Crust No One
Page 25
Emmaline took over, forcing Janice away from the door, telling her to put both hands on the wall in front of her. Janice seemed to understand that she had nowhere to go, and even if she tried, she’d never outrun Emmaline. Or Miguel. Or me.
It took only a few seconds for Em to withdraw her handcuffs and shackle Janice’s wrists. She read Janice her Miranda rights and hauled her away. She’d be held accountable for her crimes and for Mustache Hank’s death.
Chapter 27
After a long night at the sheriff’s station, I finally drove home. Miguel followed, once again wanting to make sure I didn’t veer off the road from exhaustion or fall asleep at the wheel. I was worn out, and frankly, still in shock, and I knew he was, too.
The good news, if there could be a silver lining, was that Alice would get her money back; Bernard and Dixie—and any other tenants at the boarding house—would get the care and treatment they needed, and no one else would die.
“Ten victims over three years,” Miguel said once we were both standing in my kitchen. He gave a low, disbelieving whistle. “I can’t even get my head around that.”
I couldn’t, either. It hadn’t taken long for Emmaline to turn Richie and Janice against each other. Before long, she’d pieced together the story. It had started by accident. A dead tenant. An uncashed Social Security check. And a plot had been born. Janice had cashed the check and no one was the wiser. They never reported the tenant as dead, so for all intents and purposes, she wasn’t. The checks kept coming and Janice kept cashing them.
She directed Richie to take in people with no family, or those who were mentally ill. She took over their finances and reaped the monthly income, parceling out just what the tenants needed to live. And occasionally, when someone began to suspect what was going on, she killed. She was like Miss Hannigan from Annie, except instead of poor, unloved orphans, Janice Thompson and her son preyed on poor, unloved adults.
Poor Bernard had been the lackey, digging holes and burying boxes. “He knew on some level,” I said to Miguel. He’d known, but had been powerless to stop it.
And then Hank figured it out. “Those flowers,” Miguel said. “Hank’s flowers.”
Yes, Hank’s flowers. Ultimately, it was Hank’s flowers and the garden that led us to the truth.
* * *
A short while later, our conversation about the night was exhausted. I leaned back against the kitchen counter, arms folded. Miguel stood next to me, his hip against the counter. “Ivy,” he said after a minute. “I need to know what happened.”
I knew he wasn’t talking about Hank or Janice or Richie or anything else from the present. He was referring to our history and to whatever he thought had happened between us.
I turned, mirroring him by leaning my hip against the counter and facing him. “There was never anybody but you.”
“Laura heard . . . she saw . . .”
“It didn’t happen.”
He hesitated, and for the first time since he’d revealed what had driven him away, he looked unsure. “She gave me details.”
I released a shaky breath. “You didn’t trust me. You never asked me. You just left.”
“She kept pushing and pushing,” he said. “I believed her.”
I looked up and into his eyes. “In her mind, I’d probably stolen her big brother away from her. She was, what? Thirteen? Fourteen? Whatever she told you, it wasn’t true.”
The muscles in his jaw tightened, moving with the tension. “It’s festered all these years.”
I knew the feeling. He’d driven away without a word. From that moment, what I’d thought my life would be had changed, and the unfinished relationship we’d been in had grown into some tragic myth for both of us.
“I loved you,” I said.
He looked at me and I thought he was deciding if he believed this alternate reality, so different than what he’d believed all these years. Finally, he spoke. “We were kids back then, Ivy, and I was stupid for leaving. But we’re all grown up now.” His hands found my hips and he pulled me close, wrapping me up in his arms. “That wasn’t our time.”
My breath caught, his hands on me like bolts of lightning against my skin. His lips grazed mine, one of his hands leaving my hip and wending up my back, his fingers splaying through my hair. “Maybe this is,” I said.
And then his hands left my body, settling instead on either side of my face. He tilted it up, gently, until I was looking into his eyes. “I know what I want,” he said softly. “It’s always been you.”
Surely he could hear my heart beating, feel it nearly pounding out of my chest. “I don’t want to get hurt. I don’t want something temporary.”
What I wanted were his arms around me, his lips on mine. “I’m all in, Ivy,” he murmured.
In that moment, after so much death, I felt a ray of hope and I knew that once again what I thought my life would be had changed, this time for the better. I relaxed into him. I was all in, too.
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KNEADED TO DEATH
The first in the Bread Shop Mysteries
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