by Lee Hollis
“So you took matters into your own hands,” Hayley said quietly.
“I was afraid she would go to the police and tell them about the blackmail scheme and our involvement. It might have spooked our board of directors and threatened the merger, and I just couldn’t let that happen.”
“So you rigged the cat food dispenser, and then you used Penelope’s phone to text Lena, which I assume you had access to since you obviously snuck into her room late at night when Conrad wasn’t around. You pretended to be Penelope and asked her to refill the dispenser with cat food so Sebastian wouldn’t go hungry during the night. Then you followed her down to the pantry and locked her inside seconds before the explosion was timed to go off.”
Gerard’s head was bowed.
He didn’t have to answer her.
It was clear she had nailed down what had really happened.
“And when Penelope mentioned that there had been a mistake, and Lena was still very much alive, you raced over here to finish the job.”
“My God . . .” a man’s voice said from behind Sergio.
Sergio glanced over his shoulder and then stepped aside.
Gerard’s son Tristan stood in the doorway, eyes fixed on his father, a bouquet of fresh flowers in his hand, trembling.
“Dad, what have you done?”
Chapter 30
“Tristan, son, what are you doing here?” Gerard gasped.
“I was looking for you at the estate, and Penelope told me that Lena had made a miraculous recovery so I rushed right over . . .” he said, his words trailing off as he stared glumly at his father, dropping the flowers in his hand onto the floor.
“How much did you hear?” Gerard asked, his face stricken.
“All of it.”
There was a long, agonizingly tense silence.
No one knew quite what to say.
Hayley sat up higher in the bed as Tristan stepped into the hospital room and moved closer to Gerard.
He pointed a finger in his father’s face. “You killed Lena?”
“Son, let me explain—”
“I don’t want to hear it! I don’t want to hear anything you have to say! I loved her, Dad, don’t you get it? I was in love with her!”
This caught Gerard by surprise.
It was obvious from his reaction that he had no idea the extent of his son’s feelings for Lena Hendricks.
“I know she didn’t feel the same way about me. She told me she didn’t have time for a relationship because she was too focused on her career and where she wanted to go. She said as sweetly as she could that I just wasn’t a part of that plan. I got it. I totally did. But that didn’t change how I felt about her even knowing deep down she would never want me . . .”
“Tristan, I didn’t realize . . .”
“How could you, Dad? How could you do it?”
“It was for you, son! I was securing your future! You were going to be sole heir to a whole cooking empire! You were going to be rich beyond your wildest dreams!”
“Becoming a billionaire was your dream, Dad, not mine! You took away the only thing I really cared about! I pretended to be like you. Pompous and arrogant, the loudest voice in the room! I tried really hard! But it just isn’t me! I hate acting like that! I hate trying to be you all the time! I just wanted to find a girl and get away and live a simpler life. I was hoping when I came here for the weekend that girl was Lena, but . . .”
“Tristan, I’m sorry . . .”
Another long, uncomfortable silence followed.
Tristan’s eyes darted back and forth as his mind detonated with thoughts flying in all directions.
And then, he slowly raised his head and gazed at his father. “Were you the one who pushed Hayley overboard during our sailing trip on Saturday?”
Gerard didn’t answer him.
He didn’t have to because it was obvious he was the guilty party.
“It was you, wasn’t it?”
Finally, with Tristan, Hayley, and Sergio all glaring at him, he crumbled. He slowly nodded his head and then folded his arms across his chest, hugging himself. “I wanted her to stop asking nosy questions. Lena was already spooked, believing I was the one who pushed Conrad off that cliff, which is not true, and with Hayley constantly poking around, upsetting everyone, I wanted to send her a strong message that she should just stop. She was on the verge of torpedoing the merger with her big mouth!”
Hayley took umbrage at that last part.
But she didn’t interrupt him to defend herself.
She decided to let Gerard continue babbling.
He was doing a pretty good job of torpedoing himself without any help from her.
“But she didn’t stop! She stubbornly kept bringing up questions, especially after Lena . . .” Gerard choked, his eyes brimming with tears.
Tristan’s eyes bored into his anguished father. He spoke in a low, flat voice. “So you knocked her out and dragged her to that sea cave to drown so you would finally be rid of her and you wouldn’t have to deal with any more questions!”
Gerard glanced at Hayley, who remained stone-faced.
She wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of a response, be it anger, fright, or despair over his heinous, despicable actions.
Tristan raised a shaky hand to his mouth and looked at Gerard as it dawned on him what his father was doing in this hospital room. “Dear God, Penelope told you Lena was still alive like she told me, and so you came over here to . . . Oh my God . . .”
Tristan was inconsolable now.
He recoiled as Gerard moved toward him with an outstretched hand.
Tristan turned to Hayley, who had quietly crawled out of the bed and was now standing next to the sobbing young man. She took him in her arms and hugged him, trying to comfort him, but knowing there was very little she could do to make him feel better after all he had just learned.
Gerard took another baby step forward, but Sergio blocked his path, unhooking a pair of handcuffs from his belt.
“I think we better go down to the station and get you booked,” Sergio said.
Gerard nodded, held both hands out to Sergio, forming fists as if to capitulate to the chief’s orders and allow himself to be handcuffed.
But before Sergio had a chance to snap one of the cuffs on Gerard’s wrist, he catapulted one fist upward, clocking Sergio underneath the chin, momentarily disorienting him and allowing Gerard to push him across the room into Tristan and Hayley, who were still hugging.
All three of them tumbled to the ground.
Gerard bolted from the hospital room.
Sergio rubbed his chin as he sprang to his feet and chased after Gerard.
Tristan was curled up in a ball crying as Hayley jumped to her feet and rushed out the door after Sergio.
She heard a nurse scream, no doubt startled by the two men running past her, the whoosh of air sending papers flying up off the reception desk.
Hayley followed, spotting Nurse Tilly on her feet, hand to her chest, face flushed.
She pointed down the hall. “They went that way!”
Hayley sprinted down the long corridor past rows of hospital rooms and down to the cafeteria where she saw several panicked visitors and staff hurrying out, the swinging doors flapping behind them.
She knew that’s where she would find Sergio and Gerard.
When she crashed into the cafeteria, there was no sign of them. The whole room had been abandoned. Just half-eaten Jell-O and mushy meatloaf and lumpy potatoes on trays, cups of coffee, and even a purse left lying on one of the tables.
Then she heard plates smashing in the kitchen.
Hayley swiftly ran through the swinging doors into the kitchen in time to see Sergio backed up against a stove, hands up to defend himself, as Gerard gripped the handle of a sharp butcher knife, waving it around, threatening to stab the chief.
“Come on, Gerard, you’re facing enough charges already! You don’t need to add assaulting a police officer to the list!” Se
rgio barked.
But there was no reasoning with Gerard.
He had lost everything.
His son.
Penelope.
The merger.
His entire livelihood.
He had nothing left and there was no telling what he was going to do.
Sergio caught Hayley’s eye and directed her toward a frying pan lying on the counter. Without wasting another second, Hayley dashed forward, grabbed the pan by the handle, reared back and cracked it hard against the back of Gerard’s head.
He dropped faster than a sack of potatoes, releasing his tight grip on the knife, which clattered to the floor just before Hayley kicked it clear across the room safely out of his reach.
And then she gave Sergio a hug, who certainly appeared as if he needed one.
From the way he hugged her back, Hayley could tell that she had been right.
The man needed a hug.
Chapter 31
A week after Gerard Roquefort’s arrest, the murder of Lena Hendricks was still very much on ever yone’s mind. Bruce had written a front-page story on the whole sordid affair, detailing the merger, the secret trysts, and all the schemes that had unfolded within the walls of Penelope Janice’s estate.
Penelope herself had pretty much holed up in her seaside castle, talking to no one on the outside, least of all a rabid press eager to get her side of the story.
There was an ongoing discussion at the Hancock County district attorney’s office over whether or not charges should be filed against Penelope for her role in the fake murder plot, but no one seriously expected anything to come of it. Lena was the one who had lured Conrad into agreeing to off his wife so they could be together, but it never got farther than the planning stages, and Conrad died before it ever got to the point where Penelope actually used the recorded conversations to blackmail her husband into leaving town quietly. Even if there was intent, Penelope’s celebrity status was enough to squash any talk of a possible indictment.
But there were still a lot of people who thought Penelope should be punished, not because she was in any way legally responsible for Lena’s death, but because in many minds, her calculating, cold, highly immoral actions did in fact play a significant role.
The irony was, Penelope’s brand didn’t suffer much at all, at least in the short term. Sales of her cookbooks and cutlery and bedding and towels all skyrocketed because of the salacious details of her affair that were splattered all over the papers, gossip websites, and cable news channels. Her company stock soared.
Scandal was definitely good for business.
Hayley was just happy to be home, with her pets, back to living a quiet, decidedly non-celebrity life. She relished the routine of feeding Leroy and Blueberry, picking up her morning cup of coffee at the Big Apple gas station on her way to work, and spending the day behind her desk at the Island Times, enjoying a relatively obscure existence.
A flurry of interview requests poured in those first few days, but she refused to take the bait, and answered each call and email with a firm and final “No comment.”
* * *
It was a Friday morning, and Hayley stood in her kitchen, staring out the window, reliving the events of that fateful Fourth of July weekend one more time, hoping this time would be the last, and that she would finally be able to put it all behind her and move on.
But so far she hadn’t been able to do that.
She had foolishly thought the same thing the day before, and the day before that.
Something was still nagging at her.
Hayley just couldn’t shake the idea that there was one last piece of the puzzle still missing.
She had no clue that today would be the day that last piece would fall so perfectly into place, and that the startling revelation would haunt her forever.
It was eerily quiet as she watched tiny raindrops splash against the window. The only sound in the house was Leroy gulping down his breakfast so fast he was pushing his plastic bowl with his wet nose, causing the bowl to scrape across the linoleum floor. She was about to turn and grab her umbrella to take to work in case she had to run errands at lunch when she saw a police cruiser pull in to her driveway.
Sergio got out, slammed the driver’s side door shut, and jogged around to the back. She was waiting for him as he rapped his knuckles on the wood door quickly before coming inside.
She had told him a hundred times he didn’t need to knock.
He was family.
But he never listened.
His beautiful Brazilian mother had brought him up to always knock.
“I would have made breakfast if I knew you were going to stop by,” Hayley said.
“I’m good,” he said. “I was going to call you last night, but it was late and I didn’t want to risk waking you so I thought I would just swing by this morning on my way to the station.”
“What’s up?” she said, suddenly curious.
“I closed my investigation into Conrad’s death. I am officially ruling it an accident.”
He could tell from Hayley’s troubled expression that she was not satisfied with his final conclusion.
“There was just no clear evidence that anyone pushed him,” he said, still trying to convince her. “But there were plenty of clues that suggest he fell, like the rain making everything slippery and the fact that he was drunk, three times the legal limit, in fact, according to the coroner.”
“What about the pipe found at the scene?”
“I don’t know. I suppose it must have belonged to him.”
Hayley nodded, praying that the feeling in the pit of her stomach would just go away, but it only got worse when she heard what Sergio had to say next.
“It wasn’t even a real pipe.”
“What?”
“It was one of those fake pipes. What do they call them?”
“E-pipes,” Hayley answered.
“Right. I assume Conrad was using it to try and kick the habit.”
“But he wasn’t trying to quit. Believe me, the night I had food poisoning, he was smoking real tobacco. The smell of it made me sick all over again.”
Sergio shrugged, dumbfounded. “Then I just don’t know.”
Hayley did.
She knew exactly who the pipe belonged to, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it, not just yet.
“I need to get to work,” Hayley said mechanically.
Sergio noticed her sudden change in tone.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, fine,” she lied, checking her watch. “I just don’t want to be late.”
Sergio gave her a hug and turned to leave, glancing back one more time to check on her.
She kept a mask of calm on her face as if nothing was wrong, even though inside she was falling apart.
After Sergio slid into his cruiser, backed out of the driveway, and sped off, she grabbed her keys off the counter, walked outside in the rain, got behind the wheel of her car, and drove to Seal Harbor, staring at the road ahead of her, the flapping windshield wipers holding her in some kind of hypnotic trance.
When she arrived at Penelope Janice’s estate, the gate was open and she drove straight past the main house down to the caretaker’s cottage.
When she pulled up, she saw Lex sitting on the front porch alone, looking out at the vast ocean, lost in his thoughts.
She got out of her car and walked slowly toward the porch, taking in deep breaths, trying not to burst into tears.
He looked at her, a slight smile on his face, happy to see her.
“It was you . . .”
The slight smile on his face suddenly disappeared.
“You were the one who pushed Conrad.”
Lex Bansfield.
A man she thought she knew, a man she had once loved and been intimate with, this man, rocking back and forth in a chair in front of her, was a killer.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” she said, her voice quivering.
Lex stood up. Tears streamed down his
face as he slowly nodded. “You’re not wrong. It was me. I killed him.”
Chapter 32
“Lex, no, I can’t believe it,” Hayley whispered as if the wind had just been knocked out of her. “Not you. You’re not capable of harming anyone. I know you. I know your heart.”
Lex stepped toward her, his hands shaking. “It was an accident. A stupid, preventable accident. When Conrad found out I had briefly been involved with Lena, he went wild with jealousy. It consumed him, and suddenly after months of him complimenting me every day on the job I was doing, suddenly everything I touched wasn’t good enough. And anything that went wrong around the estate was somehow my fault. It quickly became clear he wanted me gone, so he tried to make me miserable enough so I would quit.”
“He didn’t want you on the property for Lena to pine after,” Hayley said, watching him try to keep it together. “And he couldn’t fire you because Penelope would want to know why, and Conrad didn’t want to risk her finding out about his affair with Lena.”
Lex nodded solemnly.
Hayley could see that he was about to fall apart.
Living with this had clearly taken an emotional toll on him.
He looked drawn and tired.
Nothing like the ruggedly handsome man he had been when they first met.
“So he was stuck with me,” Lex shrugged. “But every time he saw me working in the garden, or mowing the lawn, or fixing a window, all that jealous rage came roaring back, even though he knew Lena and I were no longer an item.”
“What happened that night, Lex?” Hayley asked, bracing herself.
“Normally I would know how to avoid him since I’m pretty familiar with his habits and schedule, but that fateful night, the night he died, I thought he would stay late at the dinner. I didn’t expect he would be out by the cliff smoking his pipe until much later, so it was a surprise when I decided to get some fresh air that night and I ran right into him.”
“He was drunk and surly and upset about what had happened at the dinner, and he took it out on you,” Hayley said.
