Sunny’s eyes suddenly went wide. “I don’t think Zadie said anything about the file to any of them. At least she didn’t mention doing that.” She pressed her trembling fingers to her mouth. “Oh, God. Is that why Zadie was murdered? Because she showed it to someone?”
“It’s possible,” Ethan had to admit.
She gasped. “But why would one of them have killed her because of that file? What was in there that would make someone do that?”
Both good questions. And it went right back to their three suspects. Anthony had only been ten years old at the time of Belinda’s death, but he certainly could have been the one to kill Zadie and Chloe. And Anthony admitted that he hooked up with Zadie because he wanted to prove that Chloe had killed his mother.
As for Franklin or Vernice, either of them could have wanted to silence Zadie if she’d learned about Belinda’s murder because it could possibly implicate them as accessories after the fact. Heck, even accomplices if one of them had actually helped Chloe in any way.
“I should have insisted that Zadie take the file to the police,” Sunny went on. “If I had, she might still be alive.”
That was possible, but Zadie could have sealed her fate simply by learning the info that had been in the file. If Chloe had realized it was missing, she could have figured out Zadie had taken it and killed her to make sure she never said a word about it to anyone. Adding to that, it could have been Chloe herself who’d ransacked her office if she’d realized the file wasn’t in the safe.
Of course, that didn’t give them a clear answer as to who’d murdered Chloe.
“Ready to go look in the bathroom?” Grace asked, the sound of her voice blending with the wind howling through the cracks in the house.
Both Livvy and Sunny nodded, and Grace led the way. Ethan glanced around, looking for anything the CSIs might have missed. Looking, too, to try to see the place through the eyes of a killer.
And through Livvy’s.
Because she had almost certainly been here. Had likely seen horrible things that were still feeding her nightmares all these years later.
Grace stepped into the bathroom, moving to the side to give Livvy and Sunny a clear view of the tub. Ethan hung back a little but stayed close enough in case Livvy needed him.
“Was Zadie killed here?” Sunny asked, her voice as unsteady as she looked. She was shivering, and Ethan figured it was from the cold.
“We believe so,” Grace said.
Ethan had read the ME’s report just an hour ago, and he believed that someone had hit Zadie on the head, probably rendering her unconscious before putting her in the tub, undressing her and then stabbing her to death.
Any of their suspects could have murdered using that method. Zadie hadn’t been a large woman, but it didn’t seem likely that Vernice or Chloe could have dragged her into the tub. Anthony, however, could have lifted her.
What the ME’s report hadn’t been able to tell them was why the killer had staged this.
If it was to implicate Livvy or to mentally terrorize her by recreating her nightmare, then it pointed to Vernice or Chloe being the culprit. But if Anthony had seen the contents of thatfile, if Zadie had shown it to him, then he would have known about Belinda’s body being left in this very tub.
Livvy made an odd sound that had Ethan’s gaze firing to her. She was looking at him, and he could see in her eyes that something was wrong.
“What is it?” he asked, automatically looking at her baby bump.
But she didn’t have her hand over her stomach, and that wasn’t a look of pain on her face. She fluttered her hands to the window but didn’t say anything. Livvy just hurried past Grace and Sunny.
Out of the room.
And into his arms.
“I remembered something,” she whispered, though her voice had hardly any sound.
Hell. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good. Livvy was trembling all over, and she took hold of him to drag him away from the room.
“Outside,” Livvy said, moving back enough to take his hand and get them moving.
She didn’t head for the front door but instead took the one off the kitchen. There was no actual door here, just a gaping hole that led to what had once been a porch. Now it was just old boards lying on the ground.
“Here,” she insisted, leading him to the small window outside the bathroom. Sunny and Grace were no longer there. They’d no doubt come outside to see what was going on with her.
“I saw her here that night,” Livvy went on. Her eyes had a glazed look to them now. Trapped in the past. In the nightmare. “She was at the window. And she must have seen when Chloe stabbed my mother.”
