A Justified Murder (Medlar Mystery 2)

There was no need for words. They knew what they had to do next. They practically ran to Jack’s truck. He tossed a couple of toolboxes in the bed, then got in, and backed out of the garage.

“Should we tell him?” Kate didn’t specify who she meant, but they knew.

“Don’t want to,” Sara said, “but there’s that damned tampering with evidence thing.”

Kate took out her phone and sent a text to Sheriff Flynn. We have news. On our way to Janet’s house. “That should do it.”

“He’ll probably beat us there,” Jack said.

He did. When they got there, the sheriff was standing in front of the locked gate, key in hand. “I was in the neighborhood.” He nodded toward Kirkwood Avenue. Tayla’s big house was down there. Had he been searching it?

They waited for him to explain but he didn’t. He unlocked the gate and Jack drove through.

Jack planned to use a laser beam to measure the rooms. If he put the sizes on paper, they’d be able to find where there was concealed space. But first, he looked around with a builder’s eye.

Right away, he found a wire hidden in the crown molding in the master bedroom. “I suspected this. The room was bugged.” He looked at Kate and Sara. “Anything that was said in this room was heard and probably recorded.”

The women looked at each other. That meant that Janet had heard everything Sylvia and Lisa said. Sylvia had said she despised Janet so much that she was writing a true crime book about her. Sylvia said Janet was evil. And Janet heard Sylvia’s plan to run away, to hide from her.

Janet also heard that somewhere in the house was a secret room. But where? They continued searching.

It was Sara who figured it out. “The unread romances,” she said as she stood in front of the tall bookcase. “Janet said Sylvia was her favorite writer. I wondered why the spines weren’t broken from being read again and again.”

Jack turned his laser on the two bedrooms that were behind the bookcase. “Clever.” In the next second he was searching behind the books looking for the latch.

Sheriff Flynn turned to Kate. “What’s the story that led to this?”

Jack answered. “Sylvia had some out-of-towner remodel her house so she could create a secret room. She needed to hide things from Janet.”

Sheriff Flynn blinked. “That’s a jump from Janet the Good, Sylvia’s best friend, to hiding things from her. So maybe your book club wasn’t about putting your butt on a chair after all?”

Sara smiled that he’d already heard about that. “Maybe not.”

Jack stopped searching and grinned. There was a click and the bookcase swung out. He didn’t so much as glance inside but turned to the sheriff.

“Don’t touch anything. Not any surface. Nothing.”

They nodded in understanding, then stepped inside.

Sylvia’d had a foot taken out of each bedroom and had repositioned two closets. It gave her a room of about six feet by twelve.

What was in it now had belonged to Janet. Along one wall was a long table with four big computers, each with a separate screen. A shorter table held six laptops and half a dozen iPhones. A single chair was used for all of them.

“Wow,” Kate said. “She was a super techie.”

“Which one was?” the sheriff asked.

“Janet,” Sara said. “I bet Sylvia had a comfortable chair and a single laptop in here.”

“So what’s on all these?” the sheriff asked.

“I don’t know for sure,” Sara said, “but my guess is bad internet reviews that Janet wrote. And a way to send texts from the wrong person. Lots of messages that are lies. All sorts of things that destroy lives.”

There was a curtain in the middle of the facing long wall and a button beside it. Sara put her shirttail over her finger and pushed the button. The curtain started drawing open.

“I told you not to—” the sheriff began, but cut himself off.

The four of them stood there, staring with wide eyes. The wall was a shrine to Sylvia Alden. Photos, framed and not, were hanging on the wall. Sylvia and Lisa. Sylvia and Tom. Tom holding a young Sylvia in front of a shop named Alden Classics.