The Ugly Truth

by Jill Orr

  “Wait—it was Dale’s rosary?”

  “You didn’t know that?” Hadley looked genuinely surprised.

  “No, I thought it was Justin’s.”

  “I met Justin Balzichek once and let me tell you, I’d sooner believe that man was the devil himself than a practicing Catholic.” Hadley rolled her eyes. “Not that Dale is a whole lot better. He was only a Catholic when it was convenient. Didn’t start carrying that thing around until about the same time he moved Rosalee down here. I always told Greer that I thought that was suspicious. It was like he replaced his Rosalee with a rosary. Creepy as all get out, if you ask me. ’Course now we know why.”

  “Who has the other key?” Ridley asked.

  “Rosalee probably.” Hadley shrugged. “I’m guessing that’s why she hasn’t left town yet. She wants the money.”

  “Interesting. Clearly, they didn’t trust each other.”

  “So you think Balzichek was paid to kill Greer and then took the key for himself?” Ridley asked.

  “I’m thinking that Greer tried to bargain with him,” Hadley said, closing her eyes as if the thought was painful. “Tried to tell him she’d give him money if he let her…” she broke off and took a deep breath before continuing. “And Balzichek decided to kill her anyway and just take the key for himself.”

  If Justin Balzichek was the kind of man he appeared to be, it would make sense that he’d take the key and either try to find the safe or possibly blackmail Dale and Rosalee with it. That was the most likely option, seeing that Balzichek ended up dead just a couple of days later.

  The more I thought about it, the clearer things were becoming. We still didn’t know who killed Balzichek for sure, but given the stomach contents showed undigested pastry dough, my money was on Rosalee. We had to tell Carl about the safe. It was the last puzzle piece, the thing everybody was after, the reason Dale and Rosalee were both hanging around Tuttle Corner, the reason Rosalee had a key made at Sanford’s, and the reason Balzichek was dead.

  “Hadley, if Dale and Rosalee did what it looks like they did,” I said, softly, “they need to be held accountable.”

  Hadley looked up, her face wracked with grief. She wasn’t going to hurt us; I could see that now. She was upset and desperate and probably struggling with some mental health issues, but she was no killer. I stood up slowly.

  She looked at me, then down at the knife in her hand. I continued to meet her gaze until she finally lowered her hand and dropped it. The knife made a dull thudding sound as it fell onto the dirt floor.

  “We’ll go with you to the sheriff,” I said.

  She nodded, turned around, and that’s when the tears began to fall.

  The three of us climbed up the ladder and out of the cellar, exhausted from the tension of the past thirty minutes. Hadley seemed calmer now that she had made the decision to do the right thing. I felt certain that going to the sheriff with her story would provide her with a kind of resolution and peace that no amount of money ever could.

  It had started to storm while we’d been in the cellar, and I could hear the rain pounding on the roof along with intermittent bouts of thunder. It would be a soggy walk to the sheriff’s station. I pulled out my phone and saw that I’d missed several calls from Holman, but he hadn’t left a message. He texted once, about a minute ago, but it was just the letter “r.” Sure it was just a butt-dial text, I slipped my phone back into my pocket and was about to help Ridley close up the door to the cellar when she said, “Shit. I think my phone must have fallen out of my pocket down there.”

  Hadley was leaning against the cooktop, lost in her own thoughts. She didn’t seem likely to take off on me, especially not in this rain, so I told Ridley to just go down there real fast and get it. We’d wait.

  As Ridley climbed back down, I was about to ask Hadley how she was doing when I heard the back door open. I stilled. Hadley must have heard it too because she looked at me, her eyes wide. We heard footsteps coming down the short hallway seconds before Holman and Rosalee appeared in the tiny kitchen. They were soaking wet.

  “Riley!” Rosalee said, rushing over to me and throwing her arms around my neck. “Thank God you’re safe!”

  Stunned silent, I stood there as she hugged me, paralyzed with shock.

  “What is she doing here?” Hadley sniped, her voice heading into batshit-crazy territory again. “Is this some sort of a setup?”

  Unsure of what else to do, I tried to communicate to Holman with a single look that Dale and Rosalee had hired Justin Balzichek to kill Greer and were now both trying to figure out a way to get to the millions they’d been hiding in the creepy old cellar beneath her restaurant and that Hadley had figured it all out and was planning to take the money for herself but instead decided to go to Sheriff Haight and tell him everything. It was a tall order for a look, but I tried anyway.

  Holman’s eyes never left mine until he blinked, then blinked again, then blinked again. Like a toad in a hailstorm. He was nervous, which could only mean one thing: That magnificent bastard already had figured it out. He knew Rosalee was a killer, and he was here to stop her.

  CHAPTER 41

  Rosalee,” I said, trying to make my voice sound casual and not at all scared to death. “Where have you been?”

  “You bitch!” Hadley screamed and launched herself at Rosalee, who whipped around with surprising agility, turning me around like a human shield. It wasn’t until I saw the fear in Hadley’s and Holman’s eyes that I felt the pressure of cold steel at my neck. Rosalee had a gun at my throat.

  “Get back,” she said, calm and cool as ever. “Both of you.”

  “Rosalee,” Holman said. “What’re you doing? Let her go—”

  “Don’t.” She cut him off, her voice as sharp as an ice pick. “I know you figured it out on the way over here. You’re a terrible liar.”

  Holman pressed his lips together and looked down. He spoke softly. “You knew Balzichek was poisoned with cyanide. The sheriff never released that.” The look of complete and utter betrayal on his face was heartbreaking. “How could you do it?”

  “Justin Balzichek deserved everything he got,” Rosalee said. “He was a bottom-feeder. Vermin.”

  “Takes one to know one,” Hadley hissed.

  “Oh, please shut up,” Rosalee said. “I would hate to get upset and let my trigger finger slip.”

  An involuntary whimper escaped me, but I was careful not to move. The barrel of the gun was pressing into my flesh.

  “Where’s the key?” Rosalee said to Hadley. “I know you have it.”

  Hadley gave her a triumphant look. “I’m guessing that was you who tried to break into the funeral home to get it off poor dead whatshisname? Too bad I got there first.”

  So it had been Rosalee who tried to break in that night at Campbell & Sons.

  “I’m serious.” Rosalee tightened her elbow around my neck. “Give it to me.”

  “Think for a second, Rosalee,” Holman tried again. “How will you escape? Even if you do manage to kill all of us and get the money, you won’t be able to get away. Someone will hear the shots, the police will track you down in a matter of minutes.”

  He had a point and Rosalee knew it. What Rosalee didn’t know was that Ridley was down in the basement at this very moment with the knife Hadley had dropped. She had to have heard the commotion up here, and if there was a God in heaven—or maybe more aptly, a signal in the cellar, she would have already called 911. We just had to stall long enough for them to get here.

  “He’s right,” I said, my voice quavering. “If you stop now, it’ll be better for you.”

  “I just want to get my money and leave. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. That night in the cemetery when you saw me,” she said to Holman, “I was looking for the key. I thought it might have fallen out of Balzichek’s pocket when I dragged him out there. I needed it—that stupid safe Dale installed requires two keys plus a pass code. Three failed attempts and it goes into permanent lock-out mode. I’
d already tried once.”

  “With the key you had Ryan make,” I said, putting things together.

  “Right. But the keys aren’t the same. So when you offered to help me,” she again addressed Holman, “I had no choice. And then I realized I could use you to bait Dale.”

  Holman’s ears turned bright red, his shoulders rounding as if he was trying to disappear.

  “It was all his idea,” Rosalee said. “Dale said if we got rid of Greer, we could take the money and be long gone before the police even knew what happened. Then that stupid Balzichek demanded we pay him. Said he had Greer’s key and that he was going to tell the cops everything if we didn’t pay up.”

  So Hadley had been right. Justin Balzichek took the key from Greer when he killed her. She must have brought it to their meeting as a bargaining chip. Sadly for her, Balzichek wasn’t interested in a trade.

  “Dale took everything from me—my youth, my innocence, my ability to live a normal life. I was practically his prisoner all these years. But I loved him, or thought I did, and I believed his lies. He promised that once we had enough money, we would go live out the rest of our lives on a beach somewhere away from here, away from her.”

  For the first time in all the years I knew Rosalee, she didn’t sound bored or uninterested. There was real emotion in her voice. Unfortunately, that emotion was homicidal rage.

  “So what happened?” Hadley said, a sneer pulling at the corner of her lip. “He betrayed you just like he did his wife? What a shocker!” It was clear there was a part of Hadley that was enjoying this.

  I felt the muscles in Rosalee’s arm tense up. “We agreed that I would take care of Balzichek. We figured the police would think he killed Greer and they’d close the case. I arranged to meet Balzichek at my house, flirted with him a little to disarm him.”

  I saw Holman’s nostrils flare in anger, the humiliation settling in.

  “I offered to fix him a nice plate of almond croissants—your favorite.” She tugged at my neck. “The almond paste perfectly masks the scent of cyanide, did you know that?”

  “No,” I said, even though I did thanks to Carl. I had a strict policy against being a know-it-all around anyone holding me at gunpoint.

  “Dale was supposed to come down to Tuttle and help me get rid of the body. Then we were going to get the money out and I was to fly to Belize. He said he would join me after the funeral, after the investigation had settled down. That was the plan. But he never showed up that night, and he wouldn’t answer any of my calls.” Her voice got louder, faster as she talked. “I tried for hours until finally I realized he was not coming. He was going to let me take the fall for all of it. No one other than Greer and me knew about his illegal dealings with the Qataris. With both of us out of the way, he would be free to do whatever he wanted. With whomever he wanted. So I dragged Balzichek out my back door and dumped him at Sterns and decided I would clean out the safe and disappear.”

  Just then, a dull thunk sound floated up from the basement. Rosalee jerked toward the trapdoor, still standing open. “Who’s down there?” She addressed this question to Hadley. When Hadley didn’t say anything, she tightened her grip on my neck. “Who?”

  “No one—” I stammered, my heart thumping in my throat so hard, I was surprised I could speak at all. “Probably just a snake or a rat or something.”

  Holman knitted his brows and titled his chin toward me, asking the same question without words. I couldn’t very well answer him, so I just widened my eyes and hoped he understood that meant we need to keep Rosalee from going down there.

  “You’re a terrible liar too. Someone better tell me who is down there or else I am just going to start shooting,” she said, her voice rising. “One…two…”

  “Rosalee?” A male voice called everyone’s attention toward the back door. Dale Mountbatten stood in the entrance to the kitchen. In all the commotion about the noise from the basement, none of us had heard the back door open or Dale walking in.

  “You,” Rosalee growled. Her breath was hot in my ear and I could feel the sinewy muscles in her arm tense.

  “Christ on a cracker!” Hadley blurted out. “What’s next?”

  “Honey, what’s going on here?” Dale said, taking a step toward Rosalee.

  “Don’t. Move.” Rosalee backed up toward the sink, my feet sliding as she tugged me along. “And don’t ‘honey’ me either.”

  Dale stopped. He looked around the kitchen at Holman, Hadley—whom he seemed surprised to see—and lastly, the wide-open trapdoor. “I’m gonna need a little help understanding just what in the world is going on here, Rosie. Is this all part of your plan to set me up?”

  “Set you up?” she seethed at him. “You set me up. You never came that night to help me with Balzichek. I called and called and you didn’t pick up. I waited for hours!”

  With her ire directed at Dale, it seemed like she’d forgotten about the noise in the basement. I looked at Holman, who, I noticed, took the opportunity to move a step closer to the swinging door that led to the front of the café.

  “No—you never called—” Dale said, sounding almost as hurt and betrayed as Rosalee did. “I had our phone with me all night. I was waiting. You never called. I was worried sick.”

  “Liar!” Rosalee shouted.

  Another involuntary whine bubbled up from my chest.

  “Why would I set you up?” Dale said. “I wanted us to follow the plan so we could be together, and the next thing I know you stopped contacting me, you wouldn’t answer my calls. And then I found out you told her—” he pointed at me like I was a side of beef “—about Colonel Mustard Enterprises and I thought you were setting it up for me to go down for the whole thing.”

  At that moment, Hadley started laughing, cackling really, a sharp incongruous sound. “You guys are so stupid,” she said, barely able to catch her breath. “I mean, it was as easy as catchin’ fireflies in a jar.” She broke off into more uncontrolled bouts of laughter.

  Holman took another half step closer to the door. He was only about two feet from it now.

  “What are you talking about, Hadley?” Dale’s voice was sharp and abrasive. “And what are you even doing here?”

  “Yes, what are you talking about?” Rosalee said and swiveled the gun from my neck to Hadley’s chest.

  Hadley didn’t even react except to wipe a tear from the corner of her eye as she sighed with satisfaction. She looked straight at Dale, ignoring Rosalee and the gun completely. “Greer knew all about your little Colonel Mustard business,” she said, using air quotes around the words. “She knew everything. And she told me everything, too. She thought she could get you to break things off with little miss frog over here, but then…” she skipped over the unpleasant business of murder-for-hire. “Do you know how easy it is to have calls forwarded from a cell number? I mean, it’s so simple, a monkey could do it.”

  Dale looked confused for a moment, and then understanding started to set in. “When you came to stay with us…” he said, almost to himself.

  “Now you’re getting it,” Hadley said with a mock congratulatory tone.

  “You never got my calls?” Rosalee’s voice sounded as vulnerable as a child’s.

  Dale shook his head, almost in disbelief.

  Hadley seemed to revel in the silence as she watched them absorb what she had done. “I found your stupid burner phone—you really shouldn’t have left it lying around your office, you know.” She made a tsk-tsk sound. “My initial plan was just to record you admitting to Greer’s murder. ’Course I couldn’t have known y’all were going to kill Justin Balzichek too.”

  “So you weren’t planning to leave without me?” Dale looked at Rosalee, a pained expression on his face.

  “No,” she said. “Not until I thought you—”

  Dale ran a hand through his thick hair before bringing it to rest behind his neck. He asked, “Did you bring your key?”

  “Yes. In my back pocket,” Rosalee said, then quickly added,
pointing toward Hadley, “she has yours.”

  In the look Dale gave Hadley, you could practically see years of resentment and anger, not to mention the frustration of the past few weeks. “It’ll be my pleasure to take it back,” he snarled. He started to walk toward Hadley when another sound came from the basement. It sounded like rocks skittering across dirt and hitting stone. Everyone froze.

  “What was that?” Dale asked.

  “I think there’s someone down there,” Rosalee said. Then, keeping the gun pointed toward Holman and Hadley, she released the hold she had around my neck and pushed me forward. “Go. Over there.”

  Shaken, I scrambled over next to Holman. He grabbed my hand, a rare but comforting gesture of affection.

  “Go down and see who it is,” Rosalee said. “I’ll stay here.” It was clear Dale and Rosalee were a team once again. That did not bode well for us. Or for Ridley.

  “Wait—” I said, trying to stall for time. I kept thinking that surely Carl and Butter would come blazing in at any moment. Everyone looked at me expectantly, but my mind went blank. “I don’t think you should go down there!”

  Dale looked at me and scoffed. Then he turned to Rosalee and nodded toward her gun, “You have another one handy?”

  “This is the one you gave me for protection all those years ago.” She sounded like she was talking about a ring or a bouquet of flowers, not a handgun. It was surreal.

  “Take one of those.” She gestured with her chin toward the magnetic knife rack on the wall.

  Dale grabbed a large knife and headed over to the open door in the floor. He brushed past Rosalee, kissed her cheek, and whispered something that made her blush. Yup. They were back on again, a real-life Bonnie and Clyde. Lucky us.