“No, no. She adored her sister. We all did.”
Was he that delusional? And why was he covering up for his sister-in-law now? “But Abbey was so angry all the time. She was an embarrassment. She made everyone who worked for her miserable.”
He made an exasperated sound of frustration. “She was a temperamental artist. She was moody. I understood that. Sometimes I think I was the only one who did.”
“Cameron,” Miranda said softly with the tone of a mother rocking her baby to sleep. “Blythe’s fingerprints were on the jar we found in Suzie Chan’s refrigerator. That jar had Abbey’s eye in it.” If he really loved his wife, that thought should rattle him enough for her to get the gun away from him.
For a second it looked like the trick had worked.
Forest’s mouth opened in an agonized cry, but then he turned away and stumbled toward the fireplace. “Pinning it on Suzie was Blythe’s idea, yes. She helped me clean up…everything. Oh, God, that was awful. We used her car to take Abbey to the desert. Oh, God. I hated doing that. She said we had to take out her eye to make it look like Suzie…” He gasped in pain. “Blythe had a key to Suzie’s apartment. She was dating Sean Scott, Suzie’s ex-boyfriend. She made him give it to her when he broke up with Suzie. Yes, she put the eye in her refrigerator. When the police release Abbey’s body, we can give her the burial she deserves.”
Jeez what a mess. But even if Forest had lost his reason, she had to keep hers. She had to get that weapon out of his hand. She had to get him down to the station where all this could be recorded. Where the hell were O’Toole and that back-up? For all she knew, the sergeant had fallen asleep in his car.
She took a deep breath. “Cameron, people will understand. You have to tell them your story. You can’t go on this way. Let me help you.”
“Help me?” He swung his arm and pointed the gun at her again. “Get away. Don’t come any closer.” His eyes took on a wild look of desperation. “Oh, God. I’ll have to get rid of you, too. Won’t I?”
Fear zigzagged up Miranda’s spine. Her heart pounded in her ears. Was this crazy dude going to pull the trigger? Think, she told herself. Think.
“What the fuck are you doing, Dad?”
Chapter Forty-Two
Miranda’s head jerked toward the sound. She saw a skinny boy in baggy gray pajamas with dark, shaggy, sleep-tousled hair that hung over his eyes. He wore a look of sheer horror on his too-young face.
“Brandon,” Cameron barked. “Go back to bed.”
Miranda tried to lunge for the weapon. Forest stepped back and aimed it at her chest. “Get back or I’ll shoot.”
“Dad, what the fuck?” the boy screeched.
“I told you not to use that language, son.”
The boy sputtered out a nervous laugh. “You’re holding a gun on some woman and you want me to watch my language?”
“Go back to your room. I’m handling this.”
The young man ignored him and padded into the room barefooted. He stared at Miranda. “You’re one of those investigators they brought in from out of town on my mother’s murder, aren’t you?”
“Brandon, I said I’m handling it.”
Miranda decided to risk it all. “Brandon,” she said to the boy. “There’s a cop in a car outside down the street. Go get him for me.”
“Don’t you dare go, son,” Forest barked. “All right,” he screamed at Miranda. “I killed her. I killed Abbey. You’ve got your confession. Let your cop come and arrest me. Are you happy now?”
The boy cried out in pain. “No, Dad! You can’t go to jail for me. I won’t let you.”
“Brandon.”
“You got to stop all this. It isn’t working.” He crumbled to the floor near the coffee table and began to cry just like his father had.
With the gun still trained on her, Forest shuffled over to the boy and awkwardly touched his head. “It’s all right, son. I told you I’d take care of everything.”
“No, Dad. You can’t. It’s too late. Some things you just can’t fix.”
Miranda took a closer look at the boy. It looked like he had a dark bruise under one eye. She remembered what Reedy Max told her. His stepmother was mean to him. Now everything was starting to make sense. “What are you saying, kid?”
He looked at her with the most pitiful round eyes she’d ever seen. “I killed Abbey.”
“No,” Forest shouted. “He’s making that up. He’s trying to protect me.”
“Give it up, Dad.”
“Son, please.”
“You have to let me tell her the truth. You have to.” He stared at Miranda and took a deep breath. “About a week ago we had a bad fight. Worst one ever. I’m getting my license soon and I wanted to borrow one of the cars. She said no. I argued with her and she lashed out at me. She hit me.”
“That’s how you got that black eye?”
He nodded. “I was so mad at her. Madder than I’d ever been before. So when I was hanging out with a friend, we started joking around about how to, you know, off someone.
Forest’s face went white. “What friend? That boy in the gang? We warned you not to hang around with him.”
The boy rolled his eyes. “No, Dad. Not Cody. Trevor. He graduated last year. He works in a medical research center on Rainbow.”
Medical research. Just like the ME told her in the morgue. “Trevor gave you the abrin?”
The boy nodded. “I told him I wanted something to make her sick. I didn’t really know what it was. I didn’t think it would kill her. Honest.”
Forest spat out a weak laugh. “Can’t you see the boy is lying? Why would a friend risk his job over that?”
“Maybe because he is my friend, Dad,” the boy sneered. “I didn’t think about his job. I guess I owe him big time.”
Lose his job? This Trevor kid was an accomplice to murder. And then it hit her. Brandon, Cameron, Blythe, Ambrosia. These people lived in a world of fantasy. A universe of glitz and glamour and make-believe. A world of adoring fans and groupies and plastic surgery that made you look ten years younger than you were.
They couldn’t process grim reality.
Staring down at the floor Brandon took another deep breath. “Anyway, I took the stuff home. I didn’t really know what I was going to do with it. I had it in my pocket when I came in the back through the kitchen. I saw Abbey’s teapot. She always drinks it before she goes to bed. I knew Suzie had made it and left it for her. I remembered she was going out of town. I just stared at the pot for a long time. I had decided not to do it. Then my eye started to throb.” His voice grew high-pitched and pitiful as he touched the tender spot on his face. “I got mad again. I just opened the pot and dumped the stuff in.” He put his hands over his face.
The poor kid. Miranda felt for him. How often had she thought about poisoning her abusive ex when she was nursing bruises from his fists?
But no matter how sorry she felt for the boy, she had to finish this. “What happened then?”
He sniffed and pushed his hair back. “I went to bed. I thought she’d get sick and when she was feeling bad, I’d get her to let me have the car. Or maybe I’d tell her what I’d done and say if she hit me again, I’d make her sicker. But that’s not what happened.” His eyes began to fill with tears.
“Go on.”
“I woke up when I heard her yelling down in the kitchen. I ran down the stairs. I found her kneeling on the floor, barfing her guts out. Oh, God. There was puke everywhere. She reached out and grabbed my arm. ‘Help me, Brandon,’ she said. I tried but I didn’t know what to do. I got a pan from under the sink and told her to barf in there. I told her to just keep barfing. I thought if she got the stuff up, she’d be okay. But she wasn’t.” Tears streamed down the boy’s cheeks now. “She started puking up blood. She couldn’t stop. She started to shake all over. She fell on the floor and started gasping for breath. I didn’t know what to do. And then she turned blue. And she stopped moving. I called out to her over and over, but she didn’t
answer. I just sat there staring at her and then I realized my dad was in the room.”
Forest stared down at his son as if he still couldn’t believe what had happened that night.
The boy sniffed and looked up at his father, helpless shame on his face. “I’m so sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean it. I swear I didn’t.”
“I know, son.”
The boy’s gaze returned to the floor. He had more to say. “That was when Aunt Blythe came in. She said she wanted to talk to Abbey about a fight they’d had that night. When she saw her there on the floor, she started screaming her head off. Dad calmed her down. He told her what happened. He begged her to help us. She said okay.” He started to sob again.
Forest bent down and put a hand on his shoulder. “I told you I’d take care of everything. Didn’t I that night?”
Without looking at him. Brandon nodded.
Forest turned to Miranda. “You probably know most of the rest. Or can guess it.” But he told her the rest, sounding like a robot with no feeling at all. “The three of us cleaned up the kitchen. We scrubbed down everything with bleach until there wasn’t a trace of vomit or blood. I washed her body in a downstairs bathroom and dressed her in a fresh robe. I wrapped her hair in a fresh towel. I tore down the construction plastic from the room we were building and wrapped her body in it. As I did, Blythe came up with the idea of making what happened look like Suzie’s fault. It was a horrible thing to do, but we had no choice. I got one of her melon ballers from the drawer, carried my wife’s body out to Blythe’s car and put her in the trunk. Then we drove out to I-15 and left her there. We found a dumpster on the south side of town and put the clothes and dirty rags in it.”
And then they came home and acted like they knew nothing about it.
Miranda felt her eyes getting moist. Her heart broke for them. For all of them. The neglected, abused boy. The delusional father. The jealous sister. Even the self-absorbed, temperamental singer. A sick, dysfunctional family with no sense of reality. And even all those worshipping fans who thought they lived charmed lives.
Far from it.
She straightened. “Forest, you have to talk to Sergeant O’Toole. He can work something out for you.”
“What? Are you crazy?” He thought she was the crazy one?
“It’s the only way.”
He waved the gun at her again. “No, no. They can’t have my son. They can’t.”
“What kind of a life is he going to have now? With all this on his conscience?”
“He’s going to have a fine life. He’ll be just fine. I’ll take care of him. I’ll take care of everything.” He raised the gun.
Miranda held her breath. He was going to shoot her right there. Her only option was the boy. If she were fast enough, she could reach down and scoop the kid up before his father fired.
Hell, no, she thought. She couldn’t risk his safety.
But she didn’t have to. With a sudden jerk Forest bent his arm and pointed the gun at his temple.
“Dad!”
“No!” she cried.
“You said it yourself,” he screamed at her in sheer agony. “I have no choice.”
Miranda rushed for him, hoping to knock the gun out of his hand. But before she could get to him an earsplitting blast exploded the front window. The whole room seemed to shiver. Glass shattered everywhere.
She went deaf from the noise but she saw Forest’s mouth open wide in a cry of pain. Watched him grab his arm. Saw blood spurt out of it. Saw him drop the gun.
Quickly, she scrambled for it, got it in her hand and covered the boy’s body with her own. “Get back, Forest,” she cried, trying to hear herself.
But Forest was staring in shock at the broken window.
Miranda turned her head and blinked through the empty pane. In the distance she saw police lights flashing. She saw Parker running up the yard from the street.
And in the window she saw Sergeant O’Toole standing with his service weapon in his hand, still aimed at Cameron Forest.
Chapter Forty-Three
“The hospital is going to release Cameron Forest tomorrow. He’ll be taken to the detention center to await trial.”
It was the next afternoon and Miranda sat next to Parker in O’Toole’s office, on chairs the sergeant had not only fetched but seated them in himself.
In a green checked shirt that set off his Irish complexion, the sergeant leaned back and studied them from behind his desk, a grim sort of satisfaction in his wide-set green eyes. “Got his full confession last night. Forest admitted Ambrosia Dawn had been physically abusing his son for years. He’d always covered for her, made excuses, turned a blind eye. He says everything was his fault.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Miranda said, feeling a little empty.
“He copped to killing Blythe Star, too. He’ll plead guilty, which might get him a lighter sentence.”
Taking that in, Miranda nodded solemnly. “What about Brandon?” She could still feel the boy clinging to her, sobbing against her chest, as he had all the way to the police station last night.
After they’d left him with O’Toole, she and Parker had decided to back off and had returned to the hotel, leaving the rest in the sergeant’s hands.
“He’s in the Juvenile Detention Center for now. The DA’s considering a lesser charge. Brandon’s psychological profile is a strong defense and he’s never been in trouble before.”
Still, he no doubt had years of prison time in front of him. Forest would probably get longer for Blythe Star. “The boy might get out before his father. What will happen to him?”
“He might go to stay with Forest’s old manager if she checks out. She called the station and offered when she heard what happened.” The story had already hit the news. “We’ll have to look around for relatives. In the meantime, Juvenile Justice has a lot of programs for troubled kids in custody. He’ll get education, counseling. In fact, Ralston and I have volunteered to mentor the kid.”
Miranda glanced over at Parker and watched his expression soften. He was dressed in a pale blue polo shirt and designer jeans for traveling. He’d been quiet since last night. Since witnessing what O’Toole had done. Since seeing her in that house with a killer with a gun in his hand. She had no idea what he was thinking.
But just now, he smiled. “That’s a wonderful thing to do, Sid. I hope you can help the boy.”
“We’ll do our best. Oh, I’m doing a press release this evening.”
Miranda cocked a brow at him, nerves rising in her belly. “All by yourself?”
He chuckled. “Me and the DA and Lieutenant Wells. You’re both welcome to stay and watch, but I’ll be fielding the questions.”
Miranda had to grin at that. “You’re going to tell the news hounds that contrary to popular opinion Ambrosia Dawn was an angry bitch who abused her stepson and drove him to kill her?”
“I’ll clean it up some but I’m not backing down on the truth.”
The sergeant really had grown a pair of cojones.
Parker got to his feet. “I’m afraid we won’t be able to stay for the press conference, Sid. Our plane leaves in a few hours.”
“Understood.” O’Toole rose and walked them to the door.
At Parker’s side, Miranda studied the floor. “What you have to tell the media won’t help Ambrosia Dawn’s postmortem record sales, O’Toole. The estate might sue.”
The sergeant opened the door. “Such is life. The department will back me up. Though Forest could use the money for the team of lawyers he’s hiring for him and his son. But then, he was Blythe Star’s benefactor after Ambrosia.”
Miranda stepped into the hall. “He’s set then. Financially, anyway.”
“In a manner of speaking.”
Between the sergeant and Parker, she headed down the green-painted corridor. “He’ll need the cash. He won’t work here again.”
“Oh, I’m not so sure. Las Vegas may not be forgiving, but we are forgetful.”
“
Good point,” Parker said as they turned a corner.
They continued past the benches that were mostly empty now, taking in the sound of keyboards and conversations mixed with the smell of bad coffee as they went.
“I’ve been on the phone all morning, wrapping up the details and the paperwork. Dame Destinado is closing down the theater for remodeling and looking for a new act. Anything but a singer, I heard. Maybe a juggling team to compete with Cirque du Soleil.”
“I imagine the staff will find other jobs,” Parker mused.
O’Toole nodded. “Sean Scott’s going back to Kingman, Arizona to be with his girlfriend. Turns out she verified he was with her, as he claimed. Speaking of lawsuits, Scott’s threatening to sue the department for harassment.”
“He won’t get very far.”
“I don’t expect him to. And Suzie Chan is going back into business with her sister.”
“Hope she does well with that,” Miranda said. And she meant it.
O’Toole stopped in front of the glass entrance doors and rocked back on his heels as if reluctant to say goodbye. He looked at his feet and swiped at his nose. “The Lieutenant told me he was proud of me for bringing you two on. Said it was the smartest thing I ever did. In fact,” his face flushed. “He’s giving me a raise.”
“Excellent,” Parker said.
He held out a hand. “Thanks for coming, Parker. Thanks for the, uh, remedial training.”
Parker took his hand. “You’re welcome.”
O’Toole held up a finger. “One more thing. The Lieutenant was so pleased with Ralston’s performance on this case, he’s moving her under Sergeant Jones. She’ll be training to take his spot when he retires next year.”
Miranda had to grin. “That’s great news. Tell her congratulations.”
“I will.” O’Toole gave her a nudge and lowered his voice. “So since we won’t be in the same unit now, I asked her out.”
“Did you?”
“We’re going on a picnic to Red Rock next weekend.”
“Good for you.”
Parker’s gaze went back and forth between the two of them. He seemed genuinely surprised at the odd bond they’d formed.
All Eyes on Me (A Miranda and Parker Mystery Book 1) Page 20
