Get this over with.
That might be a good thing. Just a few quick questions, perhaps about the rock through their window. Or maybe Tim had finally reported the crowbar incident, and Joe was calling Lena as a courtesy before he picked up Sasha for vandalism?
Or, she really does have a trump card up her sleeve, and he's about to tell you that they're reopening the McFadden murder investigation.
Who knew, but there was only one way to find out.
She nodded and then realized he couldn't see her. "Yes, of course. I'll be there shortly."
He disconnected and she set her phone on the desk with a low gasp.
All right, so she'd pushed Serina too far, and now this was the result. She'd made her bed. She'd have to lie in it. And lie, she would.
She pushed herself to her feet and grabbed her purse and telephone.
As she exited the study, she forced a smile and a wave to her sisters and Harry, who were still gathered around the living room looking at photos.
"I've got to run to the office supply store. We're out of ink," she said with a quick wave.
She was gone before anyone could reply.
The ride to the Sheriff's office was almost surreal. Like she was floating above herself, looking down. When she arrived in one piece, she was almost surprised.
She headed inside and stopped at the front desk, giving the woman there her name.
"I'm here to see--"
"Right this way, Lena," Joe said, striding toward her, a grim smile on his face.
He gestured for her to follow him down a short hall and into a small conference room marked "Interview".
She eyed the two chairs across from one another and tried not to react. If this was a courtesy call with a couple softball questions, surely they'd be in his office, not inside an interrogation room.
"Have a seat."
She did and watched carefully as he sat across from her.
"As I mentioned on the phone, Serina McFadden came in to see me this morning." His tone was even and professional but his eyes were full of something like grief, and any hope that this was a big, fat, nothing-burger drained away, leaving behind cold, bleak fear.
"She brought me this."
He reached under the table and pulled out a paper bag, setting it between them with a thunk.
She tried not to flinch, but it wasn't easy. Because she knew exactly what she was looking at.
Ten thousand dollars in cash.
Her ten thousand dollars.
"She also brought me this." He fished a tiny recording device from his pocket and pressed the play button.
A moment later, her own voice poured from the little speaker.
“You're gonna wind up just like your daddy. Only this time, no one will find the body, because it’ll be in the bayou for the gators to handle.”
The room seemed to dip and sway as Lena struggled to maintain at least a hint of composure.
"Now, I know that's part of a much longer conversation and she's choosing what to share with me. But I'm going to need you to fill in the blanks of the rest of it, Lena, or I can't help you. What the hell is going on here? You told me everything was all right."
She wet her lips, still reeling as she tried to think of what to say and what not to say. "Can I get some water?" she croaked.
His jaw went tight but he nodded and left the room a moment later. The second he was out of view, she slumped forward and sucked in a few steading breaths. It was fine. Nothing had really happened yet. What did he have? A bag of money Serina claimed had come from her, and a one-line recording. The smart play here was to ask for a lawyer.
But this was Joe. Her Joe. The Joe she'd known since she was a kid. Would he really trick her into talking and twist her words to hurt her later?
She didn't think so.
The time for figuring it out was over, though, because he walked back into the room with a bottle of water in hand.
"Here you go."
She accepted it, wincing as their fingers brushed. His lean throat worked as he backed up and retook his seat.
"As I was saying, what--"
"Serina has been terrorizing us for the past two weeks. The note was first, then an email. After that, her friend or brother or someone named Jeb was following Maggie in a gray Pinto. He ran me off the road that night...the night I came to your house."
The words came out in a mumbled rush as she leaned across the table, wishing she could erase the stunned hurt in his eyes.
"Joe, I didn't mean to lie to you, but there are things you don't know...things that it isn't my place to tell you. I'm telling you as much as I can now so that you believe me when I say that Serina McFadden is not the victim here. Now, yes, I did give her that money. But only because she threatened my family. If that's a crime, arrest me. It came from my account and they had nothing to do with it."
Joe squeezed his eyes closed and scrubbed a hand over his chin. "I can't believe this. This whole time, you were being threatened and you kept it from me? Someone ran you off the road, Lena. You could've been killed. And somehow you thought meeting up with these people alone, giving them a bag of money, and threatening them was going to make things better?"
When he said it out loud like that, it sounded extra stupid, and she bit her lip.
“Like I said, there are a lot of things you don’t know, Joe.”
“Exactly,” he shot back, slapping his hand on the table hard enough to make the tape recorder jump. “And that ends right now, Lena. A woman claims you and your sisters went to her nephew’s house and smashed his door in to scare her. Then, you tried to bribe her in order to stop her from requesting an investigation into her father’s death and, when she refused, you dropped the money at her feet and threatened her life. Tell me why I shouldn’t believe her.”
Tears stung her eyes and she blinked them back, hard. Like Maeve used to say, crying never helped nobody but Mr. Kleenex.
She straightened her shoulders and stared at him, head on.
“Serina McFadden has been threatening us for two weeks. We have the note from the rock, and the email…and that Jeb guy went right up to my sisters in the parking lot of Target, gave them a note from her, and set up the meeting. Granted, the note isn’t signed but he said it was from Serina. He’s the one who ran me off the road!”
Joe’s jaw worked furiously. “You have two notes. One from Tim, who claims Serina had nothing to do with it, and a second with no signature that could be from anyone. Don’t let me forget the email I’ve never seen or heard about, and a car accident a man Serina knows supposedly caused that you never reported. What am I even supposed to do with that, Lena?”
Great question. She didn’t have a reply, so she stayed mum.
“But what’s bothering me the most? Is if Maeve didn’t kill Clyde, then why the hell did you give this woman ten thousand dollars?”
She hated to do it. Hated that she would have to see the disappointment in his face. The sadness. The disgust.
But she had no choice. Family was family.
"Am I being charged with a crime, Sheriff?" she asked, her tone as icy as her hands.
He drew back sharply, like she kicked him right in the solar plexus. He rebounded like a champ, though, and went into full-on cop mode.
"At this time, we're gathering information on the threat made against Ms. McFadden. Although Louisiana is a single-party consent state and a recording is legal so long as one party is aware it is being made, because it is clearly edited and incomplete, and Ms. McFadden was uninjured, you're not being formally charged at this time. The prior crime perpetrated against your family involving the McFadden family also puts some of her claims in doubt, so more investigating will need to be done. But Lena," he stared at her hard now, his voice dropping low, "this is serious now. Hiding things from me makes it real hard for me to help you here. This went from a note through the window to assault in a car and, now, death threats. This is escalating fast. Let's at least file a report on the accid
ent and we can--"
"If that's all, Sheriff, I'll be going," she said, pushing to her feet. "If you need me to come in again, please contact Alistair first, as he'll be joining me."
She forced her feet into motion and prayed that she could keep it together until she got to the door. She was almost there when his urgent whisper stopped her.
"If there is a real chance Maeve murdered Clyde, I can't just sweep it under the rug, Lena. Fighting for justice is my job. My life's work."
She answered without turning around.
"You can sleep well, then, Sheriff. I promise you, Clyde McFadden got justice, and the world is a much better place without him in it." She turned the door handle and swung it open. "And don't worry, I know the drill. I won't leave town."
She stepped into the hallway, barely resisting the urge to break into a run.
The house of cards had fallen, and she was pretty sure there would be no putting it back together again.
Maggie
“Is she ever going to come back down?"
Sasha sat on the couch in the living room, eyeing the spiral staircase as if looking long enough would make Lena appear.
"She's not one for sharing her feelings," Kate said grimly. Her cheeks were chalky with fear, and the usual fine lines around her mouth looked like they'd been etched in with a knife. "And my guess is that she's having a lot of feelings right now. I think we need to just sit tight and give her some space."
"I don't understand why she didn't tell us about the car thing. That's freaking awful. And that crazy redneck should be arrested for attempted murder," Sasha fumed.
Maggie eyed her sister, knowing that all Sasha's bluster was rooted in worry and she got it out by acting pissed off.
A shaken Lena had gotten back more than an hour ago, and had basically swept through the house with barely a wave before rushing headlong upstairs to her bedroom, muttering something about a headache. Kate had gone upstairs after her, only to return ten minutes later looking about as awful as Lena had.
Kate had filled them all in on the basics, including Harry, who was still at the house and currently sitting on the couch beside Maggie, looking completely despondent. He'd offered to leave when Lena came back, sensing there was trouble and not wanting to interfere, but Sasha had asked him to stay. It quickly became apparent that Harry knew about Clyde and what he'd done to Sasha. Maggie tried not to let that hurt her feelings. The more letters and journals they found, the more aware she'd become of exactly how close Harry and Maeve really were through the years. If everyone had a single person in their lives that held them together, Harry was it for Maeve. Surely, that whole time period had been one of the most traumatic of Maeve's life, and if Maggie were to guess, Harry had been the one thing that had kept her from just shriveling up and blowing away.
So he'd stayed at Sasha's request, but he hadn't spoken a word the whole time Kate was talking. As a matter of fact, he hadn't said a word in nearly an hour as they all talked around him, trying to figure out what to do next.
Maggie leaned close to him and patted his hand gently. "You all right? This isn't your problem, Harry. We appreciate the support, but I can drive you home, if you like."
He had taken on a gray, sickly pallor that she wasn't liking much, and the stress was clearly affecting him, but he shook his head.
"No. Thank you, but I'm where I'm meant to be. Maeve would want me to help you girls in whatever way I could." He wet his lips. "Some tea for all of us, maybe?"
Maggie nodded and left the room as Kate dove in to another diatribe about Serina McFadden.
When she came back five minutes later, tea tray in hand, she found the room silent as a graveyard.
"What's going on now? Did something else happen?"
"Alistair called back." Kate had left him a message an hour before, asking him to return the call as soon as he was able.
Maggie waited expectantly.
"Based on what I told him, he believes we have some time—days, probably—but that we should be prepared for a search warrant in the near future."
Maggie absorbed that information, nodding slowly. The ramifications of that weren't lost on her. Even just the one journal entry alone where Maeve had penned her intention to kill Clyde was likely enough to get the case reopened, given that Clyde was found dead not three days later.
Dreams of The Luxe, Sweet Maeve's Moonshine, and all of her non-profit goals came to a screeching halt.
This was bad. Really bad.
She thought back to the letter Maeve had left her. She'd wanted so much to be remembered for something good. Something special. But the part that really had her feeling sick was what this would do to Sasha.
She couldn't meet her sister's gaze as she set down the forgotten tray.
"Well, we still don't know if Serina is bluffing. Seems like if she gave the Sheriff something concrete, he'd have told Lena, or could've gotten a warrant already, right?"
Kate and Harry shared a furtive glance, and a strange sense of dread washed over her.
"There's more, isn't there?" she asked dully. "There's more you're not telling me."
Sasha, who had been gazing out the window as if lost in memories, suddenly stirred. She cocked her head and shot Kate a frown as Kate stayed silent.
"Kate?" she asked, her tone going shrill. "What else?"
"Why do the two of you look like someone just died?" Maggie demanded, shifting a glance between Harry and Kate, dread setting its hooks deep into her heart. "It's bad. I get it. We could lose our whole inheritance and Sasha's trauma could be laid bare. That's a tragedy, but we'll get through. Hell, we'll all move if we have to. I don't care about this town, and I don't care about the money. I care about my sisters."
Harry stood slowly, hitching up his pants as he ambled over toward the office, but Maggie paid him no mind, her gaze locked on Kate as her older sister nodded slowly and let out a shuddering breath.
"That's good, then. Because the only way to make sure we're safe is going to cost us all that, and maybe more."
"What are you talking about, Kate?" Sasha said, her voice cracking with emotion.
"We need to all agree, all three of us. We need to protect Lena."
"Lena?" Sasha shot back incredulously. "She's got money to burn and was willing to walk away from her part of the inheritance from the beginning. She's the one with the least to lose. She'll get a slap on the wrist for lying to the police about the accident and threatening Serina, and honestly, that was on her, anyways. If Mama goes down for Clyde's murder, she has nothing to stay here for. She can just walk out and right back in to her old life."
"That's not true," Kate murmured, but now Sasha was on a roll and there was no stopping her.
"Kate, she's been gone for decades, barely coming around. And when Mama was sick, I was the one—me! —I was the one washing her hair and watching it come out in clumps. I was the one rubbing her back while she threw up her guts after every treatment. And where was Lena? Off on the West Coast, living her best life when I needed her. Just like when we were young. She left us there, Kate. She left me there. Did you ever wonder if she knew? Did you ever wonder if she knew what he was and left to save herself?"
Maggie's throat closed, tears streaming down her face unchecked as she watched her sister pour the remnants of her shattered heart on the floor.
"No, Sasha. No," Kate shook her head furiously, her face full of horror and despair, "you can't think that. She never would've...she gave up everything to protect us."
"Why do you keep defending her?" Sasha sobbed, fisting her fingers into her hair, tears of pent up rage and pain and frustration boiling over.
"This will explain everything, sweet girl," Harry said gently. His own eyes were teary as he handed Sasha an envelope. Sasha took it and tugged out a sheet of paper, along with a second, sealed envelope with a strange seal on it. From Maggie’s vantage point, she could see the words scrawled on a post-it note stuck to the second envelope.
In case the poli
ce come sniffing around.
"Sit," Harry urged softly. "Read."
Maeve
Lena,
* * *
I'm hoping that, by the time you read this, decades have passed. That I'll have lived a long, happy life, and you and I have mended our fences. That your return to La Pierre upon my death has been easy and free of pain and heartache, unlike your past here in this town.
But if not...if the ghosts of the past come back to haunt this family once I'm gone, and there is any question over what happened that night, find enclosed my witnessed and fully executed confession to the murder of Clyde McFadden. The envelope itself has been sealed and notarized to show that it hasn't been tampered with in any way. It should be enough to put an end to any speculation as to what happened and to forestall any further investigation.
Lena, darling, I know listening to me has never been your strong point, and for good reason. I wasn't always the most sensible woman. But I need you to listen to me now. Please don't hesitate an instant to use this to protect yourself. You came in like a hero and saved the day, but now it's time to put the cape away. The thought of you living even a moment of your life behind bars, because you did what I could not, keeps me awake at night. Your sisters need you, and I need to know you're out there, free in the world to be there for them in the way I never was.
For whatever it's worth, no matter the distance between us, know this:
* * *
I loved you most because I loved you first.
* * *
Mama
Sasha
"Sash?"
Sasha lifted her head from the pillow and squinted as light filtered into the room from the now open door.
"Can I come in?"
Kate stood in the doorway, her face a mask of despair.
"Yeah."
Her sister padded in, closing the door behind her.
"Has Lena come out of her room yet?" Sasha murmured.
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