“And you will. Get up. Slowly. And keep your hands where I can see them.”
I snuck a last peek through the kitchen window, before lowering the binoculars. Aimee’s phone sat on the table beside her, the screen still dark. She never so much as glanced at it as she and Theresa spooned food onto their plates and started eating.
Vero pushed onto her hands and knees.
“Go on,” the woman said, prodding me between the shoulder blades with the barrel of her gun. Vero looked at me askance as we rose to our feet and the woman nudged us toward the house. I guess we knew who the third glass of wine was for. Carl and his wife may have been estranged, but she was no stranger to his empty home.
We marched through the frosty grass in silence. Mrs. Westover called out as we neared the house. Theresa’s and Aimee’s heads snapped up, their eyes darting to the window. Theresa shot to her feet and met us at the door.
“What the hell are they doing here?” Her face paled as if she’d seen a ghost. Aimee’s fork dropped to her plate with a clatter.
“Saw a light up on the hill. By the graveyard.” The woman pushed us into the kitchen with a bump of her shotgun. “Sit down,” she barked, directing us to the table.
Aimee gawked at us as Vero and I took seats across from her. Her phone was still dark on the table beside her. Her eyes were welling as if she might cry. “Finlay, what are you doing here?” she asked, a slight tremble in her voice.
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”
“You know exactly what we’re doing here,” Theresa snapped, making Aimee jump in her seat. “We needed a place to hide, and no one was going to look for us here. No one except you, obviously. Because somehow, you continue to be the bane of my freaking existence!”
“This is her? This is Steven’s ex-wife?” Mrs. Westover asked.
Theresa threw up her hands for dramatic effect. “Mom, please! I can’t deal with this now.”
Mom?
“Hold up a minute,” Vero said, looking between Theresa and Mrs. Westover. “If Carl’s wife is your mom, then Carl is your—Jesus, Theresa. You chopped up yourdad?”
“Stepdad!” Theresa argued. “He was mystepfather. And for your information, I never even lived with the man. My mother married him after I left for college. Lord only knows why,” she added, rolling her eyes. “Obviously, Carl and I were never close. And before you ask, no, Feliks had no idea Carl was related to me when he killed him, and I wasn’t about to offer up that information to him after what he did. Feliks doesn’t like loose ends, and the last thing I wanted was for him to come after my mom.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Mrs. Westover said firmly, dragging out a chair at the head of the table and plunking herself into it. “I told you, I can handle this Feliks person. And I can handle the police. It’s allhandled, Theresa. You’re not going to prison for that man. It’s over. Carl’s buried and in the ground.” Mrs. Westover jabbed her finger on the table. “As far as everyone outside this room is concerned, Theresa’s stepfather died of cancer in August. I have a death certificate to prove it.”
Vero chuckled darkly. “The doc who signed off onthatwas missing a big piece of information. Pretty sure it’s in the trunk of our—ow!” She yelped as I kicked her under the table.
“How did you manage to get a death certificate?” I asked. If Theresa and her mother could get away with burying the body without the police suspecting anything was amiss with Carl, then that solved one of our more pressing problems.
“It’s all about who you know,” Theresa said coyly.
“Who you know, or who you sleep with?” Vero muttered. Wine splashed over the table as Theresa launched at her.
“That’s enough!” Mrs. Westover shouted. The rest of us stilled, stunned silent by the sudden appearance of her mom-voice. No one reached for the overturned wine bottle as the contents slowly dribbled out. “Sit down!” she said to her daughter, her tone leaving no room for argument. Theresa slid into the empty chair beside Aimee with a huff.
Mrs. Westover got up and brought a fresh bottle of red from the cabinet. Then two more glasses. She uncorked it, pouring a little into each before topping off her own. “Carl was dying of cancer,” she explained. “His doctor had given him only a few months to live. That was why Theresa took Feliks to see her stepfather in the first place. Carl’s treatments were expensive, and his insurance didn’t cover much. Theresa thought he could use the money. She had no way of knowing that Carl would refuse. Or that Feliks would hurt him. Theresa is not at fault. She was swept into all this. I don’t blame her for what happened to my husband, and I won’t see her go to prison for what that horrible man did to him.
“Carl’s doctor is a very old friend,” she continued. “I told him that Carl passed peacefully, at home with me, and I asked him for a favor. He gave me the death certificate and I ordered the headstone.” She rested the shotgun across her lap. “Carl is where he was meant to be, and that’s all that’s important now. When people ask for him, we’ll explain that he passed quietly with his family and he didn’t want any fuss. There’s no reason for anyone to go looking for him.”
“Maybe not, but they’ll be looking for your daughter,” I argued. “Theresa violated her house arrest. The police are actively searching for her, and they know Aimee is with her. They can’t hide here forever.”
“No, they can’t,” she agreed. “We’ve already discussed it. Theresa will turn herself over to the authorities tomorrow. When they ask why she ran, she’ll simply say that Feliks threatened her and she feared for her life. If she turns herself in and follows through with her plea bargain as planned, the DA isn’t likely to bring up any new charges against her. Her testimony is too important to the prosecution’s case.”
Theresa paled. Mrs. Westover closed a hand over her daughter’s. Aimee looked like she might be sick. “I don’t want to go back,” Theresa whispered to her mother, her lower lip trembling. “What if Aimee and I leave town instead? She has all that money she cashed out of her accounts. Enough for us to live on for a while.”
“One hundred grand could go a long way,” Vero agreed. “Especially if you don’t have to give it to someone else.”
Theresa pulled a face. “What are you talking about?”
Aimee turned away.
“Theresa doesn’t know, does she?” I asked.
