eyes clear, Julian greeted Lydia at the door with an embrace. Lydia regarded her and thought that she looked truly happy, that it radiated from the inside out.
“The children have gone on ahead to Switzerland with Orlando,” she said, leading Lydia into the parlor, which was still relatively intact. “They’ve come to love and trust him so much.”
They sat together on a red velvet sofa that was still uncovered.
“How are they holding up?”
“Young children are resilient,” she said calmly. “They’ll have the best counselors when we’re settled.”
“What about you?”
“For me,” she said, her expression darkening just slightly, “it might take longer. But I’m getting there.” A brightness came back to her, but this time it seemed forced.
“There were just some loose ends I wanted to tie up…”
“Oh, your fee!” she said, hopping up as if to rush off for her checkbook. “Of course. How much did my mother agree to pay you?”
“It’s not the fee, Julian.”
The other woman must have heard something in Lydia’s voice, because the color drained from her cheeks. She sat back down and was suddenly wary. “What is it, then? As you can see, I’m quite busy.”
“It won’t take long,” Lydia said with a smile. She rose and walked over to one of the open windows and looked down the fourteen stories to the street below. It was a busy midafternoon, with cabs rushing by, people swiftly walking along the sidewalk. From the window, Lydia could see the top of the Chrysler Building gleaming in the bright afternoon sun, smell the wood burning from fireplaces.
“We looked into the ownership of the Lexus James was driving and found something interesting. We found that it was registered to you, purchased just a week before Richard was killed.”
The words hung in the air between them.
“That’s not possible,” Julian said with a shake of her head. But she diverted her eyes to look out the window behind Lydia.
“We also discovered that on the same day, you opened a small checking account for Nathaniel and Lola and placed ten thousand dollars there.”
“So?”
“So… someone was using a bank card to draw on that money. We’ve managed to get a surveillance photo from one of the ATM machines. And guess who it was.”
“I have no idea,” she said, drawing herself up in the same way Lydia had seen Eleanor do.
“Your brother.”
Everything Lydia had said was true except for the part about the surveillance photo. That was a lie.
After Lydia and Jeffrey had posed their questions to Ford, he’d immediately contacted the DMV and the banking institutions where Julian Ross and Richard Stratton had kept their liquid assets. It had taken them less than an hour to come up with the vehicle ownership and the information about the small checking account. It had been a small enough withdrawal not to arouse suspicion during the initial investigation into Richard Stratton’s murder, as Julian and Richard regularly made purchases and withdrawals in that ballpark, and the police weren’t really working a murder-for-hire angle.
“He could have stolen that bank card. How should I know?” Julian said, a kind of calm seeming to come over her. “I’m going to ask you to leave now.”
Ford and Jeffrey, along with Detectives Malone and Piselli, walked in through the front door. The moving men paused in their activities, sensing that something was going down. Julian looked over at them, and then back to Lydia. She seemed to deflate a bit.
“Where is he, Julian? Where’s James?”
“This is crazy,” she said simply. “I want my attorney.”
“With Ford McKirdy missing, I think you knew it was a good bet that we’d head back up to Haunted and the
