“I’ll bring them tomorrow along with some overnight kits for the two of you,” Peter said. “Are the instructions with them?”
“Yeah,” Cole said. “One copy anyway.”
“Why just one?”
“Cause someone got a little…upset…when he couldn’t um…decipher a couple steps,” Jenna said, raising one hand to cover her mouth, though the amusement in her eyes couldn’t be hidden so easily.
Peter tried valiantly but he couldn’t hold back his laughter. When he quieted down, Cole said, “You laugh now, Peter, but if you plan to take your grandchildren anywhere in the next few years you'll need car seats in that king cab of yours.”
“Good point,” Peter said soberly.
“One more thing,” Dillon said. “We got some groceries sitting in the back of the Denali.”
“I’ll grab ‘em,” Peter said, then bent to kiss Jenna. “Thank you for the beautiful grandchildren, Jenna. I’m so proud I’d be whooping and hollering if I didn’t know they’d toss me out on my ear.”
“I know how you feel,” Jenna said, then kissed his cheek. Peter moved away so she could say goodbye to the others, getting an extra-long hug from Meg.
Once everyone was gone, Dillon sat on the edge of the bed beside Jenna and took a good close look at her. “It’s time for you to lie back and get some sleep, angel.”
“Yeah, I’m real tired,” she agreed, her eyes drifting to the bassinets holding their children. “And I’m so happy I could burst with it.”
“So are we,” Cole said as he reached for the bed controls and lowered the upper part of the mattress so she was lying down. “Sleep now.”
Chapter 18
Jenna patted Max gently on the back until he burped softly. She smiled and nodded at Cole who reached down to lift him from her shoulder. He cradled their son in his arms and very gently wiped away a dribble of milk from his chin with a soft cloth. “He’s a messy eater, just like his daddies,” Dillon said proudly as he stood holding a well-fed and sleeping Marli.
Jenna smiled contentedly. It had only been six days since the births, but she absolutely loved being a mother already. Even the middle of the night feedings didn’t bother her. She felt pretty lucky that they didn’t seem to bother Cole or Dillon, either. They loved being Daddies as much as she loved being a Mom. They didn’t balk at changing diapers, or getting spit-up on their shirts, or anything else. And they took such good care of her.
“Knock knock,” Meg called out before peeking around the open doorway into the nursery.
“Hi Meg,” Jenna said happily. “Come to visit your grandchildren again?”
“Of course,” Meg said. “How’re they gonna know who I am if I don’t come visit them?”
“Good point,” Jenna said, grinning. “They just ate and Marli’s sleeping, though I think Max might still be awake.”
“Nah, he’s out like a light,” Cole said, looking down at their son with a loving smile.
“Oh well, guess I’ll have to settle for a visit with you, Sugar,” Meg said, leaning down to kiss her on the cheek. “How you feeling?”
“I’m good,” Jenna said. “Getting better every day. I can even walk all the way to the bathroom now.”
“I’m impressed,” Meg said.
“We’re just gonna put these two down,” Dillon said, moving toward Marli’s bassinet. “Then we can move to the living room.”
Jenna frowned, looked from Cole to Dillon, then to Meg. “What’s going on?”
“Anna Beck made a full and detailed confession,” Meg said grimly. “A bit too detailed in some places. I called a while ago to see if you’d be up to hearing it and Dillon said yes, but he and Cole wanna hear it all too.”
“I still have a hard time believing that nice woman did all those horrible things,” Jenna said.
“That’s cause you have a good heart and a sane mind,” Meg said. “Anna don’t have neither.”
“I guess not,” Jenna said.
“If you don’t wanna hear this, you don’t have to, Sugar. It’s up to you.”
“Of course I wanna hear it,” Jenna said, watching Cole lay Max in his bassinet. Then he picked her up from the rocker and carried her out of the nursery and up the hall with Meg right behind them. She was under Doc’s orders to limit her walking until she healed a bit more and to give her heart a little time to catch up, so she was resigned to being carried around a while longer.
Cole set Jenna on the sofa, and Meg sat down beside her. “I sure am sorry I had that woman working in my diner all that time and never noticed she had her own forty acres at the funny farm.”
“It’s not your fault, Meg,” Jenna said.
“That’s what I keep telling her,” Hank said as he entered the living room with Peter. Hank gave Jenna a kiss on the forehead, then took a seat on the sofa beside Meg. Peter took his turn at giving her a peck on the forehead then he, Dillon, and Cole took the other sofa.
“Where’s Jack?” Jenna asked.
“He’ll be a long in a while,” Meg said. “He’s gonna bring lunch from the diner for us, and said we should start without him. Since he’s the one told us the story, I don’t think he’ll miss hearing it.”
“Okay, shoot,” Jenna said, ready to hear the story so she could put it behind her.
“To begin with, you need to know a bit about Anna Beck, real name June Heap. She had a set of identical twin boys that she raised on her own from the day they were born. There was never a man in the picture. The day after their high school graduation a twelve year old girl was found on the side of the road, apparently left for dead. A couple of weeks later, when she was well enough to talk, she identified the Heap boys by name. She didn’t know them, but she’d seen them before and knew who they were. She said they’d beaten and raped her repeatedly which the doctors had already discovered by then, of course.
“The boys were arrested and charged. They claimed they were being set up, that they’d never do such a thing, especially not to a little girl like that. Some people even believed them. When the DNA proved they were liars, they changed their story, claiming it was consensual. The police photos of the girl taken after she was found convinced the jury that they were lying about that, too. They were eighteen at the time of the crime, so they were sent to prison. Inmates don’t much care for child rapists, so they decided to give the young men a taste of what they’d dished out. After that, the two of them hung themselves in their cells.”
“Good heavens,” Jenna said softly, her face paling. “That’s horrible, Meg.”
“It is,” Meg agreed. “Whether it was that mess that sent Anna around the bend, or if she was crazy from the start, no one seems to know.”
“I remember her telling us she had twins,” Jenna said.
“Me too,” Meg agreed. “She also said they were all grown up and fine men.”
“She told us every time we came to the diner that we reminded her of her sons,” Dillon said. “But she always made it sound like they were still alive.”
“That’s because in her mind she’d replaced her sons with the two of you,” Meg explained.
“Losing her children like that had to be horrific, though,” Jenna said. “Makes me feel a little sorry for her now.”
“Well, you won’t for long,” Meg said. “About two months after her sons died, that little girl was killed in a hit and run on her way to school. The car ran over her, backed up, ran over her again, and then a third time just to be sure. The car that was used had been stolen, and was later found abandoned on the side of the road. Interestingly enough, the owner of the car lived two doors down from Anna and her sons for fifteen years. They kept a spare set of keys in the shed behind the house, hidden under a rusty old watering can, but the key was later discovered to be missing.
“No one put all that together until a bit later and by then Anna was long gone. No one knew to where, or even when she’d left for sure. That was eight years ago. According to her she spent time in a few different places, hel
ping out young men who couldn’t help themselves, as she put it.”
“Oh, that doesn’t sound good,” Jenna said.
“It’s not,” Hank said grimly. “Jack says they’ve already uncovered two murders they think she might be responsible for.” He looked over at Cole and Dillon. “She also admitted to killing Lyssa Owen.”
“What?” Cole asked in surprise, while Dillon asked, “Why?”
“She overheard a conversation between me and Jack one afternoon at the diner,” Hank said. “We were in the office, and we thought the door was shut while we talked about Lyssa sabotaging an entire box of condoms. Up to then she’d decided to leave Lyssa alone since she left and didn’t come back. But the tampered condoms made her angry.”
“Jeez,” Dillon said, shaking his head. “How come we never heard anything about it?”
“The body hasn’t been found,” Hank said. “She told Luke she killed Lyssa, took off her clothes and jewelry, and…well…destroyed her tattoos so that if she was found, it would be more difficult to identify her. Then she drove up near Missoula and left her in an open field. That was about three months ago. There’s a lot of snow on the ground but Anna was real specific about where she left the body so they’re getting set to search the area this afternoon. If they find Lyssa, they’ll add her to the charges against Anna.”
Jenna felt like she was going to throw up. She looked over at Cole and Dillon. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks, angel,” Dillon said. “I’m not gonna lie. We despised that woman. But she didn’t deserve to die for what she did.”
“No, she didn’t,” Hank agreed, then turned to Meg. “Sorry love, please go on.”
“Where was I?” Meg asked.
“Up to her landing here, I think,” Jenna said. “Why didn’t your background check tell you who she really was, Hank?”
“Because even though she worked in Sparx, she lived in Jackston, so we never ran one on her,” Hank replied. “It’s not a mistake we’ll be making again.”
Jenna nodded. “She started at the diner what, two years ago?”
“That’s right,” Meg said. “She lived in Jackston almost a year before she started working for me.”
“So, she gets a job at the diner and fixates on Cole and Dillon since they’re not only twins, but nearly identical twins,” Jenna said. Meg nodded. “But you told me Cole and Dillon hardly ever went to the diner before I moved here, and that was just a year and a half ago.”
“She developed her fixation after you came, when they started coming in three times a week.”
“Oh,” Jenna said, then frowned. “But Cole and Dillon stopped going to the diner during the whole time they had Lyssa at the ranch. How did Anna even know about her?”
“About two weeks after they stopped coming into the diner, Anna got a second part time job working as housekeeper for the Olsens.”
“Oh hell,” Cole said. He looked at Jenna. “The Olsens are the men who redid all the windows.” She nodded, but still didn’t understand. He pointed out the glass wall. “That’s their house up there on the side of the mountain just beyond our east property line. It looks right down on us.”
“Exactly,” Meg said. “Anna took the job because she could see this house, and catch glimpses of Cole and Dillon, from there. The Olsen brothers are all gone during the day so she could do pretty much what she wanted.”
“Why did she suddenly decide to come after me?” Jenna asked.
“She said she liked you until you roped her boys in, as she put it,” Meg said with a grimace. “She never made any friends in Sparx for all the time she worked in the diner. She had no idea that everyone guessed that Cole and Dillon were the fathers of your babies until the day Peter came into the diner.”
“Yeah, I remember thinking it was strange that she worked in the diner several days a week, but didn’t know I was having twins. She mentioned that on the same day Peter was there, now I think about it.”
“Part of the reason for that is she wasn’t never a part of Sparx,” Hank said. “We don’t talk about our own to strangers and no matter how long she worked in the diner, she was still a stranger. Not only because she didn’t live in Sparx, but also because she held herself apart. She flirted with the men a bit too much, but she was polite about it, never bothered anyone, and she did her job well. But she never had much to say to anyone once her shift was over. She never made friends because she didn’t want to. She must’ve overheard someone talking about you having twins when they didn’t know she could hear.”
“I don’t recall her being close enough to hear us,” Jenna said. “Anna didn’t even bring my lunch that I’d ordered.”
“That’s not how she found out,” Hank said. “After you left, we had a rather open conversation with Peter about how rough things had been for you. She was right there listening like everyone else. I’m real sorry, Jenna.”
“It doesn’t matter, Hank,” Jenna said. “She’d have found out sooner or later anyway.” Her eyes widened. “That was the day before the beehive was put in my apartment.”
“Yes, it was,” Meg said. “That’s one sick woman, Jenna.”
“I have a few questions,” Cole said. “Anna’s in her late fifties. She’s healthy enough I suppose, but how the hell did she evade every hand on the ranch the day she shot out our windows in broad daylight?”
“She set up a dummy site,” Hank said. “She did the actual shooting from the roof of the Olsen’s place. And before you ask, her daddy was one of those home defense experts. He owned a gun shop and taught her to shoot when she was a child. She was an expert marksman with a particular talent in long distance shooting. She even competed, and won more often than not. The Olsen’s place is about a mile from here as the crow flies. Not so far for someone with a high powered sniper rifle and the know-how to use it. It’s down to her daddy that she knew how to rig a car bomb, too.”
“What about the shooting on Main Street?” Dillon asked.
“She came out of the diner, saw you two leaving the truck with Jenna in it, and high-tailed it down to Flo’s. She’d been prepared and waiting for an opportunity just like that for weeks, even pretended to use the bathroom in back one day so she could get into the office and steal a key. All she had to do was enter the back door of the market with the key, get up on the roof, and grab a rifle she’d already planted there. Afterward she hid in one of the big air conditioning vents and waited until everyone cleared out. Then she used the fire escape ladder to climb down after dark. Flo said they thought it got knocked down by the boys up doing the investigating so they just pulled it up and didn’t say anything about it.”
“How did she get into the house when she poisoned Jenna’s vitamins?”
“That’s down to the Olsens,” Meg said. “She got into their home office, got the serial number for the new security door they installed after she shot out the windows, and requested a replacement key from the manufacturer.” Meg looked at Jenna apologetically. “She took my key to your apartment from my purse while I was working, had a copy made and returned it without me ever knowing. The beehive she took from a farm outside of Billings.”
“The delivery truck?” Dillon asked.
“There was a delivery that morning at the diner, and Anna just happened to come in to pick up her paycheck, then stayed to have breakfast. She saw the delivery truck and went out to help Alex carry in a couple of packages. He didn’t need or even want the help, but he’s a nice man and just let her do it. Of course what she really wanted was to see if there was a delivery to be made at Jenna’s, and there was.
“She went across the street, spotted the camera over the door, and hid behind the Dumpster to wait for Alex to show up. She waited for him to ring the bell, and when she heard someone starting to unlock the door she hit him on the head with a rock, then shoved the door as hard as she could hoping to knock Susie off balance long enough for her to hit her on the head too, which turned out not to be necessary.
“Thanks to
Jag Teegan and his crew insisting that none of us talk about the security upgrades they’d made inside the shop, Anna didn’t expect there to be another camera inside. She didn’t expect Jenna to have a panic button, either. Or a Taser.”
“Or the guts to use it,” Dillon said.
“On such slender threads do life and fortune hang,” Jenna quoted softly.
“What’s that from, baby?” Cole asked.
“The Count of Monte Cristo.”
A thoughtful silence filled the room. Then Jack entered with a couple of big carrier bags from the diner. “Who wants lunch?”
Several people started talking at once, greeting Jack, asking what he’d brought while heading toward the kitchen. Dillon picked Jenna up, and smiled down at her. “And life goes on,” he said.
“It does,” she agreed, smiling. “Ain’t that great?”
Epilogue
Jenna used her key to open the front door, entered the house, set her purse down and locked the door behind her. She went straight to the living room and stood watching Max and Marli playing on their new swing set with Peter, Meg, Hank, and Jack. She loved watching them all together. They were always so happy, each and every one of them. Max, a three year old version of his fathers, was laughing with his face tilted to the sky as Peter pushed him in the swing. Every couple of pushes he’d cry out, “Higher Grandpa, higher!” causing Peter to laugh right along with him.
Jenna shifted her gaze to Marli who stood at the top of the slide with Jack standing on the ladder to make sure she didn’t fall, and Hank standing beside it for the same reason. She sat down, then suddenly laid back and rolled over onto her stomach before sliding down backwards and into Meg’s waiting arms with a high pitched squeal of delight. Jenna chuckled softly. Her daughter looked so much like her with dark red curls and cinnamon eyes, but she was such a little daredevil, something Jenna had never been. It was one of the things she loved most about her even if Marli did give her parents gray hairs now and again.
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