Unless, she had staged that brawl with Brett.
But what would her motive be?
That was always the question, wasn’t it? What was anyone’s motive? Including Julian’s.
Presumably, if Jack had gone so far as to charge Julian, he had worked all that out.
The timeline surely presented problems. Not enough problems to keep Jack from arresting Julian, though.
Ellery absently pulled on Watson’s silky ears, weighing his options.
Jack had to be pretty sure of his case to risk arresting the son of one of Pirate Cove’s wealthiest and most influential families.
“Please. I’m depending on you.”
Julian sounded so desperate.
Ellery closed his eyes, trying not to remember that sweet kiss and Julian’s disarming, “I can’t believe you’re really here.”
His cell rang again. He opened his eyes. Another call from Nora. He shuddered at the idea that they would have to come up with a statement for Sue Lewis and the Scuttlebutt Weekly. He really did not want to get involved in this.
But.
It couldn’t hurt to talk to Julian, right? He could hear him out and then decide what, if anything, he could do.
Coffee helped.
Two aspirin, a shower, and breakfast helped more.
While he finished his second cup of coffee, Ellery tried returning the unknown number in his messages and got Buck Island City Jail. Uh-oh. He hung up and phoned Jack at the familiar PICO PD number.
It took a few tries, but eventually Jack picked up. He sounded weary but unsurprised. “What did you need, Ellery? I don’t have a lot of time to talk.”
Ellery was equally short. “No problem. You’re not the one I want to talk to.”
Jack sighed. “The answer is no. You can’t speak to Julian.”
“Why can’t I?”
Jack spluttered, “What do you mean, why? Because he’s not staying in a hotel. He’s in jail. For homicide.”
“He’s allowed a phone call, isn’t he?”
“Of course.”
“Well, he used it to call me.”
“He phoned you?”
“Yes. Three times.”
There was a silence, and then Jack said, “I see.”
Judging by his tone, he did see something. Something that Ellery did not. And that Jack, being Jack, was not going to share.
Ellery lost patience. “Come on, Jack. What does it hurt if I speak to him for a minute? What do you think I’m going to tell him? What do you think he’s going to tell me?”
Jack gave a funny laugh. “I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough.”
“Then I can talk to Julian?”
“Yes. You can talk to Julian.”
Before Ellery could respond, Jack put him on hold. Ellery waited through several public-service announcements. Then there were a couple of clicks, the phone rang, there was another click, and Julian said tentatively, “Hello?”
“Hi. It’s me. Ellery.”
Julian exhaled in a long, unsteady sigh. “Thank God. I knew you’d call. Ellery, I didn’t do it. I swear to God. I didn’t kill Brett.”
“I know,” Ellery said automatically. “Of course not.”
“I’m not sorry he’s dead. I’m not going to pretend I am.”
It suddenly occurred to Ellery what Jack’s I’m-sure-I’ll-find-out-soon-enough comment had meant. Julian’s phone calls were being recorded. That wasn’t the surprise. The surprise was that Jack had hinted as much to Ellery. Did he want Ellery to know he was being recorded?
Why?
“Sure, but I wouldn’t stress that, if I were you,” Ellery said.
“I’m not a hypocrite. I’m not—”
Ellery cut him off. “Why were you arrested? What kind of evidence do they have against you?”
“I don’t know!” Julian’s voice shot up, and Ellery frowned.
“You must have some idea.”
“I guess because I found the body. The person who finds the body is always the prime suspect.”
“What about the scuffle with Brett earlier in the evening? What happened when you went outside? You weren’t alone with him, were you?”
“No!”
“At any point after that run-in were you alone with Brett?”
Julian hesitated. “No. No, of course not.”
Ellery’s hope faded. He didn’t need to know Julian well to hear the lie in his voice. That didn’t mean Julian had killed Brett. People lied when they were afraid, and Julian was audibly terrified.
“Listen,” he said. “I have some experience with this, and I can tell you that being honest with Jack—with Police Chief Carson—is your best bet. Even if he doesn’t believe you—he didn’t believe me at first when I was suspected of killing Trevor Maples—he’ll keep looking until he figures out the truth.”
Julian said bitterly, “Maybe that’s how it worked for you, but that’s not how it is now. He’s acting like he hates me. He doesn’t believe anything I say. He keeps asking the same stupid questions over and over, even when I tell him I don’t know the answers. I don’t know why I ever thought he was so hot. He’s a jerk.”
Ellery cleared his throat. “That’s his job, though. To see if there are discrepancies in your story. To see where he can follow up.”
“He’s not going to follow up on anything. He thinks I did it. All this time I believed he was one of the good guys, but he’s already thrown away the key.”
Ellery let that go. He understood Julian’s need to vent, but they didn’t have a lot of time to talk. “Julian, who do you think killed Brett?”
Once again, Julian’s voice rocketed skyward. “I don’t know! How should I know?”
“Well, he’s—was—married to your mother. You must have some idea of who he knew, and where he went, and why someone might not like him.”
“Brett was a weasel.”
“Right. But was he a-a generic weasel, or was there something weasel-specific that he did to someone that might make them want him dead?”
“I’m sure there were lots of things!”
Ellery held on to his patience. “Okay. If you had to guess who killed Brett—”
“That horrible bitch Kezzie Harwood. Obviously. Obviously, she’s the one who did it. There isn’t anyone else.”
That directly contradicted what Julian had just said about lots of things Brett might have done that could make someone want to murder him. Also, as a veteran mystery reader, Julian had to know his own mother would be a prime suspect.
Although, in fairness, he might not believe that. And even if he did, he’d have to be pretty cold to throw his momma under that train.
Ellery sighed. It must have come out sounding more tired than he intended because Julian said with a little flare of panic, “You’ll help me, won’t you? You won’t let Chief Carson make me the fall guy for this?”
“It isn’t that I don’t want to help. It’s just that I’m not sure what I can do. I’m not… I don’t…”
Arf. Arf. Arf.
Ellery rose and went to the kitchen windows to see what Watson was getting up to. No worries. Watson was chasing a very large grasshopper through the dead herb garden, barking all the way.