See How She Dies

by Lisa Jackson

  Adria steeled herself and tucked the pistol into her jacket pocket. He glowered through the windshield, his jaw set, his lips a razor-thin line. “What’s the plan?”

  “I knock on her door and demand answers.”

  “With me.”

  “You stay in the Jeep. I’ll park a few houses away.” He glanced in the rearview mirror. “No one’s followed us, so you’ll be safe. As long as you keep the pistol.”

  “I said I’m coming with you. Eunice is probably expecting that you’ll do just what you said.”

  “Listen, Adria, I don’t like this—”

  “Neither do I, but I’d rather be with you than off waiting somewhere, not knowing what’s going on.”

  “Fine.” A muscle worked in his jaw.

  “Besides, I think I’m safer with you.”

  “Let’s hope you’re right,” he growled under his breath as he pulled into the short drive of a two-storied cottage with white siding, dormers and black shutters. Though it was early afternoon, the day was gray and damp and warm interior lights blazed through paned windows. “Cozy, isn’t it?” Zach mocked as he reached for his phone, dialed a number and quickly explained the situation to Len Barry of the Portland police, then hung up. “Okay, that should give us just enough time,” he said and climbed out of the car.

  Adria’s palms were sweating, her heart jack-hammering as she and Zach walked up the stone path to a small covered porch. Flowers bloomed brilliantly in boxes and the shrubbery flanking the house was clipped and neat, a perfect little home in a prestigious community.

  The home of a killer.

  Zach didn’t wait, but knocked loudly, his fist pounding on the door. Adria felt the gun, heavy in her pocket, as her heart pounded in dread.

  Would she face the woman who had tried to kill her?

  Ginny Slade’s murderer?

  The door opened and Eunice Danvers Smythe, dressed in a black velour jogging suit, stood in the empty hallway. Sweat beaded her forehead and flushed cheeks as if she’d been working out. “Zach!” she said before her gaze traveled to Adria. “Oh…I wondered if you’d drag her along.” She forced a smile as frigid as the bottom of the Columbia River. “Come in. Both of you.”

  “What’s this all about, Eunice?” he asked, not moving.

  “I think it’s time to explain a few things.”

  “Such as.”

  “I was going to start with Kat.”

  Adria’s muscles tightened at the mention of her mother and Zach’s harsh expression turned even more severe. “Why not Ginny?” he asked.

  “Because it’s best, don’t you think, to begin at the beginning.”

  “We don’t have a lot of time.”

  “Don’t tell me. You’ve called the police.” She was walking down a hallway, her tennis shoes silent on the polished hardwood floors, her gait a little off, the scent of jasmine wafting after her. “Oh, Zach, you’re so predictable. I wish you would have talked to me first.” She glanced over her shoulder, her gaze landing on Adria again. “Maybe it’s better that you’re here after all. Close the door, would you?”

  Adria, feeling as if she was truly walking into a lion’s den, complied. Zach waited for her and by the time they walked into the kitchen, Eunice was already dipping a tea bag into a cup of hot water. Two cups stood waiting, water already steaming from their porcelain depths. “Would you like some?” she asked, dipping a tea bag into the cup.

  Zach shook his head.

  “You?” she asked, glancing at Adria and there was a light in her eyes that gave Adria pause.

  Something wasn’t right here. The smell of jasmine from the tea seeped into the room and a chill as cold as all of December settled in Adria’s bones. “I’m fine.” What was with the tea?

  “What is it you wanted to say, Eunice?” Zach, standing near the kitchen table, didn’t take his suspicious gaze from his mother as she busied herself with her tea cup.

  To Adria, the entire situation was surreal. She stood next to Zach, waiting to hear the worst, watching a woman who was probably a killer calmly fiddle with her cup.

  “Sit down, Zach, and drink a cup of tea or coffee with me,” she said, waving him into a chair. “It might be the last one we’ll be able to share for a long, long time.”

  “I’ll pass.”

  “Zach—”

  “Get on with it, Eunice.” He checked his watch. “The police should be here within a few minutes. You’d better tell me what it was you wanted to say before you have to tell it to a detective.”

  “You think I killed Ginny,” Eunice said.

  “You’re way ahead of me.”

  “I didn’t do it.” She looked up, set the empty bag on the table.

  “Right.”

  “I mean it. I said I should start with Kat…or more precisely, London. I did kidnap her and I paid Ginny to make certain she never surfaced again. But she failed.” Her lips flattened as she glanced at Adria.

  “So you decided to get rid of Ginny.”

  “No…there’s someone who’s one step ahead of me and trying to blame me for everything that’s happening.”

  “Let’s get through the bullshit,” Zach said, stepping away from the wall, closing the gap between himself and the woman who had borne him. “I came here for answers, not smoke screens or excuses or lies.”

  “But it’s true,” she insisted, her eyes pleading as he stood, looming over the table, a big man with wide shoulders and sleek muscles and a fury so intense his lips had flattened against his teeth.

  “Let it go, Eunice. There isn’t much time. As I said, the police are on their way.”

  “I’m telling you the truth, Zach,” she swore, almost desperate, her teacup trembling in her hands. She took a long sip and smiled as if at a private joke. “I didn’t kill Ginny.”

  Adria didn’t buy it, knew how evil this woman was.

  Zach’s eyes narrowed. “No?”

  “No.” Another drink of the hot brew.

  “Then what about Kat?”

  “Kat?” Eunice whispered, stunned. Every muscle in her body stiffened before she forced them to relax. Her eyes flickered with uncertainty. “She committed suicide. That’s what the police decided.” Again she swallowed and there was something that didn’t quite fit…

  “I’m not so sure,” he said, his gaze skewering his mother’s. “In light of what’s been happening around here, I’ve asked them to reopen the investigation surrounding her death. I’ve come to believe that she was killed. Someone made certain she was high on pills and booze and helped her off the verandah of the hotel room. Seems to me you’re the most likely candidate.”

  “For the love of God, Zach, are you nuts?” Eunice whispered, but couldn’t help licking her lips nervously.

  “Not me.”

  “So now you’ re accusing me of being crazy?”

  “Psychotic.”

  She nearly dropped her cup. All of her composure evaporated. “You’re accusing me?” Rage pulsed through her face. “This is insane.”

  “Exactly.”

  She was shaking, unraveling before Adria’s eyes. “So now you’ve decided to become detective, judge and jury. And you don’t even have your facts straight. I thought better of you, Zach.”

  “All you have to do is prove that you didn’t overdose Kat with pills and then push her over the balcony wall.”

  “You just can’t let it go, can you? First you were involved with that slut and now this…this woman who’s your own half-sister.”

  Adria cringed inside.

  “Do you know how disgusting that is? How sick? How perverted?” Eunice ranted, her composure evaporating, her eyes dilating.

  “Let’s talk about her. Adria. London,” he said, not backing off an inch. “While you’re trying to prove that you didn’t kill Kat and Ginny, you can make a case about not terrorizing Adria, too.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she snapped, her nostrils flaring slightly.

  “Cut the crap,
okay. Let’s see your hand.”

  “What?”

  “Your hand, the one Adria bit when you tried to kill her up at the motel in Estacada.”

  All the blood drained from Eunice’s face. “This is ridiculous.”

  Far in the distance the sound of sirens cut through the air.

  Eunice’s eyes closed for a second and when she reopened them, Adria noticed a new, steely determination in their clear depths. “You’re turning your own mother in, is that it, Zach? All because of something she”—Eunice motioned dismissively toward Adria—“contrived.”

  “I didn’t ‘contrive’ anything.”

  “It turns out she is London, Eunice. And you tried to kill her. Only you didn’t get away with it, not like you did with Ginny.”

  “For the last time, Zach. I did not kill Ginny.” She pointed toward the nearest chair and said in a voice that was barely above a whisper, “Now, please, sit down.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Sit down and drink a cup of tea with me,” she said, lifting her chin proudly. The sirens screamed louder. Closer. Eunice swallowed hard. She was scared, yes, but there was something else in her gaze. Triumph?

  Why?

  She stared at the woman and was met with Eunice’s chilling stare.

  She’s going to beat this…somehow. Adria knew it in an instant. But how? Fear crept through her blood though Zach seemed unintimidated by this woman who was his mother, this monster who had tried to murder her. “You tried to kill me,” she pointed out.

  “You were in the way.”

  Adria felt it then, the cold hatred whispering through the air. Eunice’s angry gaze slid to her. “Of what?”

  “My children’s rights, of course. Their claim to their father’s estate.”

  “So it all boils down to money,” Adria charged.

  “Money is only part of it. Prestige. Birthright. It all goes hand in hand.” No longer did she bother to mask her loathing. “If you would have left things alone, none of this would have happened. None. The children, my children would have gotten what they deserved from their father’s estate, but you couldn’t stay away, could you? Oh, no.” Her lips flattened against her teeth. “I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of. A lot.”

  “Including the kidnapping,” Zach pressed.

  Eunice hesitated.

  “You did it, didn’t you and let me take the rap!”

  “That wasn’t part of the plan.”

  “Well, it’s what happened, Eunice.”

  “Oh, Zach.”

  “Jesus, you’re unbelievable. You did it, didn’t you? You kidnapped a child!”

  “Not a child! An interloper!” She shot to her feet and seemed a bit unsteady.

  “And later you killed Kat!”

  “No, I—” She braced herself on the counter as if her legs would suddenly not hold her steady.

  “You always hated her. Hated London.” He pressed his face to within a hair’s breadth of hers. “I’ve thought about it a long time and decided that Kat didn’t kill herself. No way. She was too into self-preservation, self-promotion. No matter how desperate she was, she wouldn’t commit suicide. So either she had an accident, which is damned unlikely, or someone helped her off that balcony.” His lips were bloodless, his eyes dark and knowing. “You’re the only person who hated her enough to do it. Probably all for the sake of your children and their inheritance, the same reason you kidnapped London.”

  “No,” Eunice said weakly.

  “Come on, Mother, you wanted me here to hear your confession, so let’s hear it.”

  “But I didn’t—”

  Bam! His fist slammed against the table. The teacup jumped. Adria started. Far in the distance sirens shrieked.

  “Oh, God,” Eunice whispered, seeming pathetic. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

  “Bull! You killed her!”

  “Yes, okay, yes, yes, yes!” Eunice’s eyes were filled with tears and she blinked rapidly.

  Adria, though she’d expected the news, was stunned—to actually hear a confession to murder. “You pushed her?”

  “Of course I did!” Some of Eunice’s starch returned. “As pathetic as she was after she lost her daughter, she wasn’t suicidal. Not Kat. God, she was a disgusting creature.” She turned her gaze on Zach. “That surprises you? That your own mother could kill?”

  A muscle worked in Zach’s jaw and he’d paled.

  “It was easy, really. To slip into her room, to doctor her drink, to lure her onto the balcony…” Eunice’s voice turned to the barest of whispers. “All I had to do was pretend…put on a little girl’s voice…” She did then, sounding suddenly like a child. “Mama…Mama…” Eunice’s eyes glazed for a second, her thoughts turning inward, as she replayed the horrid scene. “She was disoriented, believed that I was London and I hid near the railing…”

  “You murdering bitch,” Adria said, shaking all over.

  Eunice snapped back to the present. “And I’d do it again. For my children.”

  Adria’s blood turned to ice. So it wasn’t over.

  “Save it, Eunice. No one’s buying the altruistic act,” Zach stated.

  “I don’t expect you to, Zach, but believe this,” she insisted. “I didn’t kill Ginny.”

  Zach’s fists curled. “After that last confession, you expect me to trust you?”

  The sound of sirens wailing was closer but Eunice didn’t seem to notice. “I didn’t even know where she was.”

  “But you admitted to having her kidnap London. Paid her off.” Zach grabbed Adria’s purse from her arm and poured the contents on the table. Lipstick, brush, wallet, keys and letters fell out—duplicates of the notes she’d given to the police. Stabbing a finger at one of the ugly notes, Zach said,” You sent these.”

  Eunice stared at the items and a tic developed under her eye as Zach, furious, added, “You also dropped off a dead rat at her hotel room.”

  The twitch quickened. Eunice twisted her hands together. Her eyes seemed to glaze.

  “And you tore up Adria’s bedsheets and her panties.”

  “No…Kat’s bedsheets…Kat’s panties…”

  “Not Kat. Adria. London.”

  “The same thing,” she said, nostrils flaring as if she’d suddenly noticed a bad smell. “Kat…London…”

  “Not at all.”

  She held out her hands in supplication and to Adria she seemed suddenly pathetic, an older woman, but not weak. One strong enough to have pinned her to the ground and tried to kill her, a twisted person who could kill a rat and drain its blood, a maniac who could destroy a room, shred clothing, smear a mirror with blood.

  “I couldn’t stand the thought of you two together, Zach. Not with Kat. Not Kat…” Her voice cracked and she blinked…as if clearing her head. She wrapped her arms around her middle and started to rock. “I mean, not with London…not with Kat…I couldn’t let that happen…I had no choice.”

  “No choice?” Adria repeated, suddenly repulsed. “No choice but to try and kill me?” Who was this woman? A mother. A socialite. A murderer. She took a step away as Zach zeroed in on the woman who had borne him.

  “Everyone has a choice, Eunice.” He turned away from her.

  “It’s not that easy.” She sniffed, stuffing her hands into the pockets of her velour jacket.

  “Sure it is. You made it hard. By trying to kill Adria and when you got hurt, you told Nelson you got hurt by falling when you were chasing the cat. Christ, you’re something. And you expect me to believe you didn’t follow us to San Francisco and kill Ginny?”

  She hesitated. “I have an alibi.”

  “Convenient. Who?”

  She let out her breath and her shoulder’s slumped slightly. She dabbed at her nose with a tissue she’d found in her pocket. “Nelson. On the night Ginny was killed he was here with me.”

  “For crying out loud, don’t you think I know he’d lie for you?”

  “Possibly, but he doesn’t have to. I was h
ere, Zach, in Lake Oswego when Ginny was murdered.”

  “I don’t trust Nelson.”

  “Then trust his friend.” She lifted her chin and met Zach’s condemning stare. “Nelson was with someone the night he was here. They didn’t stay all night, of course, because I’m not supposed to know that Tom is Nelson’s lover, but they stopped by for a few hours—just old pals, you know—and we had dinner and played cards. If you don’t believe me or your brother, ask Tom.”

  The sirens sounded so close, they screamed through the house.

  “You’ll have to tell the police and maybe they’ll buy it, but I don’t.”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “Of course it does,” he said, then seemed to notice the weird smile playing at the edges of her lips. “Wait a minute…”

  “It’s over, Zach.”

  “What do you mean? Over?” His gaze shot to the teacup. “What have you done?”

  “What I had to, Zach,” she said. “I always do what I have to. You don’t believe me, but everything I’ve done is because I love you.”

  “Shit, Eunice,” he swore, “what the hell have you done.”

  As sirens blasted outside, Zach’s gaze swept the counter and into the partially open cupboard. “Oh, no…” He threw open the cupboard door and picked up several vials. “You didn’t,” he whispered, looking at her teacup as the sound of tires crunching and voices filtered through the walls. Zach swept the teacup from the table and it crashed into a thousand pieces. “You didn’t have to do this, Mom.”

  “Of course I did. This is for you, Zach.” At that moment she lunged at Adria, and the hand that had been hidden in her pocket shot out. In her closed fist was a small knife. Its wicked blade gleamed deadly in the light.

  Adria’s heart leapt to her throat.

  “No!” Zach yelled.

  Eunice stabbed wildly. “You can’t do this, Kat! I won’t let you!”

  Adria feinted and twisted, kicking upward at Eunice’s hand. The knife swung downward, ripping Adria’ s shirt.

  “Adria!” Zach tackled his mother and she landed hard on the tiled floor. And then she looked up at her son as he reached for the blade.