by J. D. Griffo
“Sharon, how could you let this happen to your own daughter?” Alberta asked.
“I gave Nola up over a quarter of a century ago so she could have a better life, and she did,” Sharon replied. “She was adopted by a lovely family so she isn’t my daughter and I’m not her mother.”
“Incredible!” Alberta exclaimed. “Just because you gave your child up for adoption doesn’t change anything, she’s still your child!”
“And in the end she’s going to beat this, I know she will,” Sharon declared, though neither Alberta nor Jinx was certain she believed what she was saying. “So why should I have to have some sentimental Lifetime TV reconciliation and uproot both our lives? There’s no reason for it except to satisfy your twisted sense of morality.”
“Don’t you talk to my grandmother like that!”
“I will if she keeps judging me! I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“But you’re the reason all of this is happening!” Alberta shouted. “Two men are dead because of you, an innocent woman is in jail, doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“Of course it does! But there isn’t anything I can do to change things.”
“If you can’t change things, help us make sense of them. Why did your sister have to kill Kichiro?” Jinx disclosed. “He was in love with you, he might not have been happy about keeping the affair secret, but he knew that if he exposed your lie, he would destroy his own career and reputation, too.”
“You know what you are Jinx?” Lori said. “Bambina vestita come una donna.”
Jinx didn’t know what Lori said, but she had the distinct impression it wasn’t praiseworthy. “Gram, can you translate?”
“She thinks because you’re a good girl, you’re naïve,” Alberta said, clearly whitewashing the comment.
“No, I think you’re a little girl who needs to grow the hell up,” Lori corrected.
“Just because I’m not cheating on my husband or killing anyone who I think stands in my way, doesn’t mean I’m a child!” Jinx shouted, defending herself.
“And just because you’re standing next to your grandmother doesn’t mean I won’t shoot a bullet through your face!”
Instinctively, Alberta stood in front of Jinx. She knew it wouldn’t prevent Lori from shooting them, but she wanted Lori to know that she wasn’t the only one who would defend her flesh and blood with her last breath. By the way Lori smiled at Alberta, it was clear that she understood.
“You need to pay attention to your Grandma, Jinx,” Lori announced. “She seriously knows more than most of us. In fact, maybe she can answer your question. Alberta, do you know why I had to kill Kichiro?”
Alberta didn’t have to think very long to come up with an answer. “Because he was going to betray your sister.”
“Give the old lady a gold star! And seriously, there has got to be one around here someplace,” Lori said, cracking herself up. “But you’re right, Kichiro was a cop first and a secret boyfriend second, isn’t that right, Sharon?”
Shaking her head and waving her hands in front of her face as if to push away the truth from getting too close to her, Sharon replied, “No, that isn’t right! He loved me too much to have ever done that.”
“And I’m insane?” Lori screamed and asked the universe rhetorically. “He came over to your place and said that he was convinced you killed Jonas and he had to do the right thing and turn you in.”
“He said that?” Alberta asked.
“He was drunk!” Sharon protested.
“That must’ve been the night he died, the night we taped him while he was at my apartment,” Jinx said, not realizing she slipped and gave away a fact that should have remained buried.
“What do you mean you taped him?” Lori asked.
After Jinx reluctantly explained what they had done and that Nola was heard on the tape calling Kichiro and telling him to come meet her, she and Alberta thought Lori was going to go ballistic and possibly shoot them right there, but instead she thanked them.
“You’re thanking us,” Jinx said.
“You’ve put the nail in Nola’s coffin,” Lori said. “Or at least her prison cell. Here, I thought the police might figure out that I was the one who lured Kichiro back to the tree house and shot him, but now I can tell them that you have proof that Nola set a trap for him. That and the fact that they found her blood on his dead body will convince any jury that she was nothing more than a jilted girlfriend who shot her cheating lover.”
“I hate to sound like a broken record,” Jinx said. “But that’s another thing I don’t understand. How did Nola’s blood get on Kichiro?”
“You should’ve paid a little more attention in biology,” Lori said. “I cut Sharon’s leg so her blood would get onto Kichiro’s body, blood that contains the same DNA that’s coursing through Nola’s veins.”
Alberta had heard enough. She had tried to find some shred of goodness in Lori’s heart, she had tried to reason with her, and even play the complacent and willing hostage, but she had had it. She didn’t love her sister, all she wanted to do was control her sister’s life out of some morbidly obsessive desire to be powerful.
“You’re like the sister from hell!” Alberta cried.
“You should know!” Lori cried back. “Sister Helen is hardly Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.”
“You know you’re never going to get away with this, right?” Jinx said. “It’s going to be awfully hard to convince the police that Nola killed Jonas and Kichiro when we wind up dead.”
“It’ll be awfully hard for the police to know that the two of you are dead when they never find your bodies,” Lori said. “It’s a little chilly in here don’t you think? Time to put a few more coals on the fire in the basement.”
“Lori, no!” Sharon shouted.
“Sharon, yes! We need to get rid of these two so there’s no trace of them for the police to find,” Lori explained. “Now shut up and lead us downstairs to the boiler room so we can all get on with our lives. Well, at least two of us.”
“I’m so sorry,” Sharon said, starting to cry.
“Do not apologize to them! The only thing you should do is thank me for fixing the mess your life has become. Now take us downstairs!”
Lori aimed the gun at Sharon and she looked at her sister unsure if the woman would pull the trigger. Not wanting to risk it, Sharon instead pulled a clothes hook on the wall that suddenly turned her office into something out of a spy novel. A small portion of the wall rotated to open and revealed a secret passageway.
“Dio mio!” Alberta exclaimed.
“Exactly,” Lori answered. “The nuns like to pray in front of their own private altar so this secret wall was built to give them access to their own mini-church where they could pray at any time of the day or when the kids raised holy hell and they needed to be reminded that there would be salvation when the class bell rang.”
Sharon entered the passageway and Lori waved her gun to indicate that Jinx and Alberta should follow. They didn’t need a second push to get them moving.
The room they entered looked like something out of the past and was both exquisite and eerie at the same time. It was only one room that contained a small altar, a statue of Jesus, his hands at his side, but outstretched, his hair and robe long, his expression peaceful and inviting. In front of the altar was a kneeling pew that could accommodate two people, and there was a metal pedestal, rusted in several places, holding a white porcelain bowl filled with holy water. A few unlit candles decorated the area, but otherwise it was empty. The room was for contemplation, not entertaining, so it had a serene quality about it, and Alberta felt like she was trespassing on sacred ground. Lori, however, treated the space like it was nothing more than a means to an end.
“Keep moving,” she announced. “You’ll have time to pray once we get downstairs.”
Sharon led them down a staircase that turned once to the right and continued in the opposite direction and stopped only when she got to a steel door. She h
esitated only slightly before entering the room that was clearly the sub-basement of the high school.
The room was swarming with musty smells, shadows, creaks, and sounds like metal hitting against metal. They were in the boiler room and in the distance they could hear the crackles of a fire.
“I’m guessing that you ladies are religious,” Lori said.
Alberta answered for both of them, “Yes we are.”
“Then welcome to your own private hell.”
CHAPTER 24
Dove c’è la morte, c’è la vita.
As a child Alberta didn’t believe in the concept of hell. She couldn’t accept the fact that God would allow such a place to exist. As she grew older and the hardships and discomforts of life became reality, she began to realize like many others do that hell was actually right here on earth. Standing in the basement of St. Winifred’s next to her frightened granddaughter and in front of a madwoman and her accomplice, she acknowledged that she was right. She had descended directly into the mouth of hell, and there was nothing that God or any angel could do to save her or Jinx. If she wanted to get herself and her granddaughter out of this predicament, she was going to have to rely on her own fortitude and strength. She could honestly say that she didn’t care what happened to her, but there was no way she was going to let her granddaughter die in some disgusting high school basement.
“You may not believe me, Lori, but you are not going to get away with this,” Alberta asserted. “I give you my word as a grandmother.”
Hardly disturbed by Alberta’s passionate declaration, Lori looked rather bored and merely smirked as her broad, thick shoulders rose up slightly. “And I give you my word as a sister who has spent her life protecting her sibling from her own bad choices and righting her wrongs since our parents were too preoccupied doing anything else instead of raising and taking care of their children that I will get away with killing you both just like I got away with killing the two fools who came before you.” She waved her gun to the right and continued, “Now move over there so when I shoot you both we don’t have to move you so far to throw you into the furnace.”
Jinx clutched Alberta’s hand and when she turned to look at her there were tears in her eyes. “Gram, I’m so sorry.”
“Lovey, no . . .”
“I never imagined . . .”
“That you would get your grandmother killed?” Lori interrupted.
Ignoring the venomous comment, Alberta kissed Jinx’s hand. “Mi angelo, do not give up, we survived a car crash, didn’t we?”
“I should’ve just planted a bomb in the car instead of cutting your brake line,” Lori commented. “But I didn’t have enough time to gather all the necessary materials.”
“It was you,” Alberta said. “You could’ve killed all four of us! Four innocent lives!”
“I know!” Lori cried. “Talk about hitting the jackpot.”
Stunned by Lori’s apathy and loathing for human life, Alberta turned to the one person she thought could reach Lori. “Sharon, please, this isn’t right and you know it. Your sister needs help.”
“Don’t you think I know that? But there is no way that I’m going to help get my sister locked up in some state mental institution to live out her life on drugs and wrapped in a strait jacket,” Sharon declared. “And you can’t look me in the eye and say that you would allow the same thing to happen to your sister. Or your granddaughter. Or any one you loved for that matter!”
Alberta opened her mouth to protest, but her heart wouldn’t let her speak. She knew that on some level Sharon was right. She hoped that if she were ever faced with such a decision that she would do the right thing and turn her sister, family member, or her friend over to the police and work diligently to make sure that justice and decency prevailed, and that she wasn’t just throwing a loved one to the wolves, but she wasn’t certain. If she were in Sharon’s shoes she might be acting in the same way. It was a horrible thing to contemplate that she would let others suffer to allow her loved one to survive, but she would be a hypocrite to say that it was impossible.
“But think of Nola,” Alberta pleaded. “Think of the damage you’re doing to her.”
“And when was the last time you thought of Lisa Marie?”
Lori’s question slammed into Alberta’s face and she felt like she had been punched. She even stepped back a few steps, stopping only when Jinx put her hand on her shoulder to stop her from moving.
“The truth hurts doesn’t it?” Lori asked. “You treated your own daughter so reprehensibly that she had to move a thousand miles away to escape Mama Alberta’s clutches in order to breathe easier so do not play the guilt card on Sharon, you’re hardly mother of the year.”
The truth like the flames flickering wildly in the furnace had a way of scalding and forcing a person to peel back layers of thickened skin that they’ve hidden behind for years. Alberta’s heart was filled with shame, guilt, and self-loathing for all the mistakes she made in her life that caused her daughter to move so far away and disappear from her life. The only thing that filled Jinx’s heart was vengeance.
“You’re sick!” Jinx shouted.
She lunged forward and Alberta had to grab Jinx by the waist to pull her back. Jinx’s arms reached out in front of her in a futile attempt to grab hold of Lori, but merely grabbed the empty air instead. Alberta pulled hard and was finally able to push Jinx behind her so in case Lori wanted to shoot she would hit her first.
Lori, however, had no intention of pulling the trigger just yet, she was laughing too hard. “Like I never heard that one before! In grammar school, high school, at St. Joe’s, from my no-good husband, they all called me sick, crazy, insane, but that’s because no one understands the bond between two sisters. Sharon likes to say that she doesn’t understand or that she doesn’t appreciate what I’ve done, but that isn’t so, is it sister?”
In response, Sharon could only hang her head in shame and look away.
“Answer me!” Lori roared.
“I love you, Lori, you know I do, and I will do anything to help you, whatever you want, whatever you need, I will do, but I am begging you to stop this! This isn’t right!”
“And neither is acting like a whore and cheating on your husband who has given you everything a man could!” Lori replied. “You could’ve been married to the piece of garbage I wound up with, but no, you had a good man! A man who gave you money, security, properties, never denied you a thing, and how do you repay him? By sleeping around with a man half your age.”
“You wouldn’t understand . . . David is not this saint you’ve made him out to be,” Sharon protested.
“Has he ever cheated on you?” Lori asked.
Again, humility and shame washed over Sharon’s face. “No,” she whispered.
“Has he ever hit you? Does he abuse you emotionally? Do you have scars, invisible or otherwise?”
This time her voice was more defiant. “No, but—”
“There are no buts!” Lori shouted. “He’s a good man and you betrayed him. Though I don’t know why I expected anything less, you cheated on him before you were even married. You just couldn’t help yourself, could you? You had to behave like a no-good gutter tramp and sleep with Jonas one last time so before you even said, ‘I do,’ to David you had to say, ‘I’m pregnant,’ to Jonas!”
“Jonas Harper is my father?”
The comment alone would have been shocking, but it was doubly shocking to see the person attached to the comment. A person who was supposed to be locked up in a prison cell. But before anyone could ask Nola why she was standing at the entrance of the boiler room on the steps leading up to the secret passageway that led to Sharon’s office, Lori, rattled by the unexpected outburst, fired a shot in Nola’s direction missing the young woman, but hitting a gas pipe instead.
An immediate hissing sound filled the small room accompanied by the smell of sulfur. With the furnace door open and flames flickering and dancing excitedly a few feet from the leaking gas
pipe, the basement suddenly became an even worse place to be. Unfortunately, it was not a place that anyone was going to exit from any time soon.
“How can Jonas Harper be my father?” Nola asked.
It was the kind of question that could only be responded to by asking another question. “How did you get out of prison?”
When Jinx spoke, Nola turned her gaze away from Sharon and it was as if she was seeing her friend for the first time. Then she looked around the room and took in the scene in its entirety. “What is going on here?”
“Don’t worry about that,” Alberta said. “Sharon, do the right thing and let the girls go.”
“No one’s going anywhere,” Lori said. “Not while I’m still in charge.”
“Lori . . . in charge . . . with a gun?” Nola muttered. “Seriously, what’s going on here?”
Before anyone could attempt to explain how the four of them ended up in a dungeon of sorts, Nola answered her own question. “I didn’t realize they gave the medical examiner a gun, but that makes sense since you are part of the police force,” she said. “I’m here doing police business, too . . . kind of.”
“Kind of?” Jinx said. “I think you’re going to have to explain yourself a little further.”
Nola took a few more steps into the room, and if she was scared by what she was seeing she didn’t show it. Alberta thought she looked more confident than she had in weeks. Unfortunately, she didn’t think this was the most opportune time to recapture lost bravado.
“Sharon, I know who you are, I know that you’re my mother,” Nola confessed. “I’ve known all along and that’s why I moved here to Tranquility in the first place after my parents died so I could be near you and get to know my real mother. And that’s the reason I agreed to keep your secret about Kichiro. It wasn’t because you’re my boss and you knew I was short some college credits, it’s because you’re my mother. But this all has to stop now, it’s gone too far. I don’t know the details, but you’ve killed twice and even though you’re my mother, I can’t let you kill again.”
Dumbfounded, Sharon didn’t know what to say or which comment to address first, but Alberta didn’t want Nola to hear the full truth just yet. She needed to stall for time.