“That’s Apollo.”
“Apollo?” Romeo asked. “Is my sister there?”
“Last-minute trip.” Apollo walked into my house like he owned it. “Hi, thanks for giving me some excitement over the last few days. Fuck, it’s cold here. Also, how do you live in these kinds of conditions?”
Cody snorted. “Let me guess, you’re from the South?”
“Born and bred in Texas, baby.” He looked around the room. “Okay, first, we’ll start with what Gentry found out first, and I’ll start filling in blanks from there.”
Birdee looked to the cop, her gaze curious.
I was just as curious.
“So Romeo sent me down to the hospital to figure out what was going on, and things started to not add up pretty damn fast. Starting with the fact that the insurance information that was given out after the accident wasn’t given by Birdee. It was given by Birdee’s mother, Whitney.”
My head tilted. “What?”
“When officers arrived on scene, Birdee wasn’t capable of handing out identification, let alone insurance cards and thinking of using an alternate name. She couldn’t even tell us where she was at or who she was.”
“Okay…” Vito sounded worried. “Are you okay, Birdee?”
Birdee stiffened but nodded once.
“Why are you not still in the hospital?” Grace asked worriedly.
“That would be my fault,” Gentry said. “I didn’t think she was safe there.”
That had everyone stilling.
“When I got there, Whitney Watts was shouting from the rooftops to take care of her child,” he said. “But the problem was, she kept switching back and forth between Mable and Birdee.”
Birdee buried her face in her hands.
“We removed Whitney from the hospital and Tom Watts took her home,” Gentry explained. “But not before I followed them out through a side door and found them in the parking lot talking furiously.”
“What were they talking about?” Cody asked.
“That’s where I can come in,” Birdee muttered darkly, lifting her face from her hands. “My mother decided to take a life insurance policy out on everyone. My stepfather has one. I have one. Mable has one. Hell, even my dad has one.”
“Okay…” I trailed off.
“And I saw on some paperwork in her office when I was in there today that I have a lawsuit taken out against me.” She glared at me. “But beyond that, I saw some more paperwork about the life insurance policies. Once I started digging in her desk, though, I couldn’t stop. I saw paperwork from the bank with a loan in my name. I saw one with a loan in your name.” She glanced at me. “I saw a stack of credit cards in both of our names. Ones that I can assure you I never applied for. I also saw some paperwork in there about the vacation that she helped me book.” She looked sick. “But the details for this vacation were all in your name. Not mine. And I just got pissed. Because I had no clue what was going on. So I went to confront my mom about all of it since it was in her office.”
“What happened then?” I asked.
“I found her at the country club,” she admitted. “Confronted her in the parking lot. She went off about me being in her shit. She accused me of a lot of stuff, like stealing your fiancé and ruining your wedding. That she was protecting me. Doing what was necessary to fix things.” Birdee pulled at her hair. “Which I can assure you I didn’t do. I don’t know where any of that even came from. I thought you were just making shit up when it came to Morris. I knew you hated me, so I thought you were just spewing BS to make me look bad.”
“She only hates you because you go out of your way to make her life harder than it needs to be,” Cody interjected.
“Oh, like she hasn’t done the same shit to me?” She snorted. “Stealing my homework? Reporting me as cheating during school? Making fun of my learning disability? Making everyone hate me? What about when she poured Nair in my shampoo? What about when I saved up enough money to buy a car on my own? And it was taken and ‘no one could find out what happened to it?’ What about when my cat was thrown out in the cold? I know that she was behind all of it.”
Romeo’s arms tightened around me.
“I did none of those things, Birdee,” I promised.
“She didn’t,” Cody agreed with me.
“Oh, sure, sure. And you’re one that I’ll really take at face value.” Birdee crossed her arms over her chest, and the move looked like it pained her. “You stole my father. Turned him against me. He doesn’t return my calls. He doesn’t spend any time with me. Refused to see me on his weekends. He looks at me like I’m the lint at the bottom of the dryer vent. He went to your graduation and not mine. He went to all of your school plays and sporting events. Every single milestone, he was there for you. And me? I’m just chopped liver.”
