Chapter Thirty #2
“I don’t want Yvette. The affair was a mistake. I didn’t love her. Not really. I was going to end it…” cried Joel.
“You rat!” yelled Yvette.
“I loved my wife,” said Joel. He rested his face in his hands, shaking.
“You said you loved me,” cried Yvette, tears rolling down her cheeks. “You killed my sister and you never loved me?”
“The only problem with all of that is Joel didn’t kill Jessica,” I said. It was all becoming clear to me now.
“So now Joel gets everything?” hissed Yvette from behind her tears. “He still gets everything? He gets the farm and her life insurance and…” She sobbed harder.
“Actually, no. Joel won’t get a thing,” I said. “Jessica changed her will and she changed the beneficiary of her life insurance. Joel doesn’t stand to inherit anything.”
“What?” spat Joel, looking up.
“It’s all going to me?” sniffed Yvette. She stared at me with red eyes. “Really? All of it? Jessica left me the farm?!”
I shook my head. “No, you don’t get anything either.”
“Are you kidding me?” yelled Yvette. She lunged for me. I stepped back and Solomon moved into her path, blocking her.
“Then who gets the farm?” asked Joel.
I held up a hand. “We’ll get to that, but first, do none of you actually care that Jessica thought you were trying to kill her? Are you really that selfish?”
“Of course not! I loved my wife. I feel terrible. I only wish…” started Joel.
“That’s a lot of ‘I’ statements,” I cut in.
“I loved my sister,” sniffed Yvette.
“Why exactly are we out here?” asked Garrett. “I need to know who to arrest… and what I’m arresting them for because right now, I’m not certain what the crime is beyond kidnapping.”
“The reason we’re here is because of those two horses in the barn and several more back at the farm. Not only are they stolen but they’re the key to everything,” I said. “The Feds gave me the idea.”
“You’re welcome,” said Maddox, standing a little straighter and looking pleased.
“They thought Harvey was tied to a gambling ring but that wasn’t quite the case.
Harvey had other ideas.” I gazed at Harvey.
He stood stock still since he’d been taken into custody, his face stony, his jaw stiff.
Even now, he didn’t move a muscle. I would have been impressed by his poker face, if I didn’t know better.
Solomon nodded. “I got confirmation on the way here. Five of the IDs you sent us returned missing and stolen horses, including the racehorse, Vengeance Star.”
“I figured it out,” said Yvette quickly. “There never was any rehab yard and all the secrecy around the yard was fishy. I was checking the horses’ microchips when they kidnapped me. They brought me here to kill me so I wouldn’t tell.”
“Harvey was already spooked and had decided to move the horses to somewhere he could keep an eye on them from a short distance. If it got too problematic, he planned to kill the horses. No one would have ever found them,” I continued.
“He knew Jessica was onto something, and he figured it was his enterprise. After all, he’d made a deal with Joel to pay him off to look the other way.
That was how Joel was returning the money he embezzled.
“All they had to do was make sure Jessica didn’t figure out what was going on right under her nose and put a stop to it and all the money flowing in.
Jessica already knew about the affair and she was putting together the embezzling but she had no idea about the real reason behind the so-called rehab yard.
Yvette did and she’d been asking a lot of questions.
” I paused to take in a breath before I delivered my final punch.
Yvette gasped as all eyes turned to Harvey.
“This is bunk and nonsense,” he said, laughing nastily. “You can’t prove any of it.”
“I think I can. You see that’s what it looked like.
Jessica was right. Someone was trying to kill someone.
She thought it was her. After all, she owned the farm and she didn’t have a pre-nup.
Her husband and sister were having an affair and if it came out, not only would they lose their jobs, but their homes too.
She must have figured neither of you wanted to walk away with nothing.
With her out of the way, you both could have everything she’d ever worked for.
Except you really weren’t trying to kill her. ”
“I keep telling you that!” said Joel. “I never did those things to her.”
“You did get rid of the back protector though,” I said.
“What?”
“Wait.” Yvette was shaking. “The broken back protector? I got rid of it. It was mine. I took it from Jessica’s house.”
“I see,” I said, nodding. “Some of the incidents Jessica told me about were never directed at her, not deliberately. The citrus in the cereal? Probably accidental. The brakes failing could have been caused by rats.”
“What?” Yvette shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. “What are you saying?”
“The back protector? It was Yvette’s. She’d given it to Jessica to wear, not realizing it was sabotaged.
The nasty note was probably from Harvey but maybe Jessica found it, not Yvette.
The icy path was shared by Jessica and Yvette.
The loosened girth… Yvette had been holding the horse while Jessica went to the bathroom.
It would be easy to think Yvette intended to ride. ”
“You two did that to me?” Yvette turned on Joel again.
“No, no, I…” Joel’s pleading eyes landed on me. “It wasn’t me, I swear.”
“And Jessica wasn’t driving her own car that terrible day.
She was driving Yvette’s. Her tire was flat, just another malicious thing, she figured, so she took Yvette’s car, even though Yvette needed it to go to the dump.
It was stuffed with laurel leaves to take for recycling, wasn’t it?
All the farm’s laurel hedging had been cut back and there was an overabundance of them.
We saw the bonfire for the other garden debris but did they burn the laurel, or was it in the big bags for removal?
I saw leaves in the back of the car after the accident but the car was empty, and I saw the same leaves when we went back to find Jessica’s phone.
I think we’ll find someone got rid of them after the crash. ”
“No, I didn’t, I…” mumbled Joel.
“No, not you,” I said, waving at him to be quiet. “Stop making this all about you. It was you, Harvey. You wanted to kill Yvette. You just got the wrong sister.”
Joel turned on Harvey. “You killed Jessica?”
“What?” Yvette gasped.
“I killed her with leaves?” scoffed Harvey. “This is ludicrous.”
“You knew laurel leaves create toxic fumes after they’re cut and they’d been in the car probably for a few days, letting off poisonous vapor.”
“Harvey asked me to take bags of leaves to the dump. He said it was too much to burn,” gasped Yvette. “He offered to pack my car himself if I could run them over there, except I was giving extra lessons to clients and I didn’t have time. I left them there.”
“Jessica had been driving around with them in the car all morning. She had a headache at her lawyer’s office and was feeling tired so she got a coffee before heading home but, on the way, the fumes caused her to lose consciousness and her car went off the road where it crashed into a tree.
The airbag didn’t deploy because you disabled it,” I said, loud enough for everyone to hear as I pointed at Harvey.
I had a hunch and I wanted to run with it.
“You were tracking her. You must have thought Yvette had taken the car and you wanted to be certain she crashed. You knew when the car stopped and I think you went to remove the leaves from the car so no one would ever know what you did, but you weren’t quite as good at clean-up as you thought.
You left a few behind, probably in your surprise at finding Jessica at the wheel.
You wanted to remove the tracker too, but you couldn’t find it.
It was knocked off the car when it crashed. ”
“You should try writing fiction for a living,” Harvey said, his features curling into a snarl.
“We found the tracker,” I said, then I took another leap. “We can connect it to you.”
Joel gaped in disbelief. “You really did kill Jessica”
“Of course not. This is pure trash talk from some idiot who took advantage of Jessica’s paranoia to get herself hired,” sneered Harvey.
“You see, while Jessica was distracted figuring out everything her nearest loved ones were up to, Yvette had figured out what Harvey was doing,” I continued, “and that put her in his crosshairs.”
“You sabotaged the ride we took,” snarled Yvette.
“I swapped with Lexi and she got the horse meant for me. When I took off the saddle, there was a burr underneath it. That explained why the horse was so reactive and Lexi had to cling on. I wasn’t wearing any protective gear. You thought the horse would throw me!”
“It was only a matter of time before Harvey succeeded,” I said.
“This is so utterly ludicrous…” Harvey scoffed.
“But when he found Yvette in the rehab yard, he had to speed up his timeline. Move the horses, kill Yvette, and kill us too. Even better, have Joel do it for him.”
“I would never!” protested Joel. “I keep telling you that. You said it yourself. It was all Harvey!”
“It doesn’t matter whether you did or didn’t kill us, I bet Harvey was going to make it look like you did.
One of them would kill us, then it would be pinned on you as a murder-suicide.
I’m sure Harvey could plant something to implicate you, beyond ensuring your prints were on the gun.
Perhaps you were grief-stricken at Jessica’s death and went crazy?
The horses would disappear and Harvey would collect the reward money and move on, completely free.
None of us,” I finished to my rapt audience, “none of us were supposed to get out of here alive tonight.”
“I’ve heard enough,” said Garrett. “Harvey Greenwood, you’re under arrest. So are you two. Cuff ‘em!”