by Tess Rothery
“If you tell us now, your self-defense case gets a lot stronger.” Deputy Maria was too professional to wheedle, but her tone had changed.
“Yeah.” He slid to the ground again, and this time Maria let him. “I broke in. I was headed to her room to leave some notes. Aviva told me she wouldn’t do it for me anymore. It was three in the morning. Everyone’s asleep at that hour.” He stopped for a moment to catch his breath.
Having been shot herself, Taylor thought he was overreacting. How bad could a bullet to the calf really be?
After a lengthy and dramatic pause, he began his story again. “Aviva told me which room to go to. I heard voices, so I snuck into an empty room to watch for a minute. Two women came out of Maddie’s room, so I stayed put. Wanted to make sure everyone was at least trying to go to sleep. About an hour later I opened her door, and she was lying there, dead.” He grimaced, then looked up, bold and unashamed. “She deserved it. She destroyed families. But I didn’t do it.”
“That’s enough. We’ll see what the sheriff says about this.” Maria was unmoved. She yanked him up again, uncuffed him to get him away from the patio roof post, cuffed him again, and dragged him to her car.
Carly followed, clearly more concerned about the physical and spiritual welfare of Alex Stoner than anyone else was.
Had he been telling the truth?
Had he actually seen two women leave Maddie’s room while she lay there with a knife in her?
“Taylor?”
Taylor didn’t know who whispered her voice, but she was too lost in her own thoughts to be scared. She turned slowly.
Asha Szkolaski crawled out from behind a large camelia.
Taylor offered her a hand up, but the girl flinched when she took her wrist.
“Can we trust Alex Stoner’s story?” Taylor asked as she listened to the siren of the sheriff’s rig as it drove away.
Asha cradled her wrist as they went back into the house. “Alex is dangerous and paranoid. But he’s never been a liar.”
Deputy Maria was back for breakfast the next morning. Taylor wondered if she’d been sent back to the Boone-Love house to finish her quarantine, or if she was here because she believed Alex’s story.
This morning everyone huddled around the island in the basement kitchen. There was something safe about that cave-like space.
Sissy sat at the end, like the master of ceremonies, while Belle and Aviva fixed fresh waffles and strawberries.
Taylor, Jeanne, Courtney, Deputy Maria, Tansy, Pyper, and even Asha easily had three feet of space around them, but at this point, who cared? Six feet, three feet. What difference did it make? Two of them were murderers.
Taylor found herself bartering with some unknown almighty as she waited for her plate. She was begging whoever was in charge of the universe to make the killers Jeanne and Courtney.
The alternative was unthinkable. Every other woman in this room was someone she knew. Not just someone she had met once or twice—someone she knew and cared about.
“I don’t like the way your arm looks,” Sissy admonished Asha.
“Can’t be broken.” Asha was holding her coffee mug in her left hand and it sloshed on the table as she tried to take a drink. “I’ve broken my arm before, and it didn’t hurt nearly this bad.”
“That doesn’t make it better. Did you at least take a Tylenol?”
“Not yet. I didn’t bring any with me.” Her smile was silly and charming. She didn’t look like a girl who’d been thrown to the ground by an officer of the law the night before, though her wrist was swollen and had an ugly purple bruise just the shape of Maria’s fingers.
“Ridiculous. I’ll get you some.” Before Sissy could make good on the promise, Aviva set a plate of waffles before her.
“Eat first. I’ll survive.” Asha’s coffee splashed again as she set it down. “At least I will as long as I stay here. If I ever go home again, my mom is going to kill me.”
“She’s never going to forgive me now.” Taylor’s eyes were glued to Asha’s damaged arm.
“Sorry about that.” Deputy Maria’s apology to Asha was matter of fact. “You didn’t stop when I asked you to.”
“My fault.” Asha nodded. “I know I’m supposed to do whatever a cop says, but I didn’t realize you were a cop. I couldn’t see you in the dark.
Deputy Maria blushed. “We’ll take you to the ER today. That should never have happened.”
“It’s just that Alex came by my place before he went to get Aviva. He said something about wanting to make sure I was safe. It was really weird.”
“He’s a weird guy,” Pyper said.
Aviva seemed frozen by the sink.
“Don’t you think so, Vive?” Pyper asked.
Aviva turned. “He was really compelling. He told me so many stories of his sister and how she’d be getting better for a while but then go see Maddie and come home worse. The trouble was, I met his parents and they agreed. She seemed to get worse when she was seeing Maddie. They weren’t mad about it, though. They said it was just a bad fit. Alex was different. Something was unhinged in him.”
“He came to the house to bake with us when he heard we were making cookies for you guys. I think you told him, right?” Asha asked Aviva.
“Yeah, I told him everything that was going on. I wonder how many cookies he had tampered with. It couldn’t have been just the one.”
“Mom caught him trying to mess with one. He said he made the note on an adding machine as a joke for you and apologized. I think he’d already hidden the one that got through because she triple-checked everything before she sent them off. When your friend Roxy came to ask about it, my mom was so embarrassed! She hates that her kitchen was contaminated like that. She could have killed Alex.”
“Let me guess,” Aviva said, “he offered to carry the box.”
“Yup. And likely slipped the cookie with the note back in,” Asha agreed. “I didn’t know you were dating him. He said you were just a roommate.”
“I should never have, but he was really….” Aviva paused looking for the word.
“He was hot as hell and you know it,” Asha giggled.
Aviva’s face went purple. “It feels horrible to say it, since he was such a creep.”
“And controlling. He was coming to get you, you know. He said he was going to free you from false arrest, but I bet he was going to lock you in the apartment and not let you out.”
“Did he try that with you?” Aviva asked.
“Sort of. He kept trying to get me to go back to his place with him, but Mom wouldn’t let me because of the virus. He was helping us cook, but our kitchen is huge, and he had a mask and stuff. Anyway. I wouldn’t be surprised if his sister is locked in his room.”
“Do you think he might have been, um, you know, with his sister….” Taylor didn’t want to say molesting his sister because the word was so disgusting. But the girl’s eating disorder and suicide attempt as well as having an emotionally unstable and controlling brother hinted this might be the case.
“I don’t think so.” Aviva and Asha spoke at the same time. They caught each other’s eye and then said, “You too?” simultaneously.
“He was completely averse to physical affection,” Aviva stated. “Wouldn’t even pet a cat, much less a girl. I couldn’t swear that means he never touched his sister, but I would be super surprised if he did.”
“You never know. We’ll be asking a lot of questions,” Deputy Maria said. “Sheriff Rousseau is okay. He was right, that little hatchet had lodged in his protective vest and left just a bad bruise. He got knocked out when he hit his head on the floor. I’m still in quarantine with you all, though both of us had negative tests yesterday. They let him go home, but his wife is making him isolate in his spare room just in case.”
Sissy laughed. “Good. I wanted to know where he ended up but was afraid it would be bad news.”
Taylor glanced up, shocked that Sissy had ever been afraid of anything. “Speaking of question
s that need to be answered, what do you guys think Alex Stoner meant when he said Maddie destroyed families?” Taylor picked at her strawberries. She knew she needed to eat but the unanswered questions gnawed at her.
“Like a homewrecker, I think.” Aviva set a plate of waffles down for Jeanne.
“That’s disgusting,” Belle spoke for the first time that morning. “It takes two people to break up a family. There’s never just one ‘homewrecker.’” Her words held deep pain.
“Belle…is everything okay?” Taylor whispered.
“Jonah’s fine. That’s not what I mean. It’s just…” She exhaled through tight lips, a burst of air that seemed to calm her down. “Women get blamed for this kind of thing, but it’s not like Maddie could have literally hunted down some husband and taken him hostage. That’s just not how it works.”
“No,” Tansy agreed. “It’s not. If some woman ‘wrecks’ a home, it’s because some man was a trash husband.” She stopped and then burst into tears.
“Tansy, not now.” Lorraine sat next to her daughter, stiff and cold. Her words came through that thin line of her mouth as frigid as her form.
“Mom, why not? Why not now? My husband was the trash husband. That text on Maddie’s phone was from him. That person he ‘had to tell’ was me. But I didn’t kill her. He was just as bad as she was, and I couldn’t hurt the father of my babies.” She pushed her plate away and lay her head on her arms as sobs broke her.
Deputy Maria watched with narrowed eyes. She seemed to be summing up the mess before her. “Alex Stoner said two women left Maddie’s room before he went in.”
Tansy slowly lifted her head. “I was in her room.” Her face had drained of all color. She looked as though she might be sick.
“This is unnecessary.” Lorraine managed to sit on her bar stool like it was a judge’s bench.
“I went in to talk. I couldn’t sleep. I’d heard movement in her room and decided we should talk.”
“It was The Cutter.” Lorraine dropped her voice, both in volume and octave. “He’s out there still. He broke in like Alex did. He did this to me.” She held her arm out slowly, revealing those knife wounds she’d gotten in her youth. “The same person who murdered that night did it again.”
Taylor would never forget the truth she’d uncovered the previous fall, that Lorraine Love had been a young teen involved with a biker gang, using tainted LSD. That she’d been in some kind of accident and fought her way to freedom. That the only person likely to have killed someone the night she received those wounds was Lorraine herself.
Lorraine herself.
“It was.” Taylor stood slowly and made her way to Lorraine. “It was the same person who’d killed that night, long ago, wasn’t it?” She placed her hand on Lorraine’s lower back, ready to guide her away from the kitchen. “Self-Defense. A desperate escape from a vicious attacker.”
Lorraine stiffened.
“There was no string of murders, of course, but there was one death. A stabbing to save a girl who was being abused by a dangerous, older man. Maddie was killed by the same person, wasn’t she?”
“It has always been The Cutter.” Lorraine stared at her own arm. “He slashed me. I was going to die that night.”
“And Maddie was hurting your child.” Taylor was almost whispering. Talking just so Lorraine could hear her. This wasn’t a show for the rest of the people in the room. It was time to finally listen to what Lorraine had been saying all of those years. “You were protecting her.”
“Mom, no.” Tansy wavered on her backless stool.
Sissy moved to her stepdaughter, putting an arm around her shoulders to hold her up.
“Let’s go upstairs and have a nice long talk.” Deputy Maria mirrored Taylor’s tone as she collected Lorraine Love. “I’ll listen to everything you have to say.”
The room was frozen in silence as Maria led Lorraine upstairs. The ice wasn’t broken till the door to the butler’s pantry shut with a click.
“I’m so sorry.” Tansy looked at Belle with deep regret. “I’m so sorry about what I did to your fancy chicken bones. Everything…absolutely everything in my life had been destroyed and if I didn’t smash something, I thought I was going to explode.”
Sissy enveloped the girl in her arms and let her cry.
Then, slowly but surely, each of the women in the room filed their way upstairs with their plates letting Tansy have her mama-bear all to herself.
Chapter Twenty
A few weeks later, mask firmly in place, Taylor walked through the neighborhood to get to Sacred Grounds, that little coffee shop in the Methodist church. She could order a coffee, a pastry, and offer an apology.
She just hadn’t thought it through.
She had been careless, even flippant, with the life of Dahlia’s daughter Asha earlier in the year. Taylor had been around for so many murders that she’d grown immune to the danger of getting involved. When she’d sent Asha Szkolaski out on a date with the man from the sugar daddy site who might have been a killer, Taylor had thought she could control the situation. But that was far, far from the truth. It was time to make some kind of amends.
Murder was a dangerous thing that left long scars.
Lorraine Love was out on bail, awaiting a trial. She was staying with the Dorney family who had vowed to keep her from fleeing the country.
According to Sissy, Lorraine was fighting with her lawyer over an insanity plea. She claimed she was perfectly sane.
She’d managed to describe what she’d done to Maddie Carpenter, but there was a disconnect in her mind between what she had done and Maddie dying of a stab wound. Lorraine’s brain, with its wiring twisted from those years of abuse, was doing its best to protect her from the pain of her actions. She could describe taking the knife out of the cabinet to protect herself from The Cutter, then slipping into Maddie’s room, confronting her as she got ready for bed, and lunging at her in a panic when Maddie tried to touch her. It was only when asked directly if she had killed Maddie that the switch flipped. She had hit Maddie Carpenter with the knife in self-defense, but it was The Cutter who had stabbed her to death.
Murder was dangerous.
Not just to the one who was dead, but to everyone involved.
Asking Dahlia’s daughter to jump into an amateur murder investigation earlier in the year had been wrong.
And now Asha had gotten hurt again, this time physically, all because she’d wanted to help Taylor.
No, Dahlia hadn’t left the vaguely-Biblical threat in the cookie, but she was filled with fair and just anger, and deserved an apology, no matter how hard it was going to be to give it.
Taylor took a deep breath and pushed the door open.
Dahlia Szkolaski stood behind the register in Sacred Grounds. When she spotted Taylor, she straightened up to her full five-feet-two-inches and stuck her chin out.
“I’m sorry.” Taylor stood in front of the woman with her hands held palm up, as though she was offering her something. “I didn’t think. It was dangerous. I’m sorry.”
Dahlia’s eyes sparkled as they filled with tears, but her posture didn’t change.
“Earlier in the spring when my cousin was in trouble, I shouldn’t have brought your daughter into the situation. It was wrong of me.”
“She’s damaged,” Dahlia said. “She’s delicate, and now she is damaged.”
“I can help if she needs counseling.” Taylor pressed her lips together. It was an expensive offer but what else could she do?
“We can take care of our own daughter.” Dahlia slapped the counter with a damp white rag that smelled of bleach water.
“If I could do it again, I would not. And I’m sorry her arm is hurt too. I wish she hadn’t come to Belle’s house, but she probably saved her friend’s life.” Taylor might have been exaggerating, but who knew? Alex Stoner hadn’t been keeping his sister locked in his apartment, and no signs of physical abuse seemed to exist, but his logic and ideas were unhinged. A man who’d throw
a hatchet at the sheriff was not a safe man, and he’d come after Aviva Reuben. Who knew what could have happened if they hadn’t been warned?
“Taylor!” Asha came out from the little kitchen that served the church-based café. The two-week quarantine was long over, and her wrist was wrapped in a short cast. Apparently, Deputy Maria had fractured it after all. “Good to see you. Is everyone okay? I saw Jonah back on TikTok, so that seems good.”
Taylor turned from Dahlia with regret. She wanted to be forgiven. She was honestly and truly sorry. “Yeah, he got his account reinstated. He’s been home for a couple of days and lavishing attention on Belle.” Taylor didn’t add that she thought he was acting guilty. “He’s starting a master class on how to be an internet influencer. It’s already made him another hundred thousand, the little brat.”
Asha laughed. “I signed up. I see girls online in cute little outfits teaching how to speak their language and thought, why the heck not? I know enough Polish to play that game. And if Jonah can get rich for having curly hair and big eyes, why can’t I?”
Taylor glanced at Dahlia who looked like she was about to explode with anger. Taylor, on the other hand, was relieved. Teaching Polish on the internet sounded much safer than Asha’s other brilliant idea of joining “Friends of Coco” the online sugar daddy site Taylor’s cousin ran.
“Send me a link when you’ve got something. Maybe I can learn.”
Dahlia laughed. “You? Learn Polish?” She wiped the counter with enthusiasm, as if the idea of this American girl learning her complicated mother-tongue was the funniest thing she’d heard all day.
“I will!” Asha picked up a broom and began to sweep.
Taylor didn’t order anything. She’d done what she had come for. All she could do was apologize. Forgiveness was up to Dahlia.
In the church lawn, where a vintage playset with a skinny tower and a wooden bridge had stood for Taylor’s whole life, she spotted her ex-boyfriend Hudson and his little son Larry. It looked like a good, happy, life, even if they weren’t technically allowed to play on outside equipment right now. She wasn’t going to turn them in and hoped no one else would either. Her heart pinched a little, but she chose not to dwell on the unanswered phone calls from the journalist she had dumped Hudson for. After all, there was a pandemic on, as well as riots, and the beginning of what looked to be a painful election cycle. She could hardly ask a journalist to invest heavily in a long-term relationship during a time like this.