Brandon shrugged. “It’s hard to keep track of stuff like that when you’re scared and fighting for your life.”
“I know exactly how many times I hit him,” Lyra said.
But the three iron was not on the patio where she had left it. The club had been moved. It was now a few feet from the original position. She looked at Marcella Adlington.
Marcella moved to stand next to her. She raked her fingers through her wet hair. There was a plea for understanding in her eyes. She lowered her voice.
“I had to be sure,” she said.
Chapter 2
Marcella Adlington set me up,” Lyra said. She walked to the window of the office and contemplated the view of the palm-shaded street through the wooden blinds. “I can’t prove it, but I’m certain of it. At the last minute everything went off script. She had to improvise.”
“She wanted to be certain her husband really was dead,” Raina Kirk said.
“Yes.”
Raina leaned back in the big chair and tapped one elegantly polished nail on the gleaming desk. She was not sure how to deal with the situation. She had no intention of telling Lyra that she understood Marcella Adlington’s panic and determination all too well.
Nevertheless, she got the nagging feeling that it was her responsibility to offer some words of comfort. Lyra was, after all, very new in the investigation business. She had been on the job for only three days.
But Raina had no idea what to say. Until now Kirk Investigations had been a one-woman business, her business. In her other life back in New York she had worked as a secretary for a couple of professional killers. Neither that role nor her new one here in Burning Cove had prepared her for dealing with an employee who had been subjected to a major emotional shock. Maybe she wasn’t cut out for management.
In hindsight it had probably been a mistake to take Lyra Brazier on as an apprentice. Was there even such a thing as an apprentice in the investigation business? That had been Lyra’s description of the position she sought at the firm when she had walked through the door and announced she wanted to work for Kirk Investigations.
One thing had quickly become clear: When Lyra started talking, it was astonishingly difficult to resist her. Raina had sat politely through the pitch, fully intending to say no, but somehow she had ended up agreeing to give Lyra a trial run as an apprentice.
Today it was starting to look as if she might not last long in the job she had so convincingly talked her way into. Lyra came from a wealthy, privileged background. Her father owned an international shipping company. She was smart, well-educated, stylish, and determined, but she had led a very sheltered life. She lacked experience of the real world.
Lyra had been born and raised to be a socialite—to marry an upper-class man from a good family, to host charity luncheons, to throw lavish parties and attend the opera. She had definitely not been brought up to risk her neck trying to uncover other people’s secrets. And now, three days into the job, she had nearly gotten herself murdered on her very first assignment.
I should let her go, Raina thought. For her own good. There was an unmistakable aura of naïveté and cheerful innocence about Lyra. The private investigation business was not a good career choice for the naïve and the innocent.
But one thing stopped her from firing Lyra on the spot. Yes, a madman had tried to murder her that day, but she had fought off her attacker with a golf club and she had saved herself and the client. She also understood that she had been used. She was no longer quite so naïve or so innocent. She was learning fast.
“You’re right,” Raina said. “Marcella Adlington was certainly very specific about the time of the appointment this afternoon. She was not dressed for swimming or sunbathing, yet she insisted you meet her poolside.”
Lyra swung around, her hazel eyes sharp and clear. “She had a gun hidden in a stack of towels. The fact that Charles Adlington was dressed for swimming indicates that his presence at the scene was not a surprise to his wife.”
“I agree.”
“I found out later that his car was parked in the garage. He had been there for a while. She must have told him she planned to hire a private investigator to try to get him committed again, because when he realized I was there, he stopped trying to drown her and came after me.”
“If Marcella had shot her husband without any obvious reason, she would have been arrested for murder. She needed a witness and a believable explanation for pulling the trigger. She told him she was expecting an investigator because she knew he would fly into a rage when he saw you. That would give her the excuse to kill him. She would be the heroine of the situation because she stopped her husband from murdering you. She certainly would not have been arrested in those circumstances, and her terrifying husband would be safely dead.”
Lyra began to pace the room. “But things went wrong. He turned on her first.”
“If you hadn’t arrived when you did, she would have died. You saved her life when you used that golf club on Adlington.”
Lyra stopped in the middle of the room. “But suddenly Marcella was faced with an unplanned scenario. The whole point was to make sure she got rid of her husband, but she wasn’t sure that Adlington was dead. Neither of us could tell if he was alive, and we didn’t dare get close enough to check for a pulse.”
“So when you went around the house to greet Detective Brandon, Marcella picked up the golf club and made certain that her husband would not survive.”
Lyra nodded slowly. “Yes, that is exactly what happened. I don’t believe Marcella ever intended to hire Kirk Investigations. She just wanted her husband dead.”
Raina sighed. “Welcome to my world. Rule number one is always assume the client is lying or, at the very least, not telling you the whole truth. Everyone has secrets to protect.”
“Right. I’ll remember that.”
Raina sat forward and clasped her hands on the desktop. “Are you sure you want to be a private investigator?”
“Please don’t fire me because of what happened today.”
Raina raised her brows. “I’m not going to let you go because of that. After all, you saved the client—”
“Non-client.”
“You saved the non-client and yourself. You exhibited remarkably sharp thinking under extraordinarily dangerous circumstances. I am very impressed with your golf swing, by the way.”
Lyra’s jaw tightened. Shadows veiled her eyes. She turned away and went back to the window.
“What bothers me is that I’ll never know,” she said quietly.
“Never know what?” Raina asked.
“If I’m the one who killed Charles Adlington. I only struck him once, Raina, but I hit him very hard. There was a lot of blood. But Marcella Adlington hit him several more times.”