Knife Edge (A Dead Cold Mystery Book 27) Blake Banner (10 best books of all time TXT) 📖

stood, but there wasn’t enough room to pace, so I just made a couple of ineffectual turns with my hands on my hips. I drew breath to speak but Dehan said, “Only two people could be lying. Assume Brad killed the kids, that would mean Emma is lying about them having breakfast, hearing the screams and Brad running out ahead of her to the shed. According to her, remember, she arrived just a few seconds later. So that begs the question, why would she lie to protect her daughter’s killer? Even if it is her husband, surely murdering her daughter would be enough to overcome her loyalty to him.”

I grunted. “I know.”

“So assume Emma killed the kids, for some motive we do not yet know about. That means Brad is lying about having found the kids, because he is trying to protect his wife. The same question applies. This woman just killed his daughter. What possible reason could he have for protecting her—especially as we now know he was having an affair with Dr. Wagner.”

“I know, I know!”

“So that leaves the third option.”

Joe said, “That they both did it.”

Dehan nodded at him, “Exactly, that they both did it. Again, for some motive we do not know about yet. And I have to say I find it so improbable as to be fantastic, that those two would conspire together to kill their own daughter, or to protect their daughter’s killer.”

“And yet,” I said, “one of those scenarios has to be at least partly right. Simply because there is no other possible explanation.”

Dehan and I stared at each other for a long moment, and Joe stared from Dehan to me and back again. Then I said, “Unless…”

Joe said, “Unless what?”

“Unless Lea was not intentionally killed.” Dehan frowned and drew breath, but I silenced her. “Wait! Just hear me out for a moment. Maybe we are getting stuck in a rut here. We are assuming that the only person with a motive is Brad. Because he was being blackmailed by Lee and Sonia. But how do things change if, just for the sake of a thought experiment, we assume that the Mitchells have an open marriage? Let’s assume that Brad was not phased by Lee’s threat because he knew that his wife would not mind. Maybe she knew about it already and approved, because she’s having an affair or two herself.”

Dehan made a face. “She did come on to you a bit when we first spoke to her.”

Joe snorted a short laugh. “You old dawg, you.”

I ignored them both and kept going. “So he happily calls in his wife and they both laugh it off and hope that by doing that they have killed off the blackmail attempt. But like Brad said, he suspected there was somebody else behind it—Sonia. And Sonia knows that it ain’t all that simple. Maybe Emma doesn’t care if Brad is having an affair, but what about the university? What about the press? Let’s not forget he is planning to open a multi-million-dollar clinic. And what about the general public’s impression of him, when he is trying to sell his services to people recovering from drug and alcohol abuse? If he is perceived as a libertine, or worse, a sexual predator who is exchanging positions of responsibility at his clinic for sexual favors, his clinic will be finished before it ever gets off the ground. Now that…,” I wagged a finger at both Dehan and Joe, “gives both Brad and Emma a very powerful, financial motive. Because she wants that clinic open as much as he does. Maybe she’s even invested money in it. We need to look into that company.”

Dehan shrugged. “OK, but what about Lea?”

“I’m coming to that. So, Brad and Emma conspire to kill Lee, and they set up this elaborate story on which they both agree. But before they can execute it, something goes wrong.”

“Like what?”

I tried again to do some pacing, but found myself a couple of inches from a steep rack of shelves loaded with various types of paper. I turned my back on it and took a single step to the center of the room.

“There is an accident of some sort and Lea is killed.”

“No way, Stone.” She stood and leaned against the doorjamb. “I know what you’re driving at and maybe it’s the right direction, but it is pretty hard to accidentally cut your own throat.”

“Or somebody else’s, for that matter,” put in Joe. “Though, conceivably, an unlucky fall could cause damage to the throat that could then be disguised with a cut of a rusty knife… But to do that to your own daughter is pretty intense.”

“If,” I butted in, “they wanted to throw suspicion away from themselves.”

Dehan puffed out her cheeks and blew. “That is a lot of supposition. A lot!”

“We need to talk to Frank and have him go over his notes to see if her wounds were consistent with that possibility.”

Dehan raised her hands. “Whoa, whoa, wait a minute, what exactly are we saying happened here?”

“We’re not saying anything happened. We are speculating about what might have happened. Let me run through it. We have the Mitchells at breakfast on Sunday morning. We assume that Lee, under the direction of Sonia, has been attempting to blackmail Brad. Brad has told his wife and both of them are worried about the damage that Lee and Sonia could do to the project for the clinic. Now, what happens next is pretty much what they have both told us, with small but important changes.”

Dehan stepped forward and leaned her hands on the back of the chair where she’d been sitting. “They hear the screams?”

“Yes. That happens just as they said. But they are not Lea’s screams, they are Marcus’s screams. Brad runs into the garden, followed closely by Emma. I figure they both recognized the screams as their son’s. Brad is the first to arrive at the shed and he finds Lea lying on the floor, with her throat