Bones of a Feather - Carolyn Haines [78]
“Take this spawn of Satan Millicent calls her dog before I strangle him with his leash.” She pushed the tether toward me again.
I took two steps back, too stunned at Helena’s unexpected appearance on top of Millicent’s murder to say or do anything except giggle.
“Are you on drugs or just stupid?” she asked.
When that failed to elicit a response, she snapped her fingers in front of my face. “What the hell is wrong with you? Where is Millicent? I demand to speak to her.”
My brain finally engaged and I dragged my gaze from the mesmerizing eyes of the dog. There was definitely something Rasputinish about the mutt. “What makes you think Millicent is here?”
I must have looked addled, because she sighed and spoke very slowly. “She … was … working … for … John … Hightower … last … night … and … left … her … car … at … his … apartment.”
I couldn’t take any more of her tedious phrasing. “Stop it. I understand you, but it doesn’t make sense that you would think Millicent is here at Briarcliff. The Levert sisters don’t like her. She doesn’t like them. They aren’t in the habit of visiting each other.”
“It makes perfect sense,” Helena insisted. “John said he left her here. She never retrieved her car from his place, therefore she is still here. Millicent is not the kind of woman who would walk anywhere.”
So Hightower had made it home safely, but he’d abandoned his partner in snooping. He’d hauled ass through the woods and straight to his vehicle, leaving Millicent to fend for herself. Weasel. No, worse than a weasel. In my book, he might be an accessory to murder.
A terrible thought crossed my mind: What if Hightower had killed Millicent? Though he didn’t physically strike me as the type to commit strangulation—even Millicent, feminine as she’d been, could have bested him in hand-to-hand combat—still, he could have whacked her on the head and disabled her before he went for her throat. Judging from the photo, she had died of a broken neck.
Helena stomped her foot, which made an unpleasant squishing sound. “Have you suffered some kind of brain injury?”
Roscoe jerked on the leash and almost pulled her over. It was enough to snap me out of my gruesome thoughts. “What did the dog do? I mean, other than pee on your foot.” Roscoe personified trouble with a capital T. The dog exuded criminal activity.
“Millicent has trained this creature to dig into trash. He does it all over town, and he drags things about, leaving a perfect trail of … disgusting items. He has an uncanny ability to find exactly the thing you most wish—” She broke off, aware, perhaps, she was saying too much.
“So Roscoe got into your trash and nosed up something embarrassing. What, a list of orphans you’ve abused? People down on their luck you’ve evicted?” Since she was determined to force herself on me, I decided to have some fun.
“My life is above reproach. Roscoe discovered no such thing. But he is vile and horrible. Just like everything connected to the Leverts. Keep him off my property or the next time, I’ll shoot him myself.”
“What is it with you?” I asked. “You were supposed to be in Eleanor’s wedding. You were once friends. What happened?”
Hatred twisted her face. “Gaston would never have gone through with the wedding. He loved me, not Eleanor. He wanted to marry me.”
“He died during his bachelor party,” I pointed out. “To all appearances, he meant to marry Eleanor.”
“That shows what you know.” The fevered gleam of memory lit her eyes. “He didn’t know how to get out of it. He didn’t want to hurt Eleanor, but he couldn’t marry her. He didn’t love her. The Levert money would allow him to continue as an artist, but he would have gained financial success without it. I helped him see that. We had plans to run away, back to France. We would have been happy.”
“Your family fortune wasn’t enough to entice him?” I couldn’t help it. The whole situation was distasteful.