Chapter 44. Holly
Holly
Gail pushed the tiny plastic ball toward Chester.
It rolled across the hardwood floor, the little bell inside tinkling like a delicate fairy.
The cat pounced, swallowing the toy into his mouth, whipping his head side to side to break his prey’s neck, then spitting it out and pawing at it until the thing was as good as dead.
So cute.
Gail rolled it again, and once more Chester attacked. Holly watched the game from across the room, thankful for this brief moment of normalcy.
She had been home for over an hour but couldn’t stop smelling blood or seeing Spellman’s lifeless body splayed across his desk.
Gail was a welcome distraction. For once, she wasn’t talking about selling the house out from under her. Of course, the bank might do it anyway if she couldn’t pay the tax bill.
“He took everything?” Gail asked, incredulous, referring to Spellman.
Holly could only shrug. “I don’t know. My friend’s a bank auditor. She’s already looking into some oddities with the account. I’ll have to tell her about Spellman’s criminal activity as well.”
“What a little shit.”
“More like a gigantic turd, but I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead,” Holly said. “It’s just hard to accept that he stole my family’s money, and now I’ll never know if he also stole evidence related to my sister’s death.”
Holly wished she could turn to Serena as well, but her psychic friend might not be trustworthy—and she wasn’t in the mood for a confrontation. The day had drained her, and Holly’s recent text exchange with Jade made matters worse.
In hindsight, she could have responded better to Jade’s message about Elizabeth Ward. The poor kid was just trying to help, but Holly’s nerves were frayed, her temper short, and her anger had spiked.
She thought she had been clear—the Carmichaels were off-limits, no investigating allowed. It wasn’t safe. But instead of listening, Jade had asked about Conrad’s wife—or ex-wife, Holly wasn’t sure.
Find the answers … finish your novel. Holly kept hearing that jeering paper puppet calling out to her. She was finally listening, and the last thing she needed was for someone else she cared about to get hurt—or worse—before she could get her answers.
Jade should be a kid—working a simple job, making some money, and keeping her nose out of trouble—and Holly should be the adult. This was her mess to untangle. And whoever was trying to intimidate her into walking away was achieving the opposite.
Elizabeth Ward was part of the story, which was exactly why Jade shouldn’t be asking about her. Holly’s reply hadn’t been gentle: I told you very clearly that investigating my sister’s death was off-limits.
As a novelist, Holly didn’t use text speech. She wrote books with real grammar and proper spelling, and her texts followed suit. Jade would get the point—loud and clear—without shortcuts.
If you can’t honor that, this living arrangement will not work. Please don’t put me in that position.
When she sent the message, she’d been full of anger and anxiety. But Jade hadn’t responded—not to that message or to Holly’s later apology—and now she worried her young roommate had gotten in over her head. Holly already had enough guilt for one lifetime.
She kept checking her phone while Gail absent-mindedly flipped through Holly’s copy of Meow Mindfulness. Having tired of the ball game, Chester had slunk off to another room.
“Do you know what happened to Conrad’s wife—Elizabeth Ward?” Holly asked.
Gail had her face buried in the book. “Did you know people believe the frequency of a cat’s purr has healing qualities?” She peeked over the top of the cover. “I’m sorry, did you say something?”
“Elizabeth Ward, Conrad’s wife. Do you know what happened to her?”
Gail was terminally perky, so seeing a shadow cross her face was unusual.
“Oh, Elizabeth. Yeah, Conrad’s ex … there was some shit there.” She returned to her reading.
Holly’s worry for Jade deepened.
Gail kept talking with her nose in the book. “She worked for Ward Pharmaceuticals way back when—she was a lawyer, pretty high up in Daddy’s company. Not saying it was nepotism.” Gail turned to Holly and mouthed, It was nepotism, which made Holly smile.
“According to what you told me, it was also incestuous,” Holly said, cringing.
The gossip lit Gail’s eyes. “Mother-in-law becomes the stepmother. Oh yeah, that was the town talk for ages, but then came the even bigger scandal—I mentioned that when we were talking about the Carmichaels with Ethan, but we never got to finish the conversation.”
“What was the big scandal?”
“Lypotrel,” said Gail, as if Holly should know.
Holly’s skin tingled. A quiet alarm went off inside her. “Lypotrel? That was the name on the missing prescription bottle in the evidence box.”
“Interesting, but not entirely surprising. A lot of Maeve’s money came from the Ward family and that drug specifically. I was actually working for Baxter Ward when the shit hit the fan.”
“Wait, you worked for Ward Pharmaceuticals?”
Gail brushed it off. “I did some real estate deals for the company back in the day—found them a commercial plot, twenty thousand square feet of glorious commission.” She grinned like a fisherman nostalgic for a big catch.
“That’s what initially brought me to Beauport.
After scoping out properties for Baxter, I fell in love with the area and stayed.
But they stopped looking for real estate when the company found itself plastered all over the news, and not for a good reason, so I started my own business. Funny how fate works.”
But none of this was funny to Holly. She had no clue about the Lypotrel scandal. She hadn’t realized there was more to know other than it was a weight-loss drug.
“So how did Lypotrel get them into trouble?”
Gail went stock-still. “It was a great drug—you dropped tons of weight on it, and it was really popular for a while. The problem was that some people thought more pills would mean more weight loss. Instead, it got you sent to the morgue. A high dose of that stuff was genuinely lethal. Ward Pharmaceuticals insisted the drug had passed all the FDA requirements, but an independent investigation brought on by a lawsuit revealed those documents had been tampered with.”
“Tampered with?” Holly was appalled. “Someone knowingly put people’s lives at risk?”
“Not just someone—Elizabeth Ward. She was working in the legal department at the time, so she had access to all the materials. She doctored the research and made the drug seem far safer than it was to get FDA approval, all while keeping Daddy in the dark.”
“Oh yeah, I remember that story now. It was years ago,” Holly said. “But I didn’t pay much attention—and I certainly didn’t realize it was connected to the Carmichael family. What happened to Elizabeth and the company?”
“Ward Pharma did all right. Baxter paid some hefty fines, but he could afford it—especially since they found Elizabeth was largely to blame, and she was fired. There was a plea bargain. Somehow she avoided jail time. It pays to be rich. But she faced her own punishment. According to the Beauport gossip mill, she had a mental breakdown from all the stress. She ended up hospitalized. I’m not sure what happened to her after that.
I think she took off on Conrad and her father. Pretty sad story overall.”
Holly felt her phone vibrate. Was it Jade finally texting back?
She looked—it wasn’t Jade. It was Ethan.
Hope you’re feeling better. And I have some explaining to do. Can we talk?
Usually, Holly’s heart would skip a beat at a message from Ethan. But right now, all she felt was a deep, pervasive sense of dread.