“And then you insisted on taking that job with the horrible children, while Vandal found someone else for your job, and... oh, I suppose it doesn’t matter, since you ended up with both the job and the man I had planned for you anyway.”
“To be fair, I didn’t know that job I took over from Janna was the same one you talked to me about. All you’d told me was that it was a unique opportunity, and that your brother-in-law desperately needed a woman just like me. I didn’t figure it out until he told me his name.”
“Well, you were obviously meant to be together,” she said, patting her belly happily.
“I know we were, but I think I’ll wait a bit before I tell Alden that you had planned for us to meet.”
She snorted. “Men just don’t know what’s good for them.”
“Amen to that.”
Alden and Elliott, evidently done looking at the renovation, headed across the lush grass toward the verandah.
“Returning to the previous subject—why did Lisa show up at the house?”
“Her husband’s aunt asked her there.”
Alice’s face scrunched up in confusion. “Her what? Who is that? Not—you’re not going to tell me that Lady Sybilla was involved with the drugs!”
“Not directly, no,” Alden answered, taking a chair next to me. “It was her husband who installed all the grow lights in the secret passages.”
“Grow lights? Like for pot?” Alice asked, her eyes big.
“That’s what the cops tell us,” I answered, nodding and scooting over so I could put my hand on Alden’s leg. “They figured that, by the date of them, Sir James Baskerville was running a grow operation in the seventies and eighties. Lady Sybilla maintains she knew nothing about it, but Alden thinks she’s not so innocent.”
“It’s one reason why she didn’t want to leave the house until it was destroyed,” Alden said. “She was afraid we’d find the passages, and guess how her husband had funded the estate decades ago.”
“So if she’s not the aunt, then who is?” Alice asked.
“Her maid, Adams,” Alden answered, laying his hand on mine, and squeezing my fingers. “Evidently she was hired by Sir James to help him with the plants, and she just stayed on, morphing into a companion.”
“So...” Alice looked thoughtful. “So this Barrycharacter, the one who was making meth under the house, he was Adams’s nephew.”
“Yup. That’s how he learned about the passages. The best the police can guess is that they’d been making it down there for about seven or eight years,” I answered, feeling about as happy as a person could feel without actually breaking into a Disney song.
“They used the cave to get the stuff out onto a waiting boat,” Alden added. “It was a perfect plan—no one knew they were down there except Adams, and she got a cut of the proceeds. Lady Sybilla was in her own little world, and didn’t have the slightest idea of what was going on. Adams made sure of that.”
Alice tapped her fingers on the table, and frowned.
Elliott, who had been looking into the distance (Alden told me he wrote espionage books, so I assumed he was mulling our recent events over as book fodder), asked, “Why did Lisa try to kill Alden?”
Alden and I exchanged looks. “We don’t know,” he admitted.
“We know—we just have no proof until Lisa spills the beans,” I corrected. “She wanted Alden out of the house in case he found the drug lab, and since he wasn’t taking Barry up on any of the lucrative offers he forced the board of the tits to make, she took matters into her own hands. I figure at least half of the accidents Alden had were caused by her trying to scare him off. Or injure him so gravely that he’d have to sell out.”
“We have no proof,” Alden said gently, and rubbed his thumb over my hand.
“Perhaps not, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.” I sighed. “Part of the problem is that the police aren’t finding much to charge Lisa with. She says she had no ideathere was a meth lab beneath the house—which they moved out of the secret passage and into the cave after Alden arrived—and Barry, her husband, isn’t saying she did.”
“So she’ll get off without any repercussions?” Alice asked.
“Possibly. I’m going to work on the cops to third-degree her and get her to admit she tried to kill Alden with the trapdoor and the loose railing outside the window.”
“You’re going to do no such thing,” he said, lifting my hand and kissing my fingers, much to my delight. “You’re going to be too busy helping me rebuild Bestwood Hall.”
“Planning, surely,” Elliott said.
“Not just planning. We’re going to do as much of the work as possible by ourselves,” I told Alice and Elliott. “To save money, because the Hairy Tit funds will only go so far. And we’ve already signed up for a home builders’ course so we can learn how to hang Sheetrock and build joists and do roofing. Alden says he knows enough architecture stuff to do the design work, and we’re going to take the elements of the old hall that we liked and incorporate them. It’s going to be awesome.”
