She blinked. “Yes. Of course. Junior year in high school, then again in college.”
“Then you know the play’s the thing with which to catch the conscience of the king.” He spread his hands wide. “The police won’t act, so we will. Mitch Kruger killed Mary Ann Hennessy and dumped her body somewhere. We’ll get him to lead us right to her.”
“You want to...what? Stage a murder?”
“No. I’m not thinking that literally. I’m thinking we need to snoop around, ask him some questions. Make him sweat. Hope he slips up in a way that leads us right to some damning evidence.”
She sat back in her seat, digesting the proposal. Everything about this was crazy. Nuts. Bizarre to the extreme. And yet she was intrigued. She’d tried not to think about the case for weeks, it was true, but it still haunted her nightmares. Mitch Kruger had to be held accountable for his actions.
She saw something in Ben’s face that told her he understood. He felt it, too—the need to bring order to chaos, to bring some semblance of right upon the colossal wrongs they encountered regularly. “This is insane. You realize that, right?” Because she didn’t want to work with him if he was going to try to convince her this was a perfectly sound, reasonable plan.
He shrugged noncommittally. “I realize it’s an unorthodox approach, how’s that?”
She drummed her fingertips on the desktop. She’d been living with unorthodox for pretty much her entire life. “Fine. I’m in.” She tried to ignore the way her heart skipped at the broad smile that broke across his face. “But there’s a better way to catch the conscience of the king.” She leaned forward. “We have to talk to the queen.”
Chapter 13
Ronnie shook two aspirin into her palm. Her head was about to split, and she wanted to be able to close her eyes for an hour without feeling as if the room was spinning. She choked down the bitter pills with a gulp of water, feeling them slide down her esophagus. Fifteen minutes, and she should be feeling better—wasn’t that what she’d always told the kids who’d come to her with headaches at school? Go take an aspirin, and then come lie down for fifteen minutes. She couldn’t give them aspirin or ibuprofen or anything. Just mints. Sometimes that made her feel useless.
She straightened and walked back into the living room. She hated this room now. Mitch should’ve painted it right after...but then, she supposed he couldn’t. He’d been a suspect in her disappearance, and if he’d started painting the scene, that would’ve raised suspicion. Still. He didn’t even do a good job cleaning it. She’d found blood between two of the floorboards that morning—just a speck of dried blood that probably looked like a mark on the wood to anyone else, or possibly a clump of dirt. But it was blood. There was blood everywhere in that room. She could still see it on the walls beneath the antiseptic coat of primer, even after three passes. Ronnie could walk over the floorboards and hear the dried blood creaking beneath her from where it had seeped below the planks. There was so much blood, and it would always be there.
She scrubbed the entire room with bleach, donning a painter’s mask to keep from inhaling the fumes. Safety first. With furious strokes of the stiff bristles of an old cleaning brush, she worked at the spots on the walls and the ridges of the floorboards until her arms burned, then continued scrubbing through the tears that blurred her vision. It will never be clean. The blood is still there.
When her head was pounding and her arms leaden from the effort, she sat back on her haunches and dropped the brush unceremoniously into the bucket of bleach and water. The windows were wide-open, and Ronnie was wearing a winter coat to keep from freezing, and the room stank like death tinged with bleach.
She emptied the bucket and returned it to the basement. When she came back upstairs, she looked out the window and saw the two prosecutors walking up the driveway.
Ronnie’s heart skipped, and she cursed under her breath. She had nothing to say to these two, and she still had ten minutes before her aspirin was supposed to take effect, though in truth she’d already started to feel the edge of her pain dull. A quick glimpse in the mirror showed that she looked presentable, if a bit disheveled. But then she’d been hard at work, cleaning.
She plastered a smile on her face and opened the door just as the man raised his fist. She had a doorbell, but perhaps he’d been raised in a barn. “I saw you coming up the drive,” she said brightly. “Can I help you?”
Her friendliness was rewarded with two serious stares. The man spoke first. “Mrs. Kruger? I don’t know if you remember us. I’m Ben McNamara, and this is Sally Dawson. We’re with the state’s attorney’s office.”
Ronnie felt her skin pulling with the effort of her smile. “Of course I remember you.”
Mr. Tall, Dark and Broad. She’d remember a face like his anywhere, and that woman...she’d known women like her. Entitled, better-than-you types. Ronnie didn’t forget them, either.
Sally pointed her freckled little nose at Ronnie’s coat. “It looks like we caught you at a bad time, Mrs. Kruger. Are you on your way out?”
Like you care about my plans. “No.” She smiled. “I was cleaning my living room, and I opened the windows for ventilation. I was just about to shut them.” She stepped back graciously. “Would you like to come in?”
Yes, that’s good. Show them how generous you are with your time. You have nothing to hide!
Ben and Sally uttered quick thanks before stepping into the foyer. Ronnie offered to hang their coats, but they declined. “We’ll be brief, thanks,” Ben said.
Ronnie shrugged off her own coat before leading them into the living room. She closed the windows and settled on the couch. Sally and Ben hadn’t waited for an invitation before plunking themselves into two high-backed chairs across from her. Mitch had purchased those chairs to replace the cream-colored love seat Ronnie loved so much. It had been soaked through with blood.
“How can I help you?” She folded her hands on her lap and pulled her shoulders back. Always the lady, always gracious. She could be the old Ronnie when it suited her purposes.
She noticed Sally’s gaze darting around the room. “Is Mitch—is your husband home?”
“He works,” she replied. “He was lucky to be able to get his old job back after, you know, being falsely accused of murdering me.”
Ronnie didn’t bother faking a smile this time, although she could have managed a genuine smile based on the way Sally squirmed in her seat. Ben must have noticed it, too, because he cleared his throat and leaned forward.
“We’re still investigating our internal procedures. Needless to say, we’re trying to figure out how to stop that from happening again.”
He gave her a smile that reached the corners of his eyes, and Ronnie’s pulse reacted. My, he was attractive. She wished she wasn’t wearing old clothes and stinking of bleach.
“But none of that matters for today’s visit,” he continued, reaching into his coat pocket. “I’m here to ask you about your sister.”
Ronnie felt the blood drain from her head. Mary Ann. She brought her fingers to her temple and closed her eyes.
“Mrs. Kruger, are you all right?”
The voice was Sally’s, and the concern that registered in the tone was alarming. Damn, she needed to pull herself together, stop thinking about the blood on the floor and the bleach burning her nostrils.
“I’ve had a bit of a headache all day,” she explained with a feeble laugh. “Sorry for that.” She looked up again and blinked a few times as if her vision was slightly askew. “You want to talk about Mary Ann? Whatever for?”
Sally and Ben exchanged a glance loaded with meaning, and then Sally spoke. “When was the last time you saw her, Mrs. Kruger?”
“It’s just Ronnie. And, well. You know.” She forced a chuckle. “I’ve been missing myself for almost a year. I’d say maybe eighteen months ago. Why?”
> “She’s missing,” said Ben. “No one’s seen her since around the time you disappeared. Strange, don’t you think?”
Ronnie felt her face get colder, her pupils reacting even as she tried not to seem alarmed by this line of questioning. They can’t possibly know.
But her assurances did little to calm her, and her fingertips began to twitch. “That does seem strange,” she said slowly. “But I can’t imagine anything bad has happened to Mary Ann. This may sound irrational, but we’re very close, and I feel like I would know.” She smiled. “We’re sisters. We’ve always had a strong connection.”
Sally’s gaze was razor-sharp and focused on Ronnie. “You share more than a connection, don’t you? You share blood. Bone marrow.” She leaned closer. “DNA.”
Ronnie’s heart thundered in her chest, and her breathing became shallow. “Why, yes, we do. Mary Ann had leukemia. She needed a bone marrow transplant. I was a match.”
“It’s an interesting fact about bone marrow transplants, how they can turn the recipient into a chimera—an organism with multiple sets of DNA. The bone marrow from the donor creates blood in the recipient that matches the donor’s DNA, but the DNA in the rest of the recipient’s body is unique to the recipient.” Sally eyed her, watching for her response.
Ronnie’s lips twisted into something she hoped resembled a small smile. “I remember studying something about that in nursing school. Fascinating subject.”
Sally lifted one shoulder innocently and shot Ben a look. “The blood we found on the area rug matched Ronnie’s DNA, and that’s why we assumed she was dead. But if Ronnie donated bone marrow to her sister, that means the DNA in their blood was the same. It could have been Mary Ann’s blood on that rug—spilled in a fatal amount.”
Little bitch. Ronnie felt her muscles quivering with a desire to throttle her. She tried to shake her head with something like wonder at the statement, but found her muscles too stiff for such movement. “That’s—incomprehensible to me. I would have to have some sense of that. A feeling, a foreboding. We were—are—very much connected.”
That’s why Ronnie’s gut had twisted for years when she caught something in her husband’s eye. Whether it had been the angle of his gaze or the way his pupils reacted to her, something in his eyes had told her that her husband didn’t love her anymore. It was the sixth sense she had about her sister that told her that Mary Ann was the reason. Even with hundreds of miles between them, Ronnie just knew.
“I know this must be shocking to hear,” Sally continued. “But it’s what the evidence suggests. You and Mary Ann have the same blood. If it wasn’t your blood on that rug, then it must have been hers.” She lowered her voice. “Of course, that means that Mary Ann is probably dead. No one could have survived such a blood loss.”
Ronnie’s hand flew to her cheek. She opened her mouth dumbly and shook her head, waiting several moments before speaking. “No, that can’t be true. To think that Mary Ann...dead? Murdered in my own home? And by my husband? I can’t imagine.”
“We never said anything about Mitch murdering Mary Ann,” Sally said quietly.
Ronnie’s gut clenched. “No, of course you didn’t. I only meant—”
“It was a reasonable conclusion to draw,” Ben said, jumping to her defense. “I imagine it’s upsetting to hear us say these things. You saved Mary Ann’s life, donating your marrow. It’s understandable that an experience like that would bring you two closer.”
Closer? That was one way to put it. Turns out the bone marrow transplant had not only reunited Ronnie with her sister, but had reunited Mary Ann and Mitch, as well. Rekindled the love affair that Ronnie found out much too late had always been burning behind her back. That explained Mitch’s odd “business trips” to allegedly research new machinery for the hardware store, and all the late-night sessions chatting with someone on his computer. They’d been making a fool out of her. She’d pledged to love Mitch till death did part them, and she’d saved her sister’s life, and they’d both gone and betrayed her, threatened her family’s stability.
Ronnie’s fists tightened around the hem of her sweatshirt. She’d done what she’d had to do, and no more than that. No one was going to hurt her anymore.
“I haven’t seen Mary Ann.” She gave a little smile. “Is that all? We could have resolved this in the doorway.”
“Actually, it’s not all.” Ben reached into his coat pocket. “Obviously, we were wrong when we charged your husband with your murder, but we think we were only wrong about the who, not the what.” He opened his fist to reveal a little silver locket. “We think your husband may have killed your sister and disposed of her body. If we’re right, you may be in danger, Ronnie.”
Her heart flipped at the sight of the necklace. Ronnie remembered it. She’d found it on Mitch’s dresser that night, just sitting out in the open. It had her sister’s initials engraved on the back, and he’d even written out a card for her that read simply, “Love prevails.”
“What’s that?” She squinted at the necklace as if she didn’t know what to make of it. “And why does it mean I’m in danger?”
“Mitch disposed of this yesterday morning at the reservoir,” Sally explained gently. “It has your sister’s initials on it. MAH. We think he’s gotten wind that the police have been looking for your sister, and that he got scared and started to dispose of some evidence.”
Dummy. He should’ve disposed of that necklace a long time ago. All he had to do was flush it down the toilet! She couldn’t trust him to do anything.
“You’re a victim in this,” Ben added. “We know he’s been violent toward you in the past, and he could become violent again if he thinks he’s being threatened.”
Violent? Ronnie had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. Mitch, violent? Sure, he looked dangerous and talked a big game, but on the scale of butterfly to serial killer, he fell somewhere around puppy dog. The first thing he did when he saw Mary Ann’s body was to retch all over himself.
“Do you see what you did?” she’d snapped at him as he stood there looking stupid, staring at Mary Ann. “This is all your fault.”
The responsibility was his, but she’d had to take charge as usual, spelling out every last detail. Where to dump the body. How to hide the car. Where to store the rug. She’d had to save both their asses. Was Mitch idiotic? Sure. Violent? Hardly.
“Yes, he can get quite angry at times.” She looked down demurely at the carpet, as if too timid to admit such a thing about her own husband. “But I can’t imagine he’d...”
She allowed her voice to trail off as if something had just occurred to her. In truth, it had. The prosecutors bought her story. She was a long-suffering, abused wife. Her son thought his father had killed her. Her plan had been so perfect, and what? Now she was supposed to go to prison because Mitch had screwed up and kept evidence? No. She was done being victimized. He’d done it all, and his fingerprints were all over the remaining evidence. His case was lost.
She shook her head. “I just can’t imagine he’d actually kill someone, and not my sister, of all people.”
Sally cleared her throat and crossed her legs. “Ronnie, this is a little awkward for me to say, but we think your husband was having an affair with Mary Ann. We think they were planning to run away together, but that something went terribly wrong. Maybe she got cold feet or a guilty conscience, and threatened to tell you. In any case, we think that Mitch killed her and concealed the body.”
“That would explain why he was so violent with you that night,” Ben added. “He was angry about something, maybe his breakup, or maybe he’d already killed Mary Ann.”
“Maybe he tried to kill you, too,” Sally whispered. “You may have gotten away just in time.”
Ronnie sat mesmerized. She’d thought the plan was perfect: stage her own death and then return in time to save her husband from trial. E
xplain the whole thing as a minor domestic dispute. A misunderstanding. All the time the police spent looking for Ronnie meant they weren’t looking for Mary Ann, and the trail would go cold. Witnesses would forget conversations, evidence would disappear. She’d thought it was a solid plan—as solid as it could be, given the heat of the circumstances in which Mary Ann had died. There hadn’t been much forethought to any of it. But until this moment, Ronnie hadn’t realized quite how clever she’d been. They bought it. They knew about Mary Ann and the DNA evidence, and they still bought it. They believed her.
It’s not as if she especially cared what happened to Mitch right now. He’d been so stupid as to keep that necklace, and then he’d gone and thrown it away in front of witnesses. Mitch was the cheater. He was the one to blame for the tragedy. If he had only stayed faithful to her... She’d made him pay, all right. Nine months in prison, and he’d earned every single minute.
Mitch was responsible for Mary Ann’s death, not her. Mitch had disposed of the evidence. He owned the gun that killed her, and he was responsible for any fingerprints left on her car. No one could trace Ronnie to that crime, because it wasn’t her fault. If law enforcement was sniffing around again, looking for someone to blame, then that person was Mitch. Ronnie wasn’t going to jail.
She scrunched up her face, willing the tears to come. She’d gotten good at this part. Then again, all she had to do was think about Mary Ann and the way things between them had been at one point. Those memories touched a sore, and from there, the tears usually fell freely. As they did right now.
Sally was at her side quickly, crouching with a few tissues she’d pulled from her pocket. Maybe she wasn’t such a little tart, after all. “I see we’ve upset you,” she said. “That wasn’t our intent.”
Ronnie accepted the tissues and blew her nose. “You said everything I’ve been thinking since my memory came back. What if Mitch intended to hurt me more than he did? He’s been so...angry.” She balled the tissue in her fist and wiped at her nose. “I don’t know anything about Mary Ann. I haven’t called her yet. It’s just been too much of an adjustment. But if he did do something to her...” She stared at the wall and shook her head, creating a faraway look in her eyes.
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