Chapter Seventeen

As soon as they were out of Billy's room, Sara texted Lenny to ask him if he would have tea set up in the nursery. And if you see Rachel, please invite her. I'll be there in thirty minutes. It hadn't been easy to get Lenny to use a phone. He had an obsession with privacy and no one knowing anything about him. "I doubt if Lenny is his real name," Randal had said.

Kate drove Sara's MINI to Bessie's and they went in to pick up two bags of scones. One contained wheat flour pastries, and the other was made with almond flour for Sara's low-carb diet.

"What do you hope to get out of her?" Kate asked when they were back in the car.

"What was she doing with your hedgehog? Did she stuff it full of jewels?"

"Then jam it into Derek's skull?" Kate said. "Maybe the real question is if she sawed his head in half."

"After bashing him, that is. That shows some serious anger—and violence."

"If she and Reid were lovers, maybe they did it together," Kate said.

"That would be ironic," Sara said. "Derek Oliver knew that Reid was the owner of the property. His death kept that from being known. Poor Reid was cheated out of his inheritance."

"So what was the motive?"

Sara shrugged. "The man was a jerk. Maybe he said something that put someone in a rage. Grab something hard and smack him over the head. The end."

"I can believe that. It's the sawing that stumps me. What in the world did the killer do with the brain?"

"Put it in a jar as a trophy?" Sara said. "Slice it up and study it? See what makes a person so vile that everyone who meets him wants to kill him?"

Kate pulled into the driveway of Lachlan House, turned off the engine, and looked at Sara. "Again, what do you hope to get out of Rachel?"

"I'm leaning toward asking about Greer. I'm hearing her name too many times."

Kate tightened her lips. "I liked her."

"You were four. Four-year-olds like anyone who offers them a puppy and candy."

Kate didn't soften. "Promise me that you'll be nice. Don't go in there with your mind made up."

"Okay. I swear it. I'll clear my mind. I'll forget seeing her slap Reid, then kiss him. I'll not remember how she's betrayed our dear Gil. I'll—"

Kate groaned. "I'm going to switch scones, and you'll eat carbs. Lots and lots of carbs!" She got out of the car.

"You're too cruel," Sara said, laughing.

Rachel was standing by the door of the nursery when Sara got there. "Hello," she said. "Lenny told me I was invited to tea."

"Yes." Sara didn't like how curt she sounded. She wasn't going to get any information if she started out hostile. She opened the door and went inside. Lenny got someone—probably Dora—to set up a lovely spread. A small round table was covered with a lace cloth and the yellow-trimmed dinnerware gleamed prettily.

"This is lovely," Rachel said. "How very kind of you." She politely waited until Sara was seated before taking the other chair.

Where to begin, Sara thought. Maybe with a less personal topic than her and Reid. Did you two kill him? No, that wasn't the way to begin. "Tell me about Greer."

Rachel looked startled. "Is she a suspect?"

"Maybe." Sara buttered a scone as Rachel poured the tea. She certainly knows her way around a teapot! She even knows how to use the strainer.

"Greer was nice, quiet, and very young. She worked a lot so we didn't see her much."

"I heard that Oliver was quite nasty to her."

"He treated everyone with disdain, and he seemed to know secrets about them."

"Did he know something about Greer?"

Rachel smiled. "I don't think she'd had enough life experience to have any secrets. She'd lived mostly with her grandmother."

"A forced isolation?"

"Oh no!" Rachel said. "At least not that I heard. Greer and her grandmother went places and did things and read a lot." She looked up at Sara. "May I ask you a personal question?"

"Just so long as it isn't ‘Where do you get your ideas?'"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Sorry. Writer's joke. Ask me anything."

Rachel's face softened. "Quinn asked me to have dinner with him and Gil tonight. What do I take? What do I wear? Maybe I could bake a pie. If Lenny will let me borrow the kitchen, that is. Or I could buy something. But what?" She sighed. "Do you have any suggestions?"

Sara wasn't often knocked speechless but Rachel left her grasping for words. "Gil? Quinn?" she managed to say.

"Yes. Excuse me, but that bookcase behind you is driving me crazy. Do you mind if I fix it?"

Sara believed in organization. "Sure."

Rachel got up and went to the bookcase and began sorting the children's books. "They were by age and now they're shoved in anywhere." She halted and looked around. "This room appears to be the same, but it's not. The little turtle rug is missing. It was Kate's favorite."

"Turtle?" Sara asked.

"Billy used to say this room was to be untouched. It had something to do with two little boys. All the furniture and toys had been custom-made for this room. So where is the turtle rug?" She nodded to an empty place on the floor.

"I have no idea," Sara said.

Rachel walked to the other side of the room and switched cushions from a chair to the window seat. "The cottage is beautiful, isn't it? That big stained glass window is spectacular. Are you going to renovate it?"

"It's not my place."

"But won't the estate be put up for sale?"

Sara hesitated. "James Lachlan's will leaves it to his eldest descendant."

"And who is that?"

"We're not sure yet."

Nodding in understanding, Rachel stepped back and looked around the room, studying it critically. "That's better." She sat back down at the tea table and filled Sara's cup then her own. "The tea's not quite hot but it's all right. Did you want to ask me things?"

Sara was so surprised by her behavior that she'd almost forgotten her purpose. "What happened to your aunt's jewels?"

Rachel's look could only be described as blank.

Sara waited for an answer.

"I don't think they were real."

Sara knew that what they had found inside Derek Oliver's skull was very real. "Is that what she told you?" To keep you from stealing them? she wondered.

Rachel looked confused. "I didn't ask. They seemed too big and too gaudy to be genuine." She paused. "What do I do about Gil?"

"You seem to really like him. And Quinn."

Rachel looked at her teacup, then up at Sara. "I've had men in my life. Not many, but some."

"Like your husband?" Sara said.

"I did what I was supposed to do," she said softly.

Sara nodded at that. Like all women, she'd done that.

"But Gil and Quinn are different. How in the world is he single? I don't understand. Are women stupid?"

With that question, Sara softened. She loved Gil. And she'd watched Quinn grow up. Their time with Jack had bonded all of them. "I think so," Sara said. Rachel was waiting for more information, so Sara began doing what she did best in the world: she told a story. She told of Gil's one-night stand that had produced Quinn and all Gil had done since then to keep his son.

Rachel listened in enraptured silence. When Sara finished, she leaned back against her chair. "That poor man." She looked at her watch. "If I'm going to bake anything, I better go." She stood up. "I didn't kill Derek Oliver, and I don't think Greer did either. She didn't like the things he said to her, but she knew it was temporary so she could laugh at them."

"Even when he said she was ugly?"

"She was ugly. But that was only on the outside. Ask the others if Greer ever did anything bad to them. You will hear only good."

"What about you and Reid?"

Rachel blinked a few times, seeming to be surprised that Sara knew about that. "It meant nothing."

"Not to Reid."

"We were kids." Rachel looked at her watch again.

Sara was still seated. "What happened to Kate's hedgehog?"

Rachel frowned. "I don't know. She was very attached to it. Her dad said someone she loved gave it to her. When she couldn't find it, Kate got onto Lea's lap and cried and cried. It was heartbreaking." She looked around the room. "I'd like to take this place apart. I figure that little animal fell down a crack somewhere. It wouldn't mean as much now, but I'd still like to know what happened to it." Her head came up. "Did that hideous man steal it? He saw how much Kate loved it so he took it? It's like something he'd do."

"He did," Sara said. "Sort of."

"How do you know that?"

"I can't tell everything I've found out, but Oliver did take the hedgehog, so to speak."

"What a vile man!" She took a step backward.

"Go," Sara said. "Bake a pie for Gil and Quinn." She thought, And I hope he overlooks that he saw you kissing Reid.

"Thanks," Rachel said and hurried out the door.

Sara sat where she was. As far as she could tell, she had managed to get no information whatever from Rachel. Instead, she'd been the one to tell all.

But Sara's biggest surprise was that she now liked the woman. That Rachel could see how wonderful Gil and his son were had won her over.

She sighed. Now she had to face the others and tell them she had completely and totally failed in her interview.