4. June
JUNE
“The wording in the letter was kind of… ominous,” June stated.
“I had to keep the note vague in case Sienna intercepted it. It needed to look like I was warning you both away from Tom and Holt.” She paused. “Like I was jealous.”
“Why would Sienna intercept your notes?” June’s frown deepened. “And why did you need a burner?”
So many questions were swimming around her head.
“Sienna is a nosy person,” Victoria sighed. “Ever since she accused me of having an affair with Alvin Frost, I’ve had no privacy from her. She goes through everything I have.”
June sat with everything she’d just heard.
She was not certain. She wanted to be clear about that with herself. She was a long way from certain. But the story had a shape to it that the other story, the clean, neat story that had pointed so directly at Victoria, had always been missing.
“Do you think it was Sienna who attacked Lacey at the burnt-out cabin?” June asked outright. “Because Lacey answered the letter you sent for Lucy and me.”
“I…” Victoria’s eyes filled. She pressed her lips together and gave a small shrug. “I’m not sure.”
“Come now, Victoria,” Alfred’s voice was firm, and his eyes flashed with annoyance and anger as they glanced at June.
“Sienna was driving the car that we think hit Lacey off the road.” His eyes narrowed.
“We didn’t know what she’d hit when she came home in tears begging her mother to say she hit a tree or Clive would kill her. He’d be more lenient on Victoria.”
“Sienna was driving Clive’s car?” June’s eyes widened. “Why would she run Lacey off the road?”
“I don’t know,” Victoria said. “Maybe she thought it was Lucy, but…” she glanced at Alfred.
“We know that she’d just dropped that horrible cat off at the vet,” Alfred told her. “She took it in Clive’s car as she didn’t want the cat in her own car.”
“Oh!” June said, pulling a face.
“She told me when she got home that she’d dropped her evil beast off at the vet, where Dr. Lucy was in attendance. She didn’t know where the real vet was,” Victoria said. “So she knew it was Lacey in that car if it was her who hit the truck.”
“We thought you might have been after Margo as she was supposed to be in the truck at that time,” June told her.
“Margo?” Victoria frowned. “Why would I…” She looked at June. “And it wasn’t me that ran anyone off the road. I took the blame because I thought my daughter was texting and ran into a tree.”
“She really did think that,” Alfred confirmed. “I told Victoria not to do it and make Sienna take some accountability for once.”
“But I wanted peace,” Victoria said with a sigh.
“I didn’t know she’d potentially run a car off the road.
So I called Clive and told him what I’d done.
He was upset but came and got it, then took it to Harvey’s.
He told Harvey his father and Holt that he’d hit a tree, as my license is one more accident away from being suspended. ”
“The next thing we know, Clive is furious as Victoria had his car crushed,” Alfred tells June.
“You didn’t give the express crush order?” June frowned. “It was paid for with your credit card.”
“I didn’t have my son’s car crushed,” Victoria said immediately. “I even had to buy him a new one because he too accused me of doing that, but it wasn’t me.” She glanced at Alfred.
“But Victoria took the blame anyway,” Alfred clarified. “Clive didn’t know it was Sienna who’d actually bumped the car and then probably had it crushed. We didn’t realize why until we heard about Lacey’s accident.”
“That’s when I started to suspect Sienna may have run her off the road,” Victoria’s voice had dropped, and her eyes were filled with pain. “I didn’t think she’d be capable of doing something like that.”
“I saw Sienna outside the old vet office the day Lacey and Margo were inside when it was set alight,” Alfred tells June, making her eyes widen.
“She wasn’t around when the attack happened.
But I saw her talking to a person with the same color sweater that was seen throwing the gas canister, then fleeing. ”
“Excuse me!” June’s eyes were wide now as she looked from Alfred to Victoria.
“Sienna kept a red gas can in her trunk,” Alfred told June. “She was always running out of gas and having to get Clive, her father, Ace, Harvey, me, Mrs. Clark, or her mother to come get her to fill it up.”
“A red gas can?” June repeated stupidly. “We found a few…”
“Sienna kept spares in the pool house,” Alfred said before Victoria could reply. “She’d throw them away if they were used once.”
“And my daughter is the worst when it comes to filling up her car,” Victoria admitted, clenching her jaw. “But that doesn’t mean she started any of those dreadful fires.”
“Victoria…” Alfred said, his eyes filling with compassion. “You saw the rage she was in when her safe went missing.”
“Yes, the safe you and Alfred took,” June pointed out. “Sienna brought the security footage to the police station.”
“I got home after Alfred had taken me and Mrs. Clark to the store,” Victoria told June. “Sienna rushed at us, demanding to know where the safe was. Accusing me of taking it.”
“But you did,” June pointed out.
“No, I didn’t,” Victoria told her. “That night when I went to get my gown from my closet I found the safe with a note stuck on it. The note said, ‘I thought this might interest you. It was what’s in your daughter’s safe.’”
“Did you know what was in her safe?” June asked. “Prior to when it showed up in your closet?”
“No.” Victoria shook her head. “None of us did.”
“It was given to her by Victoria’s grandmother,” Alfred explained.
“Items my grandfather and father treasured as some of their keepsakes from their heists,” Victoria spat. “Whenever I tried to look in it, Sienna would freak out.”
“You do now!” June stated.
“Yes.” Victoria nodded. “And we were appalled.”
“We want to turn it all into Holt,” Alfred told June. “But we need evidence first that Victoria is not the person they’re looking for.”
“What about Judy Vernon? How does she fit into all this?” June asked. “And you never answered me about Sienna being the one who attacked Lacey.”
“I found blood on a tire iron in the trunk of Sienna’s car,” Alfred admitted. “When I went to put a new gas can in it, as she told me she’d had to replace one.”
“What did you do with it?” June asked.
“Luckily, I wear gloves when I work,” Alfred said. “So I just put it back with the gas can, closed the trunk, and left it. Then, when I heard about Lacey, I tried to go back to look in the trunk, but Sienna was just everywhere.”
“Like she knew you were on to her,” June realized.
“Yes,” Victoria said. “After that, we started noticing that everything was starting to point to me.”
“So you think Sienna is behind the fires, and Lacey and Margo being injured?” June clarified.
“I do,” Alfred said. “What’s worse is that she’s trying to frame her own mother for it.”
“She hates me,” Victoria admitted. “She thinks I failed my father and grandfather because of what my grandmother poisoned her mind with. My grandmother hated my mother. Said she was a weak socialite, my father had to marry her for the money and social status. Also, to put him in a position where he and my grandfather could move undetected through the elite.”
“She sounds delightful,” June said, shaking her head.
Then she looked into Victoria’s eyes and sucked in a breath.
There was such pain resonating there for a second that June’s heart squeezed for the woman.
Something she never thought would happen in her lifetime.
“Victoria, I have to ask you this. But do you think Sienna hurt Judy?”
Victoria’s eyes filled with tears and more pain.
“Sienna is vicious,” Alfred replied for Victoria. “She’s even swung a few punches at me. She’s grabbed Victoria by the hair and nearly dragged her down the stairs a few times when she couldn’t get her way.”
“Alfred…” Victoria berated. “Please…”
“No, Victoria. I understand that Sienna is your daughter, but it’s time for the truth,” Alfred said, turning back to June.
“Yes. She’s capable of a lot worse. At school, she was suspended for smashing a girl into a mirror in the girls ‘ locker room. She was kicked out of basketball as she used it as dodgeball when she didn’t get a shot or was unhappy.
Sienna is unhinged, especially when she loses her temper or doesn’t get her own way. ”
“Alfred, please, that’s my daughter you’re talking about,” Victoria hissed, but her eyes were dull.
June looked at Victoria, sitting on her sofa in her old T-shirt, with her unmade hair and scratched hands, and the exhaustion of weeks sitting plainly on her face.
June didn’t say anything yet.
She picked up her coffee, held it in both hands, and let the silence do what it needed to do.
Outside, the Miami afternoon was quiet, bright, and entirely indifferent to everything happening inside her living room.
As the missing pieces of a puzzle that she and Holt had tried to force together finally started making sense.
Her eyes fell on Victoria, a mother who just had to deal with the reality that her daughter might be a criminal that she didn’t know how to protect or stand up for.
How could you? What did you do in a situation like this?
Worse, if what Victoria and Alfred were telling June was true, Sienna had just tried to send her mother to jail and…
“Tell me about Mrs. Clark,” June asked, kicking off her shoes and curling her feet up beneath her.
“She should be joining us any day soon,” Victoria’s voice was softer, with an edge of defeat.
“What was her relationship to Sienna?” June asked.
“Out of everybody, and beside her father, Mrs. Clark was the one Sienna liked the most,” Victoria added. “I’d often joke that Sienna wished Mrs. Clark was her mother and not me.”