by Nancy Bush
“Jesus,” Lyle said. He walked over to a chair and sank into it. A pretty, somewhat dazed-looking woman scooted closer to him, taking the adjoining seat.
Who? Lucy wondered, and Kate answered the unspoken question, “Ainsley.”
“Ah,” Lucy said. “It happened at dinner? What happened, exactly?” She was already texting Layla that things looked okay with their father and she would call her soon.
She looked up from the text when Kate didn’t answer her. Her sister-in-law’s gaze was on Lyle. “You maybe should ask your brother,” Kate finally said.
“Okay . . .”
“You know any good lawyers?”
Lucy’s pulse leaped and she shot Kate a look. “Maybe,” she said cautiously, before realizing it was a rhetorical question.
“You’re all going to owe me for what I did,” she said with a bitter smile.
Then she walked toward the glass doors that led to the reception area of the main floor of the hospital, away from Emergency and all of them.
Chapter Thirty
A second will.
A new will. The real one. The one Junior had expected would be used and Lyle had waylaid it!
Lucy could scarcely believe it. After Kate’s dramatic departure from the hospital waiting room, Lucy had wrested Lyle away from a rather clingy Ainsley, walked him into the empty hall where Kate had disappeared, and demanded to know what the hell Kate had been talking about.
And the whole story came out ... about their grandfather’s will, which Abbott had wanted destroyed . . . about the witnesses to the will, one of whom had blackmailed Lyle . . . about Lyle taking the sixty thousand to pay off the blackmailer . . . about Abbott believing the will had been destroyed . . . about the reveal tonight that Abbott was apparently engaged and then Kate dropping the bomb on him that Junior’s last will was safely tucked in a safe-deposit box . . . about Abbott’s arrhythmia, the warning of a heart attack . . . and about the fact that Abbott had been systematically separating investments from the company, secreting money for himself.
While Lyle talked, stopping and starting, Lucy’s emotions ran the gamut of shock, anger, and a little bit of hope at this recitation. It looked as if her father and brother’s plans to sell Stonehenge were scuttled, at least until the will was settled. She’d been silent with disbelief and was furious with her brother, her anger mounting with each new revelation. When it seemed he’d said all he could, or all he wanted to divulge, she exploded.
“You should never have hidden the will,” she hissed at him. “Then none of this would have happened!”
He had no good answer for her wrath, other than that he’d always been under their father’s thumb. Abbott’s favorite child. “You have no idea what it’s like, the pressure I’ve been under,” he said vehemently, as if he’d shouldered all the burden of being a Crissman.
She was utterly frustrated with him and had to draw a breath to pull herself under control.
As they stood in the hallway, she bit back a dozen harsh retorts and instead studied her brother. She and Layla had teased him mercilessly when they were young, calling him “Little Monster,” among other things. His mother had complained about them to Abbott, and a division had occurred, a schism in the family. Then his mother had left, swanning off like their own mother, spending even less time with Lyle in the ensuing years than Layla and Lucy’s mother had with them.
Still, he needed to man up. He should have a long time ago.
“You always liked Brianne Kilgore,” she said aloud, bringing his head around in surprise.
“What’s that got to do with anything?” He glared at her, stepping out of the way as an orderly pushed an elderly man in a wheelchair to a bank of elevators.
“You had a relationship with her, but you lied to her father,” she charged, lowering her voice. “You told him Brianne was responsible for her little brother’s death.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Our dad just had a heart attack and that’s what’s on your mind?” he asked, incredulous.
“I don’t get you, Lyle. I don’t get any part of you. You toyed with Brianne and you hid that will.”
“I didn’t toy with Brianne,” he shot back.
“You had sex with her and she’s not ... she doesn’t process well enough to have it be consensual!”
“Brianne broke it off with me,” Lyle snapped. “Dad told me Brianne was responsible for her brother’s death. I mentioned it to her father and it got back to her. I didn’t want to stop seeing her, but that’s what happened. And it’s all old news.”
Lucy had let it go after that. Other people were walking through the hall and stepping in front of the elevators. She’d wanted to argue with Lyle about something and so she had, but it hadn’t made her feel any better.
They returned to the ER waiting area. Shortly thereafter, the doctor came out and told them Abbott was being moved to a private room and that he was resting comfortably and would likely be able to go home the next day. At that point, Lucy just left. She was glad her father was going to be okay, but she didn’t want to see him. She needed to process. Leaving Lyle, she texted Layla as she walked outside to her car, letting her know their father was going to be fine.
* * *
Monday morning, Lucy was standing in the kitchen, drinking black coffee, planning the day. Lyle had said he and Kate were collecting the will from a safe-deposit box and taking it to a lawyer. Lucy had suggested Dallas, understanding Kate’s cryptic comment now. Dallas might not be an estate attorney, but he could point them in the right direction.
With that in mind, she called him. She’d gotten his cell number, and though it was barely seven o’clock, she didn’t care. She wanted to talk to him. There was so much to say. So many issues.
He answered on the third ring. “Hi, Lucy.”
She opened her mouth and thought, Oh, no, oh, God no . . . as her throat closed with emotion.
“Lucy?” he asked.
“I’m sorry. I’ve got to talk to you . . .”
“What is it? About Layla? Or . . . your husband ... ?” He sounded wide awake and alert. “Should we meet at my office?”
“Sure.” She could barely get it out.
“Or . . . I could come there ... ?”
“Yes. Please. Soon as you can.” And she hung up before she broke down completely.
Her insides quaking, she went upstairs to collect herself and apply some makeup. She felt vulnerable and angry at all the men in her family, Lyle, Abbott, and yes, even John. She stopped by Evie’s room on the way, checked in, and saw she was still sleeping. Then she went to the master bedroom and switched on the television as she walked toward the bathroom.
“. . . authorities are looking into the nearly one hundred thousand dollars that passed from Neil Grassley’s bank account to Layla Crissman’s over the course of the last week. Sources say there was animosity between them, and their relationship had become contentious with a lawsuit pending. . . .”
Lucy stopped cold, staring at the screen in shock. Still listening, she found her phone and called Layla.
* * *
Layla couldn’t take her eyes off the TV. The news was terrible. Terrible! She was being crucified and it was all lies! She was cold inside from head to toe and gripped the back of one of her chairs for support. If the police believed she’d stolen Neil’s money ... ?
She had answered the phone in a daze, and it took all her powers of concentration to understand what Lucy was saying. “. . . Dallas will figure it out. Don’t worry. We know the truth . . .” And then she went on to tell her about their father, who apparently was recovering fine from a heart attack and engaged to a woman almost half his age, and that Lyle had secreted their grandfather’s most recent will, which cut out their father entirely—that fact being the catalyst for Abbott’s heart event—and that Kate had been the one to force the truth to come out.
“Wow,” was all Layla had been able to get out.
Talking fast, Lucy finished w
ith, “Dad tried to cut us out of our inheritance, Dad and Lyle. Our brother’s been right there all the time, knowing the truth and not doing anything about it. He and Kate are turning the will over to Dallas today, and he’s coming over in a few minutes and I’m going to ... tell him everything.”
“Everything?” That penetrated. She glanced away from the TV for a second. “You mean . . .”
“I think so. Don’t watch the news. It’s just ... I don’t know. Somebody’s got their facts wrong.”
“Okay.”
But it was impossible not to look back. A reporter was claiming the police had evidence—evidence!—that Layla had been receiving payments from Neil! Impossible. She’d taken the twenty thousand dollars from Neil and squirreled it into an account, but that was it. They had no evidence. They couldn’t!
But...
Still holding her phone, she pressed the icon for her bank’s app and signed in. She wasn’t all that computer savvy, but she knew enough to handle the basic banking on her phone. Her heart nearly stopped as she found two deposits of fifty thousand dollars each, transferred into her account last week. Neil had done it. Somehow.
Layla groaned in disbelief, the cell slipping from her fingers. She felt persecuted by unseen forces. She groaned again when she realized she was due at Easy Street at eleven today. If the news reporters had been outside her door yesterday, they were bound to be there in full force again today.
As she picked up her cell, the phone jingled in her hand. Dallas Denton’s name flashed onto the small screen. She answered, and he identified himself, mentioned he was meeting Lucy at her house this morning, and then got down to business. “They’re doing the autopsy on Grassley today.”
“Have you seen the news? Did you see what they’re saying?” She was breathing hard, damn near hyperventilating.
“Yes. Don’t watch it. I’m just pulling up to your sister’s. We’re working on it. Don’t talk to them, the press.”
“Dallas . . . I checked my bank account. That money’s in there, but I didn’t put it there! Neil must’ve.” She was pacing, her thoughts swirling, panic growing.
“There’ll be a record,” he said calmly. “We’ll follow the trail.”
Suddenly, she wanted to be there with Dallas and Lucy. She felt like a traitor that she knew Lucy’s secret and he didn’t yet, when he was working so hard for her, for them both. “I have to go to work. They’ve been camped outside my door.” Walking to the living-room window, she looked outside and saw a news van parked on the other side of the street. “Oh God. They’re here again.”
“Ignore them. Do you need a ride? I can send Luke to take you.”
“No, thanks. I’ll take care of it.”
They ended their call and she slipped on her jacket and went down to the parking garage. She let herself out a back door, then zigzagged through the city blocks and traffic to a deli four blocks from the apartment building. On the way, she hired an Uber driver and found his black Honda with the Uber sticker in the rear window waiting at the corner. He dropped her off at Easy Street and she barely had time to wrap an apron around her waist when a young man with sharp eyes strolled in, looking around, his gaze falling on Layla. He’d been waiting for her, she realized.
Layla walked directly into the kitchen and said to her boss, “I’m going to have to leave.”
The owners, both of them, didn’t even bother to try to stop her. It was clear they thought there might be some teensy bit of truth in the fact that she was involved in Neil’s death.
She walked out the back of the restaurant, sneaked around a few more blocks, ducked into another restaurant, and called Uber once more. To hell with it; she would go to Lucy’s.
* * *
“For God’s sake, Auggie, where’s this information coming from?” September snapped into her cell as she paced back and forth from the kitchen to the back patio where the barbecue stood, cleaned and ready for use, though Jake had ended up leaving the steaks in the refrigerator and going to a nearby burger joint instead. The coffeepot gurgled away, and she could smell its scent each time she passed through the kitchen. “All this bank information on Layla Crissman. It’s all over the papers. Is it verified?”
She’d already called her brother twice this morning, texted him, too, and he’d finally gotten back to her. “It came from Grassley’s account last week,” he said.
“How do you know this so fast?”
“From the bank. There was a flag on Grassley’s account.”
“Layla didn’t do it, Auggie.”
“It was done from his home computer, and she had access. She had a key. She knew her way around. The money’s in her accounts, and he was most likely dead or dying when she did it.”
“It’s a setup! Somehow.” She grabbed a mug from the cupboard and waited for the last of the coffee to drip into the glass pot.
“I’m just telling you what it looks like. We’ve apparently got a leak around the department. That’s how the word got out so fast. We weren’t planning on making it public.”
“Sounds like there was no attempt to cover up the transfer at all. She’s smart. She would have tried harder,” September argued, filling her cup. “And Grassley told her that he wanted to marry her. No prenup. She could have had it all.”
“I’m giving you what I know, Nine,” Auggie said, calling her by her nickname: September was the ninth month of the year.
“Layla’s the least money motivated of the Crissmans. She didn’t do it.”
“Okay. Then who did?”
“Somebody else who had access. Courtney Mayfield, maybe.” September remembered the computer at her parents’ house as she took her first sip, nearly burning her tongue. “She’s a data processor of some kind. It would be easy for her. Layla only uses the electronics she has to. She’s an artist. A painter.”
“I’ll pass that along.” He hesitated, then added, “There’s something else that hasn’t been put out there yet but probably will be soon. Grassley took a blow to the head, probably what killed him. Autopsy is tomorrow and we’ll know for sure. But the tox screen came back. He was poisoned with the same stuff as John Linfield. Amanita . . .”
“Ocreata,” September finished when he trailed off, her brain buzzing. “You think the mushrooms were the real cause of death?”
“Like I said, we’ll know more after the autopsy.”
“Okay.” September felt slightly ill, thinking of Brianne Kilgore. Was she involved with Grassley’s death? The angel of death mushroom sure suggested that. Had she taken September’s advice and talked to Deputy Morant yet?
As soon as September was off the phone with Auggie, she put in a call to her ex-partner. Whatever Brianne Kilgore decided to do, Gretchen had likely taken over the Linfield case, and she needed to be informed. When Gretchen didn’t answer, September tried Wes and failed to connect there, too. She was thinking of phoning George when she got an incoming call. Laurelton Police Department flashed on her screen.
Good timing, she thought, wondering which one of them was calling her. “September Raf-Westerly,” she answered.
“Ms. Westerly, it’s Dana Calvetti. Do you think it’s possible you could come into the station for a follow-up interview this week?”
That brought September to attention. “I can be there ... today?”
“That’ll work. How about two o’clock?”
“Great. Thanks. I’ll see you then. . . .”
Her heart was pounding fiercely as she hung up. Was she about to get her old job back?
* * *
Lucy answered the door before Dallas could even knock. She looked . . . great, actually, in slacks and a pink blouse open over a white camisole, face flushed, eyes bright. He put the blush down to fury over what was happening with Layla. He’d noticed, over the years, that some women’s beauty seemed to heighten with anger and outrage, though he couldn’t say the same for their improvement in judgment; but then, that was true for the entire human race, male or female.
&n
bsp; Before he could say anything, an eight- or nine-year-old girl bounced down the stairs and said, “Hi!”
“Hi,” he said, taking her in.
Lucy said, “Oh, um . . . Evie, this is Mr. Denton. He’s a lawyer. Here to talk about Grandpa and Layla . . . and stuff.”
“My grandpa’s in the hospital,” said Evie solemnly.
“I heard,” said Dallas.
“But he’s going to be fine.” Lucy was brisk. “Hey, uh, give us some private time to talk, okay? Maybe head upstairs with your iPad.”
“You’re telling me to go to my room with my iPad?” she asked, as if she hadn’t heard correctly.
“Yes. Knock yourself out.”
“O . . . kay . . .” Evie raced back up the stairs, clearly afraid Lucy was going to come to her senses and change the plan.
As he followed Lucy into the family room, she kicked aside a metal figure of a snail used as a doorstop to close the door behind them. Clearly, this was something that didn’t happen often; the door was usually left open.
“What?”
Turning to face him, her eyes were wide. She said in a rush, “I have a couple of things to say, and I want to just say them. First, my brother has been hiding my grandfather’s true will. It cuts my father out entirely and we—my sister, brother, and I—need to do whatever needs to be done to put it in place and supersede the old one before my father sells Stonehenge to Jerome Wolfe.”
“Okay,” Dallas said in surprise. “Did this have anything to do with your father’s heart—”
“Yes. Yes, it did.” She clasped her hands together, holding on to them tightly, her knuckles blanching, her gaze sliding away. “But there’s something else. It’s not related to that ... much ... it’s, um . . .” She unclasped her hands and placed them on either side of her face, pressing them against her cheeks, not looking at him. “Oh my God. I can’t believe I’m going to do this. And no one knows, except Layla guessed, but otherwise no one. And I’m afraid if I don’t get this out now I’ll never do it, and you’re going to hate me anyway ... or something . . . I don’t know how you’ll feel. . . .”