Chapter Seventy-Seven Piper
Chapter Seventy-Seven
Piper
Kiersten sank to the rug in the foyer, resting her back against the closed door.
“You were awesome,” Piper said, sinking down beside her.
“I don’t feel awesome. I feel terrified. He knows we’re lying about the diaries.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Piper said. “You kept them out of his hands. That’s the important thing.”
“I’m kind of excited,” Rosamund said, settling onto the bench in the foyer. “I’ve always wanted to go undercover.”
“Do you think Aspen will tell us anything useful?” Kiersten asked.
Piper chewed on her lower lip, thinking. “She spends a lot of time with Margaret. Remember how she told us Grammy is really popular on Instagram? She’s gotta know something about the family she married into. Something about Margaret’s early years as a wife and mother. It’s worth a shot.”
“Do you think Chip knows . . . about his dad?” Kiersten asked.
“I do. I think he is literally a chip off the old block in every possible way.”
“You mean . . . he’s capable of murder too?” Rosamund asked quietly.
Piper paused. She didn’t want to scare Kiersten and Rosamund. But they also needed to understand the possible consequences of what they were about to do.
“There’s an inverse relationship between the consequences of a crime and the length people will go to cover it up.”
“So if Richard murdered Dottie . . .”
“He and Chip will do everything in their power to keep Richard from going to prison. To keep the truth about sweet old Grammy from derailing Aspen’s Happy House Life HGTV deal. And to keep Chip’s and Trey’s political and career ambitions on track.”
“You think they would . . . kill again?” Kiersten’s face had gone pale.
“I think we need to be really careful,” Piper said.
Kiersten rose from the floor and extended a hand to pull Piper to her feet. They moved to the dining room.
“We still haven’t spoken with Lillian about this.” Kiersten squirted cleaning spray on a dry-erase board filled with algebra problems. “But she came home from her trip yesterday, and she’s lived here for decades. And she might know something that points us in a completely different direction.”
“Before we do anything else, we need to finish Dottie’s last diary,” Piper said, handing her a paper towel. “We only have a couple entries left.”
“Where is it?” Kiersten asked.
Piper frowned. “Where’s what?”
“The diary.”
Her heart dropped. “I thought you had it.”
“I don’t have it,” Rosamund said.
Kiersten went into the kitchen and returned a few minutes later. “Sorry. It was buried in a pile of LEGOs. Ready?”
Piper sat in a dining room chair, prepared to listen with an open mind, hoping she was wrong about her neighbors, wrong about Dottie’s fate, wrong about everything. But the tiny whisper of intuition that had guided her through a long law enforcement career told her she was right.