“No,” Savilla blurted. “You tried tofilcheverything, to steal, to take it all for yourself.”
“The money wasn’t thethingfor us,” Katie cut in. “Savilla, you have to believe that we did all of this because we wanted you—and we wanted you to have it all.”
Emotions ran across Savilla’s face: confusion, hope, longing. All of it was on display, and I knew it would take a long time for her to unpack what her family had become.
Aunt DeeDee stepped forward, her brows drawn together as if she was in physical pain. I ached for the betrayal she must have been feeling. “But we’ve known one another for years… We’ve worked together; we were room moms together; we’ve been at every pageant together. Why would you frameme?”
Katie’s eyes widened, the hint of tears as she was confronted with the extent of what she’d done. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what to do, and Jim suggested you as the perfect decoy. I panicked.” She swallowed. “The police were supposed to take you in and question you for theft, not murder.” She bent forward at the waist as if she wanted to plead for forgiveness despite the sheriff’s handcuffs. “The letter wasn’t supposed to implicate you, but then Jimmy got it into his head that you could take the fall for everything. He’s the one who took the Polaroids and put them in Dakota’s room before she even arrived. I swear I didn’t know he was planning to do that until after…”
Aunt DeeDee’s eyes darted to me. She hadn’t known about the photos with the implicatingmessage under my duvet and, for a moment, the idea of Dr. Bellingham being in my room was more concerning to her than anything else.
“I’m good,” I told her. “Nothing happened.”
“Please, forgive me,” Katie said to Aunt DeeDee, her eyes pleading. “I… I knew they would eventually let you go.”
That wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. No one could know that.
As silence settled again, I stepped forward. I couldn’t keep quiet. I needed to know one more thing.
I looked directly at Katie and asked my question. “Mr. Finch died in the middle of the night, so where was he during the evening before his death? And how did you hide his body in the 1950s tent?”
“He was with me,” Katie answered, showing all her cards now that it was too late to refuse to play the game. “We’d reached a truce years ago, but he was still nervous that I would blow hiscover, let the world know what kind of man he really was: one who had slept with a maid and then stolen her child. That kind of reputation could ruin his beloved pageant. I’d told him that with Savilla now grown, I wanted to talk to him about me leaving Aubergine for good, and to meet me at the back of the property during the meet and greet one last time to discuss a final payout. Stupid man. He waited and waited for me, spending time with his bees and his honey while I planted the note in his apartment and the crown in DeeDee’s room.” Katie looked sheepish for the first time, but she continued. “I told Fred to leave his phone, his keys, everything. I said I didn’t want us to be interrupted, that if he would do this one thing, he would never hear from me again after this week. He did everything I asked—that’s how much he still despised me. When I got to the back of the property late that night, Fred and I took a walk.” Katie swallowed. “I talked about his plans to build a museum memorializing the pageant. He joked about making an exhibit that would honor me. He thanked me for my service, for giving him our daughter—as if I’d had a choice. He thought he was actually getting rid of me as we started back through the tunnel in the early morning hours. He had no idea what was coming.”
Glenda spoke now. “I helped move his body sometime after two a.m.”
“That’s right,” Katie added. “In the dark of the night, she and I hauled him up the stairs and onto a rusty old cart. We did what we had to do, and Dr. Bellingham met us in the 1950s tent and helped shove him into the kitchen cabinets.”
My eyebrows rose clear to my brow line and another photo snapped. I considered the image of the three of them working collectively to hide Mr. Finch’s body. I wondered, only for a moment, why they would hide him there, in a place where he would be found in such a public way. But then I looked at them and understood: it was poetic justice.
The sisters wanted the man who had controlled and dictated their lives to be discovered in the most domestic part of the home in the most housewifely era. The Gilman sisters also needed him to be found. If he’d simply disappeared—like Miss 2001, aka Cathy Peabody, had done so many years ago—then his estate and his money would be in limbo for what could be years. Katie and Glenda had wanted everything finished as soon as possible. They’d waited long enough for what was due to them and Savilla.
I tried to blink away the image of the two women hauling him up from the underground tunnel and through the opening in the heart of the fake rose-hedge maze, but the thought of these two sisters working together one last time stuck in my mind. The evening had been full of reveals, but this was my primary takeaway: Dead bodies were heavy, but angry women got things done.
FORTY
Once upon a time, a maid rose in rank to catch the eye of a millionaire. She gave him her greatest pride and joy: a daughter. Out of misogyny or sheer power-mongering, he discarded her, using his resources to keep their child from her, but the maid had a surprise ally, a sister who would sacrifice anything for her happiness, a sister who would marry a man for his riches and find a way to reunite true daughter with true mother once again. So the sisters went to work, tricking and cajoling and manipulating the man. The four of them—millionaire, sisters, and daughter—lived fitfully ever after at the royal palace until one night, when one of them stabbed Mr. Finch through the eye. They achieved their goal, but not their freedom. The End.
This is the story that would be told again and again among Aubergine residents in coming years, but for now, we were living it in real time.
“I did it for my daughter,” Katie Gilman yelled to a handful of reporters as she was led away in handcuffs by Sheriff Charlie Strong, whose name would become nationally known in coming days. “No matter what they tell you, I did it for her!”
Savilla, meanwhile, stared on from the ballroom stage in her family mansion as her mother and stepmother disappearedthrough the grand doors. The sisters would soon be united again, and I could only imagine the two of them sharing a cell.
So many audience members held their phones aloft that it looked like a concert rather than a pageant. Maybe for the first time ever, Aunt DeeDee was stunned into silence, but she soon did her best to recover the show, asking everyone to applaud for this year’s winners. Even so, by the end of the final song, as I stood with the crown on my head, DeeDee gave up and set the microphone on the podium. As soon as the last refrain echoed through the speakers, the seats emptied fast.
The show had gone on, but it had concluded with a bang—thankfully, only figuratively—from which it might never recover. The centennial pageant may have been the last for the Rose Palace.
Lacy came backstage, her headset hanging around her neck. “Are you okay?” She pulled me into a hug. “What an insane way to win.”
“Right, but… I mean…” I took the crown from my head in disbelief. “After all of this, I’m having a hard time believing that I actually won.”
Aunt DeeDee joined us, eyeing the crown. “You won fair and square, sweetheart. I just looked at the tally sheets. The judges—even Dr. Bellingham before they took him away—were particularly impressed with your confidence and comportment, especially being such a new contestant. They tracked you from the first moment you stepped foot into the ballroom for the bonding session, and their notes said you were a natural. You scored one more point than the second place winner.”
My heart nearly skipped a beat. I’d won this thing. Legitimately, like Aunt DeeDee before me, like Momma knew I could.
“So the money?”
“It’s yours.” Aunt DeeDee smiled. “The prizes will be distributed just as they were awarded this evening. It’s all held in a separate account from the Finches’ personal assets. I’ll meet with the board first thing Monday morning and see to everything. The winnings don’t come overnight, but you’ll get it all.”
