This confession was a too-bright light flashing in her eyes, leaving spots in her vision. “Do you think this, or did Jonas convince you that you did it?”
“It wasn’t him. I found . . . the . . . the murder weapon. It was . . . my scarf.”
Tongue dry, Natalie picked up her glass of water. It slipped out of her hand, struck the edge of the table, and splashed water all over the carpet and side of the recliner. She slouched back in her chair, not bothering to retrieve the glass.
“How do you know your scarf was used to strangle Camille?” As she asked the question, Natalie tried to sweep all images out of her head. No imagining allowed, no pictures. Only objective words.
“Jonas told me he had evidence that I’d killed her but that he’d keep it safely hidden and I shouldn’t worry about it. I thought he was talking about my notebook. When he was gone last night, I searched for it—I went down to the basement. I can’t believe I went down there—basements scare me to death—but I knew that’s where he’d hide something from me. I found the notebook, but I also found my scarf. It was . . . damaged.”
“Damaged?”
“It had been twisted. Stretched. Jonas must have . . . when he went to Camille’s searching for me, he must have seen my . . . He recognized . . . He must have taken it so the police wouldn’t find it.”
The thought of Jonas unwinding Lacey’s scarf from Camille’s cold, bruised throat made Natalie feel she was drowning in a maelstrom of regret. Lacey had killed Camille. Her own client.
“I still don’t remember doing it,” Lacey said. “I guess I blocked it out. I don’t even . . . Well, I have no idea how I had the scarf with me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know I wasn’t wearing it when I ran out of the house after Jonas took my notebook. I’m sure I wasn’t because that was the day I spied on Camille at that Indian restaurant, and no way would I have worn that scarf when I knew she might see me. It was exactly like her scarf—that’s why I bought it. I didn’t want her to notice me copying her.”
Natalie picked up the water glass from the soaked carpet, wanting to refill it but sure she’d walk into walls or trip if she tried to listen to Lacey while carrying the glass to the kitchen. She set it on the table. “Your scarf was exactly like one Camille owned?”
“Yes, a coral one with gold beads.”
The coral scarf. Natalie remembered it. “If the scarves were identical, how do you know it was your scarf at Camille’s? It could have been hers.”
“That was the first thing I thought,” Lacey said. “When I found it in the basement, I thought it must have been her scarf and Jonas had freaked out thinking it was mine. But . . . it’s mine. If it weren’t, mine would still be hanging in my closet, and it’s not there.”
“If you weren’t wearing the scarf when you left home, how do you think you came to use it on Camille?”
“I have no idea. I couldn’t have grabbed it before I left because Jonas had locked himself in our bedroom. I guess I must have come back for it later? I don’t remember.”
Natalie assimilated the details of Lacey’s story. She’d run without the scarf but had decided to return home—while terrified of facing her husband—to take the copycat scarf and use it to strangle Camille. She’d been meticulous enough about the murder that she’d sought a specific weapon, yet she remembered none of what she’d done.
Had Lacey thought about the fact that she wasn’t the only one who could have used that scarf to murder Camille?
Natalie spoke quietly. “Is Jonas listening to this conversation?”
“No. I’m hiding in my workshop so he won’t hear me talking to you. He’s in the shower. He doesn’t know I have his phone. He doesn’t want me to talk to you at all, but I can’t . . . I can’t live like this. The police came again this morning, and Jonas made me stay in the bedroom while he talked to them, and I thought I was going to die, I felt so horrible. I knew I had to tell you the truth. It’s okay for you to call the police.”
If Lacey truly wanted to turn herself in, why hadn’t she called the police instead of Natalie? Because she wanted someone else to take control? She usually passed that responsibility to Jonas; now she was pushing it on Natalie. Or was she hesitating because she knew in her heart she wasn’t the killer—and she knew who was, but facing that possibility scared her more than accepting blame?
“I’ll do everything I can to help you,” Natalie said. “But you need to be honest about what’s scaring you. You know you weren’t the only one with access to your scarf. The way you described that day, Jonas could have taken it more easily than you did.”
Lacey’s tremulous voice went shrill. “He wouldn’t.”
“Do you feel responsible for Camille’s death because you think Jonas killed her to keep her from finding out you were stalking her?”
“No!”
“Lacey, stay calm. I’ll call the police. Don’t tell Jonas you called me. Lock yourself in the bathroom, or—” A shriek from the phone made Natalie jump. “What happened? Can you answer me?”
“Jonas—no—give that back—”
The call disconnected.
Chapter 27
Jonas checked the screen and stowed his phone in his hip pocket. “That was Natalie Marsh, wasn’t it? Don’t you understand how dangerous it is for you to talk to her? Why can’t you listen to me?”
Lacey backed away, her gaze skimming her workshop. A room she loved now seemed like an arsenal. Metal tools, sharp glass, stone. Countless weapons that could hurt or kill her. Jonas’s face was inert—white tile surrounding cold brown eyes.
“She’s calling the police,” Lacey said. “There’s no way for you to stop her. I’m . . . I’m turning myself in. I’ll tell the police I killed Camille.”
His face contorted, dislodging fragments of his stony expression. “Baby, no!”
“I . . . found the scarf. My beaded scarf. In the basement.”
“You went in the basement?”
“Last night, while you were gone. I didn’t swallow that sleeping pill. I wanted to search for my notebook.”
“You never go down there!”
“I had to find out why you thought I killed . . . I had to find the evidence.”
The evidence. A scarf Jonas had had better access to than she’d had. And a notebook she’d reread in the bathroom this morning while she’d run the water so Jonas would think she was indulging in a long shower. She’d confirmed the notebook included no references to violence, no words about harming Camille. Only words Lacey remembered writing.
She still didn’t remember murdering Camille. Because she hadn’t done it.
“You’ve always taken care of me,” Lacey said. “I shouldn’t have stalked Camille. I caused this trouble. You thought you didn’t have a choice, that you couldn’t let Camille find out what I’d done. I swear I won’t tell the police the truth.”
His mouth gaped, a hole in the white-tile mosaic of his face. “You’re saying I killed her? Why the devil would I kill her?”
Lacey edged farther away from him. “I’ll tell them I did it.”
Jonas wasn’t moving to seize her or grab something sharp. “I took the scarf from around her neck, but I took it to protect you. It’s a distinctive scarf—I couldn’t let the police trace it to you. And you might have gotten your fingerprints on those beads.”
“Well, they’re there now, anyway.”
Jonas ran his fingers through his wet hair, disheveling it into messy spikes. “You’d been stalking her. You wrote about how you followed her and spied on her and broke into her garage and liked to scare her. When I took your notebook, you ran off, and . . . she died.”
“When I ran off, you were locked in our bedroom where my scarf was. How could I have come back to get it when I was too scared to face you?”
“You’re saying I took it and strangled her with it? Lacey! If you didn’t kill her, why did you buy a replacement scarf before you came home?”
“What do y
ou mean?”
“The new scarf, the one you put in your closet. So I wouldn’t notice the other one was gone.”
“What?” This conversation was random colors and shapes tossed together, no design. “There’s no scarf in my closet. I checked.”
“I know. I got rid of it. Those beads might have made distinctive marks on Camille’s throat; you wearing that scarf around town would have been dangerous. I would have thrown away the damaged one, but I was afraid I’d need it.”
“Need it! Why?”
“You couldn’t remember what you’d done. I kept it to show to you in case you were too messed up to listen to me and I needed proof to convince you.”
Lacey tried to pick up each phrase in her mind and set it into a spot where it made sense with the other phrases. “You found a scarf in my closet after she died?”
“You don’t remember buying it? Baby, I was keeping an eye on the credit cards. You spent money at Townsend’s Saturday morning before you came home. You told me that’s where you originally bought that beaded scarf.”
“I did, but I didn’t buy another one on Saturday. I bought a blanket. I was freezing in the car and thought a blanket might help me sleep.”
“Then where did the replacement scarf come from?”
Lacey lifted a drawing that lay on her worktable, one of the possible Stoker Building mural designs. It was hideous. She crumpled it and tossed it on the floor. “I bought the scarf—the first scarf—because it was exactly like Camille’s. I was copying her. If you found a scarf in my closet after she died, that was my scarf. The one around her neck was hers.”
“Camille had a scarf like yours?”
“I had one like hers. She had hers first. I guess you never saw her wear it.” Lacey stuck her hand into a bowl of iridescent purple tiles and stirred them. If Camille had been strangled with her own scarf, maybe Jonas hadn’t had anything to do with her death. “How can you think I’d kill her?” Lacey threw a handful of tiles on the floor. They hit with painful cracking noises. “I wanted to be Camille, not kill her.”
“Why would you want to be someone else? You’re prettier than she was, prettier than anyone.”
“Who cares about that?” Lacey dumped the whole bowl. The clatter was earsplitting. “I’m not talking about her face; I’m talking about her self. She was strong. She knew how to stand up for herself, to be herself, to deal with people. She wasn’t weak and stupid.” Lacey kicked at the pile of tiles; they skittered across the floor.
“You don’t need to be strong,” Jonas said. “I’m here to take care of you.”
“That’s what I’m sick of!” Lacey screamed the words. “I can’t stand it anymore.”
Jonas’s face should have been deeply familiar, but Lacey had the dreamlike impression that she didn’t recognize him. From the befuddled way he was staring at her, he didn’t recognize her either.
“You’re sick of me?” he said.
“Not of you. I’m sick of you telling me what to do, running every part of my life, telling me what to cook and which shirt to wear and which project I should be working on and whether or not I should call Dr. Marsh. I’m sick of you telling me when to stay home and when to go out. I’m sick of you thinking it’s okay to read my private notes and take my keys and treat me like I’m a child or a prisoner.”
Jonas looked so punch drunk that Lacey wasn’t sure he understood what she was saying. “I’m sick of you meaning it when you call me ‘baby,’” she said. “I’m an adult.”
He spoke unevenly, as though straining to heave each word from his mouth. “I . . . thought you . . . liked it when I took care of you. That’s what you wanted. I rescued you. I kept you safe. I’ve given you everything you need.”
“I was eighteen when you rescued me from my nightmare family. I’m twenty-six now.”
“You . . . want to leave me?”
“No. I just want you to . . . to . . .” How could she explain this? She’d imagined herself talking to Jonas about this hundreds of times, but she could remember hardly any of the confident, intelligent phrases she’d wanted to say. The ones she remembered were in Camille’s voice, not her own.
“I want to be myself,” Lacey said. “If I want to wear that sparkly blue skirt, I don’t want you hanging it in a box in the basement because you think it looks like a Cinderella prop.” Silly Lacey words gushed out. “I want to make raspberry sauce for breakfast. I want to make more mosaic purses, and I don’t want you to tell me I’m wasting my time. I want to help decide where we go on vacation. I want you to listen to me instead of acting like I’m a dummy because I never went to college. I want you to respect me. I want to take a kickboxing class. I’m sick of making waffles. I—” At the wail of sirens, Lacey’s rant collapsed. “The police,” she said. How could she have forgotten the police were on their way? She kicked more tiles across the floor. “Um . . . did we decide which one of us is the killer?”
“You’re not going to prison,” he said.
“Neither are you!” she yelled.
With weighty, cautious steps, Jonas moved toward her. He stopped about a foot away, agony and confusion in his face, as though he didn’t know how he’d been injured. “I love you,” he said. “I’ll always love you. I didn’t know you wanted those things from me.”
“Neither did I,” Lacey said. “Not for a long time. I’m still figuring it out. I want us to get help. Both of us.”
“I’ll do anything you want,” he said. “Except let you take the blame for Camille’s death.”
“We’d better just tell the police the truth,” Lacey said. “The total truth. And . . . I guess we hope they believe us.”
Jonas nodded. As the sirens grew louder, Lacey stepped into his embrace and curled her arms around him, pressing her cheek against his.
* * *
Not until a brief, kindly text from Detective Bartholomew assured her that Lacey was safe could Natalie finally set her phone aside instead of frantically staring at the screen, desperate for news. What was happening with the Egans now? Unless Jonas had flat-out confessed to Camille’s murder, Natalie was still a suspect herself. Then again, with the Egans’ fraught marital dynamics, even a confession might not be enough. Turner and Bartholomew might think Jonas was trying to protect Lacey, even as Natalie had thought Lacey was trying to protect Jonas.
Let the police do the investigating; neither of the Egans was her responsibility at this point.
Stretched out in her recliner, Natalie scanned the comfortable clothes she’d absentmindedly changed into after arriving home from Gideon’s: a faded sweatshirt, ragged-but-not-on-purpose jeans, rubber-soled felt slippers. Classy. Skyler would be here soon—maybe she should have stayed in her nicer clothes? No. Who cared? Skyler wouldn’t.
She closed her eyes, tightened the muscles in her scalp for several seconds, then relaxed them. Facial muscles. Jaw muscles. Neck. Shoulders. Working out tension through progressive muscle relaxation was a better use of her time than spiffing herself up.
Arms: tighten, release. Hands. She was tightening the muscles in her toes when the doorbell rang. She slid out of her chair and padded to the door.
“Hey, Nat.” Skyler held out a loaf of bread. “Coconut bread, fresh from the freezer. Don’t tell Kirk.”
“Thank you.” Natalie claimed the ice-cold loaf. “Come in and explain how I’m supposed to defend the castle when Kirk storms the walls to steal this.”
“Eh, don’t worry. I have another loaf I’m defrosting for work tomorrow, and this time, I’ll remember to bring it. That’ll hold him off.” Skyler stepped inside. “When I told Vicki we were meeting tonight, she told me to bring you a loaf, even though it’s frozen. She figured you’d want it for breakfast, so that’s time to thaw.”
“Perfect,” Natalie said, not even curious what Skyler had told Vicki about why she’d wanted to talk with him. Vicki probably already knew about her dysfunctional family. “Thank you, and please tell Vicki thank you.”
“You d
oing okay? You seem okay at work, but I’ll bet you’re faking it.”
“I’m sort of okay and mostly faking it. Have a seat.”
Skyler sat on the couch. Natalie returned to her recliner.
“What can I do for you?” he asked. “Teach you to control your sister with your mind powers?”
“Could you? Biofeedback therapy is a more powerful tool than I thought.”
“I’m kidding. Remote-controlling minds is outside my area of expertise. Talk to the CIA.”
“Thanks for the tip. And I have no idea how much you already know about my relationship with my sister . . . which, to be honest, makes this uncomfortable for me.”
“I get it.”
“I realize you have to respect patient confidentiality—”
He held up a hand. “Here, I’ll give you what I’ve got. I worked with your mom for . . . can’t remember how long, but it was over a year. From after her cancer surgery until it was plain nothing was going to fix her and the best we could do was manage pain and keep her functional as long as possible. We got along great. She enjoyed the appointments. The physical therapy helped with her pain and mobility, and my handsome face, ripped abs, and charisma were a bonus.” He flexed one arm. “Check out these biceps. Wouldn’t they cheer any woman up?”
“How did she feel about your super-sized ego?”
He grinned. “In all seriousness, she did like me. She talked to me. She didn’t seem fazed by the fact that she was dying—seemed to like talking about it, actually. Shocking people with it because she didn’t look that sick. She’d throw it at other clients or receptionists. I got the sense she liked watching them try to respond to lines like”—he switched to falsetto—“‘Well, dear, I’ll try to have a nice evening, but I have so few days left that every sunset is depressing. I have terminal cancer.’”
Natalie sighed. Yes, her mother would have enjoyed the power of leaving strangers feeling flustered and guilty. “What did she talk about with you besides her death?”
“Money was a favorite topic,” Skyler said. “Your family was well-to-do, huh?”
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