The pieces were coming back. I could hear the fight in his voice as he struggled to put them together. “What are you seeing?”
“I remember the grip and how easy it was for the person to drag me.” Jeremy shook his head. “I didn’t see who grabbed me, but I’m not little. I can’t imagine any woman I know being able to subdue me like that.”
“She had help.” I repeated the words Aubrey had said to Isabel.
Stella’s eyes focused. On me this time. “What are you saying?”
“I was going in and out but... Yeah, the conversation. I only picked up snippets and those aren’t coming back to me yet, but they knew each other. Isabel and the person who put me in a choke hold were talking.”
The answer seemed both obvious and impossible. I wasn’t sure what to say but Jeremy shot me anI’m finelook that spared me from trying. Probably his way of telling me to calm down. Yeah, too late on that.
“Everything sounded muffled, but the person behind me, or above me or whatever, asked Isabel if Daniela saw her and then said something about setting the fire away from Daniela’s body. He sounded surprised there was anyone in the café other than me.” Jeremy sighed. “But I was too out of it to recognize the voice. I wish I did.”
I still didn’t understand how anyone knew where Jeremy was that night. He should have been at school. He’d come home for me and we’d fought. The Xavier news had trickled out from household to household after the attorney meeting, but who knew about the sleeper sofa I kept in my office from the days when Jeremy was little and needed to sleep near me while I got ready for opening?
One name popped into my head. One person who knew abouttranquilizers because his name had been splashed all over the news for helping to get them off the street.
I looked at Stella and asked the question that would start us down a road that wouldn’t allow retreat. “How many men would Isabel trust?”
“Now what are you suggesting?” Stella asked the question deathly slow, emphasizing each syllable.
This time I wasn’t exactly sure, but I did remember Aubrey’s comment about Lukas being at the house that day years ago. I never saw Lukas.
I could dance around the question or hit it straight on. With Stella’s shifting moods, I wanted to ignore the topic completely... Then I remembered those needles on the floor of the garage and my temper spiked. “How close are Lukas and your mom?”
Stella stood up. Her emotional exhaustion gone in an instant. She jumped to her feet in full fighting mode. “I’d been warned about you.”
I refrained from sayingsame,but I wanted to. Probably a good thing because Jeremy hated when I used that comeback. Insisted it made me sound old.
“Predictable Hanna,” Stella said.
I was trying to give her some leeway. She’d experienced one shock after another, but I had a limit on how much I could tolerate. Stella had run right up against it. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“The decency thing is an act with you. Turns out you’re exactly the kind of woman Victoria claimed you were. Needy and pathetic.”
Jeremy tried to get up. “Watch it.”
I held my hand out to stop him from saying more. Stella clearly craved her time in the spotlight. She could have it.
“Stay away from my family.” A thumping darkness, thick with menace, swirled around Stella as she headed for the door. “This is your only warning.”
Chapter Sixty-Two
Aubrey
The news of Isabel’s arrest hit the local gossip channels this morning. The moms in the pickup line at school. Workers in office kitchens over coffee. Commuters on the train into the city. Patrons in booths in the restaurants and diners across the county.
Law enforcement gave themselves a hearty pat on the back for solving one of the open cases related to the Tanners, sending the town into a tailspin. Three devastating fires happened to the Tanner family or in its vicinity over the years. One was no longer a mystery.
With only a day to spare, talk of Halloween restarted. Tourists sucked up all the parking and clogged traffic. They took their photos and wandered around the stores on Beekman Avenue. Walked the grounds of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.
We’d returned to the point where the missing Tanner family and their escapades were the biggest news in town. That wasa show that had been running nonstop for fifteen years. Locals were accustomed to unanswered questions feeding the never-ending churn ofwho didittales.
Slipping under the radar was the one story that mattered most. The ground scans continued on Xavier’s property. Hanna and Jeremy also gave permission for the police’s exploration of the pond at the back of Gramps’s property. That didn’t happen all those years ago because the carnage centered on our house, not his.
Dive teams. Digging up the shallow end. Dredging the entire thing.
They were about to find another body.
