by Amy Vansant
“Anyway, you can always make toilet wine,” said Darla.
Mariska’s lip curled. “That’s disgusting.”
Darla laughed and elbowed her friend in the arm. “I feel like I dodged a bullet. I was bread elf last year.”
“Sure, rub it in.”
“Did Alice have everything all laid out for you when you got there?”
“Yes. She was so thoughtful.”
“And she had you choose the starter?”
Mariska smiled. “Yes. She was so cute with those three starters, shuffling them like it was a game.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Charlotte.
“She had three different jars of starter yeast. The bread elf gets to pick which one to use.”
Darla opened the door to her house and ushered the ladies inside. “I think that’s how Alice tried to make it special for us—as if choosing which starter we used somehow made the finished product ours as much as hers.”
“What was the difference between the three of them?”
Mariska shrugged. “Probably nothing. I think it was just a gesture. That’s the kind of person she was.”
“Very sweet,” agreed Darla.
Mariska pounded her fist into her opposite open palm. “I’m so sorry the plan didn’t work. It would have made me feel so much better to do this for Alice.”
Charlotte patted Mariska’s shoulder as they mounted the steps to Darla’s house.
“Stop beating yourself up.”
Darla gave them each a glass and poured three fingers of Pinot Grigio into each.
“Here’s to Alice,” said Darla, holding aloft her glass.
Charlotte snapped from her thoughts and dinged her glass against Mariska’s.
“To Alice.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Charlotte returned to the Miller farm the next day to find her knock answered by a Hispanic woman in a maid’s uniform. She recognized her as the wife of the eldest landscaper attending Miller’s funeral. When Charlotte asked for Mina, she pointed toward the kitchen and Charlotte went there to find Mina sitting at the table with her head in her hands. The puppies were loose in the kitchen, tumbling with each other and knocking their heads into the chair legs as if they were made of rubber.
Charlotte wobbled as she dodged to keep from stepping on one.
“I like to give them a daily romp,” said Mina. Her voice sounded as if it weighed a thousand pounds.
“Who answered the door?” asked Charlotte.
Mina glanced back towards the main hall.
“One of the cleaners? I’d arranged to have them come clean up after the party. Of course, that was when I thought I’d have the money to pay them. I guess I’ll ask Lyndsey for a loan.”
“I talked to Lyndsey’s mother last night. She said Kimber knew Lyndsey was his daughter.”
Charlotte watched the blood drain from Mina’s face.
“He knew?”
“According to her.”
Mina closed her eyes. “Then it’s true. He knew. And all this time I thought I talked him into taking her. I thought I’d done this noble thing.”
“Do you have that packet containing proof of Lyndsey’s paternity?”
Mina nodded and moved to the kitchen’s bill-paying desk to retrieve a brown folder Charlotte recognized from the reading. Mina handed it to her and she flipped through the papers, not sure what she hoped to find. Everything appeared to be in order, but Mina would need a lawyer to check each document to be sure. She handed it to Mina who placed it back on the desk.
“When did Kimber start to lose his mental capacity?”
“Maybe two months ago.”
“Did you ask when the will was changed? You could potentially contest it.”
Mina’s shoulders slumped as if the very idea exhausted her to her core. “If she’s his real daughter...”
Charlotte lowered herself into a seat.
“Are the girls here?”
“They’re all out at the barn. They only have two modes. Horse mode and phone mode.”
“Do any of them know it was Lyndsey’s mother who killed the twins’ parents?”
Mina gaped. “How do you know that?”
“Tracy Griffin told me.”
“Like she was bragging?”
“No. It came up while I was questioning her.”
Mina sighed. “They know. The twins have thrown it at Lyndsey during some memorable fights. Kids can be so mean.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t think it was important and it hurts Lyndsey’s feelings when it comes up. She feels responsible for her mother’s behavior.”
“You brought the daughter of your brother’s killer into the house.” Charlotte said it as a statement of fact.
Mina nodded. “It felt right.”
“I guess Mr. Miller was okay with it because he knew she was his daughter.”
Mina barked a bitter laugh. “No. Not at all. We fought. I told him something good should come of it all. Lyndsey was such a darling girl. Eventually he just gave in. Or at least I thought he gave in. If he knew, maybe it was his plan all along. He did like to fight.”
“Tracy said she didn’t think he was particularly nice to her, though?”
Mina sighed. “There’s some truth to that. He always favored the twins. I tried to hide it from Lyndsey, but he didn’t. He definitely resented the girl. Either for what her mother did or for her very existence.”
“But he left her his money. Maybe to assuage his guilt for ignoring her all these years?”
“Maybe.”
A puppy began to gnaw on Charlotte’s flip flop and she picked the critter up.
“Did you notice any additional interaction between your brother and Lyndsey over the last few months?”
“No. He hadn’t been downstairs since Christmas two years ago. Well, until they carried him out.”
Charlotte’s gaze floated to Mina’s phone lying on the table beside her. “They gave you back your phone.”
Mina nodded.
“How come you only have that one camera in the back?”
“Hm?”
“When I went to review the camera footage, there was only data for the camera that looks out over the backyard.”
Mina scowled and grabbed her phone. “No, there’s a camera at each of the entrances front and back—” Mina flipped to the app on her phone and clicked through a few pages. “Well how about that? There’s only the one camera on.”
“Why would that be?”
“I don’t know. When you said you looked at everything I assumed you’d seen all the cameras.”
Charlotte lifted her chin to avoid drowning in kisses from the puppy in her lap. “I only saw the footage from the one.”
Mina dropped her phone to the table. “What’s the point of having the cameras if they don’t work?”
“Who else knows how to shut them off?”
Mina rolled her eyes. “All the girls do. You know kids and technology. They shut them off all the time so I don’t get a ding when they sneak out to party with their friends. I never think to check the thing.”
“Do you mind if I spend a little more time looking at what’s there?”
“No. Here.” Mina traded her the phone for the puppy. “I’ll take these guys back upstairs before they chew up the place.”
Charlotte flipped through the camera app to the list of archived videos. She checked the cameras for unusual activity leading up to Miller’s death, but the front camera held nothing but videos of FedEx drivers leaving packages, water deliveries and the everyday comings and goings of the family. The back door camera contained much of the same—-the twins leading their horses back and forth, Todd rolling a wheelbarrow to and fro, Lyndsey leaving her apartment and walking down the path that led to the riding rings or toward the back door of the house, usually around dinner time.
She wasn’t sure what she hoped to find. Maybe one of them in the backyard pretending to b
ash skulls with an iron rabbit. Maybe a stranger with the iron rabbit in his hand, walking toward the house holding his driver’s license towards the camera as he walked. That would be nice.
She heard Mina talking to the cleaning crew in the hall and hastened to check the back yard roof top camera with the refection spot one more time. She watched the reflection of Mina trudging up and down the stairs, waiting on her brother. After all that caregiving, she had every right to be upset her brother had willed almost everything to his surprise daughter. She saw another figure pass by and recognized it in the wavy metal as Lyndsey. She assumed she was on her way up to talk to Miller and then hide with the puppies—
Hold the phone.
The date on the file was two days before Miller died. She went through some earlier files and found more evidence of Lyndsey heading up the stairs, always around four o’clock, almost always on Wednesdays.
Mina came in looking exhausted.
“I swear, you have to keep on people to do a good job at anything. Kids, help—”
“Do you do something on Wednesdays around four?” asked Charlotte, looking up from the videos.
“Hm?” Mina seemed confused for a moment before her expression relaxed. “Oh, yes, that’s mahjong night with my friends. Why?”
Charlotte held out the phone and Mina took it to watch the video she’d queued up.
“That’s what you showed me before. Lyndsey going up the stairs.”
“Look at the date.”
She gasped. “That’s a week before he died.”
Charlotte nodded. “I checked. She goes up those stairs every Wednesday for as far back as the videos go.”
“I think they erase after three months,” mumbled Mina. She looked at Charlotte. “What does this mean?”
“It means Lyndsey was cultivating a relationship with your brother. Talking to him. Getting to know him. Gaining his confidence.”
“Behind my back.” Mina lowered the phone and stared through the window into the front yard. “She could have talked him into changing the will.”
“It also means she lied about being suddenly summoned upstairs.”
Mina sat. “The day I found her, I’d come home early. One of the mahjong girls had the flu and we had to cancel, but I didn’t find out until I was almost there. I turned around...” She looked at Charlotte. “Did I catch her in the act of killing him?”
“I don’t know. But I’m starting to call everything into question.”
“Like what?”
“Like the paternity test that says she’s his biological daughter.”
Mina nodded slowly, suddenly looking very sad.
“What is it?” asked Charlotte.
“There’s something I need to show you. The thing that has had me most upset.” She disappeared toward her bedroom and reappeared with a sheet of paper. She held it out, her face flush with emotion.
“What is it?” Charlotte looked at the document. “Another paternity test?”
She nodded. “The twins are Kimber’s, too.”
Charlotte gasped. “I thought they were your other brother’s kids?”
“Kimber had an affair with Liz, our sister-in-law. She was in the process of proving the babies were his when she died.”
“Proving?”
“She wanted Kimber to give John a raise and give her money as well.”
“She was blackmailing him.”
“Yes. Though it wouldn’t have worked. Kimber would have told his brother himself before he let her blackmail him.”
“Then they end up dead and he takes in the girls? His girls?”
She nodded. “At the time he felt everything was turning out the way it should, in a way. He didn’t want our brother dead, of course. But he went from villain to hero in a heartbeat.”
“Villain?”
“I mean having an affair with his brother’s wife. She was about to tell everyone. And there were people who knew about the affair. At the time, a part of me thought taking in Lyndsey, too, made it less obvious the twins were his. It made it look like we were just doing the right thing. It threw the company rumor mill off the scent.”
“Didn’t Tracy Griffin work for him?”
“Yes. But who would ever imagine he was the real father of all three kids? I told him taking the girls would make him look like a great guy. Especially to women. That did it.”
Charlotte studied the document in her hand.
“I assume the twins don’t know?”
Mina shook her head.
Charlotte pointed to a circular splash mark on the paternity test results. “What’s this red blotch at the top?”
Mina sniffed. “Cherry juice, I think. Kimber loved his Manhattans. I’m sure as soon as he found out his sister-in-law’s kids were actually his, he probably started drinking.”
“So this is the original?”
Mina leaned to look. “Yes. I left him a copy. I was afraid he might destroy the original during one of his snits and I wanted a record in case I needed it.” She grit her teeth. “Like now.”
“You think the girls deserve more.”
Mina nodded. “I feel trapped. If I tell the girls they’re Kimber’s daughters too, they’ll contest the will. It will tear the family apart.”
“But if you don’t tell them, they lose their rightful portion of the inheritance to Lyndsey.”
“Exactly.”
Something about that red mark bothered Charlotte. She moved to grab the lawyer’s packet again, and flipped to the paternity test results proving Lyndsey was his daughter. There, she also found an affidavit from Tracy, admitting to their affair.
“Look.” She held up the paternity sheet and pointed to a gray splotch. “I thought something looked familiar.”
Mina held up her own copy of the twins’ test and compared the two. “They both have the same splotch, but Lyndsey’s is gray. How is that possible?”
“I think Lyndsey found the copy you left in Kimber’s things. We know she’s been sneaking up there for weeks. I’m assuming he wasn’t always awake.”
“Probably not.”
“She must have made a copy with her own name on it and then convinced him to change his will based on the information.”
Mina gaped. “He was awfully fuzzy the last few months of his life. He could have gotten the story confused and believed she was his daughter, not the twins.”
“Could he have believed he’d had an affair with Lyndsey’s mom?”
Mina snorted a laugh. “He’d slept with everything that moved at that company. That part probably is real.”
“And he could have forgotten the twins were his too?”
“During those last few months, he’d forgotten they existed entirely, several times. He forgot who I was once or twice.”
Mina’s eyes began to tear. “What am I going to do?”
“I think we have to take this new information to Sheriff Carter.” Charlotte grimaced. “And we definitely need a new paternity test, not to mention a lawyer to prove Kimber wasn’t of sound mind and check the dates and signatures on everything.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Gemma leaned against the doorway of the stall and stared at Todd. He’d taken off his shirt and the muscles in his back moved and flexed as he picked through the straw.
“Hey,” she said, in what she hoped sounded like a sexy, smoky voice.
Todd looked up and rolled his eyes. He had a smile on his face when he first glanced up, but it had slipped away the moment he saw it was her.
No. I’m imagining that. He’s just hot. It’s humid today.
“Hey,” he said before returning to his work.
“What time do you think you’ll be done?”
Todd paused and leaned on his apple-picker, wiping his brow with the back of his arm.
“I don’t know. I guess the same time I’m usually done.”
He stared at her, as if waiting for her to say something, but she suddenly lost her nerve. Her mouth felt dry.
Gemma chewed her tongue a second and swallowed. “I was wondering if, maybe later—”
“If maybe later she could ride you like a stallion.” Payne banged into her sister’s arm, knocking her from her sexy, hip-cocked pose and sending her sprawling toward the wheelbarrow full of horse manure. She caught her balance and shoved her sister back.
“You’re such a jerk.”
Payne laughed and stepped back to avoid Gemma’s retaliation. She folded her hands and held them beneath her chin as she stared into the rafters. “Oh Todd, what are you doing tonight, big boy?”
Gemma could feel her face burning. She glanced at Todd and saw he, too, was laughing. Laughing at her.
She turned on her sister, who still stood swoony-eyed, pantomiming her adoration for Todd.
“I hate you!”
She ran down the center aisle to the barn exit. Once out, she threw her back against the outer wall, tears gliding down her hot cheeks.
He thinks I’m a joke.
She heard boots approaching and for a moment thought it might be Todd on his way to comfort her. He was coming to tell her she had no reason to be embarrassed and that he had feelings for her, too.
“Come on, I was just playing,” said Payne as she rounded the corner.
Oh it’s you.
Gemma looked away and wiped at her tears. “It’s not funny. You embarrassed me. Why do you always have to be such a jerk?”
Payne snorted a laugh. “You can’t be serious. You don’t really like Todd.”
Gemma looked at her sister. “What if I did?”
“Why would you be all over the manure boy?”
“He’s not a boy. He’s older than we are.”
“Yeah, and there’s another reason he wouldn’t want to be with you. You’re seventeen.”
“So?”
“He’s, like, twenty-one. That’s, like, statutory rape or something. He could go to jail.”
“We’re only four years apart.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Gemma crossed her arms against her chest and pouted. “We could wait to have sex.”
Payne guffawed. “Boys that age don’t wait to have sex.”
“How would you know?”
“Everyone knows. Boys that age are basically just a walking penis. It’s all they think about.”
