“How are you, babe?” I snuggled into her side—the two of us buried under a mountain of blankets, chocolate, and funny movies in the second living room. “And I mean a real how are you?”
She gave me a trembling smile. “I’m okay. The detectives couldn’t get me in front of a judge, so they kept me in the holding cell the whole time. Lantana isn’t exactly a hotbed of crime, so except for the occasional drunken public nuisance that needed some time to sleep it off, I was in there by myself. Boring as shit,” she dropped. “But not too traumatic.
“No, what freaked me out was knowing someone hated me so much they put a bloody knife in my bag and framed me for murder.” She chomped a huge bite out of her white chocolate bar. “Why would Mrs. Finley do that to me? Did she blame me too for what happened to Colin? Did she think I helped you get away with it or something, so she wanted to take us all down?”
“No, but I bet she throws that lie on top of the rest to help sell that she’s the killer.”
She paused mid-chew. “Excuse me?”
“She didn’t do it, Courtney,” I announced, finally voicing the truth I tried to tell Davis the day before, and lost my nerve when I tried again with Alex. “She didn’t kill Mrs. Prado or my mother, so it’s highly unlikely she ever came anywhere near the murder weapon to put it in your bag.”
Huge eyes swallowed me. “Sarah, what are you talking about? The woman confessed. She got her nephew to help her get inside. She tried to kill you!”
“All of those things are true.” I climbed out from under the blankets. Crossing my legs, I sat up and faced her. “But when I asked her why she killed Mrs. Prado, I could see in her eyes that she didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. Then, she made it worse by claiming Mrs. Pradogot in her way.
“It’s just vague enough that Detective Dumb and Dumbass might swallow it, but it doesn’t make sense. Colin was still alive when Mrs. Prado was murdered,” I said. “Mrs. Finley still had something to live for—someone to live for. She had a child who needed her, so why would she risk everythingby knifing an innocent house manager in the back? With her in prison, Colin would have no one, and she just wouldn’t have done that to him.
“And I know that because she’s hated my mother and my family for ten years, but she never once tried to take revenge until—”
“Colin died,” Courtney whispered, slowly bobbing her head. “You’re right. Shit, Sarah, you’re right. It doesn’t make any sense that she’d just get up one day and kill Mrs. Prado for no reason, but are you sure?” She scooted closer, dropping her voice. “Are we sure that Mrs. Prado was killed by the same person? The police still don’t have a motive for either murder, so how can you be sure?”
“I’m sure.” My voice was firm. “My mother’s murder was clearly premeditated. The party, the guards, the frame job, the escape—all of it was executed too perfectly to be random. I think the killer used Christie and the parade of staff she brought that morning to blend in and scope out the place. What they weren’t planning on was Mrs. Prado being there—front and center to see them arrive.
“She must’ve recognized him,” I insisted. “Knew that he wasn’t some waiter for an event planner in New York, so what the hell was he doing strutting around my manor in a waitstaff uniform?”
Her head bobbed harder, following along with every word. “That makes sense! Mrs. Prado has been a house manager for forty years. She’s worked for most of the rich families all up and down the coast. She’d definitely find it strange if she saw one of her former rich-boy young masters here pretending to be a waiter. So strange, she’d mention it to you.”
“And just like that”—I clapped—“she had to be silenced.”
“Wow,” she breathed, leaning back. “It does sound less and less like Mrs. Finley had anything to do with this, but then why confess?”
“I have no doubt that Mrs. Finley came here that night with the goal of doing something final,” I said, rubbing my neck. “But I also doubt she ever came close. What I think really happened is that Finley got lost.”
Her brows rose up. “Lost?”
“Yep. My mother’s room was in the east wing on the second floor, but Micah saw her skulking around the guest rooms on the third floor of the west wing—about as far from my mother as she could get. She was lost,” I cried. “Stressed, grieving, breaking down, she didn’t come here with anyreal plan, so of course, she got lost in this maze of a place—searching frantically while trying not to be seen.
“When my scream brought the rest of the cop guards to me, Officer Callahan rushed his aunt out the other way—getting her out unseen, but deeply dissatisfied,” I told her. “She came here to get justice for her son, and instead left with nothing. She must see this confession as her second chance to fight for him.
“Everyoneis going to want this story. Reporters are going to climb over each other to interview her. The trial will be televised. After a decade of being ignored and silenced, she gets to tell the world her and Colin’s story. She gets to tell them all that the devil’s name is Kim.”
“Wow,” she repeated, rocking back until she fell on the pillows—mind blown. “That’s... that’s just so sad. All of this—this whole miserable situation—breaks my heart.”
“It breaks mine too, Court. I only went along, pretending like I believed her because I’d have done anything to get you out of jail, even if it meant handing the police a recorded fake confession, but honestly, sitting there listening to that devastated woman, all I wanted to do was something I haven’t been able to do since this all started—cry.”
We fell silent, thinking of all the lives destroyed, and the acts that couldn’t be forgiven.
“So what now?” Courtney asked the ceiling. “The real killer is still out there, toasting his luck because someone else confessed to his crime. We’ve got to find them, and yes, I saidwe.” She flashed me a stern look like she sensed an argument coming. “You’re not searching for this guy alone. He’s fucking nuts. He murdered a woman and tossed her in a dirty fountain just for recognizing him. If he gets his hands around your neck, he’s not going to stop until he finishes the job, so don’t argue with me. We’re in this together.”
I cracked a smile. “I wouldn’t dream of doing this any other way. Together—let’s bring this son of a bitch down.”
We stared at each other.
“Uh, now seems like a good time to ask,” Courtney drew out. “Howdo we bring this guy down? Where do we go from here? I’m sure your event planner vets her staff, but if the killer just stole a uniformand blended in with the chaos, she’d know nothing about them, so she’s no help there. Ditto if some of the cops were being lax and weren’t actually manning their posts. If someone else made it upstairs like Mrs. Finley did, they may not know about it—so ditto on being unhelpful.”
I huffed out a groan. “I was thinking the same thing. Rhodes was in his office. Micah was in his parents’ room. Alex went up after the murder to make a call. Layton was in the library. Mrs. Finley was lost on the third floor, and Reynard has a photo of himself out with his friends at the same time Rhodes says he saw him in the garden, but either way, he wasn’t in my mother’s room. So many people weren’t where they were supposed to be, but they also weren’t near my mother, so what does that leave other than a stranger who slipped in here unnoticed? How can I track him down if that’s the case?”
“They can’t be too strange,” she murdered, chewing her lip. “It has to be someone who had a problem with your mother. Someone she knew. Someone we haven’t thought of yet.” She snapped her fingers. “Plus, they had to know the event planner and her fleet of minions would be arriving at the manor that morning. How many people could’ve known that?”
