Disclaimer: I only own Anne and the plot.
Chapter Fifteen: Conspiray Theories
James stared at Olivia in blank astonishment for a moment. Dinah's eyes were like sapphires in her pale face. " Dear God," she whispered. " You killed Phillip Spaulding."
" I don't know," Olivia mumbled, her hands jerking. " I went to the mansion to pick up Emma-it was Phillip's day with her. He was swaggering around the study with his nose in the air and he's saying that I'd better enjoy my time with my baby because I didn't have much longer with her. He said he was going to prove in court that I'm not fit to be a mother and then I remember attacking him-I was trying to claw his eyes out-and I know I had a gun in my purse. I don't know if I did it or not, Dinah, I don't know-"
" Calm down," James told her. "What's the next thing you remember, Olivia?"
" I remember sitting in my car-I was all out of breath and shaking and I was starting to feel some bruises from fighing with Phillip. I heard sirens, and the ambulance came-Alexandra was crying on the steps, Beth and Alan were running after the EMTs, and they were rolling a gurney along, there was blood-I don't know if he was dead." Her mascara was making dark circles around her eyes and trails down her cheeks as she tried and failed to keep from crying.
" Your hands," he said, trying to remember what he knew about guns. " Was there any black powder-a residue-curse American dialects-on them?"
" I-I don't remember seeing any-"
" Good. Dinah?" This was like the old days-this was just another strategy council, and Dinah and Olivia were just two other generals.
" Does Bill know?" Dinah asked,staring rather fixedly at nothing.
" No. I didn't tell him. I'm sure I didn't do that."
" What do we do now?" Dinah said, looking at James. He found it rather amusing that Olivia had come to Dinah with her problem and she was passing it to him to take care of.
" It's up to Olivia at this point," he said, lowering his voice so there was no chance anyone but them heard him. " Do you want to involve the authorities or do you want to keep this quiet?"
" No cops."
" All right, then. You need an alibi." He bit his lip. "All right. The first thing you need to do is go home and tell Bill the truth. We're lucky-we have a little time. If we're very, very lucky he'll remember his attacker and it won't be Olivia. If not, then we'll need this time while he's out to formulate the best cover we can for Liv. Worst case senario-" he broke off, unwilling to voice it.
" What?" Dinah asked. " What's the worst case senario?"
" Worst case senario, he had Alan or Alex or maybe even Beth shoot him in such a way that it wouldn't be fatal and plans to say that Olivia attempted to murder him."
" You don't think so?"
" I could believe it," Olivia said savagely. " He hates me enough to take that chance."
Dinah looked at them. " And if he dies?"
" All the better. We have a saying back home-corpses tell no cradle stories. I don't know what you lot call it." The actual saying was 'corpses tell no cauldron tales', but they wouldn't understand that at all.
" James!" Dinah sounded a little shocked and a little approving. " The saying's dead men tell no tales here, by the way," she added.
" Thanks. I know it sounds more or less heartless, but it's true."
" The only way I'd feel safe around Phillip is if he were dead and I saw him cremated-saw his body go to ash in the fire," Olivia said grimly. " Too many people come back if they're buried. " She must have registered his startled look, because she laughed. " The dead returning is very common here." Her gray eyes met his. "Why're you helping me?" she asked simply.
" I've been there," he said just as simply. " I've stood in your shoes, and Dinah's, and not that long ago. I had the perfect alibi in my wife, who was a ninny and believed any and everything I ever told her. You don't have the advantage of being married to an idiot, and I have a bit of a soft spot for damsels in distress."
Dinah laughed. " You think Liv's a damsel in distress?"
" It's the polite way of saying it, Dinah."
" This one's always polite," Dinah said, gesturing to James. " Sometimes I wonder if I'm not involved with an actor."
" Wish Bill was," Olivia said. " Did you hear him at Danny and Marina's wedding? 'Livvie, you're drunk as a fiddler's bitch.' That's love."
" That's what comes from being one of our kind," Dinah said with a shrug. " Women with a past. We get men with pasts like James or what the nice girls leave over like Bill."
" Can we get back to business?" James interrupted.
Spoken like a true Wright, Anne interjected. Only one of us could call covering up the murder of a man by his least favorite ex business. He ignored her.
It didn't take long to work out an alibi. Olivia and Bill had both been with James and Dinah the whole time. The details couldn't be determined until Olivia remembered what time everything had happened and they found out where Bill had been, but it was a start, and that was the best that they could ask for.
Later in the afternoon, he made his way to the Country Club as a guest of Alexandra Spaulding. He had called the baroness after the council with Dinah and Olivia and asked her to name a time and place that they could meet. She had selected the Country Club, a place Dinah had told him held special significance for Phillip, as he'd trashed it on his close friend and ex-wife Mindy's eighteenth birthday when he found out that Alan had bought him on the black market from Ross Marler's brother and the brother's lover Jackie so that Alan's wife at the time, Elizabeth, wouldn't lose her sanity after a stillbirth. Elizabeth had died thinking Phillip was her son, and Phillip had reacted to the news badly, culminating his teenage rebellion by marrying Beth Raines against Alan's wishes. Ironic that Alan had come to think of Beth as his daughter and had practically dragged Phillip to the altar to remarry her the third time.
Alex looked distraught. He decided to get straight to the point. " I hear that Phillip was shot last night."
Her head jerked up, and she looked slightly frightened. " How?"
He repressed a smile. " I live at Company, Alex. Nothing happens in this town that I don't know. All the nurses from Cedars come in for lunch, and they talk. I have a personal interest in the Spauldings, as I'm your guest so often. Even if that weren't so, it's in the paper." He threw a copy of the Springfield Times on the table between them. Alex paled noticably. " Any word on his condition?"
" The doctors say he'll be all right," she managed. " He's still unconscious."
" I'm glad to hear that Phillip's going to pull through," he said, tit-for-tat. "Are the police speculating on who would have tried to kill Phillip?"
" Darling, someone like Phillip always has enemies," Alex said, her hint of an accent coming through. " There are many guesses. Even the family will be interrogated, if I know Frank. He doesn't trust Spauldings, not even me." She managed to look puzzled. Speaking from expirience, James could see why Frank wouldn't like Alex even if his family and hers weren't enemies. No son halfway loyal to his mother liked his father's mistress. That Nadine Cooper had been dead for years was trivial.
" I see." Alexandra dropped the fork she had been twirling with a clatter just as the waiter came up and couldn't stop himself from staring a little at such an uncharacteristic gesture. James held his peace until the waiter was gone again, and then it was Alex, obviously trying to gain control of the situation, who spoke first.
" I only agreed to leave the hospital for this because I wish to ask you a question," she said with a semblance of her old composure. James quickly destroyed her wavering authority before it could assert itself.
" If you want to know if I pulled the trigger," he said very quietly, " I will tell you directly instead of talking around it. I didn't, and I have witnesses to the fact that I was nowhere near the Spaulding mansion yesterday."
" That wasn't my question," Alex blustered. " You and that Dinah Marler-Ross's daughter-are as publicly lovers as me and Buzz." James didn't bother to correct her; one just doesn't tell a baroness who one has and has not been sleeping with, and having her think that he and Dinah were closer than they were could be used to their advantage. " She has a reputation for not being exactly...stable, and almost everyone has something against my family. Where was she last night?"
James looked her straight in the eye. " With me. Dinah did not shoot Phillip." Alex blushed redder than a Weasley's hair at the implications of that. She was almost hypocritically prudish for a woman so notorious for her extramarital affairs.
" Well-that's good to know," Alex stuttered. " Two fewer suspects for us to consider-the Spauldings will punish them our way, of course, not just the judicial way, it's family policy. You do understand that?"
" I know all about that. My family is very like yours, Alex."
" Yes, of course." Alex swallowed half the wine in her glass at one go. " Is news of Phillip's condition all you wanted?"
They kept up a much more proper conversation for fifteen more minutes, then Alex, much more composed, left. As soon as he was sure she was gone, he went to the phone and called Dinah.
" Hello?" He could hear Bill and Olivia in the background.
" It's me," he said. " I've just been talking to Alex Spaulding."
There was a pause. " And?" He barely heard her over the line. Good thing Lily had taught him how to use this thing.
" Remember the worst case senario I told you about?"
" Yeah."
" I'll need to look into it more closely, but I think that's what we have on our hands."
There was another pause, then Dinah quietly voiced his feelings with a single word. " Shit."
Author's Note: chapter sixteen is half through and undergoing editing to make it worth reading. I will try to have it up by Sunday night, as weekends are the only time I have to write anymore, for the most part. Classes are back in session. I'll probably wrap up the Phillip subplot in three to five more chapters-it's a bit difficult to write, as I'm trying to avoid mirroring the plot of the show. The real plot gets underway in Chapter Sixteen. A threat from an old nemesis drives Dinah to James for protection and a new rival is plotting to undo them both. Anne has devastating news.
Augusta
