Chapter 23
CHAPTER 23
There was a flurry of panic as Nick’s headlights approached. Viola issued quiet orders. Knives were hidden, stuffed in pockets, or tossed into the trees. Sally scurried into the cabin to hide. Lola, Birdie, Kathy, and Gita sat on the porch steps, blocking the entry. Mrs. Haggerty stood beside Vero and me at the foot of the stairs. Viola positioned herself like a sentry in front of us.
A car door shut. Footsteps crunched cautiously along the path.
Viola cocked her rifle and stared down the barrel. “You’re trespassing on private property,” she called out as Nick came into view. “Announce yourself if you don’t want to be shot.”
Nick paused. He raised one hand and used the other to hold up his identification. His badge glinted in the moonlight. “I’m Detective Nicholas Anthony,” he called out. “Fairfax County Police. I’m looking for two women, possibly in distress. I have reason to believe they might be on this property.”
“Is anyone else with you?” Viola asked.
“No, ma’am.”
“Keep your hands and ID where I can see them.” She kept her gun trained on him as he slowly approached the cabin.
She gave his badge a performative glance before lowering her rifle. “I apologize, Detective. I don’t get many visitors out here, especially at this time of night. My friends and I were enjoying our retreat, and we heard your car come up the driveway. Women have to be careful. I’m sure a man in your position understands. I hope you’ll forgive our hostile greeting.”
Nick nodded once, his posture tense and wary, his hand hovering close to his side as he put away his ID. His eyes made a quick pass over Vero and me. “You two okay?”
“We’re fine,” I said, thankful for the dark as I glanced at Mrs. Haggerty. “It was all a big misunderstanding.”
Nick’s eyes narrowed on us. “A misunderstanding?”
I cleared my throat. “More of an accident, really.” It was, wasn’t it? How else could I explain any of this without dumping more lies on the heaping pile that already existed between me and Nick? He stared at me, waiting for an answer. “You see, Vero and I were very concerned about Mrs. Haggerty,” I explained. “We heard her leave the house after dark, and she isn’t supposed to be driving—”
“Because she’s a menace to the public,” Vero said through her teeth.
“If we had known Mrs. Haggerty wanted to join her friends at their book club retreat so badly, we would have offered to drive her. But she left without telling anyone where she was going or who she was meeting here. So we followed her.” That was all true, if not entirely complete.
“We thought maybe she was having one of those senior moments,” Vero said flippantly. “You know, like wandering off and not remembering who she is or where she lives. I, for one, would have been satisfied to pretend she didn’t exist and let her shrivel up and die like the big, fat pimple on my ass that she is, but Finlay was determined to go after her, just to make sure she wasn’t getting into any trouble. Right, Finn?”
“In a manner of speaking.” I was finding it hard to hold Nick’s gaze. He wasn’t buying a word of this. Any trust I had earned with that phone call, asking for his help, was slipping like cremains through my fingers.
“If you both followed her, why wasn’t Vero with you when you called me? You said she was in danger.”
Vero threw up her hands. “That was totally my fault. See, Mrs. Haggerty stopped to pick up a friend on the way here. They were all following each other,” she explained, “and while they were stopped—”
“We were snooping,” I admitted. Nick’s eyes cut to me. “Vero was curious about what was in the refrigeration truck, and she accidentally locked herself in it. Mrs. Haggerty’s friends started driving away before I could stop them. I was terrified Vero was going to freeze to death. But she’s fine. See? We’re all fine.” I winced, remembering Sally’s husband.
“What were you looking for?” Nick asked in his cool cop voice.
Vero’s eyebrows shot up. “Who, me?”
“You said you were worried about Mrs. Haggerty. But that truck isn’t hers.” All of Nick’s focus shifted to me. “What were you looking for in the truck, Finlay?” A chill tightened my skin, every one of his questions peeling back a layer, leaving me more exposed. He was about to catch me in a lie and he knew it in that way detectives always seem to know that something isn’t what it seems.
The cabin door creaked open behind me. “They were looking for me,” a voice said.
We all turned to stare at the figure on the porch. In the dim light from the window, I could just make out her short bob and the soft lines of her long sweater. Nick stiffened as Penny Dupree stepped out into the moonlight.
Mrs. Haggerty gasped. The others shot to their feet.
The bathroom. Penny must have been hiding in the bathroom the entire time we’d been here. Just as she had at Birdie’s house, during the last book club meeting. When I’d tried to flush the brownies in the toilet, the downstairs bathroom had been occupied. It all made sense now, why Mrs. Haggerty never wanted me to join her club. Why Viola met us on the porch when I’d come to her house. Why Birdie had only cracked the door when I’d knocked, forcing me to barge my way into her home.
They’d been hiding Penny.
Penny had been a member of their book club all along, in cahoots with all of them. And now that Nick knew she had lied, what would these women do to us?
His eyes darted over her as she descended the stairs, as if he was trying to reconcile this modestly dressed, fresh-faced woman with the glamorous blonde he’d met five days ago.
She tucked back a lock of her chestnut hair and hugged her cardigan closed over her chest. “I don’t know why you look so surprised, Detective. Finlay’s been telling everyone who will listen that she suspected I was lying about her ex-husband. She’s a damn sharp and determined young woman. I’m guessing she was looking for proof in that truck because no one was willing to believe her.” She shook a reproving finger at him. I reached for Vero’s hand as Viola tightened her grip on the gun. The women all tensed. Time stood still, suspended on a fulcrum as we waited for Penny to seal his fate.
Her sigh was heavy with remorse when she finally spoke. “Now that we’re all clear on why we’re here, would you please call Detective Tran and ask him to meet me at the station? I’m ready to offer him my full confession for the murder of my husband, Gilford Dupree.”
The women in the book club cried out.
Mrs. Haggerty reached for her. “No, Penny! You mustn’t!”
Penny took Mrs. Haggerty’s frail hands in her own. “A man has been murdered, Maggie. The police won’t stop looking until they identify the person who killed Gilford. I am that person. I murdered my husband, no one else. And once I come forward, that investigation will close and no one else has to suffer.” Penny cast a meaningful look at her friends. The subtext was clear. As far as the police were concerned, there had only been one murder. Only one body.
One confession would put the investigation to rest.
She squeezed Mrs. Haggerty’s hand. Mrs. Haggerty squeezed back.
Mrs. Haggerty sighed and turned to Nick. “I suppose I’m ready to confess, too.” The women all gasped, including Penny. A few of them began to cry as Mrs. Haggerty confessed, “I was there the night Penny killed Gilford. I helped her cover up her crime, and I concealed the truth from the police. I have a responsibility in this, too. If Penny is willing to tell her story, then so am I.”
“I’m listening,” Nick said with an encouraging nod to both of them.
Penny drew a shuddering breath as she prepared to explain. “I fantasized about it all the time,” she began. “I felt so trapped. I had never been so relieved as I was on the days when Gilford would pack up his bag after one of our fights and leave for our vacation home in Florida. I didn’t care what he was doing there, only that he was gone and I could finally breathe. He always returned in a better mood, so apologetic, bringing me flowers and gifts, and I would have to put on a smiling face and pretend I was happy he was home.
“I had met Maggie at the library that spring. I was so glad to have a friend—Gilford never let me have any, and it was a relief to finally have someone to talk to—someone he didn’t know about. I was so careful to keep our friendship a secret because I was terrified he wouldn’t let me talk to her anymore if he knew. Things at home had gotten so bad, I cried to Maggie about it all that summer, imagining all the ways I could make my problems with Gilford disappear. To make him disappear. But I couldn’t do it alone, and Maggie said she couldn’t go through with it. It was too risky, she’d said. Too frightening. I was so desperate, I didn’t care. My life with Gilford felt like a far worse punishment than the consequences of killing him, but Maggie was convinced we would both be caught, and I was more worried for her than for myself.” Penny and Mrs. Haggerty exchanged a tearful smile. “The next time Gilford left for Florida, Maggie met me at the park. We went for a long walk, and I told her I couldn’t live one more minute trapped in his house, walking on eggshells, waiting for him to snap. It was him or me, I told her. I had to do something.
“Maggie convinced me to run. To pack up and leave town while Gilford was gone. She said I should only take what I needed for a few days, that she would send me enough money to deal with the rest later. I packed a single suitcase. I was just getting ready to leave when Gilford came home and surprised me. He saw my hatch open in the garage with the suitcase inside it and he exploded. He demanded I unpack my car but I refused, so he reached inside to unpack it for me. I don’t know what happened—I guess it was my turn to snap,” Penny said through an anxious laugh and a sniffle. One of the women pulled a tissue from her pocket and passed it to Penny. She blew her nose before resuming her confession.
“While Gilford was turned away from me, I grabbed the garden shovel from its hook on the wall, and I struck him across the back of his head with it.”
Nick listened, silent, every ounce of his focus on Penny, as if he was committing her confession to memory.
“Gilford fell over into the back of my car. His legs were just hanging out of the hatch. When he didn’t move, I panicked. The only person I could think to ask for help was Maggie. I knew if I could just get to her house, she would know what to do. I lifted his feet and stuffed the rest of him inside the car. Next thing I knew, I was parked in Maggie’s driveway. She told me her landscaper had just finished installing her new rose garden. She said the dirt was soft and the sod around it had only been there a few days. That it would be easy to pull up. We backed my vehicle into her garage, snuck Gilford through the back door into her garden, and had him in the ground just before sunup.”
“Owen slept through the whole thing,” Mrs. Haggerty recalled with a soft but bitter laugh. “He was a drinker. Had been for years. He had three glasses of scotch after dinner every night and passed out by ten like clockwork. When Penny and I were finished in the garden, I cleaned us both up, washed the shovels, and told her to drive straight to her vacation home in Florida. I told her to wait a full day after she got there before calling the police.
“When Owen woke up the next morning, I told him I needed to run some errands. I drove to the park near Penny’s neighborhood, walked the rest of the way to her house, and snuck in through the back door. Then I took Gilford’s keys and his phone and left the house in his fancy coupe, right around the same time he usually departed for work in the morning, to keep the neighbors from suspecting anything. I left his car at the park and took my own car home. I only knew Penny had made it to Florida when I saw that Gilford had been reported missing on the TV news.”
“You didn’t talk to her?” Nick asked.
Mrs. Haggerty shook her head. “Penny and I agreed we would only communicate by hand-delivered letters from then on out, and we would only meet when absolutely necessary.”
“It was weeks before we spoke to each other,” Penny said. “I thought it would be safer for Maggie if the police never figured out we knew each other. If Finlay hadn’t been so determined to prove her ex-husband was innocent, I’m not sure anyone would have ever known.”
“Now that we’ve confessed all our secrets, our only choice is to turn ourselves in.” Mrs. Haggerty’s eyes made a stern pass over their group, delivering an unspoken message to each of them. This was not up for a vote. Penny and Mrs. Haggerty had made their decision.
“But what will happen to you?” Gita asked them.
Penny and Mrs. Haggerty deferred to Viola. Considering her line of work, she was probably the only member of the book club who was capable of answering.
She frowned as she thought for a moment. “If Penny turns herself in and offers a full confession, she stands a much better chance of securing a plea deal. The prosecutor might consider a lesser charge that carries a shorter sentence. And given Mrs. Haggerty’s age and limited involvement in the crime, I don’t think the judge would expect her to serve for very long. Maybe six months in a minimum-security prison.” Viola looked to Nick for confirmation.
He nodded, carefully wording his reply. “Assuming they can prove to the court she’s not a danger to anyone.”
Mrs. Haggerty frowned. “Do they have video games in those fancy white-collar joints?”
Nick almost cracked a smile. “I’m sure we can work something out.”
“Then let’s get this shit show on the road,” she said. “The rest of you ladies, clean up this mess and get on home.” She handed Vero the keys to The Eggplant. “I’d be grateful if one of you would deliver my car to Cameron’s house. Tell him he can take care of it for me while I’m gone.” Nick waited while Mrs. Haggerty and Penny exchanged tearful goodbyes with each of their friends. Then, arm in arm, the two women started down the footpath to the cars.
Vero followed them.
Nick took my hand and held me close to his side as we walked. “You’re not off the hook yet. I’m assuming we’re going to talk about this tonight when we…” He paused beside the porch. I turned to see him staring down at the moonlit ground beside it. He frowned at the track Robert’s body had made through the pine needles and dead leaves.
Vero, Penny, and Mrs. Haggerty all turned to see why we’d stopped.
We all fell silent as Nick knelt, took his penlight from his pocket, and aimed it under the porch. He swept the beam slowly over the ground. The light sliced through the shadows across an empty stretch of dirt.
Slowly, he stood and clicked off the light. He pulled me close and lowered his voice. “Is there anything about this I need to know?” he asked. Not What aren’t you telling me? Not Are you hiding something? Like every question Nick asked, this one, too, had been carefully worded.
I shook my head. Held his gaze. “There’s nothing you need to know.”
He glanced back at the remaining members of the book club where they stood huddled by the woods. He dipped his head in farewell as he returned his penlight to his pocket. “You ladies drive safely getting home tonight.”
Then he tucked me under his arm and walked me to my van.