Tangled Web: A Small Town Romance (The Cortell Brothers Book 6)

by Giulia Lagomarsino

  He jerked his head up to look at me and narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean how long you’ve been worried? Exactly how long have you known about this?”

  “Um…Well, time is a subjective thing—“

  “Don’t you dare start talking like a human now to get out of the question,” he seethed.

  “Maybe a few days—”

  “Well, that’s not bad,” he cut in.

  “Before I found out you were working for her.”

  He swallowed hard and flopped down heavily in a chair. “You mean to tell me that the whole time I’ve been working there, you knew she was a murderer?”

  “Knowing is—“

  “Subjective. Yeah, I got that part.”

  “Look, I didn’t know anything for sure. Her step-son came to me for a job. He wanted me to look into her because of her past.”

  “And what is her past?”

  “Well, there’s this kid from her home town that died at the age of eighteen of a heart attack. And then there was her fiancé…he died in a car crash.”

  “And her husband,” he sighed. “Anyone else?”

  “Well, her mom died of mysterious circumstances.”

  “Christ, this is a goddamn nightmare. How the hell could you keep this to yourself? What if she went on a killing spree?”

  “Well, I kind of feel like she already has. Have you seen all the times I’ve been injured around her?”

  His eyes widened comically. “You think…”

  I snorted. “Well, there was the wrench that came just centimeters from my head, and you remember the tub that almost crushed me. At first I thought it was just all a coincidence, I mean, after I freaked the fuck out.”

  He thunked his head down on the table, shaking it from side to side. “I can’t believe this. Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “Well, I couldn’t exactly. I was investigating her.”

  “You were fucking her,” he corrected.

  “Right, well, it was part of the investigation,” I grumbled. “I was trying to get close to her.”

  “Oh, you did that alright. What made you finally come clean?”

  “I was at her house the other night and we were…doing stuff…”

  He rolled his eyes at me. “This is what you have trouble telling me?”

  “Anyway, she got a phone call and took it out in the hall and I thought that was kind of weird. I mean, if she didn’t know me, I could understand the whole privacy thing, but we’ve been together for a couple of weeks. Why would she hide a phone call from me? So, I listened at the door and I heard her say that she had killed three people.”

  He was obviously shaken by this news. He kept running his hand over his face and shaking his head. His eyes would get wide and then he would take deep breaths. Yeah, he was trying not to freak out. His twitching eye gave him away though. It was going crazy, worse than when Kat told him she was pregnant the first time.

  “Alright,” he said, after about five minutes of trying to calm himself. “So, she actually said she killed three people. Not that she was responsible for their deaths or she killed them in a car accident or something.”

  “No, she said, I already killed three people. And then she said, how the hell am I supposed to convince them I’m innocent?”

  He nodded. “Which means someone suspects her of killing another person.”

  “That’s what I was hired to look into.”

  “How the hell did you get out of there without losing your shit?”

  I cleared my throat uncomfortably. “That didn’t go very smoothly. I sent Robert an S.O.S., but she answered the phone and it was all downhill from there.”

  “She knows that you wanted out of there?” he asked incredulously.

  “Well, I smoothed it over. I told her that I was just getting scared and I needed some time.”

  “And she bought that?”

  “Well, we’ve been moving pretty fast. I mean, I’ve spent a lot of time with her lately, so…”

  He stared at me for a minute, and I started to get uncomfortable. Then he laughed and shook his head. “You’re in love with her.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “You are.”

  I grimaced, not wanting to admit it. He sighed and pulled out his phone.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m calling Robert. We need to know how to handle this.”

  “It’s simple. I just go to the police.”

  He looked up at me from his phone and gave me a blank look. “You’re going to go to Jack and tell him that the woman you love and have been sleeping with is a murderer.”

  “Yeah.”

  He nodded once. “And then Jack is going to haul you in for questioning in relation to those murders because he has a vendetta against our family right now.”

  “He wouldn’t—“

  “You know he would.”

  “But I didn’t even know her when these murders occurred.”

  “It doesn’t matter. He’ll hold you on conspiracy to commit a future murder or…aiding and abetting a murderer! We need Robert here, and we need to figure this thing out.”

  I sagged in my chair, my whole body going limp. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I knew it all along. I knew she was a murderer and I should have trusted my instincts. Now I had put my whole family in danger and I had to figure out how to get us out of this before it got us all killed.

  “What the hell is so urgent?” Robert asked as he walked through the door. “I finally got Anna to talk about the wedding and you called and fucked it all up for me.”

  “We have a situation,” Eric said, nodding to me.

  Robert turned to me, lips pressed together in a tight line. He pulled out a chair and sat down. “Alright, what the hell did you do?”

  “Just hear him out,” Eric jumped to my defense, always playing devil’s advocate.

  “Well, you know Lorelei…”

  Robert shook his head. “Yes, we’ve met.”

  “Right. Well, anyway, funny story,” I chuckled. “It turns out that Lorelei isn’t exactly who she said she is.”

  He shook his head in confusion. “Okay, then who is she?”

  “So, funny thing is—“

  “Yeah, you keep saying it’s funny, but I have a feeling it’s not so funny.”

  My brows furrowed and I nodded as I considered this. “Right, well, so it’s not funny. See, she’s actually from West Virginia. Did you know that?” He just stared at me. “Yeah, you don’t care about that. Anyway, so it turns out that this guy she knew died…and she killed him.”

  “Self-defense?”

  I shook my head slowly.

  “So, she needs an attorney?”

  “Oh, she definitely needs an attorney, but not just for that, and not by you.”

  He sighed heavily. “You know, I really hate riddles.”

  “Right, right. So, anyway, it turns out that her mother also died suspiciously, and then her fiancé also,” I added slowly.

  “Didn’t her husband just die?”

  I scratched behind my ear uncomfortably and nodded. “Yeah, that would be true also.”

  “So, let me get this straight…her husband just died, but now you’re finding out that all these other people died too…”

  “Not exactly,” I said slowly.

  “So, what exactly did happen?”

  I looked to Eric for help. “He’s been sleeping with a murderer for months, knowing that it was possible that she was a murderer.”

  “What?” Robert exploded. “You slept with a woman knowing that she was a murderer?”

  “Not a confirmed murderer,” I corrected. “I was doing a job. I wasn’t sure.”

  “So you slept with her?” he asked incredulously.

  “Hey, it seemed like a good way to get information at the time. I needed to be sure.”

  “And now you are?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I heard her the other night admit it.”

  “Wh
at the hell were you thinking?”

  “Honestly? I was thinking she was pretty hot.” At his glare, I rushed on. “But I was super careful the whole time. I mean, if you knew how many times I stayed awake just to make sure I wasn’t killed in my sleep,” I laughed, but it fell flat with my brothers. “So, what do I do now?”

  Robert’s face crinkled in thought for a minute. “Who was the job for?”

  “The step-son. I met him just around the time that Eric started working on her house.”

  “So, he came to you with information?”

  “He told me his suspicions. He thinks that Lorelei killed his father for the trust.”

  “He could just be saying that. Who gets the trust if Lorelei doesn’t?”

  “It would go to the family, but it would be broken up differently. He left me the terms of the trust. Her husband wasn’t willing to leave everything to his children.”

  “Yeah, but better they get something than nothing,” Robert said, thinking it over.

  “I thought so at first too. I mean, I checked into Arlen, the husband, and went through his business contacts. The guy was ruthless. Not to mention that he handed me a pretty compelling case against Lorelei.”

  “Alright, so walk me through the other murders.”

  “Well, the mom died when Lorelei was thirteen. Just died in her sleep. They didn’t have an autopsy or anything. So, I casually asked Lorelei about this and she claims that they didn’t have any money to go to the doctor or for the autopsy. They buried her and that was the end.”

  “Honestly, that’s very plausible. Coal country isn’t what it used to be.”

  “And I kind of thought the same thing. But there’s this kid, he was best friends with Lorelei. He had a heart condition, but it wasn’t really serious. According to his medical records, he died of a heart attack due to extreme stress. But he was an eighteen year old kid. He had one job and he was supporting his family, but I didn’t see anything that would put him under extreme stress. He didn’t play sports and he wasn’t a runner. As far as I can tell, the kid just went to work and then stayed home.”

  “So, what do you think killed him?” Eric asked.

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to go there. It was a pretty dark theory, but if I wanted Robert’s help, I had to be honest.

  “She always spoke of her mother fondly, but I got this feeling that she was holding something back, so I did some digging. It turns out, her father was quite abusive. So, I got to thinking that maybe the abuse wasn’t just directed at Lorelei. Maybe it was also directed at her mother.”

  “Why would she kill her mother for her father beating on her?” Robert asked.

  “Resentment? It’s hard to say. I mean, she wasn’t very open about her home life. But if I’m right, Lorelei has psychopathic tendencies. Maybe she couldn’t deal with the fact that her mother couldn’t or wouldn’t protect her. My assumption is that she killed her mother, probably with a drug overdose, and the friend found out. And when the friend found out, she had to kill him too.” I thought about that for a second. “Oh, and I also think she killed her father. He just vanished one day after he nearly beat Lorelei to death. How suspicious is that? No, I think Lorelei killed the dad and has just been pretending he disappeared.”

  “What do the cops say?”

  “Not much. He vanished and they haven’t found him. Rumors spread from time to time about him, but nothing concrete.”

  “Alright, so what happened after the friend died?”

  “She split town two months later. Suspicious timing, don’t you think?”

  Robert nodded, a frown creasing his face. “Definitely suspicious, but still not enough to say she murdered either of them. It could have just been bad luck and she wanted to get away from that town, make something better of herself.”

  “And I would agree with that, except she got engaged to someone just two years after she left her hometown, and he was pretty well off.”

  “Let me guess, he was the fiancé that died,” Robert added.

  “Exactly.”

  “Heart attack?”

  I shook my head. “Car accident. But the police report suggests that there was another person in the car. Some of the lug nuts were loose on one of the tires, which could have caused the accident.”

  “But then what happened to the other person?”

  “There was a hair in the car…” I said hesitantly. “I…um…I accessed the database and I…”

  Robert rolled his eyes. “Christ, you got Lorelei’s hair and you want to compare them.”

  “It would prove she was in that car. If she was, and she was innocent, why would she run?”

  Robert’s brows furrowed as he thought about it. “It does look suspicious.”

  “It looks more than suspicious. It looks damn guilty,” Eric muttered.

  “Look, the fact is, we can’t just pick up a hair and tell the police it’s hers. There’s a chain of evidence that has to be followed. But Andrew, you’d better be really fucking sure you want to go through with this, because the moment you put the police on Lorelei’s trail, there’s a shit storm headed her way, and you can’t take that back.”

  “Not to mention that I doubt she’ll still love you after you hand her over to the cops,” Eric pointed out.

  “Wait, you’re in love with her?”

  I winced at Robert’s tone. Hell, I knew it was ridiculous that I was in love or possibly in love with the woman. Knowing she was a murderer, I slept with her and fell in love. It was the most fucked up thing I’d ever heard and I knew it, but that didn’t mean I could help how I felt. Still, love or not, could I let a murderer walk around free?

  “So, what’s the deal?” Eric asked. “What are you going to do, stand by your woman or turn her in?”

  I leaned forward on the table, needing to talk this out. “Okay, let’s say for a second that I love her and decide that I don’t care about her past. Let’s say that I want to try and make it work with her.”

  “Let’s say you don’t end up with a knife in your back,” Robert pointed out.

  I waved him off. “I’m guessing poison is her style. Anyway, let’s say that I do all that, and she never tries to kill me, but things just don’t work out between us.”

  “Because you’re not rich enough for her to kill,” Eric adds.

  “I have plenty of money,” I snarled. “But true, I’m no Arlen Henning. So, she doesn’t kill me, but then she decides things have gotten too stale. She misses the hunt. She misses the kill…”

  “And she moves on to some other poor schmuck and kills him,” Robert nodded. “Now, you’ve withheld evidence, aided and abetted a criminal, and you’re partially responsible for the next man’s death. Not to mention that there’s a slew of other charges that could be put your way.”

  I nodded. “And if I turn her in, and let’s say by some miracle she’s innocent…”

  “That’d be some miracle,” Eric muttered.

  “Right, but say she is…”

  “Then you’d lose the woman you love. I don’t know that there’s any way you come back from putting your woman through a murder investigation,” Robert sighed.

  “You came back from a lot of shit,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t try and send Anna to prison.”

  “So, my choices are: lose the woman I love because I send her to prison, or lose the woman I love because she may murder me or someone else.”

  Eric clapped me on the shoulder and squeezed. “It’s a tough choice, man.”

  I sighed heavily. “I know.”

  He slapped me upside the head. “No, it’s not. The woman you love is a psychopath and murdered people. Turn her ass in before you end up dead.”

  Andrew

  “You’re sure you want to do it this way?” Robert asked me as we approached the police station.

  We had already talked about all this. I knew that going to Jack would most likely land me in jail, but I also knew that something was going on with Bar
ty. The man wasn’t all there and he had another agenda. So, despite the fact that I knew Lorelei was a killer, I also wanted to make sure that she had a fair trial. I wasn’t so sure that she would get that if Barty was involved in any way.

  I took a deep breath and nodded. “Whatever happens, I was working a case. I wasn’t withholding evidence. He can try whatever he wants. It won’t stick.”

  “Alright, let’s do this, then.”

  He pulled the door open and we walked inside, instantly greeted by Jack’s scowl. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “I’m here to report a crime,” I said, swallowing hard. There was no going back. I had to do this. Shit.

  Jack’s eyebrows shot up just as Corduroy walked out of the back room. “Ah, the Cortell brothers. Whatever did we do to get so damn lucky?”

  “Apparently, they’re here to report a crime,” Jack snickered. “What happened? Did someone steal your computer?” he asked sarcastically.

  I shook my head slightly. God, I felt so sick to my stomach right now. “I’m here to report a murder.”

  Jack’s face turned dark quickly. “Please tell me it was you and that I get to lock you up.”

  “The murder isn’t recent.”

  Jack stood so quickly that his chair flew backward. “Is this about Natalie? Does this have to do with her?”

  Robert held up his hand, pressing Jack back before he attacked me. “Just hear him out. This has nothing to do with Natalie.”

  Corduroy put his hand on Jack’s shoulder, trying to pull him back, but Jack was wound too tight.

  “It’s about the new woman in town, Lorelei Henning.”

  “She’s dead?” Corduroy asked.

  “No…she’s the killer.”

  Both of their jaws dropped, and against every fiber in them, they offered us both a seat. I pulled my research documents out of my bag and handed the file over to Jack. He opened it and flipped through it.

  “What am I looking at here?”

  “That’s all of my investigation. I was hired by her step-son, Bartholomew Henning, because he suspected her of killing his father.”

  Jack’s eyes shot up to meet mine. “And you have proof?”