Chapter 38
Now
Frances stood in front of me, her eyes wet and cheeks ruddy. Aunt Hattie reached to brush away her tears, but she winced.
I asked, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Frances sniffed. “I made the calls and left the messages, like we planned. I—” She pressed her lips together and swallowed a sob. “I’m fine,” she repeated. “Ruth and Bunny are waiting. It’s time.”
Hattie-May said nothing, but her lips puckered into a frown, concern etching onto her face. “Let me grab the mixture from the greenhouse. Will only take a second.”
I handed her the key and watched as she slipped it into the lock and disappeared inside.
“Sister,” I said. “Are you sure you can do this?”
“Of course I’m sure. It’s my life that depends on his death, remember?”
I ignored her bitchy tone. She’d always had an attitude when she was upset.
“Yes. I know. It’s only, this isn’t going to work if you can’t keep it together. Burt has to believe you’re happy to see him.” I held her hands between us, my gaze searching her face for something that would tell me if this was only nerves or a real problem.
Frances opened her mouth to speak, but Hattie-May appeared through the greenhouse’s doorway. My sister snapped her mouth shut and blinked quickly, sniffing every so often as my aunt tottered over. I dropped her hands.
Hattie-May pressed a cobalt blue vial into my palm. “Come along now, girls,” she said, and led the way toward the path home. “This will all be over by dinner.”
As we trudged back to the house, moving at Hattie-May’s slow, steady pace, I snuck glances at my sister, who was doing her best to hold back tears.
She took deep breaths, her face contorting every so often, before going blank, and then the cycle would repeat.
This didn’t feel like nerves. This felt bigger.
Who could blame my sister for being emotional about killing the man she’d thought she loved, even if he deserved it? But where were these tears yesterday as we hammered out the plan and had time to take her emotional state into consideration? Because now? Now, we definitely did not have time.
And our plan hinged on Frances.
It was straightforward. This morning, Frances called Burt while he was on his flight home and left voicemail messages explaining how she’d planned on leaving him. She’d ran away to my house to figure things out.
But she’d had a change of heart.
The time away from him cleared her head of any silly ideas. What would she do without her husband?
The message to Burt would detail how, after visiting me in Persimmon Key, Frances realized she was done with her marriage after finding something on her car that the internet said was a tracking device.
She pulled it off and dumped it in a trash can, then in a fit of emotion, she decided to go to her aunts in Tennessee for a while to clear her head and lick her wounds.
On her way she got overzealous and threw her phone out the window, knowing that Burt could track her through it too.
Then she’d explain how soon after, the radio played their song, cracking her heart wide open.
I know you only keep up with my whereabouts, are so strict only because you care so much!
When she turned around to go home, karma came calling, and her car broke down.
My own fault for ever leaving you, Burty!
The closest business around was a motel. It’s sketchy—come and get me and please hurry! She’d lay it on thick: It was a mistake—all of it. Please come, Burt.
It wasn’t a perfect plan, but all that mattered was that Burt showed up to the motel. Which, last night, a fully confident version of Frances had assured us, he would. “Like all devils, he has one hell of a God complex and can’t resist playing the hero.”
She knew her husband well and said there was no way he wouldn’t take full advantage of having Frances alone in a sketchy motel room.
There would be bottles of water. Tiny bottles of booze.
Glasses. (All placed in the space ahead of time by us, since Bunny said it wasn’t exactly the kind of place that came with a minibar.) Frances would get the poison into Burt’s drink one way or another, while Bunny and I waited out of sight nearby in case things went sideways. I’d insisted on this.
Once he was dead, we’d make it look like an overdose.
Frances would wipe the voicemail from his phone.
And to anyone on the outside looking in, it would appear that Frances was still in Persimmon Key visiting me.
Since my roommate was on a trip with her boyfriend, there wasn’t anyone who’d say otherwise.
But if Frances was losing it already, how could she remain cool once Burt showed up? If she answered the hotel door a terrified stammering mess, Burt would know something was wrong.
I kept quiet as we walked from the path and across the backyard. I again took my sister’s hand in mine. Her eyes were bleary and red. She let out a hiccupping sob.
She can’t do it. No matter what she said or what she wanted, she wasn’t up to pulling this off.
I should’ve known last night when she’d stood outside her house, terrified and moonlight pale, that when it came down to killing Burt, she was all talk. But she’d insisted and hadn’t even wanted to try my plan.
Maybe it should’ve pissed me off that now everything was in jeopardy when the stakes were at their highest, but I didn’t have it in me to be angry. This only proved my sister was no different than me: She didn’t want to hurt anyone.
All she wanted was to be free. To live her life without fear.
It wasn’t fair she had to kill for it.
As I watched Frances cycle through attempting to hold it together—sniffing tears, face scrunching, blank stare—I knew what I had to do. And it wouldn’t go over well.
We joined Ruth and Bunny on the porch, and I turned to my sister. “You can’t come.”
“What?” Ruth asked, brows steepling, forehead wrinkles deepening. “The plan only works if Frances is there.”
“Naw.” Bunny inhaled her cigarette and blew out a stream of smoke. She nodded at Frances. “Look at ’er. Milly’s right.”
“No.” Frances sniffed. “I’m fine. This is my problem, and I’ll see it through.” Her voice cracked.
Hattie-May put an arm around my sister, and Ruth blew out a breath. “Well shit. What do we do, then? We don’t have much time. We have to be on the road before Burt’s plane lands and he gets that message.”
“I think…” I bit my bottom lip. “I think we should still go. Ruth, you come with me and Bunny. Frances can stay here with Hattie-May.”
“And what exactly are we going to do when he shows up?” Ruth nervously plucked Bunny’s cigarette from Bunny’s fingers and took a drag. “I don’t see that going over too good.”
Frances’s face crumpled, “Of course I’m going and—”
“No,” I said firmly. My gaze drifted from my sister, to Ruth, to Bunny. “Showing up without Frances is a risk, but I think taking her like this is a bigger risk.” I looked at my sister. “You said Burt’s obsessed with me.”
“What?” Ruth asked.
“It’s true,” Frances said, giving me a knowing glance, pleading with me not to tell her secret. That she’d broken her word and told someone about Shane.
“Well, this keeps getting better and better.” Aunt Ruth’s voice was pure petulance, but she let me finish.
“If he’s obsessed with me, maybe we can use that. When he shows up, I’ll tell him I know where you are. I’ll explain everything, but we have to talk first. Say whatever it takes to get him into the room.”
“Won’t he just turn and leave?” Ruth asked.
“No.” Frances’s cycle of tears and face-scrunching was interrupted with a look of thoughtfulness. “It could work. He’d be intrigued.”
“Yeah. You said he loves a game,” I said.
“Won’t he be suspicious?” This question from Bunny.
“Maybe. Burt’s always suspicious of everyone all the time. But the thing about my dear husband is, he never sees anyone as a real threat. He’ll play until he’s bored.”
Ruth rocked on the heels of her boots and thumped the cigarette into the yard. “How the hell are we supposed to get the poison in him? Jesus, this feels like a clusterfu—”
“Language, Ruthie,” Hattie-May interjected.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But we will because we don’t have a choice.”
“Could we put it in a syringe?” Ruth asked Hattie-May, who shrugged.
“Oh, I don’t know, dearie.” Hattie-May shook her head. “I’ve never done that. But it won’t take much. If it crosses his lips, he’ll go down like that.” She snapped her fingers. Her expression grew serious. “It’s potent. Mind you don’t ingest any yourself or get it in your eye.”
“Maybe.” Bunny appeared thoughtful. “We are setting this up as a drug overdose. Guess it won’t matter if an autopsy finds the injection site. But either of you have a syringe lying around?”
“Good point. That’s out, then,” Ruth said. “We have to figure this out. I don’t like winging it.”
“This means you’re coming?” I asked Ruth.
“Well of course I’m coming. I’m not sending you two off on your own with a half-cooked scheme.”
“Good.” I looked at Bunny. “Were you able to get everything we need? To make it look legit?”
Last night, Frances had told us that in college and right after, Burt had gotten in trouble several times with cocaine and once with ketamine. Being an Anderson, his grandpa made it disappear.
“The Anderson family motto is basically ‘Avoid scandal at all costs,’” she’d said, and assured us that as long as Bert’s death looked like a believable bender, his family likely wouldn’t use their resources to dig deeper.
They’d want it over and done with and out of the public eye as quickly as possible so it didn’t cast a shadow over his brother’s political prospects.
The Andersons sounded like a lovely bunch.
“Yeah, I got it.” Bunny nodded. “It’s in the car. Which is why we need to leave right now. Speeding ain’t an option. I can’t get pulled over with that shit.”
“I was planning on driving my car,” I said.
“Oh you were?” Bunny smirked. “Better make another plan, because we’re taking the Camaro. It’s reliable and fast. And I’m driving.”
“Fine.” I sighed. It was dumb how, out of everything that would be happening over the next twenty-four hours, the idea of not having my own car sent flurries of anxiety through my chest, but Bunny was the only person who I’d ever seen out-argue Aunt Ruth. I let it go. “Let’s hit the road, then.”
Frances squeezed me in a hug and whispered in my ear. “Sister, you’re saving me once again.”
I hugged her back, then walked to the car and folded all five foot, two inches of myself into the cramped back seat.
We were silent as we made our way down the driveway, until Bunny turned on some music.
Ruth stared out the window, Bunny lit a cigarette, and the first bars of Britney Spears’s “Gimme More” blasted through the speakers. For the second time in my life, I was on my way to kill for my little sister.