Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 127368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
“You’re bloody perceptive,” the man spat.
Indeed he was, for he was proving that right now.
“Ah,” Ian replied. “So you wanted me fuzzy so I wouldn’t notice your shit.”
“It didn’t bloody work,” he muttered. “I told her to put more in. With your size, you’d metabolize it too easily. She didn’t like doing it in the first place. She refused to do it again.”
“That might serve her well now,” Ian drawled. “As for the psilocybin?”
The man glanced at Portia.
I moved protectively toward my sister just as Daniel circled her with both arms, his glower on the man outright vicious.
I turned again to the man on the couch to catch him looking back to Ian. “She was the one who was supposed to leave here and tell others the story. You bloody lot keep your secrets. You would never do it.”
“And Dorothy haunting the manor would sell more books, wouldn’t it, Mr. Clifton?” Ian surmised.
I gasped again.
So did Portia.
Lady Jane obviously knew him, so she did not.
“You watched Dad enter the code when he let you in all those times to do your research,” Ian said. “The combination to the safe, when he took you to the Brandy Room. So when you maneuvered your way back in, you could get what you wanted. Your mouse in the house told you about Portia and Daniel, how Portia was coming to visit. And you hatched your plan.”
The man slumped into the couch, crossing his arms like an angry child, and said, “You’ve figured it all out. So I don’t have to say anything.”
“Yes. My investigators are thorough with bank records and ferreting out royalty statements and tracking prescriptions. It seems I’m not the only one who thinks your book is absolute rot.”
The man’s face flushed with anger.
“Dorothy was loved by her family, she takes care of you all to this day in a manner, does she not?” Ian asked.
The man looked away.
She did.
“The dedications in your book, both of them were sarcastic. Your private joke. You didn’t think Dorothy had talent. You scorned her because you thought she slept her way to the top. And your parents didn’t support you. They thought you were the piece of shit you are and disinherited you. So you used the only thing you had, and it was still Dorothy’s, to make money off her very dead back. Going so far as to take her things from your family’s archives, should you need to use those too. Like her shoes from that night. Her dress. One way or another, you were going to use all you had of Dorothy to line your pockets, and you did.”
Boy, Ian’s investigators didn’t mess around.
And microdoses of Valium did nothing to affect Ian’s perception.
Not at all.
“Now, let me tell you why you’re here right now,” Ian offered. “Stevenson has been losing sleep to keep an eye on the staff entrance, which has an entry close to it that leads to the corridors. We could have set up a camera, but Stevenson wouldn’t hear of it. This house means something to him, as do the people in it. You didn’t just violate the Alcotts with your devilries, Mr. Clifton, you violated our whole family.”
Ian swung out an arm to encompass everyone in the room.
And yes, that right there was when my fall was complete, and I knew I was in love with him.
I looked to Stevenson who was standing, back straight, staring down his nose at Steve Clifton.
“Nevertheless, he didn’t need to. My investigator was following you and saw you approaching the house. She phoned me. But Stevenson saw you come in,” Ian went on, “and he roused the staff to creep around and find you. I’d already roused Dad and Daniel. Daniel and I were the ones who first saw you. Daniel used the corridors to round to the other side. And I watched you myself carry that mannequin to the landing. Then I watched you lie in wait. This was a big play. Were we taking too long to be terrified, Mr. Clifton? Or, at the end of our week together, was this your grand finale?”
“The girl told me what was happening. That the sister was having tricks played on her,” he mumbled sullenly.
“So you thought you could ride those coattails,” Ian surmised.
Clifton lost it but phrased it in an attempt to find the moral high ground.
“You lot think you can get away with bloody murder!” he yelled.
I looked to Lady Jane.
She glanced at me with an expression of lips zipped.
Not that I would say anything, but I didn’t say anything.
“First, that was a hundred years ago. Everyone who was there is dead,” Ian retorted. “More importantly, second, you don’t care who killed Dorothy. You might be covetous of what we have and wanted to fuck with our heads because we have it, and you’re a shit writer, apparently a shit son, and definitely a shit individual. But that’s an aside. Mostly, you needed renewed interest in your dead aunt so it would sell books because you’re broke, and your millionaire family doesn’t give a flying fuck.”