“Why?” I stepped forward, genuinely wanting to know what Mr. Finch had done to deserve death. Yes, he’d somehow tried to keep Savilla from Katie Gilman, but it obviously hadn’t worked, at least not completely.
Katie sniffled as she reopened her past. “I was trying to get a job and start a life when I took a position here as a maid. I was young and dumb and believed it when Fred said he loved me.”
“You weren’t the problem,” Glenda gently corrected before turning to the sheriff. “My sister couldn’t sue for custody. She had nothing, and Fred had everything. So we made anotherplan: she would compete and win the money in the 2001 pageant under a pseudonym.”
“He let me win, was baiting me, but I couldn’t be that close to Savilla…” Katie turned to look at her now-grown daughter. “I was impulsive. When Fred said I’d never be with her, even if I won all the money in the world, I took her and ran.”
“But you didn’t get far,” I added.
“I had a backup plan,” Glenda broke in. “I would marry him and hire Katie as the nanny. Then I would divorce him and take half of everything.” She sighed. “Unfortunately, he was one step ahead with a watertight prenup.”
“But when I told him I would go to the tabloids, tell them everything, he did allow me to return as Savilla’s nanny,” Katie said, her voice quiet, as if to show her own weakness. “For that I’m grateful.”
Sheriff Strong couldn’t keep from asking the question that was on all of our minds. “How could you kill the father of your own child?”
“It wasn’t hard,” Katie answered, looking at him as if he was an imbecile for not realizing such a thing. “It was time. I knew that according to his will, Savilla would be free to inherit at twenty-five. It just took me a few years longer than I’d expected to figure out how to do it without getting caught.”
“And how’d that work out for you?” the sheriff asked.
“It would’ve worked if?—”
“Mother,” Savilla said, extending a hand in Katie’s direction. “That’s enough. You don’t need to discriminateyourself.”
I had no time or energy to address that one. None of us did, and besides, maybediscriminatewas exactly what she’d meant.
Sheriff Strong turned toward Savilla now, and I could see he was trying to discern whether he needed to take another member of this family into custody. His voice was heavy withauthority as he asked, “Savilla Finch, do you have anything to say about these recent confessions?”
Glenda spoke for her. “Leave her out of this. She only found out that Katie is her biological mother a few months ago.”
“Before or after Savilla took out a life insurance policy on him?” the sheriff asked.
Kudos to him. I wondered if he’d also been poking around the Finches’ liquor cabinet to find this detail—but he likely had more official means of gathering intel.
“I was a witness to that,” Aunt DeeDee said, bravely stepping forward. Even though my instincts were to tell her to keep quiet, I was proud of her for being willing to help after all she’d been through. “Despite how it might look, the policy was a simple practicality.”
“That’s right. Daddy said it never hurt to have more money. I signed the policy, but I had no idea they were planning to kill…” Savilla was shame-faced and vulnerable, like the child I’d grown up with.
Her expression and Aunt DeeDee’s testimony were convincing. I’d been wrong about Savilla’s involvement in all of this. She hadn’t killed her father, and she couldn’t control her mother or stepmother. Her only fault was trying to live up to all of their expectations.
Savilla turned to Katie. “You never said anything about”—her arms flailed wildly in the air as if the gesture could encompass the events of the past few days—“any ofthis.”
“You must understand. Your father wasn’t a person,” Katie calmly told her before turning to the audience. She wanted all of us to feel her justification. “He was a monster, a baby stealer, a narcissist that everyone loved because he had money and power.”
“And… what about StepMommy?” Savilla asked. “Why would you want to… to poison her?”
“Oh, baby. I would never… That was all Jim’s doing,” Katie said. “I had no idea. We asked him to help ensure everything ran smoothly, but apparently, the money we’d promised him wasn’t enough. He wanted a chance at killing Glenda and seducing you for the entire inheritance.”
Glenda stared at Savilla as if willing her to believe them. “What happened to me had nothing to do with your mother, and after I came to, I was afraid that you might be next.”
So, Dr. Bellingham’s greed had gotten the best of him, and he’d gone rogue, sneaking those toxic honey jars into the Finches’ liquor cabinet to get rid of either or both of them.
Katie’s eyes filled with tears as she looked from her sister to her daughter. “Savilla, we just… we just wanted you to have the family and the resources you deserve. The three of us, together.”
As I thought about my own mother, about what she would’ve done to stay with me, tears sprang to my eyes, and that’s when a photographer snapped a picture that would appear on front pages of newspapers everywhere the next morning. The ugly cry of the beautiful new queen.
“Now I’ve lost Daddy and both of you…” Savilla’s voice trailed off as she choked out the words. “All because you wanted to be filchy rich.”
“Filthy, darling,” Glenda corrected, almost sounding like the kind of uppity woman I’d assumed she was for most of the show.
