Michael Nightshade was in the rose garden this afternoon with Elizabeth Killingsworth. She was showing him around the Farm. He probably could have picked up the corkscrew when Elizabeth dropped it, but he did not do so. His mind was elsewhere.
Michael is not exactly who he appears to be. And he is not the only one. His Aunt, Kathryn Lawless, is not exactly the best friend to Elizabeth that she would make us believe.
Michael is not a real estate developer. He is a junior executive trainee at a real estate brokerage in New York City. He came to see Elizabeth in order to buy her farm inexpensively. While helping Enrique Graves with his college research, Kathryn uncovered clues to millions of dollars in gold somewhere in the Killingsworth Farm fields. This was a secret she kept even from Michael.
Kathryn and Michael first planned to buy Elizabeth’s farm outright – he was to buy the farm and sell it to Kathryn afterwards at a tidy profit. Unfortunately, Elizabeth’s asking price was much more than Michael could afford on my modest salary.
Unable to persuade Elizabeth to lower her selling-price enough, Kathryn decided to take the plan to the next level. She was desperate to escape her mundane life here in Marcocain and obtaining the gold on the Killingsworth Farm would have provided her with the financial freedom to pursue all of her life’s dreams.
While Michael was out seeing the grounds with Elizabeth, Kathryn stole some sleeping pills from Elizabeth’s medicine cabinet and slipped them to Michael while he was making phone calls from his car.
He crushed the sleeping pills and slipped them into Elizabeth’s wine while they were wine-tasting in the vaults just before she was killed. Kathryn had forged a suicide note for Elizabeth with instructions that Kathryn should be given the Killingsworth Farm. Kathryn was trying to get the farm for free and leave Michael completely out of the picture. Had Michael known that Kathryn was trying to give him the shaft, he would never have gone along with her crazy plan. He admits that he tried to kill Elizabeth, but somebody else got to her first. He certainly did not stab her in the neck with a corkscrew.