“Huh. I’ve never been to Hawaii. Always wanted to go.”
“So it’s a deal.” She stepped backward, shrinking toward the door. Gideon could read her: she wanted to get out of here and tell herself she’d done everything she could. Gideon would take it from here, and if Natalie got killed, it wasn’t her fault.
“Hang on. This is good for the trip.” He tapped the money. “But I want more specifics about afterward. What if it takes you a while to use your connections to find me a new job after I get fired for going AWOL?”
“I can handle it.”
“I want some guarantees. Sit down for a minute. Do you want something to drink?”
She wiped her face. “I need to go.”
“Go then. I’ll get you a police escort for the ride home. I’ll tell them you’re planning to pay off drug dealers but won’t share their names.”
She lurched toward him and grabbed the stack of cash. “If you do that, you won’t get a cent.”
“Hey, hey, don’t panic.” He eyed the money in her hand. “Let’s nail down the details. We can be quick.”
She sat on the couch, still clutching the money. “Get me a drink then. Just water. Sparkling water if you have it, which you probably don’t.”
“I have it.” He rose to his feet. “Hungry? I have some fudge-brownie ice cream—”
“No.”
He headed into the kitchen area. He opened the fridge, squatted so the breakfast bar hid him from Andrea, and pulled out his phone. With his knee, he bumped jars and bottles so it sounded like he was searching for the water. With his fingers, he texted as fast as he could.
Message sent, he reached for a bottle of salsa on the top shelf and knocked it to the floor. It struck the tile. Glass smashed, and salsa spattered Gideon’s shoes.
“What is your problem in there?” Andrea asked.
“Sorry. Broke a jar. Hang on.” Gideon headed to the pantry to get the broom and to the counter to fetch paper towels. He wiped up a clump of salsa with a paper towel, carried it to the trash, and returned to wipe up the next clump. When only salsa-stained glass was left, he swept the floor, scrupulously shoving the bristles in every corner and resweeping the area nearest the fridge three times.
“Forget the mess,” Andrea snapped. “Get back in here and finish our discussion.”
“Almost done.” He put the broom away, wet a paper towel, and went to wipe the remaining smears of salsa off the tile.
When the floor was clean, he washed his hands, filled two glasses with sparkling water, and brought one of the glasses to Andrea. “Sorry about that.”
“Good thing Natalie will put up with a klutz,” she said irritably, taking the glass.
“Sorry. I’m, uh, a little distracted.” He raised an eyebrow at the envelope Andrea had refilled with the money and placed on the coffee table.
“Let’s get this over with and you can have it,” she said.
Gideon sat and gulped from his glass, frizzling his tonsils with carbonation. “First thing I want to know is—is this going to be dangerous for me? If a killer is after Natalie and I’m her escort . . .”
Andrea snorted. “Don’t be a coward. He won’t bother you. You didn’t cheat him. You have ten minutes to settle this, and then I’m leaving.”
Gideon set his glass down on the coffee table. He picked up the envelope of money, peered inside it, and rubbed his thumb along the stack of bills. “Still sounds like a dicey job.”
“I thought you cared about Natalie.”
“I do, but I care about staying alive too. No wad of cash could bounce me out of the grave.”
“I should have known Natalie would go for a wimp. Do you sit here every night alone playing with Legos?”
“Pretty much. It’s safe. They aren’t dangerous unless you step on them with bare feet.”
“Listen, clown. You’re not in danger.” Andrea lifted her glass and drank. Gideon wished she’d drink it all; otherwise, she’d probably throw the rest of the water in his face if he pushed her too far. She set her glass on the table. “This is a . . . private thing, a personal vendetta. You’re not involved, you won’t get hurt, and if you get Natalie out of here, she’ll be fine.”
“Okay, good enough. But how soon do we need to go? It’d be nice to have a little time to pack and plan and research which island would be the most fun—”
“You idiot.” Andrea made a convulsive up-and-down motion as though wanting to spring from her seat but fighting to stay still until she’d locked down his cooperation. “You’re running away, not planning a honeymoon. The sooner you can get her out of here, the better. Forget packing; buy new stuff when you get there. Go get her tonight, bring her here, leave as soon as you can get a flight out.”
Gideon held his palm flat, set the envelope in it, and hefted it as though weighing it. “She’s going to wonder what the rush is. I won’t be able to get her to cooperate without telling her you hired me to keep her safe.”
Andrea’s tone changed from impatient to venomous. “How can you be this stupid? If you do that, she’ll never leave with you. She’ll stomp over to my house and yell at me. She’s in denial. If you want her out of danger, lie to her. Make it all impetuous and romantic—if you have any idea how to do that.”
“Fine, I get it. Calm down.”
“Are we done?”
“Getting there.” He sniffed the money in the envelope.
“Hurry!” Andrea ripped the envelope out of his hands. “What other questions do you have?”
Good thing she was too worked up to critique his acting, which had to be atrocious. “This is cash to cover the vacation, right? What about . . . let’s call it a salary. I’m doing you a favor, doing your family a favor. That doesn’t seem like it should be a freebie. It’ll be a real pain for me to leave—”
A knock came at the front door. Gideon jumped; Andrea gasped. She moved to hide the money under her cape, but Gideon snatched it away from her. The last thing they needed was a “get a warrant” argument as to whether the money existed.
“I’ll hang on to this,” he said.
“Don’t open the door,” she whispered. “Are you insane?”
“It might be important.”
“At least get that out of sight.” She gestured urgently at the cash. “Do you want to get robbed?”
Gideon shoved the envelope in the back waistband of his pants. Andrea darted to the far side of the living room, out of sight of anyone on the doorstep.
Gideon opened the door. “Come in,” he said. “You guys are fast.”
Detective Turner stepped into the room, followed by Bartholomew.
Turner nodded at Andrea. “Good evening, Mrs. Collier.”
Andrea stood with her mouth pinched shut, her eyes murdering Gideon.
Gideon took the envelope, removed the money, and set the envelope and stack of cash on the coffee table. “I texted Detective Turner and told him you had information about Camille’s murder, that you know Natalie’s in danger, and you’re trying to pay me to whisk her out of here. Now, how about you share the details?”
Chapter 29
Natalie wanted to sleep, but she didn’t want to go to bed and end up tossing and turning, wide awake, her stress burgeoning as sleepless hours passed. Instead, she wandered between the living room and kitchen, made herself hot chocolate, sat in her recliner and tried to read, wandered back into the kitchen for a fresh glass of water, tried to watch TV, walked back to the kitchen for a piece of toast, then went back to her recliner to stare at a cobweb she needed to sweep down from the light fixture.
She closed her eyes and pictured grief and anger as the tiny white petals blown from blossoming trees. Twirling on the breeze, scattering, sifting down between blades of grass still brown from winter. Floating along a stream, sweeping over rocks, slipping down waterfalls, lingering momentarily in pools, but drifting, finally, to where crystalline water flowed over—
She twitched in her chair, knocking her book to the floor.
She rubbed dry eyes, not sure if she’d heard a thumping noise or had dreamed it.
The thump came again: a knock. On the back door. At . . . what time was it? Too late for visitors. She grabbed her phone and crept toward the doorway to the kitchen.
Outside, leaning close to the glass with a wry grin on his face stood Skyler. She stalked over, unlocked the door, and yanked it open. “You’d better have another loaf of coconut bread for me. Or a year’s supply of filet mignon.”
“I don’t, but I’ll herd a whole cow to work tomorrow if you’ll give me my wallet.”
“Your wallet?”
He entered the kitchen and closed the door behind him. “Yeah. It must have fallen out of my pocket on your couch. Sorry about that.”
She massaged her forehead. “Why didn’t you text or call me instead of giving me a heart attack?”
“I did call, twice. It went to voice mail. Is your phone off?”
She squinted at her phone screen. It didn’t show any missed calls, and the ringer was on. “It didn’t go through.”
“Stupid carriers. Anyway, I decided to drive by to see if your lights were on. I saw the kitchen light was on and thought you might be having a midnight snack—that’s why I came to the back door.”
“I’d like to feed you to a bear for a midnight snack. How could you tell from the road that the kitchen light was on?”
“Side window.” He pointed at it. “Could see it when I was driving up.”
“You realize there’s a murderer in town, and you think it’s good manners to creep around like the bogeyman?”
“Sorry. Didn’t want to scare you. But I already searched my house and my car, so if the wallet isn’t here, I must have lost it when I was out to dinner. I need to know whether or not to cancel all my cards, which would be a giant pain in the neck.”
“I understand,” Natalie said grudgingly. “And I was still awake. Sort of.” She walked toward the living room with Skyler trailing her. “That better be a good cow you bring me tomorrow.”
“USDA Prime from head to tail.”
“Search.” She waved at the couch. “If you find any loose change, you can keep it for your donut fund.”
“Nice,” Skyler said, but he stayed behind her. Natalie glanced over her shoulder. All her nerves sparked with sharp, bright pain, and she whirled to fully face him.
“Sorry.” He swished the gun he was holding, tracing an apologetic downward curve with the barrel. “I’m sorry, Nat.” He extended his other hand. He was wearing gloves—sleek, close-fitting black gloves. “Give me your phone.”
She was asleep. She drew a deep breath, wiggled her arms and legs, blinked. Nothing changed. “Skyler—”
“Phone.”
She held it out. He took it, flicked the switch on the side to silence it, and stuck it in his hip pocket.
Natalie stared at his index finger resting on the trigger of the gun. “What’s going on?”
“You know how things can start small and end up huge and ugly and you have to do whatever you can to control them? That’s where I’m at. I don’t have anything against you. I like you.”
Natalie gathered every scrap of composure and met his gaze. “You don’t want to do this. Put the gun down.”
He grinned. “Shall we explore my feelings about you? Or about firearms? Or about my daddy or my self-esteem?”
“We’re friends. I care about you. You know that.”
“I killed Camille Moretti,” he said. “Do you still care about me?”
The words slashed through her calm façade, tearing into her soul. “Why would . . . I don’t understand why—”
“I didn’t have anything against Camille either. She was great. Here’s the thing: I’m a guy who likes taking risks. Life’s a bore without them, right? But sometimes they pay off; sometimes they don’t. Sometimes you need plan B, and plan B usually isn’t the greatest.”
This had to be a nightmare. “What was plan A? What ‘small thing’ started this?”
“Money. Money was the glorious plan A. Nobody getting hurt. Where’s your laptop?”
“It’s . . . still in my bag from work. In the entryway.”
“Get it. And your purse too.”
“Why?”
“Because if you don’t, I’ll shoot you. That’s what the gun means.”
With slow steps and her ears attuned to Skyler’s footsteps behind her, Natalie fetched her computer and purse.
Skyler directed her to the couch and sat next to her. He braced the gun on his thigh, tipped so the barrel pointed at her chest. “Open the computer and angle the screen so I can see it too,” he said. “You’re going to buy an airline ticket.”
“To where?”
“You have a current passport, right?”
“Yes.” A passport she’d planned to use on international adventures with Camille.
“France,” Skyler said. “You’re going to France. Find yourself a flight that leaves early tomorrow morning. Doesn’t matter which airline.”
“Why am I going to France?”
“Because you don’t need a visa, and it’s a good place for American fugitives to hide. Did you know that?”
“I’m not a fugitive.”
“You will be.” He touched the muzzle of the gun to her temple. “Find a flight. Now.”
The chill of the gun seemed to draw all warmth from her body. She’d never imagined what it would feel like to be one tiny muscle contraction away from death. “A flight for both of us?”
“Just for you.”
Natalie started typing. “What went wrong with the money-only plan A?”
“I tried to blackmail the wrong guy. Awkward, right?”
“Who?”
Skyler withdrew the gun and rested it on his thigh again, now aimed so a bullet would hit her in the side. “See, I lied tonight when I told you your mom never said anything nice about you. She did. Toward the end, she started saying things like maybe you meant well and you were actually a nice girl in some ways and really smart. She told Wade Radcliffe the truth; she did change the will.”
Natalie gawked at him, forgetting about the search for flights, almost oblivious to the gun. “She told you she was changing her will?”
“Fifty-fifty between you and Andrea. It would be her posthumous big reveal. She hadn’t told anyone, she said, except her lawyer, Andrea, and me—didn’t mention Wade; he must have been a later impulse blab. She thought it was hilarious how angry Andrea was, how hard she tried to convince your mom that only she cared about her, but she had to be so polite because she was scared your mom would boot her out of the will. Poor Andrea.”
Poor Andrea, who had insisted their mother had wholeheartedly despised Natalie up through her final heartbeat.
“Her fantasies were great theater,” Skyler said. “She pictured you collapsing in Moretti’s office and sobbing out thank-yous. You ought to be flattered—at the end of her life, the thing that thrilled her most was imagining your reaction when you found out she’d bestowed a pile of money on you.” He tipped his head toward the computer screen. “That first flight on the list is fine. Book it.”
She clicked on it. Her fingers were fragile sticks, buckling, nearly snapping as she tried to type her information into the boxes and kept misspelling her name. “She died before she could change the will?”
“No, she did change it, and that’s where plan A started. See, I knew she’d changed it.”
“Why did she tell you all this?” Natalie glanced at him and answered her own question. “Because she needed an audience to gloat to.”
“Yeah, that’s what I figured. I was her hunky, charming, listening ear; I was a neutral party, and I was paid to be polite. After she met with her lawyer, she gave me a full report of the meeting and how Andrea had looked so grim, but it didn’t matter. Roxanne had made up her mind; too bad for Andrea. Chattered my ear off the whole time I was working with her.”
“But weren’t there witnesses? Don’t witnesses have to si
gn a will?”
“Sign it, yeah, but they don’t have to know the content. The witnesses were employees at Moretti’s firm, and Roxanne didn’t tell them a thing.” Skyler took Natalie’s purse with his left hand and clamped it between his knees so he could unzip it and root through it with one hand. He brought out her wallet and handed it to her. “Buy the ticket.”
She opened it and removed a credit card, wishing futilely she had a canister of pepper spray hidden in her wallet. “Did Andrea pressure her until she changed the will back?”
“Nope. I didn’t even realize anything was wrong until after Roxanne died and all the legal nonsense was finished and I heard through the grapevine that every penny had gone to Andrea. Which shorted out my brain because that wasn’t what Roxanne had told me, and I was working with her right up until she was so weak she couldn’t speak a full sentence, so it was hard to believe she’d changed her will at the last instant. Nat, that’s the third time you’ve erased your card number and started over. Quit stalling and finish the transaction.”
“Put the gun down, and maybe I won’t have so much trouble typing accurately.” She started again on the card number.
“I didn’t like Andrea,” Skyler said. “Truth is I didn’t like your mother either. For all her rambling about her wealth, she never gave me so much as a gift certificate for a burger. Tacky, right? The cheapskate. I’d hoped if I charmed her, it would pay off, but nope. So I was mad anyway, and then after I heard Andrea got it all, I got suspicious, wondering if she’d pulled a fast one. I decided to gamble, and I confronted her. I told her I knew Roxanne had changed the will to include you. I asked her how much she’d paid the lawyer to get him to destroy the altered will.”
Natalie sat paralyzed.
“Yeah, I was fishing,” Skyler said. “But it made sense, and her reaction was a giant squid on the hook.” He wriggled his fingers like tentacles. “I told her that for a fee, I’d keep my mouth shut. That seemed fair.”
Natalie tried to stuff her credit card back in her wallet but couldn’t fit it in the slot. “You blackmailed Andrea?”
Not a Word Page 29