by Lisa Jackson
“Police!” Reed’s voice boomed as he stood in the doorway. “Drop your weapon!”
Penelope spun, falling onto the floor, screaming as she dropped Uncle Alex’s gun, and the sounds of sirens could be heard cutting through the night. The flashlight twirled in an arc as, squealing, she writhed, crying and screeching, the copperhead wrapped tightly around her ankle, its mouth open wide, its fangs visible.
Nikki made her way to Reed, who held a gun on the stricken woman with one hand, while with the other he called for backup, barking out orders for an ambulance and animal control.
Gingerly, he picked up her gun as the first of the backup units arrived, sirens screaming, lights flashing. By this time Penelope Hilton McBaine was nearly catatonic and Roland Camp was unconscious.
Nikki threw herself into Reed’s arms, thankful for his strength and wondering how she ever thought for a second that she couldn’t marry him.
Finally, after twenty long years, the scandalous truth of Amity O’Henry’s murder could finally be told.
December 17th
Last Interview
Now I know the truth as I stare through the smudged glass at the broken woman, a maniac whom I once thought I loved. It’s hard to imagine that hatred could rot a person’s soul to the point that now, this woman I cared for, is nearly unrecognizable to me.
“Good bye, Aunt Penelope,” I say.
“Go to hell!” is the sharp, concise response. She’s recovered from her snake bites but never again will find peace, if she ever had it in the first place.
“Sorry. I’ve already been there, thanks to you.” I give her a hard smile and get off of my stool. “But now I’m back and have my life again. I’m getting married tomorrow.”
“That’s a mistake,” she snarls.
“I don’t think so.”
“You’ll find out,” Penelope says with a bitter, hard-edged cackle, as if she knows better, just as the guard reaches for her. “Men,” she advises with a pinched face. “They’re all the same.”
She seems so sure of herself. So convinced. And yet she is on the other side of the bars; she is the one who is caged. Who is she to give out any kind of advice?
“Blondell’s finally spoken,” I say. “She was dumbfounded to learn you were the stranger who attacked her. She really did have car trouble on the way to the hospital. Turns out she loved her children, as best she knew how. She loved Uncle Alex and kept silent rather than implicate him in any way, even with his betrayal with Amity.”
Penelope’s face devolves into a mask of hatred.
I leave then, get up from the uncomfortable chair and walk down the long hall, hearing the gates clang shut with finality as I pass. I won’t miss the smells or the sounds or the sights or the feel of this place, and I know I won’t be coming back.
As I gather the things I left at the admittance area, I close my mind to my childhood and the hours I spent with my cousins and aunt and uncle, the halcyon days that now I realize are just a nostalgic figment of my imagination, a fragmented and unreal part of my family history.
I’m escorted out of the prison area to freedom, and as the final gates close behind me, I draw in deep, cool breaths. Bars and cages, tight places and locked doors—not my thing.
Roland Camp died on the way to the hospital, but Penelope survived. Is that justice? Maybe there is no such thing. I don’t know. Donny Ray Wilson is talking, and he’s agreed to be interviewed for the book, so that’s a good thing. As for Calvin O’Henry, he and June refuse to acknowledge me, and they resent the fact that Blythe is willing to be a part of the story. Niall feels vindicated, of course. He didn’t see his mother shoot him as she was struggling with a stranger for the gun that Aunt Penelope hid for twenty years and Uncle Alex never admitted was missing. Uncle Alex was as guilty as she in many ways, though I don’t believe he ever knew his wife was a murderess. I won’t let myself think that horrid thought. My mother never liked Aunty-Pen and wasn’t all that surprised, though my sister, Lily, found the scandal “delicious.” Yeah, well, she didn’t have to live through exposing it.
Uncle Alex lives in an ever-deepening twilight world. Is it payback? Karma? Maybe.
In the end, the snakes were captured, and it was determined that Roland Camp had killed Alfred Necarney, though why Roland was so upset with my digging up the past will remain a mystery.
I wonder about Effie Savoy, but I’ll never really know her. Not now.
It’s mind-boggling.
I leave the prison behind me. Forever.
Reed is waiting for me. Wearing jeans and a light jacket over a long-sleeved T-shirt, his hips leaning against the dirty fender of his ridiculous Cadillac, his hair teased by the winter wind, he smiles as I approach—that slow, sexy smile that always gets to me. “Hey, Hot Stuff,” he says as I draw near.
Damn—I can’t help but grin.
“What do you say we elope?”
“Tonight?” He’s got to be joking, right?
But the spark in his eye says differently. “I’m talking about right now. You hop in and I drive.”
“Seriously?” I can’t believe it. “But . . . the wedding and . . . the guests . . . and the church and the country club . . . My mother will be mortified. She’ll kill me. And she’ll kill you too. Both of us.”
“So what? I want to just get married, the two of us. You and me. No muss. No fuss.”
“Romantic.”
“It could be.” Again, that irreverent grin stretching across his beard-shadowed jaw. I really can’t tell if he’s kidding or not.
“Well?” he asks.
“Well.” I stare at him long and hard, and suddenly I feel free. Light. Even giddy. Those ponderous ropes of convention, the ones that have been weighing me down, the seating charts, and menu options, and limits on the bar tab, the need to please my mother . . . they finally snap. “Okay, Detective,” I hear myself say as I slide into the warmth of the Caddy’s passenger side, “Let’s run away together. Right now. Take me to the nearest preacher and make me your wife!”
Reed switches on the ignition and we stare at each other a moment, then both of us start grinning as the Caddy rolls forward.
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2013 by Lisa Jackson LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 2013936474
ISBN: 978-0-7582-5858-8
eISBN-13: 978-0-7582-8933-9
eISBN-10: 0-7582-8933-2
First Kensington Electronic Edition: July 2013