Chapter 74 2025
“Damn rabbit’s foot,” the sheriff mutters, and Poppy looks up.
The name fits, and it’s not lost on him the irony that it was Ivy, Vivien Kendall’s daughter, who came up with it.
“Poppy seeds are black,” she’d told Grace. “And she’s very poppy.”
Grace loved it, and it stuck, and now, each time the sheriff uses it, he feels that much worse for his role in all this.
Though it’s not entirely his fault. The woman is a conniving genius and planned this.
From the moment the murder happened, she foresaw the future and orchestrated the outcome she wanted, and like a master chess player, she’s been three steps ahead of him from the start.
After her arrest, he got a search warrant for her house.
In the safe, he found the Glock, and beside it was a damn rabbit’s foot.
The DA seized on the discovery. Between the evidence they already had and now having one of the victim’s possessions locked in her safe beside the potential murder weapon, the case had turned into a slam dunk.
“The woman wouldn’t kill an ant,” he says to himself out loud, and Poppy lifts her head and tilts it as if truly interested. “Literally. I watched her. She wouldn’t kill an ant.”
He runs his hand roughly through his hair, racking his brain for the umpteenth time to figure out a way to fix things.
The plea bargain is being filed today, and an innocent woman .
. . well, not entirely innocent. After all, she did destroy evidence and conceal a crime.
But a woman innocent of murder is going to be convicted of it.
The DA agreed to reduce the charge to second-degree murder since there was no evidence of premeditation.
They also agreed to a suspended sentence since it’s unlikely she’ll live to her sentencing hearing.
Yet none of that eases his guilt. As Grace said, the woman is a hero, a national treasure.
She deserves to be remembered that way. But now, thanks to him, she’ll die a convicted murderer.
He’s tried more than once to reason with her, to convince her to come clean and set the record straight.
“The record is straight as far as I’m concerned,” she said on his last visit.
They were in Meryl Fairbanks’s living room. He could see how sick she was—her voice barely a rasp and her birthmark painfully pocked and blistered.
“What about your legacy, everything you’ve fought for and everything you’ve done?”
She waved it off like a pesky fly buzzing around her face. “They got it wrong. I was just a girl who wanted to skate.”
She was so much more than that. The sheriff had witnessed it. The world had changed because of her, and most of the reasons why had very little to do with skating.
“But you didn’t do it,” he said in frustration.
Her jaw set, and he saw the fierceness of her conviction in her face and knew he was wasting his breath. She would never betray whoever it was she was protecting.
“Let it go,” she said. “I’m good. Content. I’ve had a good life. My daughter is happy and healthy. Her future is secure. And I’m surrounded by love. Things could be a whole lot worse, and sometimes, even if not ideal, accepting less of a loss is the closest you’re going to get to a win.”
“It’s not my job to negotiate for less of a loss,” he shot back. “My job is to figure out who actually murdered the reverend, and we both know that wasn’t you.”