Stranger Danger (Lucy McGuffin, Psychic Amateur Detective 4)

“Oh, no. Don’t put that on me. You do what you think is right.”

Then I think about it a minute. My best friend needs my advice. So I should give it to him.

“Listen, Will, you don’t owe anyone anything. You have every right to keep a pen name. Jefferson Pike was wrong when he said you were asking to be scammed. In every way that counts, you were just as much a victim of Jefferson Pike as any of those people whose money he took. Don’t let him suck the creative juice out of you. Keep being J.W. Quicksilver if that’s what it takes to keep writing those awesome books of yours.”

He grins. “Gosh, Lucy, I’m getting choked up.”

I playfully punch him in the shoulder.

“How about I buy you lunch?” he says.

“How about a raincheck?” I look at my watch. It’s two thirty. “I have to go show Betty Jean how to clean up after a shift.”

“Good luck with that.”

“Dinner tomorrow night at my parents’?”

“Where else would I be on Sunday night?”

Paco and I get in the car, and we head back to The Bistro.

Archie Clements confessed to Jefferson Pike’s murder. Only I know he’s lying.

It makes no sense. Why would he confess to something he didn’t do?

I try to reason it out like a puzzle. Did he have motive? Yes. Jefferson and he argued about the publishing scam. Archie isn’t violent, but everyone has their breaking point.

Did he have opportunity? No. He was in a car trying to get away as fast as he could. He and Anita left the beach house at what … four fifteen? Jefferson was murdered sometime between five and five thirty, about an hour after Archie and Anita had already left town. They were all the way to Tallahassee when they …

They were all the way to Tallahassee?

Wait. What did Travis tell me again?

I thought you’d like to know that about an hour ago we caught Hoyt Daniels and Anita Tremble. They were outside of Tallahassee when they got stopped by the highway patrol for a broken taillight.

Travis gave me that information at almost ten o’clock the night of the murder. Tallahassee is less than a three-hour drive. If Archie and Anita really did hightail it out of town when they said they did, then by 9 p.m. they should have been almost to Jacksonville.

Which means they didn’t leave town at four fifteen.

Anita and I got back to the beach house around four that afternoon. Once we knew we’d been compromised, we packed up and left the beach house immediately.

Archie said they left the beach house at four fifteen. He never said they left town. I made that assumption on my own. Which means he was still in town when Jefferson was killed.

There was something else about that conversation with Archie that has me puzzled. What was it?

I pull my VW bug into The Bistro parking lot. Betty Jean must be wondering what’s taking me so long. I unclip Paco’s leash and open the kitchen door.

Archie was disturbed when I told him that Jefferson never went to The Harbor House to see the potential mark, who I now know was Betty Jean. And he had no idea that Jefferson was murdered between five and five thirty. I gave him all that information when I went to see him at the jail.

Once again, I ask myself, why would he confess to a murder he clearly didn’t commit?

And then, it hits me.

Archie was disturbed because it was in that moment when I unwittingly gave him the missing pieces to the puzzle, that he was able to figure out who killed Jefferson Pike. There’s only one person Archie cares enough about to take the fall on a murder rap.

Paco starts to growl.

The kitchen is eerily quiet. “Betty Jean?” I call out.