CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT #2
“Naw, bra,” Everett said, scratching the back of his neck. “Looks like Mr. Corcan here teamed up with your daughter to steal the horse to use as leverage and hold him for ransom against Mr. Barone.”
“Absolutely not,” Otto protested. He looked at his daughter.
Avelyn merely rolled her eyes.
“But why?” Myla asked.
“Ah, I might be able to answer that.” Gabrielle held up her phone. “This is the PI Tom’s lawyer, Michelle Price, hired to investigate Vincent.”
“You what?” Vincent asked, struggling against Maverick and Jagger.
“You’re on speakerphone,” Gabrielle said.
The PI on the phone cleared their throat.
“Right. Anyway, I followed Mr. Corcan to the island, where he did indeed visit Mrs. Whalley. Upon further investigation, it would seem that Mr. and Mrs. Whalley are in the process of getting a divorce. Mr. Whalley, who is a professional online gamer, met someone else through the gaming community and has filed for divorce.”
Hatred burned in Avelyn’s eyes.
How I managed to conjure an ounce of sympathy for that woman was beyond me, but it happened. When that flicker of pain emerged in her gaze, mixed with all the anger and hate, I saw a broken, desperate woman, confused by hurt and ultimately making a stream of poor decisions because of it.
“Mr. Corcan approached Mrs. Whalley and asked her to partner with him to get the land away from Mr. Barone with the promise of letting her live on the land and run whatever moneymaking scheme he intended to set up. Of that, I’m not entirely sure yet,” the PI went on.
“Whose genius idea was it to kidnap a pony?” Everett asked.
“Horse,” Sam corrected. “He’s a foal, but will grow to be a full-sized horse.”
“Where are Brenda and Clyde?” I asked. Were they in on this too and just got out of Dodge at just the right time?
“They’re on the mainland for the day. With her cousin who is visiting,” Otto said, the weight of everything finally having settled on him, or so it seemed. He appeared to be retreating into himself more by the second. “Zoo, aquarium. All that.”
“This is all so freaking weird,” Raina said, shaking her head. “A terrible scheme when you really think about it. And one that you had to know wasn’t going to work. So why even do it?”
The front door of the house opened and shut, and the sound of footsteps preceded a man who looked exactly like Clyde, just older.
Wild brown hair, a narrow face, thick brows, pale skin.
It was like the man had never seen the sun and stared at screens all day—which he probably did.
This had to be Jory Whalley. His dark-brown eyes were red and had pinpricks for pupils.
With one look at Vincent, his expression darkened. “What are you doing here?”
“Who is that?” the PI asked.
Right, he was still on Gabrielle’s phone.
“Jory,” Avelyn said, her voice soft.
Jory’s gaze fell on Midnight. “Why’s that guy holding a pony?”
“It’s a baby horse,” Sam said, exasperated. “He will be full grown, eventually.” She ran her hand over Midnight’s head. “And magnificent.”
“What is going on here?” Otto exclaimed, finding his sense of pseudo-power again, or at least trying to reclaim it.
“That’s the fucker Avelyn cheated on me with,” Jory said. “Who broke up our family.”
“This is like a freaking soap opera,” Raina said. “Like a telenovela, but in English.”
“Wait, I thought you said Jory broke up the marriage?” Myla asked.
Jory shook his head. “Avelyn met this douche online. I found out. Filed for divorce, but she won’t sign the papers. Since then, I’ve started seeing someone in the gaming community.”
The shred of sympathy I had for Avelyn evaporated on the breeze. She deserved every ounce of pain and suffering, and more.
“Why are you still living with her parents though?” Everett asked.
Jory shrugged. “Times are tough. Rent is free.”
“Top shelf humans all around,” Jagger muttered.
“So, hang on,” Gabrielle started. “Avelyn and Vincent met online, and she started cheating with him. Did he know that she lived next door to the land he wanted?”
Everyone pivoted to face Vincent, and the look on his face said it all. He knew.
Avelyn’s expression fell. She didn’t know. He’d played her.
“For what purpose though?” Gabrielle asked.
“To have easy access to do … whatever he needed to get the land?” I mused. “He’ll stoop low enough and steal a horse, and threatened to burn down the barn. So who knows how low this asshole would go.”
Avelyn, her heart broken, and finally piecing everything together in her bimbo head, came over to the restrained Vincent and smacked him hard across the face with the back of her hand.
Her nails were already ridiculous, but she was also wearing a bunch of rings, and boy-oh-boy did all that bling leave a mark.
“I’ll add that Gabrielle and I found two very fresh, very different in size, muddy footprints on the edge of Tom’s land this morning,” Maverick added. “I suspect if you check the soles of Vincent and Avelyn’s shoes that they’ll match the prints.”
Avelyn sighed and rolled her eyes again.
Did she not understand the seriousness of all of this?
She committed a crime. The police were going to arrest her, and yet she was still acting as though this was all just a big game and we were overreacting.
No wonder her child was a monster; the woman was delusional.
“I think we’ve heard enough,” Myla said with a sigh. “Gentlemen, if you’d be so kind as to help us load Mr. Corcan into the squad car, please?”
“Would be our pleasure,” Jagger said.
Myla began reading Avelyn her Miranda rights while Everett placed handcuffs over the woman’s wrists. The moment they slapped the cuffs on her, panic filled her eyes, and she realized this wasn’t just going to blow over.
Justice, bitch.
The happy couple were then stuffed into the back of the police cruiser while Otto and Jory stood in the driveway and watched them get carted away for processing.
“You should know that I’ve filed all the necessary complaints and paperwork with the school district and superintendent to have you removed from administrative duty at the school,” Gabrielle said to Otto.
“Over fifty parents on the island have agreed to write letters detailing your horrific tenure and how their children have been negatively impacted by your presence at the school.”
Otto’s eyes widened.
But my cousin wasn’t done. “You’re a terrible principal, a terrible person, and you don’t deserve to have any influence on any child’s future.
In my professional opinion, it would behoove you to put in for retirement and leave of your own accord.
Lest you be submitted to investigation, which we both know would ruin your and your wife’s reputation on the island and in the educational community.
” She graced him with one of her “got you” smiles, that only stayed on the bottom half of her face, then rejoined Maverick, who stood on the side chatting with Jagger, Raina, and the McEvoys.
“Maybe be a grown-up and move out of your in-laws’ basement,” I said to Jory, who could only nod, shove his hands into his pockets, and head back into the house.
Otto lifted his pale-blue, defeated gaze to me, waiting for the next round of verbal flagellation from the single moms who owned the vineyard.
“Leave,” I simply said to him. “Stop being such a disruptor.” His eyes widened again, and his nostrils flared.
“And take your grandson with you. The island is too good for all of you. You don’t belong here.
” Then I turned around, gathered my daughter in my arms, and together, with the rest of the search party that had arrived, we returned to our vehicles.
I glanced around for Tom, but couldn’t find him.
My heart sank a little. He must have taken Midnight back to the barn.
“I, uh … I parked Tom’s truck up on the road,” I said to Jagger.
He nodded. “I’ll run up and take it back to his place.”
I handed him the keys.
Raina grabbed his keys from him. “I’ll meet you there.”
Maverick, Gabrielle, Sam, and I all climbed into Jagger’s truck, and we followed Jagger back to Tom’s.
“So what do you think is going to happen to everyone?” Sam asked.
“Well, Vincent and Avelyn will be charged with horse theft and probably a few other felonies,” Gabrielle said. “We’ll slap them both with heavy restraining orders, and I doubt Vincent will be allowed back on the island. And as for Avelyn, her marriage is clearly over—”
“So is her affair,” Maverick added.
“And without his grandfather at the school to keep him from getting in trouble, Clyde’s going to have a real hard time,” Raina said. She glanced at me in the rearview mirror, her eyes sad. But there were too many of us in the vehicle to have that conversation, and I wasn’t ready either.
I just hoped that now that we had Midnight back, Tom would be calmer and see that none of this was his fault—or mine.
We followed Jagger onto the property, and he parked Tom’s truck in front of the house.
Sam bailed out of the backseat, and before I could stop her, she flung open the barn door.
Gabrielle turned around from the front passenger seat and placed her hand on mine. “It’ll be okay.”
Emotion hung spiky and thick in the back of my throat, like chunky peanut butter, but the peanut shards were as sharp as glass. All I could do was nod.
Jagger climbed out of Tom’s truck and went to the barn as well. Maverick joined him.
My cousins and I stayed in the truck though.
For whatever reason, I just didn’t want to face him. I didn’t want to find out now, or this way, that things were over.
Because it felt like they were.
Maybe they weren’t, and I was just spiraling because this was my first relationship, and we went all in, hot and heavy with the “L” word and everything really soon.
Maybe this was just a hiccup. Relationships had hiccups all the time.
Raina and Jagger had one in the beginning, and so did Maverick and Gabrielle. Was this just our hiccup?