HER SISTER'S KILLER an absolutely gripping killer thriller full of twists

by MICHELLE S. SMITH

  Victoria felt her phone vibrating in her pocket and fumbled for it. “Hold that thought.” She accepted the call from an unknown number.

  “Detective Wharton?”

  Victoria listened intently as the voice on the other end spoke briefly. “Yes, yes, any time,” she replied. “Day or night.” She ended the call and stared at Janet. “It was the hospital. Apparently, they’ve been trying to get hold of me all day. They kept getting Steve on the phone at the police station. Wanted to tell me that Todd has regained consciousness and is asking for me. He’s asleep again, but they’ll phone as soon as he wakes. They finally reached Karen, who gave them my cell number.”

  Janet frowned. “Why didn’t Steve let you know?”

  Victoria shook her head, unable to think of an answer. She pulled up his number. “Engaged,” she replied. She waited, tried once more, then shoved her phone back in her pocket. “No answer.”

  Janet shrugged. “He’ll probably explain when you see him. You’d better let your mother know that you may finally have answers. If Todd can tell you who attacked him, you should also have Becky’s killer.”

  Victoria groaned. “Yeah, you’re right,” she admitted. “I’ll head over that way now. Maybe stop first at the police station to see if I can find Steve and ask him what’s going on.”

  Janet looked up with wide, pleading eyes. “Can I finish off your champagne?”

  Victoria grinned and handed her the glass.

  Chapter 34

  When Vicky got to the police station, only Karen was there. “Any idea where Steve is?” she asked.

  Karen shook her head. “Any more leads on the phone you found?” she asked Victoria.

  Victoria sighed. “Yeah. It’s my sister’s. As we assumed.”

  Karen placed a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said simply.

  Victoria nodded, unable to speak.

  “I’m heading out,” Karen said, “Will you be okay?”

  “Sure.”

  Victoria stared blankly into space for a moment, listening to Karen’s footsteps recede.

  Where are Becky’s phone records? she thought suddenly. She hurried across to Steve’s computer and opened it.

  “Password, password,” she muttered. She called Steve’s number. Unavailable again. Victoria slammed down her phone and stared at the laptop.

  Knowing she shouldn’t, she tentatively typed in Steve’s name into the password bar. Incorrect. She tried his surname — incorrect. On an impulse, she typed in “Victoria.” Incorrect. Victoria breathed out a sigh, then tensed again. There was something else she could try.

  She held her breath as she pushed enter, not sure whether to pray it worked or to pray that it didn’t.

  She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them to see his desktop home screen appear. Her heart sank.

  His password was Becky.

  Numbly, she opened his email, and when that showed nothing, searched through all likely folders.

  “Where are they?” She sighed in frustration, closed the last document and returned to the desktop. She saw an unnamed folder and opened it, guilt and trepidation crawling in her stomach. A list of photograph files, all unnamed like the folder, came up. She opened the first one and stared at the laughing girl in the picture.

  “Becky,” she said. She opened more photos. Becky laughing with friends. Becky with her arms around Steve. Another one of her kissing Steve. Becky helping out at a church sale. Becky pulling a face and clowning around with John, a slightly fuzzy picture as though taken without their knowing. Unbidden, lines from ‘My Last Duchess’ flashed into Victoria’s mind:

  That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall . . .

  . . . she smiled, no doubt,

  Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without

  Much the same smile?

  She no longer needed the phone records, she realized. The photographs told her what the records would reveal.

  There was one last unopened photo file she hadn’t seen. She braced herself to see Becky’s smiling face once more. She double-clicked. Her hand rose to her mouth.

  A sick feeling swam inside her as she stared at the familiar lines around the eyes, the thin lips smiling back at her.

  “Dad?” she whispered.

  * * *

  John knocked on the open door of the police station. When no one answered, he walked in to find Victoria gazing unseeingly out of the window. He tapped her on the shoulder. Victoria jumped and swung around.

  “Woah! It’s me! I just came to let you know my mom says she’s so grateful for all you did for Gina.” John put out a flat palm against the fist Victoria had raised against him. Victoria stared at John for a moment, her hand still clenched.

  “Sit down,” John said. “You’re shaking.”

  Victoria shook her head. “I have to go to my mother. As soon as Karen is back at the station.”

  “You shouldn’t be going anywhere.” John scratched his head.

  “Don’t try to stop me.”

  John grinned. “I’d be too scared to,” he said, nodding at her fist. He slowly took her hand and unclenched it. “I’ll walk there with you,” he offered. “I won’t come inside.”

  By the time Karen had returned, Victoria had almost stopped trembling.

  “Adrenaline,” she muttered, holding her outstretched hands before her for inspection. She nodded at John. “We’d better be on our way.”

  They left the building. “What’s going on?” John asked.

  “I found a photo of my father on Steve’s computer.”

  “That’s disturbing.” John frowned. “How did you find it?”

  “I wanted my sister’s phone records and hacked into his computer when he kept delaying giving them to me. His password was Becky,” she said. “He has photos of her too. They were obviously together.”

  John grimaced. “Yeah, I suspected so. Especially when we got into a fight outside her place.”

  “And you didn’t say anything?”

  John shrugged. “I assumed you guessed too.”

  “Yes, all the signs were there.” Victoria sighed. “His calling her Becky, not giving me the phone records. His jealousy of you. What bothers me the most is that he never told me.”

  “You want to admit why that frightens you so much?” John asked. “Saying it aloud doesn’t necessarily make your suspicions true.”

  Victoria fought to stop her voice from choking. “We’re almost here,” she said, her mother’s neglected garden coming into sight.

  She glanced up at John. “You’re right,” she admitted. “I’m terrified that the real reason Steve said nothing was—”

  At that moment, her phone rang. She swiped her screen to accept the call. “Todd?”

  She hurried up to the house. The door stood ajar.

  “Want me to wait for you?” called John, but she didn’t hear him. She was listening to the rasping voice on the other end of her phone. She walked into her mother’s lounge and her face turned ashen. Vera was not alone.

  Victoria ended the call and pointed at the tall man standing by the window, a familiar holster on his hip.

  “It was you!” she hissed. “You killed my sister!”

  Steve turned slowly, his face almost as pale as hers.

  “That was Todd on the phone,” she said. “He told me everything. How he saw you leaning over my sister’s body when you dumped it, how he didn’t recognize you until he was arrested and he realized that the man who gave him the threatening note for me was the same man who had killed Becky.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Steve scoffed. “Why would he suddenly recognize me then and not before?”

  “His eyesight is bad, but his hearing isn’t,” she replied. “He recognized your voice.”

  “And you believe him?” Steve replied. A faint smile crossed his face. “A pathetic alcoholic.”

  “So you didn’t offer Todd blackmail money and attack him behind the Meeting House? You mean you didn’t try t
o kill him in the hospital?”

  “He told you that?” Steve asked, a smile still playing around his lips.

  “He was very lucid,” Victoria said through gritted teeth. “Now I know why he was so agitated when he saw us in the hospital and why he kept saying ‘Eve’. He was trying to say your name and to reveal the murderer.” She laughed shortly. “He also told me that I was right in suspecting you of police brutality — that you hit him at the police station on the evening he was arrested to make him cooperate.”

  Steve laughed, and Vera stared from her daughter to Steve and back again, her hands opening and closing repeatedly in her lap.

  “So you think you have tied up all the loose ends?” Steve said. He came closer and loomed over her. “Maybe I offered Todd money, but you have a far more practiced blackmailer in the woman sitting beside you.”

  “Be quiet!” Vera interposed, but Steve took no notice.

  “Do you want to tell her, Vera, or shall I?”

  “Mom, what is he talking about?” Victoria asked, bewildered.

  Vera chose her words carefully. “Simply that I decided to take pity on him when he was young and to pay for his studies even though I had very little left after the divorce. If you call that blackmail . . .”

  “Why would you do that?” Victoria asked. “You hated him even then.”

  “Do you want to tell her?” Steve shouted. “About the affair your husband had, a few years after you married?”

  Victoria felt nauseous and sat down suddenly.

  “Mom, is this true? Who did my father have a relationship with?” she asked, her throat dry.

  Steve answered for her.

  “My mother,” he said.

  The nausea now was overwhelming. “Are you saying—?”

  Steve nodded. “When I was little, I was left alone at home for hours on end while my mother was out drinking, always trying to find the next man to fulfil the emptiness left by my father. Your father.”

  “Mom, tell me it’s not true,” Victoria whispered, but Vera was silent.

  “I came to Hancock as a young man,” said Steve, “to find the father I had never had, whose absence robbed me of the home life I always wanted.”

  “So you befriended us — Becky and me — to try to find your father?” asked Victoria.

  “Why else?” sneered Steve. “When I discovered he was gone, I confronted Vera. She told me my mother had written to her telling her about my birth, but she had hidden it from my father. She offered to pay for my studies if I would go away.”

  “He threatened to tell everyone,” Vera panted, her voice rising. “Especially you and Becky. To humiliate our family.”

  “So that was why you left,” Victoria said. “You got your money. What made you come back? Wasn’t the money enough?”

  Steve laughed. “Not even close,” he replied. “It was enough to keep me quiet while I studied, but after that . . . your mother robbed me of a father. And then thought it was sufficient to compensate me with cash. She could have told him about me, but she said nothing. And so I came back once I was qualified, this time determined to take revenge.”

  “You are evil,” Vera muttered. “You deliberately started a relationship with Becky to destroy this family. Your own half-sister.”

  “How could you?” Victoria seethed. “Using Becky like that when you didn’t even care for her.”

  Steve shook his head. “That’s where you are wrong,” he muttered. “It was something I never could have imagined would happen. I fell for her. She was so beautiful.” His voice caught as he spoke of her. “I would have done anything for her. Safeguarded her from Maurice — but she still turned to John for protection. He was always phoning her.”

  “Maybe she felt safer turning to John than someone who would have beaten Maurice to a pulp the way you did to Joe,” Victoria said.

  “She did,” said Steve in a low voice. “I realize that now.”

  “Is that why you killed her?” Victoria asked. “Was it jealousy? And what about me? Did you start a relationship with me out of revenge or to distract me from finding out who my sister’s murderer was?”

  Steve shrugged. “Mostly to distract you,” he said, his eyes locked on Victoria’s in a cruel, hard stare. “I tried sending Todd with a note too — I knew how poor his eyesight was, so I spoke to him when it was dark and hid my face. But I never really thought threats would be as effective as a relationship. You were so pathetically lonely that I knew from the start you’d be easy prey.”

  “You’re not quite as irresistible as you thought, or we wouldn’t be standing here,” Victoria answered, struggling to keep away the tears. “And you haven’t answered my question. Was it jealousy that made you murder my sister?”

  “I didn’t murder her,” Steve said, his fingers traveling subconsciously to his holster. “I loved her.”

  “Love! She was your sister! Mom, why didn’t you stop them?” Victoria cried, turning to her mother.

  “I tried,” her mother replied. “I was livid. I confronted Becky and commanded her to end the relationship.”

  Something in Vera’s words made Victoria freeze.

  “Say that again,” she said.

  “What?” Vera held her gaze. “I commanded her to stop.”

  Victoria swallowed.

  “I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together.” she quoted. “From ‘My Last Duchess’.”

  She moved unsteadily toward her mother. “It was you,” she whispered. “Wasn’t it?”

  Vera’s face seemed to crack.

  “I didn’t mean to.” Her voice was barely audible. “We had never fought. Becky always listened to me. Until him.” She pointed an accusing finger at Steve. “She refused to give him up, and I couldn’t tell her why. It would have broken her. Destroyed her. Destroyed our family.”

  Victoria knelt beside her mother, her hands grasping the wheelchair. “Our family is already so broken. What difference would revealing the truth have made?”

  Vera shook her head tiredly. “She and Steve came here to tell me about their relationship. At Steve’s insistence, of course. I can still see him standing over there, lounging beside her, one hand in his pocket, the other around a drink. He put down the bottle on the table next to me, pulled her closer, kissing her. He wanted to see how far he could push me.”

  Vera gave a shuddering sigh. “I begged Becky to leave him. Then I ordered her. When she wouldn’t listen, I grabbed her by her arms and shook her. She pulled away, lost her balance, and fell onto her knees next to me. And still she refused to leave him. I was so beside myself that I didn’t know what I was doing. Something just — snapped. I snatched up the bottle from the table, and I—”

  She sank her head into her hands. “I told Steve I would destroy his career, tell his superiors about his blackmailing and his incestuous relationship if he didn’t help me. He took Becky’s body and dumped it on one of the trails, but he had forgotten about her phone. His calls and their chat history would incriminate him and make him a suspect. When Paula found Becky, he managed to get a moment alone and crushed the phone and threw it into the bush. It was a stupid thing to do.”

  “Not as stupid as killing her,” hissed Steve, his hand still on his holster. A menacing silence hung in the air. “When I heard that Todd was awake, I came at once to tell Vera we were in trouble.”

  Victoria suddenly remembered John outside and raised her voice as much as she could without sounding unnatural. “Don’t do it, Steve,” Victoria ordered. “Drop your hand.”

  “You know too much,” he muttered. “I’ve worked too hard to get where I am to have you destroy it all. Todd can be bought off. Once he knows you are dead—”

  “Mom?” Victoria pleaded. “Say something. Stop him!”

  Vera looked away, unable to meet her eyes.

  As Steve lifted his gun from the holster, his usual steely calm faltered for a second. His fingers fumbled, and the gun fell.

  Victoria made a dart for the weapon a
t the same time he did, and they grappled wildly on the floor. Her fingers closed over the gun for a moment before Steve snatched it from her hold and rose to his knees, pulling Victoria up with him. She struck out with the heel of her hand to his chin, trying to break free of his hold. He jerked back, but his grip didn’t loosen.

  “Victoria!”

  Steve swung around to see John charging toward them, and Victoria took her chance and wrenched free, snatching for the gun. Her hands closed around Steve’s as his finger felt for the trigger. She tried in vain to divert the direction of the weapon, but his hand mercilessly forced the barrel toward her head. Desperate, she dropped her hands and threw herself against him with the full force of her body, knocking him off balance as his finger found the trigger. A shot sounded, and Vera’s head sank onto her chest.

  Everything swam in slow motion then. Victoria was dimly aware of John wrestling the gun from Steve’s hold and pinning him down. Her fingers, clumsy and trembling, felt for her mother’s pulse, her heartbeat, anything, and then were still. Nothing. She sank down beside Vera’s wheelchair and sobbed.

  Chapter 35

  Norway Pond at sunset no longer held any terror for her. The sand felt soft under her bare feet, and the air was still warm in the twilight. Her fingers clasped a small container carefully as she made her way across the beach. As compact as the container was, she felt the whole weight of her past lay within that small box holding her mother’s ashes.

  “Victoria.”

  She glanced up to see John approaching.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said, taking a deep breath, her fingers tightening over the box. “I’ve been dreading this day for ages. Not being alone somehow makes it much easier.”

  “I’m glad you’re still here,” he replied. “Every time we message or meet up, I expect you’re going to tell me you’re leaving Hancock.” He smiled awkwardly. “Case is over. Steve in jail.”

  Victoria hesitated a moment before answering.

  “It’s really just wrapping up my mother’s estate that I still need to sort out. Of course, it’s been busy at the police station too.”