He nodded to Darling and Ross and took the seat at the head of the conference table, leisurely laying out his folders.
Darling was getting frustrated with the delay and just wanted to get to the bottom of why they were all here. She hated seeing her father look so worn-down. She gently cleared her throat, hoping that would be enough of a signal.
Sheriff Brickman glanced up at her. “I’ve called you here today because there’s been some developments in the case,” he said and went back to shuffling through his papers.
“Please, Sheriff Brickman, what are the developments? Don’t keep us in suspense. This has already been a very trying couple of days.” Darling leaned forward in her chair.
“Well, we charged your cousin Logan with attempted arson, animal cruelty, discharge of a weapon in a residential area, possession of an unregistered firearm, and accessory to murder after the fact.”
Darling’s mouth dropped open in surprise. How could that be possible? Logan had probably been ten years old when her mother disappeared—correction, was murdered—and it was not likely a child that age would have much to do with it. “My cousin is obviously a bit disturbed, but I really don’t think he could have had any kind of involvement in my mom’s murder. I mean, do we even have a solid cause of death yet?” Darling asked, looking earnestly at both the sheriff and her father, who seemed to be lost in his own world.
The sheriff shook his head. “I only have a preliminary C.O.D., but it’s likely it was blunt force trauma to your mother’s head. Dr. Wilkins suspects she died instantly.” Brinkman let the information settle into the crowd before continuing. “We think the golf club that was recovered underwater by your mom’s remains might’ve been the weapon. There was some loose tape on the grip that we may be able to get some evidence from, but it’ll be awfully tricky considering the number of years everything’s been down there.”
Her father’s head shot up, and he finally seemed to come back alive. “A golf club? Was it a nine iron?” her dad asked, his eyes bulging wide open.
Brinkman nodded solemnly. “Yes, Frank, it was a slightly bent nine iron with the tape all unraveling from the grip. We’re assuming it was a weapon of convenience.”
Her dad shook his head from side to side. “That was one of my clubs. I noticed it was falling apart as I loaded my bag into my brother-in-law’s car. I was so mad over it, I threw it out of the bag into the driveway. I was so mad about a damn golf club…” Her father dropped his face in his hands, hiding his tears from the rest of them. She wanted to go up and put her arms around him but was afraid that just might make things harder for him.
This didn’t quite make sense, though. “I still don’t understand what all of this has to do with Logan? Who would want to hurt my mother? You don’t think my father did it, do you?” She looked back over as her father was wiping his face on his shirtsleeves, barely registering what she said.
“No, no. Absolutely not. Your father’s not the right height to swing the club from the correct angle and cause the damage that was done.” Darling nodded, not at all surprised that her father hadn’t been the attacker, since she had seen her mother after he’d already left for his golfing trip that morning.
“Darling, we charged Logan with accessory after the fact because it seemed he was trying to help cover up the murder over these last few months. Once we accused him, the killer approached my deputy and the district attorney’s office with a deal. Now the prosecutor’s willing to go along with this, but I felt that we should have the victim’s family’s consent before we go through with it, so that’s why you’re here.” Brinkman spoke slowly as if talking to a young child.
Darling straightened up in her chair and felt Ross’ hand reassuringly squeeze her own in support. “I just want to know who killed my mom and why. That’s the most important thing, right, Daddy?” She spoke the words to her father, who seemed to be pulling himself together more. He nodded his agreement.
Brickman straightened up ready to proceed. “Okay, then. Well, it seems your aunt Tracy has come forward and is willing to confess to the murder if we drop the accessory after the fact charge against Logan.”
Darling let out a loud gasp. “What? Tracy? My aunt, Tracy Chidsey?” Sheriff Brickman nodded solemnly. “She said she killed my mother? Why would she do that—I mean, confessing to a murder to get your kid out of some trouble seems pretty extreme.”
“It is, and it was the first thing I thought of too, but after talking to her—well, she’s willing to give a full confession and face real prison time. They’ll probably go murder three since she claims it was an accident, but she wants her son to have a second chance. She claims she never told Logan about the murder, just that she was in financial trouble and really needed to get your property bought and sold to a developer to get her out of it. He claims he was just trying to aggravate you enough so that you’d be interested in selling and sort of thought he was doing you a favor.”
Some favor. I could have ended up being killed.
“I don’t want to tell you what to do, but I think you should consider hearing your aunt out. It’s got to be horrific to find out someone you trusted, someone from your own family did something like this, but maybe at least you’ll have the answers you’ve always wanted.”
Darling nodded and looked Brickman directly in the eye. “Set it up. I want to know what happened to my mother.”
* * * *
A few hours later Ross held the door open for Darling to enter the county lockup’s visitors’ room. Her aunt would only be held here until she could be properly processed and transferred to another jail. They had been assured that she would go before the judge the next morning and that she was all set to plead guilty to a whole slew of counts. The assistant district attorney had met with Darling and her father and gone over all the details of the various plea bargains being put together. They were in agreement that letting Logan off lightly was worth finding out what really happened.
Ross just hoped Darling would be satisfied with the answers she heard. He couldn’t imagine what it must be like for her, knowing that her mother’s body had been chained down to old wood and rebar piles right outside the family’s lake house. What they needed to know now was why had this happened and were any of the other deaths something other than accidental. He shivered just thinking about having met a woman who may have killed three people.
Darling, Ross, her father, and a young assistant district attorney named O’Malley all sat around a large table together waiting for the guards to bring her aunt in. Her aunt’s attorney, an older-looking man who looked more like a creepy mortician than a lawyer, sat across from them flipping papers. The two attorneys whispered a few things back and forth and shuffled a couple of papers around, probably making sure everybody had the right eggs in the right basket, but it was darn annoying. Ross kept waiting for something to go south, some last disaster. Darling had been too quiet and too calm, considering all that had been revealed today. He almost wished she would burst into tears or scream or something, just let him know what her thoughts were. He assured her he loved her and wanted to support her however she needed him to. He held her a bunch of times, but she would just nod and gave him one-syllable answers to any questions he asked. She barely touched the lunch he picked up for her and only seemed to perk up a bit when he drove her over to the vet clinic to visit Beauty Belle to see how well she was coming along.
Movement in the hallway visible through the glass windows of the visitors’ room caught his attention. The woman in the gray jumpsuit and handcuffs being led by a female officer in no way resembled the put-together Aunt Tracy who had read Darling the riot act for entertaining a man in her home. This woman looked drawn, pale, and defeated. Ross knew women could dole it out but good when they were wronged, but this woman didn’t appear like she’d ever had the strength to squish a flea, never mind bash her sister-in-law in the head with a golf club, wrap her in chains attached to rebar, and kick the body over the side of the dock. And then t
o stay cool as a cucumber for fifteen years. It just didn’t make sense. He felt Darling’s body jerk and straighten up a bit the moment her aunt was brought into the room. Tracy sat by her attorney at the far end of the table away from them. Her cuffs rattled, and Darling sniffled. He sure hoped his girl wasn’t feeling sorry for that viper across from them.
Tracy folded her handcuff-clad hands on the table. “Frank. Please, Frank, just look at me.” Her brother wouldn’t even glance up at her. She turned her attention to Darling. “Darling, it’s not what you think. I’m so sorry. It’s just that I have to explain—it was an accident. I never meant to hurt your mother, I swear it.”
Darling straightened up even more in the uncomfortable metal chairs and stared her aunt down. “What exactly was this accident?” He’d never seen her so cold and commanding before.
Tracy’s eyes watered, and she swiped her cuffed wrists across her cheek to catch the moisture. “I was in the middle of divorcing your uncle Ryan, and things were getting ugly. We were battling over custody of Logan and our marital assets. Your mom was in a tough spot since Ryan was her brother, but I’m her husband’s sister. She asked me to stop over at the house so we could talk. I agreed, not knowing that she was on to me.” She paused to look over at her stone-faced brother. “When I got there, she told me she knew that I had been having an affair with Carl Jenkins and that she was going to tell Ryan. She was hurt that I had betrayed her brother but wanted to give me the heads up so that maybe I could tell my husband first and try to work out a fair deal. I begged her to keep quiet, but she insisted he should know and that, well, that I shouldn’t get full custody of my son.” Tracy’s voice broke a bit, but Darling’s expression remained blank. What he was hearing chilled him. His family was fucked up, but none of them had tried to off each other.
Tracy seemed to ignore her niece’s vacant stare and continued. “I was enraged. I picked up the golf club, wanting to slap it on the deck a couple of times in my frustration. Your mom just kept talking, I got so angry—angry at her knowing what I’d done, angry about the threat of losing Logan, and yes, angry that she was acting all high and mighty, like she’d never committed a sin. I wanted it all just to stop, but instead I swung. I whipped the club around and hit her in the head. I didn’t mean to hurt her. I just wanted her to stop saying those things.” Tracy began to let fat tears fall down her face and stopped trying to wipe them away. “I swear I didn’t mean to hurt her. She fell to the ground right at the base of the dock. Her scalp was leaking blood. Her eyes were rolled back up. I knew she was dead, and I panicked. I dragged her down the dock to the new gazebo. I left her to get the tire chains from my trunk and came back. I put a couple of them together and attached it to a spare dock post and rebar piece the workers had left. After that, I just rolled her over into the water. For the next few weeks I couldn’t sleep over what I’d done. I thought night and day of confessing. Every time the phone rang I expected it to be a call that she’d been found. After a year went by and still no one had found the body, I thought I could just put it all behind me.” She dropped her face into her palms and openly wailed.
Darling’s body was rigid. He could feel her muscles stiffening next to him as if she was using all her strength to stay still and calm. Her father appeared catatonic. The lawyers allowed Tracy to cry a minute more before her defense attorney cleared his throat. “Well, I think you got all the information you need. I’ll file the rest of the briefs in the morning.” The creepy older man moved to get up, but Ross knocked on the conference table, drawing every eye in the room.
“No, that’s not it. Two other people related to that house also died in some fairly wacky ways. So why don’t you dry up the crocodile tears and start explaining what you did to the contractor and the old lady, since I’m damn sure no professional would just fall on his own tools, and grandmas don’t usually take up third-floor free-falling in their golden years,” he accused her, wanting to slap her scheming face, his jaw clenched in anger.
Her aunt straightened up in her seat and schooled her features. Gone was the shattered woman baring her soul for forgiveness. This Aunt Tracy glared at Ross with ice in her eyes. Her lips thinned; the smile she gave him was pure evil. “Fine. I’ll give you what you want. Why not? The paperwork is all signed.” She dropped her gaze from Ross and looked at Darling.
“I was over at my former mother-in-law’s house trying to get her to sell the place. It needed some work, and she was too old to be living all alone in such a big house. I made her an excellent offer to buy the place. Carl Jenkins and I ended our affair years ago, but we still kept up a business relationship. He had a lead on a development financer who wanted to build luxury condos on the lake. Her lakefront acreage would be perfect for the project. Carl had even run some perk tests and estimates on site work.” She looked around the table at her audience, each one wearing a different expression.
“But the old hag refused to sell. Insisted that she leave the house to you.” Tracy pointed at Darling, her handcuffs rattling together. “We went around and around for over an hour, and in the end I just shoved her frail little body over the rail. I moved her bird feeder to a branch that hung a few feet away from the rail and sprinkled some birdseed about. The cops assumed she was reaching over to refill it and fell.” Tracy shrugged her shoulders as if killing an eighty-five-year-old widow was no big deal. “I thought for sure you would have more sense than she did. Why would you want to move to a small lake town when you had a job and friends in New York City?” She took a sip of the water glass and soundlessly returned the cup to the table.
“But no, you wanted to get the dock fixed and gazebo replaced. Carl really wanted to be the lead contractor on such a big job, so he immediately agreed to come look at the damage from the storm. I met him out there and explained that what I really needed was to get the body moved from under the dock before workers tore it out and she was found. The bastard refused. After all I had done for him over the years, he chickened out, claiming he didn’t want anything to do with me. I shoved at him, yanking on his tool belt to rage at him. I must have grabbed one of the screwdrivers, and when he went to push past me to leave, I shoved it at him. He just looked at me like I had surprised him. Well, I guess I did. He fell over onto the driveway, impaling himself even more with the tool. I wiped the blood from my hands and went to an open house a few streets over.” Her nonchalant confession of murder and cover-up was nauseating. This was the type of woman who was born part praying mantis—a true eater.
“You bitch. You destroyed our lives for money? I could have forgiven you someday if I truly believed you feared losing Logan in the divorce and accidentally struck out at my wife. But it’s all lies, and I hope you rot in hell.” Frank Roberts shoved his chair back and stalked out of the room.
Darling gripped Ross’ hand tighter and stood; he followed right alongside her.
“You want to wish me an eternity in hell or anything too?” Her aunt taunted before continuing, “Don’t bother. Because of this deal, I’ll be out in five to seven years, thanks to your curiosity.”
Darling leaned forward across the conference table and sneered, “And you’ll need to watch your back every day, hoping I don’t find you.” Darling’s hand shot out in a flash and slapped the white out of Tracy’s face, sending dear auntie’s head sideways. Her body slid right off her chair onto the floor. Without a word, Darling simply turned and walked out the door, leaving the attorneys and prison guard to deal with the now sniveling woman. He’d never been so proud or in love with anyone before.
Epilogue
Six weeks later
“This is so awesome,” Madison said as she laid her head back against the rough cement wall.
“Are you high? What’s so great about this? In case you haven’t noticed, we’re sitting in a jail cell,” Darling exclaimed, flicking her nails toward the bars.
“Okay, yes, it’s jail, but at least this time it’s not my fault. This one’s all on you.” Her friend laughed, causing
three other women sitting on the bench across the cell from them to look at her as if she was a little bit touched in the head. “I actually tried to do the sensible thing and get you to leave the bar as soon as that bastard came up to our table all drunk and stupid.”
“You’re right. For once you are the responsible one, but I’m still so glad I hit him.” Darling smiled wistfully and rubbed her red knuckles.
“Does your hand hurt still?” Madison examined her hand and shrugged. “He’s lucky you are right-handed. If you’d clocked him with your left hand, that giant rock of an engagement ring Ross put on you might have killed him.”
“Don’t remind me.” Darling sighed. “A bit of ice wouldn’t be a bad thing, but I’m okay. I just wish Ross would hurry up and get here or send someone to bail us out. I can’t believe we’re stuck here while Logan is already out on bail for arson.” Darling leaned back against the wall, shifting her weight on the uncomfortable wooden bench.
It really was her fault. She knew as soon as Logan came up to her and Madison, interrupting their girls’-night celebration, that he was loaded. The old Darling would’ve turned the other cheek and shuffled out of there to get away from him. She would have fully believed that he’d get his once he went to trial. However, her new persona wasn’t putting up with that sort of crap and letting herself get pushed around. She gave him one warning that he was drunk and out of line.
He chose to ignore it. He started calling her a greedy, backstabbing little bitch, and the insults just pushed her temper over the edge. She whaled him right in the face, splitting his nose. He responded like a bear that had been poked. He staggered back a foot, only to rise up and flip over the small table littered with empty beer bottles. Darling stepped aside just as he came after her. Like the good friend Madison was, she stepped in, wielding the pool-racking triangle menacingly. It was just the distraction Darling needed to regain her balance. Logan stumbled forward with a clumsy punch that missed her by a mile, and she took the opportunity to swing a pool cue at the back of his knees, dropping him to the ground. Apparently punching out her relatives was becoming a bit of a habit with her.
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