The woman stopped struggling and fixed her gaze on him.
“I am Henry Burke, chief of police here in Caerphilly. Ms. Langslow is assisting me in an investigation. You have already opened yourself to charges of assaulting a police officer in the performance of his duties.”
“Two police officers,” Sammy corrected.
The chief favored him with a withering glance.
“Kindly cease this ridiculous behavior and tell me who you are and what you’re doing here,” the chief went on.
“My name is Felicia Granger, and Clay is my … my friend.” She pulled herself up and stood still. Sammy and Horace let go of her, but stood ready in case she backslid.
Granger—she was probably the wife of the man who’d been following me the night before.
“And your purpose in coming here?” the chief asked.
Felicia seemed to wilt.
“We were supposed to see each other last night,” she said. “He never showed up, and never returned my calls, and—did something happen to him?”
“I’m afraid Mr. Spottiswood is dead,” the chief said, very gently.
Felicia uttered a shriek and fell in a small heap on the floor.
The chief and his officers seemed taken aback by the violence of her grief, and I ended up being the one to help her up, lead her back to the living room, plunk her down on the couch, and say “there, there” as she cried on my shoulder.
The chief had the presence of mind to send Sammy for a glass of water and Horace for a box of tissues, and then ordered them to get back to work searching Clay’s house.
After a while, when Felicia’s sobs finally subsided, she sat up, wiped her nose on the back of her hand, and looked over at the chief.
“How did he die?” she asked.
The chief paused, obviously weighing the effect of what he was about to say, before he answered.
“I’m afraid he was shot,” he said.
“Oh, my God!” Felicia turned pale and clapped both hands over her mouth. “He did it! He really did it!”
“Who did it?” The chief sounded irritated. I could tell Felicia was wearing on his nerves. He wasn’t the only one.
“My husband,” she said. “Ex-husband. Well, not quite ex yet, but we’ve been separated for two months. And he hates Clay. He said he’d kill him if he didn’t leave me alone. Lots of times.”
“That would be Mr. Gerald Granger?” the chief asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Jerry’s been threatening to—”
The door flew open, and Jerry himself burst in.
“Aha!” he exclaimed. “Caught you red-handed! I’m going to—what’s going on here?”
“That’s him,” Felicia said, pointing to the new arrival. “That’s Jerry.”
“I have already met Mr. Granger,” the chief said. “Sit down!” he snapped at the newcomer.
Mr. Granger flinched at the chief’s fierce tone and scuttled over to the chair with surprising meekness. The chief scowled at him for a few moments, as if making sure he was planning to stay put. Then he turned back to me.
“Meg,” he said. “Take Mrs. Granger to the garage and ask Sammy and Horace to keep an eye on her. I need to have a few words with Mr. Granger about his violation of the restraining order against him.”
“You’re going to arrest him, aren’t you?” Felicia said, as I pulled her to her feet and started steering her toward the kitchen. “Because he did it.”
“Somebody did the world a favor,” Jerry said. “But it wasn’t me.”
“You bastard!” she shrieked. She tried to launch herself at him, but unlike Sammy and Horace, I had considerable experience dealing with juvenile tantrums. She wasn’t a particularly large woman, so I slung her over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry and hauled her out to the garage, still kicking and shrieking. Sometimes it comes in handy being not only taller than average but, thanks to my blacksmithing work, a lot stronger than most women.
“The chief says keep an eye on her,” I said to Sammy and Horace, who looked alarmed at her return.
“Bitch,” she said to me, but she seemed to have calmed down.
“What happened?” Sammy asked.
“My husband happened.” Felicia grabbed Clay’s recycling bin, turned it upside down to dump the contents on the garage floor, and sat on it, with her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. “He killed Clay Spottiswood.”
“He’s a suspect,” I said. “How did you and Clay meet, anyway?”
“He decorated our living room.” Felicia shook her head. “You want to know the ironic thing? I didn’t want to hire him in the first place. I actually preferred one of the other designers who gave us a proposal. But Jerry liked Clay’s designs. Said he wanted a masculine look in the living room, not a lot of female frippery.” She chuckled mirthlessly. “Bet now he wishes he’d picked Martha Blaine’s design.”