Love Is Murder

by Allison Brennan

  Lucy thought back to Vanessa’s message to her brother.

  You were right. We win.

  What did she mean?

  Trevor hadn’t called Vanessa’s brother yet, and Lucy wanted to be there when he did. But if she let on to Trevor that Vanessa’s death was a homicide, she didn’t know what he would do, or if she could control his reaction. It was best to keep the information to themselves.

  Leaving the barn, Lucy looked toward the lodge. Visibility was still poor, but Lucy didn’t see anyone walking around on the porch. The lights in the cottage were off. She turned back to Kyle. “I need you to go back to the house and hang around the porch. Delay anyone coming to the cottage.” She looked at her watch. “I need ten minutes.”

  “You’re going to search that place that fast?”

  “I know what I’m looking for.” Or she had a good idea.

  Kyle reluctantly agreed, and he and Lucy parted ways at the short path—at least, she thought the path was where she turned, buried deep in the snow—that led to the cottage.

  The door was locked, but she opened it with the key she had taken. More silence, though as she listened she heard a ticking grandfather clock. The hum of the refrigerator. The deep drone of the generator.

  She quickly assessed the layout. There were only two bedrooms, no den, and one great room that had a kitchen and dining area attached to it. She went to the room that was obviously Grace’s and immediately searched her drawers.

  At first she found only clothing. She went to the closet, which was packed with thick winter clothes. The floor was a mess of clothes that had fallen off hangers and shoes and folded blankets.

  If Lucy needed to hide something, where would she hide it? Not under the bed—though she checked there quickly. Grace wouldn’t have wanted Steve to find it, even accidentally.

  She thought back to her brothers and how they never liked to talk about “girl stuff”—namely menstruation. Carina had once told her that she used to hide her chocolate in a Tampax box so Patrick wouldn’t steal it.

  “He never looked there, didn’t even consider it.”

  Lucy went to the bathroom. The bottom drawer was filled with feminine hygiene products. She opened every box and there it was.

  Maybe she didn’t know what she was looking for specifically, but she had certainly found it.

  A box full of pill bottles. Prescriptions for Thyrolar, made out to Grace Marie Holbrook, and several prescriptions made out to Leonardo Delarosa. She put them out by date—first a basic diuretic, common for high blood pressure. Then lisinopril, which was a stronger medication. That started after his heart attack three years ago. Then six months before his death, the doctor increased the dosage.

  There were pills in some of the bottles. She opened one up and it was coated in a fine powder—more powder than would naturally rub off the pills from friction. Lucy looked in the drawer and found a small mortar and pestle—a classic tool used for hand grinding. Such as to grind pills into a fine powder that would more easily dissolve in liquid. And the bitter taste would be masked by a strong drink. Like orange juice.

  The front door opened and Lucy quickly put everything back and closed the drawer.

  “Angie and I wanted to use the snowmobiles this afternoon if the snow lets up,” Kyle was saying.

  “I think tomorrow.”

  Lucy breathed in relief. It was Steve. But she didn’t want him to know about Grace, not yet. Not until the police arrived.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Look, Kyle, I’m sorry, I’m just really tired. It’s been a long couple days and I need to check the barn, the wood—”

  “Let me help. Please, I’m going to go insane in that house without anything to do.”

  “Okay. Fine. I’m just need to get my parka.”

  Two minutes later, they were gone.

  Lucy didn’t want to tempt fate. She watched out the window until she saw Kyle and Steve go into the barn, then she left the cottage and retrieved her snowshoes from where she had stashed them on the side. She crossed over to the lodge, retracing Steve’s and Kyle’s tracks.

  She saw something odd to her right where the root cellar entrance came out of the ground on the side of the house. The doors were open.

  Who had gone down there? Trevor? The killer? Patrick had the key—but he was in no condition to check on the body.

  She needed someone to investigate with her—she wasn’t going to go down in the cellar alone, especially when no one knew she was checking it out. She stepped toward the lodge, but movement on her left startled her. She turned and saw Grace Delarosa skiing rapidly toward her. Before she could move, Grace had rammed into her, sending Lucy sprawling into the snow.

  She struggled to get up, the snowshoes making it nearly impossible, and Grace grabbed her arm. Lucy opened her mouth to call for help, and Grace backhanded her with a gloved hand. Lucy tasted blood and spit into the snow.

  She felt a pinprick in her neck and hit at it. Something warm trickled down into her shirt.

  “You’re too late,” Grace said and she pushed Lucy back down. Lucy tried to talk, but her muscles weren’t working right. She tried to stand, then crawl, but couldn’t control her limbs.

  Grace dragged her to the root cellar. Darkness ate at the edges of her vision.

  “I’ll be long gone before anyone knows you’re missing.” She reached into Lucy’s pocket and pulled out Patrick’s keys.

  “W-why did you?” Lucy managed to whisper.

  “You’re so smart, you figure it out.”

  Grace pushed Lucy down the rough earth staircase that led down into the root cellar and closed the doors. She heard the lock slip into place.

  Everything was black.

  She lost consciousness.

  IX.

  Lucy woke up not knowing how long she’d been unconscious, but certain she was freezing. Her face was flat on the frozen ground, her cheek numb. The musty smell of damp earth brought images of a graveyard to mind, and her heart quickened. She opened her eyes—or thought she had—but it was pitch-black in the root cellar.

  She slowly got up on all fours. One snowshoe had broken off when Grace had tossed her down the stairs. She turned to sit and take off the other.

  Her muscles felt weak and uncoordinated, but she didn’t think Grace had gotten enough of the drug into her. There had been an instant effect, but she didn’t seem to have any lingering side effects. She had to find a way out. What if Grace hurt Steve? Or someone else? Was Patrick okay?

  Thinking about Grace drugging her brother pushed Lucy through the pain. She was sore everywhere, but nothing was broken. The padding of her winter clothes had protected her from the fall. She reached to her lower back and found Patrick’s .45 still there.

  There should be a light switch somewhere. She felt around the hard-packed dirt floor to make her way to the wall. Her finger touched plastic, and her stomach rolled as she realized she’d been sitting right next to Vanessa’s body. She crawled away until she reached a metal shelving unit. She stood up, knees cracking and muscles still weak. She held the shelf as she shuffled along the edge until she found the wall. It, too, was hard dirt, and she felt along for a switch. There was none.

  “Of course not,” she said out loud, her voice startling her in the dark silence. It would most likely be suspended from the ceiling; the root cellar was cut out of the earth to preserve food without refrigeration. The light would most likely be tapped into the housing electricity.

  She considered the layout of the house. What room was directly above the root cellar? She could find something to bang on the ceiling and maybe someone would hear her.

  She realized she was directly beneath Beth’s room.

  Lucy hesitated. Beth could be part of the scam to steal money from the Delarosa estate. She had no way of knowing whether or not the sisters were in this together.

  She’d heard Grace lock the root cellar, but Lucy had to try to escape. She found the stairs and crept up, crawling a
t the end as the ceiling got lower. She pushed the thick wood doors. They didn’t budge.

  But she heard something. Two men’s voices. They were getting closer. Steve and Kyle?

  “Steve!” she cried out. She banged on the door. “Help! Steve! Kyle! I’m trapped!”

  Silence, then Steve called through the doors, “Lucy?”

  “Yes!” She relaxed with relief. “Thank God. Get me out. And don’t talk to Grace!”

  “What did you say about Grace?”

  “Get me out and I’ll explain everything.”

  “Hold on, I know where the spare key is.”

  Spare key? That’s what Grace must have used.

  “Get the key from Patrick!” Lucy called.

  Kyle said, “Steve went inside. What happened?”

  “Grace locked me in here. She tried to drug me, too, but I didn’t get the full dose. It’s a muscle relaxant, and I think that’s what she used on Vanessa before she killed her.” If Vanessa had been incapacitated with a muscle relaxant, Grace could easily have suffocated her. Lucy hadn’t thought to look in Vanessa’s nose and throat for cotton fibers from a blanket or pillow—but often those fibers were only visible under a microscope. An autopsy would provide a definitive answer.

  “Grace killed Vanessa?” Kyle asked. “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Lucy admitted, “but Grace has at least five identities, including one in Phoenix where Vanessa is from. She took Patrick’s keys. Did you see or hear his truck leave?”

  “No,” Kyle said. “Steve and I just came from the garage—no one was there. Patrick’s truck was still there.”

  What was Grace up to?

  “Kyle, how long has it been since you and Steve went to his house?”

  “Fifteen minutes? Twenty at the most.”

  That meant Lucy had been knocked unconscious for only a few minutes. And since Patrick’s truck was still here, Grace was still here and was probably planning something. What? Was she in her cottage packing, thinking she had more time?

  “Lucy? Are you down there?”

  It was Patrick. “What are you doing out of bed?”

  “I’m fine.” He unlocked the padlock and opened the doors. The light from outside poured into the cellar and Lucy instinctively shut her eyes. She crawled out and Patrick stood her up. “What happened?”

  “Grace ambushed me and locked me in the root cellar. She took your keys.”

  “Why would she take my keys and not use the lodge truck?”

  “You have a better truck,” Lucy said. “Or maybe so we don’t follow too quickly. I don’t know.” She looked around. “Where’s Steve?”

  “He went to find Grace,” Patrick said.

  “No! She’s been drugging him for God knows how long. I found prescription thyroid and blood pressure medicines in her bathroom—dozens of bottles. The pills had been ground into a fine powder. Thyroid medicine increases your heart rate, and blood pressure meds lower it—” She frowned. “What was she doing with Leo Delarosa’s blood pressure meds? He should have been taking them, especially after his heart attack.”

  “Unless she withheld them or swapped them out,” Patrick said.

  “If she was giving Steve the blood pressure meds, that would explain his dizziness and fainting. And Kyle”—Lucy looked at him—“you drank the orange juice that Steve had been drinking earlier. That’s how she did it.”

  “Why?”

  “So she could control and sell the land. This place has no mortgage on it, it’s worth a small fortune, and I’ll bet she embezzled the money Leo left to run the lodge.”

  “You know what you’re saying?” Patrick said.

  Lucy nodded, shivering more from her deduction than from the cold. “She killed Leo.”

  “Let’s get inside and contact the sheriff,” Patrick said, “and get everyone in one room.”

  They started toward the stairs to the porch and that’s when Lucy saw Steve standing at the top. His face turned from shock to rage.

  “What did you say?”

  “Steve, we need to get everyone in the house. Everyone. We need to talk.”

  “Tell me what you meant—who killed my father?”

  Lucy stepped forward, her boots sinking into the snow. Fast was not an option, but she moved as quickly as she could, worried that Steve would do something stupid. “We’ll talk about this inside.”

  “Tell me!” he shouted.

  Lucy reached him on the stairs. “Steve, I don’t have definitive proof, but I found your father’s heart medication ground into powder in Grace’s bathroom.”

  Steve looked perplexed.

  Lucy realized why the thyroid meds were also ground up. “I think she was giving him her own thyroid medicine instead of his blood pressure meds.”

  “I don’t understand. What would that do?”

  “Thyroid medicine can increase the heart rate. Since your father already had high blood pressure, if he wasn’t taking his meds and then was given something to make his heart work harder, the combination could bring on a heart attack or stroke. It’s not predictable—Grace couldn’t have known when it would happen, just that it would eventually. Then when she found out she couldn’t sell the land, she took all the money she could from your accounts. Maybe she took the money before he died, I don’t know.”

  “But why?” Steve wailed, his pain and anguish evident in his voice. “My father loved her!”

  Lucy had some ideas on what had motivated Grace, but didn’t want to share them now, not with Steve so volatile. She glanced at Patrick and nodded to Steve. Patrick stepped next to him and said, “Let go inside. The sheriff will take over.”

  As they stepped through the door, they all heard an engine start. A half minute later, the barn doors were nudged open by Patrick’s truck. Grace was at the wheel.

  Beth walked into the foyer. “Close the door! You’re letting the heat out!”

  Steve turned on her, pushed her back. Her eyes were wide in fear, and Steve shouted. “Did you know? Did you know your sister killed my father?”

  The shock on Beth’s face was palpable. Without waiting for an answer, Steve pushed Patrick and stomped out the door, grabbing cross country skis from the rack.

  “Steve, wait for the sheriff—”

  “No! She killed my dad. It all makes sense. Everything makes sense now.”

  Lucy tried to stop Steve, but she couldn’t move fast through the snow, and Steve was on the skis before she reached him.

  “Patrick!” she called out. “The snowmobiles.”

  Patrick said to Kyle, “Call the sheriff now. Give him my truck description, license plate 5K55567. Tell them Grace may be armed and dangerous. There’s only one road out of this mountain—they need to meet up with her before she hits the highway.”

  “That doesn’t give them much time—twenty, maybe thirty minutes.”

  “Then tell them to haul ass.”

  Beth looked shell-shocked. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

  “We can’t explain now,” Lucy said, “but your sister is a killer. I’m sorry.”

  “I thought—” she hesitated. “I thought we’d finally become close. I was wrong.

  Patrick said to Lucy, “Get everyone in the library and stay there. I’ll get Steve.”

  “You’re not going out there alone,” she countered.

  “Dammit, you’re not a cop!”

  “Are you going to argue with me or cooperate? You were drugged last night, Patrick. Grace is a killer and Steve’s emotions are running high. You need backup. Let’s go.”

  She gave Patrick no opportunity to argue. She started toward the garage where the snowmobiles were stored. Without snowshoes, it took longer. Patrick waved her over to the tracks his truck had made; walking on the pressed snow was definitely easier.

  By the time they reached the garage, Grace and Steve had a six-minute lead and the steadily falling snow was covering up their tracks. Patrick uncovered the snowmobiles. “Why don’t we take Stev
e’s truck?” Lucy asked.

  “We need to make up time, and we’ll never catch up to her before Steve. Trust me, snowmobiles are faster.”

  He started one up, then motioned for Lucy to take it before he started the next. This was only the second time Lucy had rode one of these vehicles—the first time being two days ago when they first arrived.

  Patrick led the way. As they passed the lodge, Kyle came out and gave them a thumbs-up. Hopefully that meant he had spoken to the sheriff. With that, Patrick rode off and Lucy followed.

  They stayed on the path left by the truck. Lucy noticed that Steve’s skis had diverged from the road, leaving a clear trail through the trees.

  She sped up and motioned for Patrick to stop.

  “What?” he shouted.

  “Steve went that way,” she pointed down the mountainside. “We should split up.”

  “Hell no.”

  “He’s going to cut her off. He knows these woods better than anyone.”

  “I don’t care, we’re not splitting up.”

  “We may not catch up with her in time, and I’m worried for Steve. Please—I’ll follow him.”

  “And what if you get lost?”

  “I’ll stick to his trail. I can catch up with him and stop him from doing anything stupid. You focus on Grace. We’re wasting time.”

  It was clear Patrick didn’t want to agree, but Lucy took his silence as assent. She rode back to where she’d seen Steve’s ski trail, worried that the heavy snowfall would cover his tracks faster than she could follow them. But he’d been traveling fast, leaving deep gouges in the snow, and Lucy easily found the path he’d left.

  Lucy started slowly because she was at a dangerous downhill angle. But it leveled off a bit and she picked up speed. The trees started far apart, but the more she went down, the closer they got. She paid close attention to the tracks, because if she lost them, she would have to backtrack, and she might not be able to find his path again. Worse, the snow was making it difficult to see more than twenty or so feet ahead of her, and she had to slow when Steve’s tracks started swerving between trees.