by Amy Vansant
“I thought I’d pretend I’m returning her sugar sifter.”
“You have her sugar sifter?”
“No, but I thought I’d lost mine and bought another and then I found the first one, so I have a spare I don’t mind giving her.”
“But even if she confesses, you need to record it or have a witness.”
“You can come with me.”
“Me?”
“You can be there as a good role model of a young lady.”
Charlotte snorted a laugh. “Oh I’m sure she’ll love that. Don’t say that out loud.”
“Will you do it? I need you there with me.”
Charlotte sighed. Even if Crystal didn’t drop to her knees begging for forgiveness, she wanted to hear everything the girl would say or imply. Maybe she’d let slip a detail that would help them prove what happened.
She glanced at her watch. “You want to do this now?”
Mariska took a final sip of her coffee and nodded. “I do. She’s usually home this time of day. and usually alone.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I’ve been planning this for days.”
“Fine. Let’s do this before I get comfy because I won’t want to do it later. I need to walk Abby first.”
“I already did.”
Charlotte cocked an eyebrow at Mariska. “You’re really not going to give me a chance to think about this a little, are you?”
Mariska shook her head. “No.”
Resigned to her fate, Charlotte filled Abby’s dinner bowl and accompanied Mariska outside so they could begin the short trek to Alice’s house.
“Be gentle with her,” suggested Charlotte. “Try to fit in everything her grandmother did for her over the years without making her sound like a saint—”
“Why can’t I make Alice sound like a saint? That woman was a saint.”
“It could make her angry. Just because she might regret killing her grandmother, doesn’t mean she’s forgiven her for years of fights and resentment. You don’t want to make her sound too perfect.”
Mariska nodded. “Okay. What else?”
“Ask her if she ever made stollen. Ask her if she knew about the allergy—”
“We’re here.” Mariska paused and Charlotte watched her throat bob as she swallowed hard.
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
Mariska nodded. “I’m sure. Let’s go.”
They walked the path that led to Crystal’s door and knocked.
Crystal opened the door. A television on volume one million played in the background. Crystal had removed her waitress uniform in favor of what looked like pajama shorts and an oversized V-neck tee. Her hair was wet and scraggy, as if she’d recently showered. Her mouth set in a grim line at the sight of them.
Charlotte’s immediate impression of Crystal’s mood was that she seemed sad.
Maybe Mariska is right about this.
The girl’s gaze settled on Mariska as a flash of recognition rippled across her expression.
“You,” she said.
Mariska held out the sifter. “Hello, Crystal. I borrowed this from your grandmother the night I was bread elf and I’m bringing it back. Have you ever made stollen with her? She had allergies to nuts, didn’t she?”
Charlotte silently groaned.
Smooth, Mariska. Smooth.
Crystal seemed to grow paler by the second.
“Yeah and, I, no…she’d wouldn’t let me,” she said.
Crystal took the sifter, her stare still laser-locked on Mariska.
“She wouldn’t let you?” echoed Charlotte before she could stop herself. Her plan had been to stay quiet and pretend she wasn’t there at all. It shouldn’t have been difficult, considering Crystal appeared mesmerized by Mariska and hadn’t appeared to even notice her. She needed to let Mariska work her grandmotherly magic, instead, here she was opening her big mouth.
Crystal’s gaze shifted to Charlotte, her head retracting on her neck a notch, as if she was surprised to find her there. Her expression clouded, and Charlotte knew she’d made a mistake. The girl sniffed, and her look of sadness dissipated, replaced by defensive posturing.
“Thanks for…” Crystal looked at the sifter and, seemingly unsure what to call it, shook it. “Thanks for the thing.”
She took a step back and began to close the door.
“Wait,” rushed Mariska, holding out a hand to stop the door’s progress.
Crystal paused. Again, Charlotte felt Mariska held some special fascination for the girl, and Crystal was powerless to deny her.
She regretted even more deeply not keeping her mouth shut and pressed her lips together as a reminder not to speak up again.
“I wanted you to know how sorry I am about Alice,” said Mariska. It wasn’t a line they’d practiced. These were Mariska’s true feelings.
Crystal’s expression softened and she nodded. “Thank you. That’s...you’re nice.”
“I didn’t know about her nut allergy, but I promise you I didn’t add nuts to the recipe.”
Crystal’s lip began to quiver. “I know. I have to go.”
She closed the door and Charlotte heard it lock.
Mariska looked at her, clearly upset. “She didn’t confess.”
“Let’s go.” Charlotte headed back down the path to draw the conversation away from Crystal’s doorstep. Mariska followed.
When they reached the curb, Charlotte continued. “She didn’t confess, but that isn’t your fault. That’s my fault. She seemed ready to listen to you and I broke the spell.”
“No, I don’t think it was your fault—”
“Thank you, but it was. You did great.”
Mariska sighed. “We did our best.”
They walked in silence, both locked in their own thoughts. Mariska wondered aloud if jail togs were one hundred percent cotton. Charlotte replayed in her head their short conversation with Crystal.
What did she mean about Alice forbidding her to make stollen? There was no logical reason to stop the girl from helping. Maybe she was sloppy? Tended to leave things unfinished after starting them? Maybe Alice knew anything they did together would end in an argument and she couldn’t bear the thought of asking for help.
Then there was the part that really caught Charlotte’s attention. When Mariska said she didn’t add the nuts to the stollen, Crystal said ‘I know.’
How could she know unless she knew who did put the nuts in the stollen?
And how could she know, unless it was her or she was covering for that terrible boyfriend?
Maybe that had been her confession.
Still, it wasn’t enough. They couldn’t take an off-handed comment as proof of Crystal’s guilt. The girl could have been dismissing them—using I know as a variant form of whatever.
As they approached Mariska’s house, Charlotte spotted Darla approaching them.
“How’d it go?” she asked.
Charlotte raised her hands and let them flop to her sides. “Mariska had her on the ropes and I ruined it.”
Mariska shook her head. “That’s not true. She was never going to confess. Why would she? It was a silly idea to get my hopes up.”
Darla opened her arms and gave them both a hug. “You tried. Let’s go have a glass of wine at my house.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Charlotte.
Mariska sighed. “I might as well. They probably won’t let me have wine in prison.”
Charlotte laughed. “You’re not going to prison.”
“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 bash 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 al
most 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.
