Chapter 16
CHAPTER 16
“Tell me you’re not serious.” Vero looked like she might be sick in the back of my minivan the next morning. It was the only place I could think of where we could talk privately. As soon as Vero had come down to the kitchen searching for coffee, I had shoved her arms in her coat and a travel thermos in her hands and hauled her out to the garage with me. Then I’d stuffed us both inside the back of my minivan, locking us in where no one could hear us.
“I am telling you, I saw the exact same book in Penny Dupree’s house.”
“I was talking about you having sex in Mrs. Haggerty’s.”
“Says the woman who still has her own bed! Can we please focus on what’s important here? Penny had that same book of old mysteries in her house.”
“So?”
“So the woman owns a library of pristine contemporary romance novels. She keeps them in a glass-enclosed case in her living room, so why is there a ratty old collection of Agatha Christie murder mysteries hidden in her closet? And why does Mrs. Haggerty have the same exact book in her nightstand?”
I hadn’t mentioned a word of it to Nick last night. I couldn’t, not without revealing how I knew about Penny’s book. But it might be possible to convince him that Mrs. Haggerty and Mrs. Dupree had both lied when they’d claimed they didn’t know each other. “All I need is some thread of evidence connecting the two of them,” I told Vero. “I just can’t figure out how the book fits into the case.”
“Maybe you need to stop thinking about this as a case and start thinking about it like a story. Maybe it’ll make more sense to you that way.”
“What do you mean?”
She turned sideways on the bench seat to face me. “You’ve got all these little random plot threads, right? All you have to do is figure out how those plot threads connect. Ask yourself, what do Mrs. Haggerty and Penny Dupree have in common with that book? Figure it out, and that’s the solution to your mystery. Anything else is just a red herring. What else did you find?”
“Just a letter from her late husband and a stack of her old neighborhood watch diaries. They were in an evidence box the police left in her house. They must have already searched them all.” Vero’s eyes went wide. “Not the most recent one,” I assured her before she could ask.
“You think Tran has it?”
“God, I hope not.”
We both jumped at a loud knock on the window. I craned my head above the captain’s chairs to see my sister’s face pressed up against the glass. She cupped her hands around her eyes, squinting to see through the tinting. “What the hell are you two doing in there?”
I reached between the seats and unlocked the door. Georgia slid it open and frowned at us.
“The car has to be running for a suicide pact to work, you know.”
“We’re hiding from Mrs. Haggerty,” I explained.
“Don’t bother,” Georgia said, climbing in with us. She knelt on Delia’s booster seat, leaning over the back of the chair to see us. “Mrs. Haggerty was the one who told me you were out here.”
“How’d she know we were out here?” Vero asked.
“She said she heard you screaming that it was cold in the garage and why the hell was Finn making you sit in the van in your pajamas.”
“Right, that was probably it.”
“We might as well not all freeze to death,” I said. “Let’s go back inside and I’ll make everyone some breakfast.”
Georgia stopped me before I could wedge myself out of the bench seat.
“You might want to stay put for a minute. I’ve got some news, and it’s probably better if I tell you out here.”
I sank back onto the bench, my stomach growing a little queasy at the look on her face.
“Joey called Nick this morning. Nick called me. He thought I should be the one to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“Steven’s bond hearing was this morning. The judge decided to hold him.”
Julian had told me to expect that much. “Is that all?”
“Also, some true-crime podcast did a whole episode about Steven last night. They talked up his involvement with Dupree’s wife, then rehashed the night we found the dead mafia guys on Steven’s farm. They’re spinning some serial-killer angle out of it. Apparently, the episode got a lot of attention. Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS… they all had reporters sniffing around the station this morning, wanting to know if the sod-farm case was being reopened in light of new evidence. Brendan Haggerty’s campaign manager got word of it and called the station. He’s putting pressure on Tran to nail Steven for this, probably to get the Haggertys out of the spotlight before the election this fall.”
I threw up my hands. “Great. Anything else?”
“Yeah, Mrs. Haggerty says you’re out of toaster waffles. And your literary agent just left.”
I sat up. “Sylvia was here? What did she want?”
“I don’t know. She was talking to Mrs. Haggerty when I got here. She said something about going to the station to look for Nick.”
“Oh, boy,” Vero said.
“Jesus, Georgia! You couldn’t have led with that?!” I bolted out of the back of the van and raced into the house, where Mrs. Haggerty’s School for Finlay Donovan’s Wayward Children was already in full swing. Delia was hunched over the table, pencil in hand, as she meticulously copied the alphabet onto a sheet of hand-lined paper while Zach stood naked in the corner, screaming bloody murder, his clothes scattered over the floor and snot pouring from his nose.
“I. DO. SCHOOL. TOOOOOOOO!!!!” he shouted at Mrs. Haggerty’s back as she rewarded Delia’s progress with a sticker.
“Only boys who use the toilet and keep their pants on go to school.” Mrs. Haggerty turned to me. “We’re out of toaster waffles. I’ve made you a list to take to the store.”
Zach demanded a sticker at the top of his lungs. He was past the point of no return, and there was no sense in trying to calm him. I raised my voice to speak over him.
“I can’t go to the store right now,” I said, pulling on my sneakers and coat. “Maybe Vero can take you.”
“But we’re in the middle of arithmetic and toilet training.”
“And we all see how well that’s going,” Vero said over Zach’s screams.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Haggerty, but I have an emergency I need to handle right now. I’ll take you shopping when I get home.” I kissed each of the kids on their heads in case Nick murdered me and I never got to see them again. “Vero’s in charge,” I told them.
Delia nodded. Zach threw himself on the floor and screamed louder.
Mrs. Haggerty stood in my way as I gathered my purse and keys. “My book club meeting is this evening,” she said. “I’ll need a ride. Cameron was supposed to drive me, but he’s taken my vehicle to the repair shop.”
I fought the urge to offer to drive her off a cliff. But maybe this was serendipitous. I could take Mrs. Haggerty to her book club meeting and Vero could stay behind with the kids and search the house for that missing neighborhood watch diary. If she could find it, that would solve at least one of my problems.
I pasted on a smile as I circumnavigated Mrs. Haggerty. “I’m sure I’ll be back in plenty of time to take you. What book are you all discussing?” Maybe I could cram the CliffsNotes version before the meeting.
“We’re not,” she said bluntly.
Vero raised an eyebrow. “You’re not discussing a book at book club?”
“On Saturdays, we discuss. On Tuesdays, we vote.”
“Vote on what?” Vero asked.
“On the next book, of course! If you let one person choose, you’ll be lucky if anyone else bothers to read it. You end up sitting in an empty room with the host, with nothing to do but complain about your husbands and gossip about the neighbors. Regardless, we’re not accepting new members, so there’s no point in either of you coming. You can wait in the car.”
I decided not to point out the note her friend had left in my mailbox the other night about joining her club. Apparently, Mrs. Haggerty didn’t want an author who writes those kinds of books cramping her style.
“Fine. I’ll drive you to your meeting, and I’ll wait in the car. We’ll stop for groceries on the way home.”
And as soon as I got her out of the house, the hunt for her diary was on.