More solid footfalls shattered the stillness.
She put her back to the wall next to the window and peered out through the crack in the curtain.
Agnes, dressed in her gardening clogs, sunhat, jeans and a loose-fitting flannel shirt, raised her gloved hand to knock.
The wave of relief was so overwhelming Grace started to shiver. She wasn’t in the middle of a scene from a horror movie, after all. She lowered the phone and opened the door.
“Agnes,” she said. “Are you okay? Is something wrong?”
“I’m so sorry, dear,” Agnes said. There was a mix of anger, fear and guilt in her eyes.
“What on earth?” Grace said.
More footsteps sounded—light and quick this time.
Kristy appeared from the far side of the porch where she had been concealed behind the old refrigerator. She had a bottle of vodka in one hand. There was a gun in her other hand.
“Drop the phone,” Kristy said. “Do it now or I kill the old lady first and you next.”
Grace dropped the phone.
Forty-Six
It’s all coming together,” Devlin said. “The Seattle investigators are convinced that Marrick was working the scam with Millicent Chartwell. The partnership went bad.”
“No, it’s not that simple.” Julius paced the small hospital room. The medication and the painkillers had finally worn off. The pain was back but he could think clearly again. “We’re overlooking something.”
“We’ll fill in the missing blanks when Marrick wakes up and starts answering questions.”
Julius stopped at the window and looked out at the view of the street. “Marrick is a professional. He should have cut his losses and run a few days ago.”
“Everyone has a weak point,” Devlin said. “Seems clear that in Marrick’s case, it was the need for revenge.”
“No,” Julius said. “The timing is off. Millicent was embezzling from the Witherspoon accounts over a year before Burke Marrick showed up.”
“Two cons passing in the night, recognize each other and hook up for a score,” Devlin said.
“No, this was about revenge from the start,” Julius said. “And it only started a few months ago.” He went to the nightstand and picked up the phone. “I want Grace where I can see her.”
He keyed in her code.
And got tossed into voice mail.
“She’s not answering,” he said.
“Maybe she’s in the shower or taking a nap. She spent the night here at your bedside. She needs some rest.”
“I don’t like it.” Julius opened the tiny closet and discovered that it was empty. “Where the hell are my clothes?”
Devlin raised his brows. “Locked up in evidence bags. Grace is bringing you some clean clothes when she returns with the soup, remember?”
“Screw the clothes. Where’s my gun?”
“That’s in evidence, too.”
Julius swung around. Pain lanced through his side. He ignored it and looked down at Devlin’s ankle. “You’ve got a spare. You always carry an extra.”
“Your point?”
“Let’s go.” Julius headed toward the door, the tails of the hospital gown flapping in the breeze.
Devlin followed. “Do you think it’s possible you’re overreacting?”
“No,” Julius said. “Call Harley. He’s closer to the Elland place.”
Forty-Seven
Act as if you are in control, especially when you know it’s not true. Your mind will clear and you will be able to see opportunities that are veiled by chaos.
“Agnes needs to sit down,” Grace said. “Can’t you see that she’s about to collapse? She has serious health issues, don’t you, Agnes?”
She focused on Agnes’s eyes, willing her to play along.
Agnes gasped and clutched at her chest. She started to pant.
“My heart,” she wheezed. “It’s beating so fast. I think I’m going to faint.”
Rage flashed across Kristy’s face. For an instant she appeared confused. She had not made allowances for small adjustments in her plan—always assuming there was a plan.
Using Agnes as a hostage had been an impulsive decision on Kristy’s part, Grace decided, one that had probably been made at the last minute when it became clear that the grand scheme to exact revenge had fallen apart.
Because that was what this was all about, Grace thought. The vodka bottle that Kristy had set on the kitchen table made it clear. This was about vengeance.
“Sit down.” Kristy jerked the nose of the gun toward one of the chairs and glared at Agnes as if she was nothing more than a nuisance now that she had served her purpose.
“Move, you stupid old woman,” Kristy hissed when Agnes did not move fast enough.
Agnes staggered rather dramatically toward the nearest chair. Grace remained where she was in front of the stove. She watched the gun in Kristy’s hand. It was trembling ever so slightly. That was not a good sign.
Kristy was in the grip of an obsession. There was nothing else that could have caused a smart woman to risk two more murders when there was nothing to be gained except revenge. Burke was in the hospital and under guard. He would start talking soon. Millicent was recovering and in time would provide answers to the questions the police were asking. It was all over.
Kristy should have been on the run and hiding under a new identity. Instead, here she was, confronting her target. Vengeance was a harsh taskmaster.
“I’ll give you credit for your skill at hiding in plain sight,” Grace said. “You and Burke must have spent a long time working on your business plan, so to speak. It went perfectly, at least for a while.”
“Burke and I didn’t learn the truth about our real father’s death until a year ago,” Kristy said. Her eyes burned with the fever of her rage. “Mom left Dad while we were still babies. We had no memory of him. She changed our names and our life histories because she was terrified of Dad. Told us he died in a car crash. She never gave us the truth.”
“She was probably trying to protect you,” Grace said gently.
Kristy giggled. “Sure. She didn’t want us to know about the bad genes on that side of the family.”
“If your mother was so frightened of Trager, she must have kept an eye on him from afar,” Grace said. “She would have been aware of his death.”
“Wrong.” Kristy smirked. “She never knew what happened to him because she was killed in a car accident, herself, shortly before you murdered Dad. Talk about karma, huh? Witherspoon would have loved that. Mom lies to us about Dad’s death and then she dies in the exact same way he supposedly died. But his death wasn’t an accident, was it? You murdered him.”
The gun in Kristy’s hand trembled more violently. Grace held her breath. Agnes sat very, very still.
Kristy used both hands to tighten her hold on the gun. She appeared to regain a measure of her control.
“Mother died with her secrets,” she said. “Burke and I went into foster care.”
“Was it bad?” Grace asked, trying to make the conversation sound normal—reasonable.
Kristy grinned. “Let’s just say it was very educational. One of our foster parents taught Burke how to sell drugs, and I learned how to make money in . . . other ways.”
“Someone pimped you out?”
“Not for long.” Kristy shrugged. “Burke and I gave it a few months and then decided we could manage much better on our own. Burke has a real gift for the tech stuff, and I was the perfect saleswoman. We did pretty well, considering we were a couple of amateurs at the time.”
“And then Burke got busted for running a pyramid scheme.”
Kristy raised her brows. “You know about that, do you?”
“The cops know everything now.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Kristy said. “This will al
l be over soon and I will disappear. Yes, Burke did time. He learned a lot inside. First thing we did when he got out was make up some new identities. We’ve had several over the years. Burke and I die and get reborn on a regular basis. Talk about positive thinking.”
“Burke buried your past by changing the records to make it appear that you died as a little girl in the car accident that took your mother’s life. He faked his own death after he got out of prison.”
“I’m impressed,” Kristy said. “You really have done your research.”
“What made you come looking for me?” Grace asked.
“Burke discovered the truth when he was preparing the set of identities that we’re using now. He got the bright idea of researching Mom’s family tree. There’s so much ancestry information available online. Amazing, really. Anyhow, that’s when he figured out that she had lied to us about our past. Once he started peeling back the layers, it didn’t take him long to find the connection to Cloud Lake and our real father.”
“How long did it take him to find me?”
“Are you joking?” Kristy smiled. The fever in her eyes rose a couple of degrees. “The girl wonder of Cloud Lake. The young heroine who saved a little boy from a vicious killer. The brave, resourceful teen who killed a man with a liquor bottle. Oh, yeah, your name popped up right away—once we started looking in the right place.”
“You started making plans,” Grace said. “Nice work landing the receptionist’s job at the Witherspoon Way.”
“The fact that Sprague needed a new receptionist at the time was just good luck,” Kristy said. “But even without that opening, I would have found a way to get close to you, Grace.”
“How?”
“Simple. Burke and I would have rented space in the same office tower and set up shop as a pair of investors. It’s easy. One way or another I would have become your friend. I wanted to get to know the woman who murdered my father, you see. I wanted time to decide just how I would make you pay for what you did to my family. I wanted to destroy you slowly but surely.”
“You intended to start murdering the people around me and leave a bottle of vodka at the scenes?”
“I knew it would take a while for the police to get the significance of the vodka. But that was fine by me. I was sure you would understand immediately that this was all about the past. I wanted to see you suffer and fall apart. I wanted to destroy you.”
“Burke was on board with the revenge plan, then?”
Kristy grimaced. “Burke is all about the money. He didn’t get excited until he realized how much revenue Sprague Witherspoon was pulling in with his motivational seminar business. That’s when he sat up and paid attention.”
“He set out to marry Nyla.”
Kristy’s smile was thin and cold. “I was patient. I gave him the time he required to set up his con, but when I told him I was ready to start putting my plan into action, he got upset. He wanted to ride the Witherspoon Way gravy train for another year or so. He figured the income would double or even triple in that time frame, thanks to you.”
“So he didn’t want you to take any action that would jeopardize my position at the Witherspoon Way, at least not until he thought that he had maxed out the profits.”
“We quarreled.”
“Right. That day when you met him at a coffee shop on Queen Anne.”
“Shit, you really do know too much.” Kristy frowned. “Burke didn’t want to meet me but I insisted. I had already waited long enough. I had given him his shot at Nyla. He stood to make a few million. He was getting greedy. He knew that Sprague had to die before Nyla could get the inheritance. It was just a matter of when. He finally agreed.”
“Are you the one who murdered Sprague?”
“Yes.” Kristy smiled, pleased. “I knew the code to override the household alarm system because I was the one who volunteered to look after Sprague’s plants while he was out of town, remember? Sprague also authorized me to buy stuff for him using his credit card.”
“That was how you made it look as if he had purchased the vodka that you left in his bedroom.”
“Exactly.” Kristy beamed. “I let myself into his mansion shortly after midnight and shot him while he slept. He never even woke up.”
“The next morning when we all started to wonder why Sprague hadn’t come in to the office, you were the one who suggested that someone should check on him,” Grace said. “I was the logical one to do that because I lived closest to the office. My car was in my apartment garage, only a few blocks away.”
“It was so easy,” Kristy said, almost crooning. “Things went exactly as I had planned. Burke was pissed because he figured he’d lost a few million but he was still going to do okay out of the con and he knew it.”
“Until he found out that Nyla’s inheritance was missing.”
Kristy snorted. “I told him, easy come, easy go. He didn’t like it but there wasn’t much he could do about it. But he called me right after he left her apartment. Told me the con was back up and running. He said Millicent needed someone to launder her money. She told Burke they could run the same embezzlement scheme at Rayner Seminars.”
“So you tried to murder her, too.”
“She was next on my list, anyway,” Kristy said.
“What went wrong?”
“The bastards I bought the drugs from cheated me.” The gun shivered again in Kristy’s hands. She took a moment to regain control. “I was in a hurry. I knew I had to move fast. I got to Millicent’s about an hour after Burke left. I was in tears. I told her I needed to talk to someone because I had stumbled across some information about Larson Rayner that indicated he was a con. I said we had to talk about it before we agreed to work for him.”
“You lied.”
“Of course. It’s one of my many talents. But Millicent wanted the information she thought I possessed. We had a couple of drinks together. I put the drug in her glass. When she started to pass out, I dragged her into the bedroom and injected her with more of the junk. She should have been dead by morning.”
A faint burning odor wafted through the kitchen. The soup was starting to scorch.
“You’re the one who sent the late-night emails,” Grace said.
Kristy smiled. “Thought those would make you nervous. You knew someone was watching from the shadows but you had no idea where to look. I loved that part.”
“Which one of you sent those thugs after Julius?”
Kristy stopped smiling. “That was Burke’s idea. We knew Arkwright was getting too close to you. Burke thought a good beating would scare him away. After all, Arkwright was just a businessman. He should have been a soft target.”
“A bit of a misjudgment on Burke’s part, I’d say. And he certainly didn’t hire high-end talent to deliver the message.”
Kristy grimaced. “Same bastards who sold me the drugs that were supposed to take care of Millicent. Burke and I were from out of town. We didn’t know how to find reliable help here in Seattle. Burke asked around shortly after we arrived. Someone recommended that pair of idiots.”
“Were they the ones who put the dead rat and the vodka bottle in my refrigerator?” Grace asked.
“No.” Kristy beamed. “That was me. Pretty cool, huh? I had a lot of fun with that bit. Wish I could have seen your face when you opened the refrigerator that day.”
“Things really went off the rails after you failed to kill Millicent,” Grace said. “Burke must have been shocked when he realized Millicent had sent me the key to the money and that I had given it to Nyla.”
“He said there was still a chance to save the con because Nyla still trusted him. But he had to get rid of Arkwright once and for all because Arkwright was too close to the truth.”
“But Burke screwed up last night and now everything is falling apart, isn’t it?”
The smell of scorched bro
th was getting stronger.
“Do you mind if I take the pot off the fire?” Grace asked. “The soup is burning. It might set off the fire alarm.”
Kristy hesitated but she obviously wasn’t quite ready to pull the trigger. She wanted more time to explain exactly why she had gone to so much trouble.
“Move the damn pot,” she said. She gestured with the gun.
Grace turned toward the stove and carefully gripped the heat-proof handle. She lifted the heavy pot off the gas burner and shifted it to the other side of the stove. She did not turn off the burner that she had been using to heat the soup.
Casually she reached for a paper towel to wipe her hands. She pulled the leading edge toward the stove and left it lying on the counter. Then she placed one hand on the counter as if she needed support.
She turned halfway around to look at Kristy.
“You came here today to finish what you started, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Kristy said. Hot tears burned in her eyes. “This was about punishing you for what you did to me and my brother.”
“What I did to you?”
“If you hadn’t murdered my father—my real father—everything would have been different for Burke and me.”
“You think your biological father would have taken you in? Cared for you? The guy beat his second wife to death and would have murdered a little boy, just to cover up the crime. Try a reality check, Kristy. What kind of father do you think he would have been to you if he had lived?”
“We would have been a family.”
“The perfect family,” Grace said softly.
“Yes, damn you.”
Grace moved her hand slightly on the counter, guiding the trailing edge of the paper towel into the fire of the gas burner.
The towel burst into flames that raced across the counter, consuming paper towels with stunning speed. The thick roll caught fire. Smoke billowed.
The smoke detector screamed.
Kristy stared at the smoke and the fierce flames. “What did you do? Stop it. Stop it.”