by Patti Larsen
“Doreen?” I glanced at Mom who shrugged.
“I don’t know, dear,” she said. “I was going to ask but John told me not to.”
Hmmm. “Dad?”
“It’s just a rumor,” he said. “Nothing substantiated. And every time I broach it with Doreen she seems surprised.”
She was treasurer of the club. Surely if someone was skimming she’d know about it. “Want me to try?”
Dad shook his head. “It’s probably nothing.” Though, from the crease between his eyes he didn’t believe it just yet. “Let me keep digging and you do you.”
“Which is what, exactly?” I made a face, not sure where to go from here. “Heather won’t talk to me and David is in custody.” That left Chris, I guess, though I really didn’t believe he was guilty.
Mom cleared her throat before meeting my eyes. “Did you really ask Malcolm Murray for help?” She didn’t seem upset, more curious, though when she glanced sideways at Dad a flicker of concern woke. She knew so much more than she was telling about Dad’s history with the Irishman. I wished the two of them would just spill and get it over with. But, since I’d made that fateful phone call to Siobhan, I’d know what I needed to soon enough.
Speaking of which, now that I’d taken the step? Yeah, I wanted her to call me back yesterday.
“Let’s talk to Heather together,” Dad said, pushing his mug aside. “Thanks for the snack, my love.” He smiled at Mom, reaching out to squeeze her hand.
She smiled back. “Have to sweeten you up somehow,” she winked.
Seriously. My parents.
I followed Dad into the foyer and upstairs, but when we reached Heather’s door, I had a sinking feeling at the sight of one of my staff inside, changing the bed.
“She checked out,” Megan/Mindy/Cindy said with her usual perky tone (okay, they were all perkyish, so the generalization fits, right?). “I think Rose took care of it.”
Snarl. Didn’t help Daisy’s step-sister was part of the exodus, though obviously it was a coincidence. Just rubbed me the wrong way, like everything Rose did these days.
Dad and I descended back to the front door where he paused with his hand on the knob. “I’ll contact the state troopers,” he said, “and get them to track her down as a person of interest. I think we have enough to make them pay attention.” His big shoulders straightened, head nodding. “The evidence is certainly piling up against her.”
I agreed. “Go get her, Dad,” I said. “I have a business to run.”
He laughed, hugged me quickly before pausing. “Fee.” Dad’s hesitation and swift mood reversal made me tense. “I think Crew’s gotten himself into trouble he might not be able to get out of.”
I swallowed, nodded. “Do you think he’s coming back?”
Dad didn’t comment which only made things worse. “Try not to worry about it,” he said as if he hadn’t just given me fodder for picking over in the dark of a sleepless night. And had the nerve to leave me there, in the foyer, one mystery maybe solved but the one close to my heart still burning there.
***
Chapter Thirty One
An early evening run seemed just the thing to clear my head and give me perspective. Except that, of course, running by the lake made me think about the case and then about Crew and then about the mess and… yeah. Not so clear, right? And perspective? Snort. As if.
I jammed the earbuds deeper and cranked the sound, hoping the pounding beat of the music would shut up my endlessly chattering mind. I’d considered taking up meditation, except every time I tried I quit after about ten minutes of revolving information that wouldn’t stop. Last time I made the effort I somehow went from a recipe for pie dough to what the impact would be on our planet if the scientists who wanted to recreate mammoths actually succeeded to the fact that the baseboards in my apartment really needed a good dusting.
Meh. I guess I just wasn’t zen. Go figure.
Running did help sometimes, but tonight it just added to my frustration. Except, of course, as I rounded the corner near the curve back toward the parking lot, the answers I needed for one mystery fell in my lap, if not the other. There, standing knee-deep in the water of the lake, still dressed in a skirt suit not at all fitting for a swim, stood Heather Parborough.
I stumbled to a halt, pulling the cords of my headphones so the buds bounced against my chest and gaped at her while she sobbed into her shaking hands, her long, dark hair hanging over her shoulder, masking her expression. She didn’t seem to know or care I was there, the heartbreaking sound of her crying tearing at me as I finally pushed my feet to approach her, slipping into the water without thought for my sneakers and socks, approaching slowly with dread sitting like a giant fist in my stomach. Because there was only one reason she’d be standing in the water like this.
Heather had a plan to make sure she didn’t have to face the music.
She turned toward me, startled when she realized she wasn’t alone any longer, and gaped at me, eyes huge, tears real enough, though was she crying because she was afraid or because she was guilty? Or both?
“I figured you’d have left town by now,” I said, going for soft but factual.
She shrugged, looked away, staring at the water with hunger. “I have nowhere to go,” she whispered, voice hoarse.
That sounded about as final as I expected. “Please, Heather,” I said, one hand gentle on her elbow. “Just come back to shore with me. Let’s talk about it, okay?” Could I stop her if she decided to kill herself? I formulated a tackle plan to try to overwhelm her physically, not sure if I could manage it if she was dedicated to ending it all, when she turned to me like she finally realized what she was doing.
“Yes, of course,” she said, sounding dazed, confused. “I’m trying to pull myself together before I turn myself in.”
Sure she was. I helped her, hand still on her elbow, to the shore, seated her on the bench near the path’s exit, shaking so much when I released her I had to clench my hands in my lap to keep from vibrating. All while my mind accepted she had killed Lester. “I can call my dad,” I said. “He’ll treat you fairly, take you to the troopers instead of local law enforcement.”
Heather fished a tissue out of her bag, shredded the edge with her manicured fingertips, her pretty face blotchy with shed tears and stress. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, that kind of dull apathy that comes from the depths of surrender hitting me deep inside and making me want to protect her all over again. Sheesh, she was a murderer and I was feeling sorry for her? “I just wanted a few minutes to get my tears out before I face the music.”
Because she hadn’t just been contemplating suicide. Whatever she needed to say out loud to make herself feel better. I wasn’t about to draw attention to her close call. “Did you want to talk about it?” I did. Forgive me for being ridiculously nosy and awful and an utterly heartless monster considering the fact she’d been this close to drowning her sorrows quite literally, but I really, really did. “Might help you sort things out in your mind.” Fee, you liar. This had nothing to do with her state of mind and everything with my own busybody nature.
Still, Heather seemed to buy it, blowing her nose and nodding. “Thanks,” she said. “I think I would.”
Was it wrong I felt a lifting of my own mood, anticipation burning a hot, bright light in my gut. Yes, yes it was.
“I don’t know how everything went so wrong.” Heather met my eyes, hers huge but full of acceptance. “How my life turned into this disaster. But I’m responsible for it, as much as I want to blame Lester.”
“You were stealing from your company for him.” At least, according to her boss.
Heather gulped, nodded. “It was innocent at first,” she said. “I never meant for it to go so far. I believed him when he said he wanted me.” Oh, yikes. “That he was leaving his fourth wife for me.” Le sigh. When would men stop using that line? When women stopped buying it, I guess. “The affair was an accident, I swear. But I fell in love with Lester. And that w
as the beginning of the end.”
She sighed deeply, sagging into the edge of the bench, staring past me toward the water softly lapping the shore. A speedboat zipped past, sending ripples outward, increasing the slap of waves while Heather went on.
“I tried to break it off with him last year,” she said, grim now. “When I realized he wasn’t going to leave her after all. And when I found out he was broke.” So maybe she wasn’t so innocent. “Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t after his money. Not at first.” She shrugged then like it didn’t matter. “I just didn’t want to waste more time on someone who obviously didn’t love me.” Heather’s face tightened, her lips a thin line. “I should have realized then how much trouble I was in,” she said. “That I’d really stepped in it this time.” Bitterness now, beneath the acceptance. “Story of my life.”
“You have a history of bad choices,” I said, winced inwardly. Is that what I called killing someone now?
Heather didn’t take it personally. “Do I,” she said. “And I come by it honestly.” Right. David mentioned her father, hadn’t he? That Heather’s dad was one of his old cronies? “But that was behind me. My record was sealed, I paid my dues, I moved on. I thought I had.”
“He was blackmailing you.” That gave me even more assurance she’d murdered Lester. Money and a pressure cooker that threatened the life she’d built? Considering she had a history with manslaughter, it wasn’t much of a reach, especially if Dad’s assessment was accurate and Lester’s death was an accident.
Heather didn’t seem to realize the connections I was making in my head. “He used my past against me,” she said. “My father’s old mistakes. He threatened to tell my boss. And not just about me.”
Right, didn’t her father work for the same company? “He was going to get your father fired.”
She gasped a sob but stilled. “He was going to get my father arrested.” Yikes. How? “I didn’t care about me, but Lester had information, thanks to David.” She sounded bitter about that. “I went to Lester for help, hoping he could convince David to stop blackmailing me. Back when I trusted him, when I believed he might actually love me. Instead, he turned it against me, took the proof Dad used to be a thief and threatened both of us.” Anger, so much anger, and desperate horror at what her life had become. “I know I shouldn’t defend my father, but he turned his life around, Fiona. He hasn’t stolen anything in over a decade.” My sense of justice wasn’t exactly feeling sympathy for her father, but I did for her so I kept quiet. Heather seemed to struggle with guilt far more than anything in that moment. “Dad wouldn’t just lose his job. He’d go to prison.” She sagged against me. “I needed to make sure Dad was safe.” Heather leaned forward suddenly, grabbing my hand. I almost cringed at the wet tissue she still clutched but chose to ignore the feeling of it against my skin as she rushed on. “I knew the boats I’d switched out, which of Lester’s friends got their deals. I was going to take all the information to the state troopers. In fact, I had a meeting scheduled with your Sheriff Turner to hand over the evidence I had against Lester, but he hasn’t come back. And then Lester died.” More tears, but silent ones. “I love my father. And I’d do anything for him.” Didn’t negate any of the suspicions against her, did it? Well, the way I thought about my own father? Yeah, I got her internal battle with self-loathing. “If Lester hadn’t threatened Dad I would have just taken the heat, gone to prison myself for what I did.” She was sweating, like she was trying to convince herself. And yet, she hadn’t accepted her wrongdoing at any point, had she? Instead she’d dug herself deeper, to the point she planned to end it all rather than face what she’d done. But it wasn’t up to me to make that judgment. I stayed quiet and let her go on. “When he used Dad against me this time, when I refused this last deal, I had to do something.”
“You realize that makes you sound guilty.” Okay, I hadn’t meant to say that out loud. She had to know I knew she’d done it.
Heather grimaced. “I know,” she said. “But I didn’t kill him. I swear.”
I wasn’t expecting her to deny it, actually, and found myself floored. “I thought you were going to tell me the truth.”
There was enough honest agony on her face I realized she was. “Yes, I was on the boat that night,” she said, stumbling over her words as she rushed them past her lips. “He was heartless, laughing at me. Told me he never cared about me, that it was all about the money. We fought and he told me to leave. So I did.” Her eyes narrowed into slits, anger showing all over again. “That was the last straw. I was going to tell Sheriff Turner and the troopers everything.” Bitterness and regret? Looked like it to me. She hesitated then, anger ebbing. “I stopped long enough to go looking for the proof he had against my dad,” she said, “but I came up empty handed.”
“Is that why you didn’t go to the police?”
“How could I?” She flinched. “With Lester dead, hopefully the evidence against my father was lost for good. And the con was over. I would go to jail, not my dad.” Unless she ended her own life first.
Still motive, except Lester’s death put her directly in the line of fire and without having the evidence against her father in her possession, she’d failed to protect the person she’d gone through this for. I couldn’t help but believe her claim. Maybe because she was being so candid about everything else?
Heather’s misery was as clear as the blue sky overhead. “I know it sounds bad,” she said. “And you have no reason to believe me. But I didn’t kill Lester. I just wanted to protect my father.”
“Heather,” I said, “what happened when you were a teenager? Did you kill that girl?”
She met my eyes with her own full of a mix of so many emotions I couldn’t untangle them as her lips parted and she spoke. “Yes,” she said.
***
Chapter Thirty Two
No time to judge. Heather wasn’t done. Despite my visceral reaction, the gut-punch of understanding Heather just might be a murderer after all, she sobbed softly before going on.
“I swear it was an accident,” she said, “but I might as well have killed that girl like the courts said I did.” She struggled to swallow, her face red, neck and chest mottled from the overabundance of her emotional turmoil. “My friend and I were drinking, like we did a lot when we were teens. We were jumping off a bridge, you know? Just a stupid thing to do, especially considering how drunk we were.” She shrugged, sniffled, wiped at her nose. “Fourteen is a stupid age sometimes.”
I thought back to my teens and winced. I hadn’t drank, per se, if only because my father was sheriff and my mother the principal, but I knew lots of people who had and I’d gotten into trouble a time or two over lack of forethought and sheer idiocy, so I got it.
“Madeline’s sister showed up,” Heather said, shaking her head as she stared down at her hands, clenched into fists in her lap. “She was young, just twelve. She shouldn’t have been there, but Maddy’s parents sent her to find her sister, bring her home. We were having so much fun, I didn’t want her to go. So I convinced Bridget to jump into the water.”
And now I knew where the guilt came from, where the horror Heather wore and the surety she’d killed someone found purchase inside her. “She drowned?”
“The local cops said I pushed her.” She shook like she believed it. “I don’t remember pushing her, but some of the other kids there said I did, and I was drunk, so I must have.” Heather met my gaze with hers full of agony. “I must have, right?”
I couldn’t answer that question. “They tried to try you for murder?”
She shook her head, misery all the more apparent as if she thought she deserved such a charge. “No, they finally ruled it manslaughter. That meant I was tried as a juvenile and my file was sealed when I turned eighteen. But I have to live with it, Fee. “
That she did. I had one last question for her. “Do you know anything about the money missing from the club’s accounts?” If Lester was behind the loss of funds, Heather might know about it.
<
br /> She shook her head, but her brow was creased like she wished she could give me more. “I’ve heard the rumors,” she said. “I wouldn’t have put anything past Lester. The man was scum.”
She wasn’t really making a case for her own innocence at the moment. “You might want to tone down that attitude when the police question you.”
She gulped, stiffened. “Right.” Her hand found mine, squeezed. “You believe me?”
Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I did, despite the evidence. Time to keep digging while she was willing to talk. “You knew Lester was having money problems?”
An eager nod this time. “He was broke,” she said. “The man was a total con artist who had everyone fooled. But he complained constantly about the matriarch of the Patterson family, that she’d cut him off years ago.”
With no idea why, I couldn’t chase down that line of questioning just yet. “Heather,” I said, sighing heavily and leaning back against the bench, “you realize you’re suspect number one, right?” She flinched but didn’t argue. “There’s video footage of you boarding Lester’s boat just before time of death, but none of you leaving.” Yes, I was telling her what was stacked against her. Why? Maybe I really did believe her. “He was electrocuted with a string of decorative lights, pushed overboard.” Like the little girl Bridget had been pushed? Heather’s claim the child’s death was an accident could easily apply to Lester as well if she’d shoved him into the water with the string in his hands. Was it manslaughter or murder or just a bad situation turned horrifying? “No matter what happened, Heather, you have to face the truth.”
She hesitated, stared at the water. “Why did you stop me?”
I choked on the hurt in her voice, the girl inside her—fourteen and in agony over the guilt of the death on her hands as palpable as the summer air—shining through. “You deserve the chance to forgive yourself,” I said. “And dying won’t change anything.”