3. June #2
“I never had an affair with Alvin Frost,” Victoria told her, holding June’s eyes steadily.
“I understand why everyone thought so. But Alvin and I ended long before I married Tom.” Her voice was level.
“What nobody in Sandpiper Shores ever knew, because nobody there ever asked me a direct question in their life, was that Alvin was already in love with Cynthia by the time we graduated high school. He had been for years.” Something shifted in her expression.
“Alvin and Cynthia were very much in love, right up until the day she died. It destroyed him.”
“Then who were you dating before Tom? If it wasn’t Alvin?” June frowned.
Victoria looked at her steadily. “His best friend.”
“Tony Vincent?” June’s brows shot up.
“Tony wasn’t a bad person,” Victoria replied. “He was seventeen years old, and he was forced into a situation he never asked for, and he never got out of it.” Her jaw tightened. “That was my father’s doing.”
“How?” June asked.
“My father caught us together one evening,” Victoria told her. “I’d taken his car without asking. Not just any car. This vintage muscle car he’d recently acquired.” She paused, and the pause was deliberate.
“What does that mean exactly? ‘Acquired.’” June asked.
“It means my father bought it from a connection of his,” Victoria replied.
“A connection who was considerably less than legitimate, as Tony figured out very quickly. Tony had already been working in his family’s auto repair shop for years.
He loved restoring old cars. Tony knew exactly what he was looking at when he saw that car.
” Her voice dropped. “And my father knew Tony knew exactly where the car had come from.”
“Your father was dealing in stolen cars,” June said slowly.
“My father was dealing in a great many things,” Victoria replied, and the venom in it was real and old and entirely unperformed.
“He told Tony that unless Tony turned his family’s repair shop into a full chop shop operation, he’d turn Tony in for stealing the muscle car.
Tony had already been in trouble multiple times for joyriding.
He wouldn’t have survived another charge.
” Victoria’s eyes were steady on June’s.
“So Tony did what my father told him to do. For years. My father kept him doing it with the threat of exposure every single time Tony tried to walk away.”
June sat very still.
She thought about Harvey. About Harvey losing his father to prison at an early age.
About Harvey spending his adult life building something in Sandpiper Shores and showing up at every community event with the careful warmth of someone who’d decided that the town was going to be his family since he didn’t have one of his own.
“Your father didn’t just ruin your life or Tony’s,” June said quietly. “He ruined Harvey’s, too.”
“Harvey is like another son to me,” Victoria replied, and the warmth that moved across her face when she said it was the first entirely unguarded thing June had seen from her.
“I made sure Harvey and Clive grew up as close as brothers. I made sure he was included in everything. I paid for his education quietly, through a fund Tom thought was a community scholarship.” Her expression hardened.
“His mother was one of my father’s people.
She didn’t intend to get pregnant. I had to push her to keep Harvey because I knew what a child would mean to Tony.
” She lifted her chin. “When she got caught for her own crimes and went to prison, I made sure Harvey never knew the real reason she was gone.”
“Harvey thinks she just left him,” June said.
“It’s better that he thinks that,” Victoria replied. “What she was is not something Harvey needs to carry.”
Alfred appeared in the doorway with a tray.
He’d found the bowls for the Chinese food and heated everything.
Alfred set the tray down on the coffee table and handed each of them a bowl and a fork.
He set a coffee mug on the side table beside each of them before taking his own bowl and settling into the other armchair.
“I’m still not entirely used to this,” Alfred admitted, glancing at Victoria with a small smile. “Sitting and eating together like this.”
“You and Mrs. Clark ate lunch with me nearly every day,” Victoria reminded him. She looked at June. “Alfred and Mrs. Clark became my friends. My father couldn’t get to them. They knew everything Sienna got up to, so she couldn’t fool them the way she fooled everyone else.”
“She didn’t fool Clive either,” Alfred added. “He’s known for years who his sister really is.”
June set her fork down. “You and Sienna didn’t get along.”
“I tried,” Victoria replied. “I genuinely tried with her from the beginning. But the moment my grandmother came to stay with us and started filling Sienna’s head with stories about my father and grandfather, I lost her.
” She looked at her bowl. “My grandmother was proud of what they were. She thought it was glamorous. She used to tell Sienna bedtime stories about the heists, the places they’d been, the things they’d taken.
” Victoria’s voice was flat. “Sienna was eight years old.”
“She became a completely different child from that point,” Alfred confirmed. “In front of people, Sienna always made it look as though Victoria was the difficult one. Behind closed doors, it was entirely the other way around.”
“She turned Tom against me,” Victoria continued. “Slowly. Carefully. Over the years.” She looked at June directly. “Tom is a good man. He believed what he saw. What he saw was what Sienna showed him.”
“You warned Lucy away from Tom,” June recalled. “You were not very nice about it, as I was there.”
“I was warning Lucy for her own sake,” Victoria replied.
“Sienna is extraordinarily possessive of her father. Lucy is a wonderful woman. She didn’t need to walk into that without knowing what she was walking into.
” She paused. “I sent that letter to Lucy and to you. I needed Lucy to understand the situation, and I needed to speak to you about something else entirely.” She glanced at Alfred briefly.
“Years ago, I asked Shaun to keep something safe for me. A journal filled with evidence of what my father and grandfather really were. I needed it somewhere, Sienna couldn’t find it. ”
“Gilbert Fry came to Sandpiper Shores because of Victoria,” Alfred told June, leaning forward.
“They were working together, quietly. Gilbert had footage and documentation he needed hidden. He was frightened. He’d been followed and warned off.
” Alfred’s voice was careful. “He gave everything he had to Shaun to store safely.”
“We thought initially that Alvin might have been involved in Cynthia’s death,” Victoria added.
“He’d been quietly selling off Cynthia’s family heirlooms and replacing them with copies.
But it wasn’t Alvin.” She set her bowl down.
“Alvin loved Cynthia. He was trying to pay off gambling debts without her knowing. He made terrible choices, but he didn’t hurt her.
Nor did he sell the real crystal slippers. ”
June was quiet for a moment, turning everything over in her mind.
“You know,” she said carefully, “that everything you’ve just told me runs completely counter to the case that’s been built against you.”
“I know,” Victoria replied.
“The journals found in your office. The blueprints. The footage of Alfred loading the safe.” June looked at her steadily. “The evidence is substantial, Victoria.”
“It was planted,” Victoria replied. “That panel in my office was for my jewels and items left to me by my mother. Things she’d given me that my father never knew she had.
” She held June’s gaze. “Right before we left, I asked Mrs. Clark to go check if anything was left in there. She was taking so long, Alfred went to go find her, she was gone, and the panel had been secured. The code changed.”
“I got a message a few minutes later telling me to leave,” Alfred continued. “It was from Mrs. Clark. She said to get out of the house now, someone had planted things in there that had framed Victoria for some bad crimes.”
The mention of Mrs. Clark hit June hard as she watched the two of them, wondering if they had killed Mrs. Clark.
“Where was Mrs. Clark?” June asked.
“She told me that she needed to check something and would find us in Miami,” Alfred replied.
That was a bit alarming for June. Her eyes landed on Victoria’s hands. She looked at the scratches across the backs of them, thin and linear, and at the matching marks on Alfred’s hands that she’d registered on the doorstep.
“Those scratches,” June said. “Both of you have them.”
Victoria and Alfred looked at each other.
“Sienna’s cat,” they said together.
“That animal is not a normal cat,” Alfred told June, with the conviction of someone who’d been sitting on this information for some time. “It attacks on command. I’ve watched Sienna do it. A specific sound she makes with her tongue, and that animal goes for whoever she’s looking at.”
“Sienna set her cat on both of you?” June stared at them.
“Because she found my burner phone with the messages on it,” Victoria replied. She looked at her hands. “Sienna was furious when she found out who the messages were from.”
Victoria and Alfred exchanged a look, and she gave Alfred a nod; he gave her a small smile before turning back to June.
“Victoria uses it to speak to Tony,” Alfred told June, his voice gentling. “He calls from prison a few times a week.”
“You’re still in touch with Tony Vincent?” June’s eyes were wide.
“Yes.” Victoria looked at June, nodding.
“Wait…” Something dawned on June at the mention of a burner phone, and a chill ran up her spine. “It was you!” Her expression dropped. “You sent the pink envelope letter to Lucy and me.”
“Yes,” Victoria confirmed. “The phone number on the letter I sent you and Lucy was that burner phone.”