“So you took care of the doctor.”
“Waited three weeks and then went into his house at night.” He smiled. “Snatched him right out of bed and vanished him.”
“Did the police really have evidence against you?”
“I’d said a few things to him that night. So they had a lot of suspicion. When they checked into my background, they had even more. And a neighbor saw a car like my rental backing out of his driveway that night.”
“Nothing decisive.”
“Enough to haul me in for questioning, maybe arrest. David didn’t let that happen.”
Anne said, “You did the right thing. So did David. Not that you need me to tell you that.”
He nodded. “Was that really thiopental you gave Cassie?” he said.
“If I’d had something stronger I would have brought it down,” she admitted. “All I’d kept was the thiopental. Cassie might not survive the trip anyway. She was out a lot longer than I’d thought she’d be, and I know she’s had more than one concussion over the years.”
Holt looked hopeful. “That would make things simpler.”
They went into the house. Anne opened a cabinet and brought out a whiskey bottle, raising it in silent query. Holt nodded. She poured and handed him a shot glass, filled one for herself. She leaned against the kitchen island on one side, while Holt sat on a stool on the other. They regarded each other.
“Cancer treatment is very expensive,” Anne said at last.
Holt regarded her steadily. “Dad had a long illness. That trip to the clinic was only one of many. The bills . . . you could hardly believe how much, and the insurance only covered a fraction of the cost. My mom and my brothers were scared shitless. The debt would loom over them the rest of their lives. Mom and Terry, my older brother, think I have some hush-hush military job, and they know the military doesn’t pay well. They didn’t expect I could help much. They were really understanding about that. It burned me up inside.”
“So you siphoned off the money from the enemy fund.”
“Yeah. I did.”
So there it was.
“You did a good job covering your tracks. How’d you plan it?”
“It helped that David’s never been confident with numbers. He always sweated budget time, needed a lot of help from me. I remembered a genius accountant, a guy I’d roomed with in college,” Holt said. “Tom was doing the books for a lot of the wrong people. That was how I knew where he was. Tom was glad to help. He’s one of those people who loves to beat the system, any system.”
“It Tom still around? Can they interrogate him?”
“He began doing bookkeeping for the wrong people. He disappeared a year ago.”
Anne eyed Holt narrowly. “Really?”
“Yes, really.” Holt managed a small smile. “Nothing to do with me. But convenient.”
“So what now?”
Holt’s smile vanished. He looked very grim. “When David showed up today, I felt like the bottom had fallen out. I hated that he was suspected of something I’d done, when he’d done nothing but back me up. As people like us go, he’s a good man.”
Anne had thought of suggesting they follow David and run his car off the road. She was glad she hadn’t said that out loud.
Anne had the feeling they were stepping on thin ice, new and fragile territory in their relationship. The two regarded each other in silence.
Finally, Anne said, “Do you think David suspects you?”
“No,” Holt said immediately. “He would have tried to take me out. An honor thing.”
“Your family does not know where the money came from. They couldn’t reveal anything accidentally?”
“I told them I’d invested money in an online shopping program, and it had taken off. They were too relieved to ask for any details.”
“You think Oversight will come back with questions about your dad’s bills being paid off?”
“If the bills had been paid in one lump sum, it would be suspicious. But I paid in irregular amounts spread out over two and a half years, some of it channeled through my family’s accounts. Less conspicuous.” His mouth twitched in a smile. “And I haven’t worked at Camp West in more than two years. I live on my coach’s salary.”
“And the money’s stopped disappearing. No one’s stealing from the enemy fund now.”
“They’ll still be looking. No one makes a fool out of Oversight.”
“But they might be glad to find a scapegoat.”
“What are you thinking, Anne?”
“I’m thinking we can find Cassie’s rental. We can drive it to Pennsylvania and get there ahead of David. Two drivers instead of one.”
Holt looked interested. “Then what?”
“Then we plant money in Cassie’s house, gold or bearer bonds. Untraceable stuff.”
“Anne, I don’t have anything like that. I don’t even have much cash stashed away. Not enough to make them believe she stole everything.”
“I have some backup funds,” Anne said. She looked away.
Holt leaned forward and took her hand. She couldn’t avoid his eyes. “You’d do that?”
“Yes,” she said stiffly. “I would.”
“No regret?”
“No regret.”
Holt struggled to find words of gratitude, but Anne held up her hand to keep him silent. “If they find unexplained money in Cassie’s house, David’s in the clear, Cassie will vanish, and they’ll consider the theft explained. It’s all good. I know where her house is, and we’ve got the keys.”
“Let’s get on the road,” Holt said.
Anne retrieved half of her escape fund from its secret hiding place – the same place the thiopental had been stored – and she was back down the stairs in less than two minutes.
“If we find the rental quickly,” she said, “it’ll be a sign that we’re doing the right thing.”
Anne and Holt knew where to start looking. Using the key fob to make the lights blink, they found it in four minutes, parked behind a house for sale on the other side of the street.
During the long drive north, they made some plans for Spring Break.
Those plans involved Gary Pomeroy.
Other Books by Charlaine Harris
SWEET AND DEADLY
“A first-rate mystery with special character…as convincing as it is surprising in its final resolution.”
—Washington Post Book World
“Harris writes neatly and with assurance, and she avoids the goo that makes many equivalent books so sticky.”
—The New York Times Book Review
Newspaper reporter Catherine Linton ignored her investigative instincts when her parents died in a mysterious car crash six months ago — grief obscuring the warning signs that something was amiss. But when she discovers the beaten body of her father’s nurse on Linton property, Catherine quickly realizes her parents’ death was no accident.
Though the sleepy Southern town that Catherine’s family has called home for generations still prickles with racial tension and decades-old classism, Catherine never expected that Lowfield, Mississippi, could harbor a murderer. Now, it seems everyone has a terrible secret. But how many people in Lowfield would kill to keep them hidden?
Catherine finds herself both the sheriff’s lead suspect and the killer’s next target. With the help of her handsome editor, Randall, and her quirky fellow reporter, Tom, Catherine must untangle the dark roots of the murders and stop the killer who wears a neighbor’s face.
Buy the book!
* * *
A SECRET RAGE
“Not many novels, and no mysteries, have shaken me as brutally as A SECRET RAGE…Far more than the story of a crime, this is a scream of fury, of brutal humiliation…It strips bare the latent rage concealed within the gentlest of exteriors.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Extraordinary. Powerful.”
—Library Journal
Dropped by her agent, New York City model Nickie Cal
lahan decides to start over—moving back to the South to finish school at Houghton College in Knolls, Tennessee. But Knolls isn’t the quiet town Nickie remembers from her youth. A rapist is targeting the women of Houghton, growing bolder and more vicious with each brutal attack, leaving the community gripped by fear.
When the violence affects Nickie personally, she moves from fear to fury—resolving to catch the rapist at any cost. After joining forces with another survivor, Nickie discovers that the attacks are not random—the rapist knows his victims. With that small clue, and an ironclad determination to stop him from striking again, Nickie begins the grim search for the relentless assailant hiding in plain sight.
Buy the book!
* * *
Also available in a 2-in-1 omnibus edition.
A SECRET RAGE & SWEET AND DEADLY
Buy the book!
GUNNIE ROSE
An Easy Death
MIDNIGHT, TEXAS
Midnight Crossroad
Day Shift
Night Shift
STANDALONE WORKS
Small Kingdoms and Other Stories*
Dancers in the Dark*
Layla Steps Up*
The Layla Collection: Dancers in the Dark and Layla Steps Up*
Sweet and Deadly*
A Secret Rage*
A Secret Rage & Sweet Deadly Omnibus*
THE AURORA TEAGARDEN MYSTERIES
Real Murders*
A Bone to Pick*
Three Bedrooms, One Corpse*
The Julius House*
Dead Over Heels*
A Fool and His Honey*
Last Scene Alive
Poppy Done to Death*
All the Little Liars
Sleep Like a Baby
THE SOOKIE STACKHOUSE SERIES
Dead Until Dark
Living Dead in Dallas
Club Dead
Dead to the World
Dead as a Doornail
Definitely Dead
All Together Dead
From Dead to Worse
Dead and Gone
Dead in the Family
Dead Reckoning
Deadlocked
Dead Ever After
A Touch of Dead
The Complete Sookie Stackhouse Stories
The Sookie Stackhouse Companion
After Dead: What Came Next in the World of Sookie Stackhouse
THE LILY BARD MYSTERIES
Shakespeare’s Landlord
Shakespeare’s Champion
Shakespeare’s Christmas
Shakespeare’s Trollop
Shakespeare’s Counselor
THE HARPER CONNELLY SERIES
Grave Sight
Grave Surprise
An Ice Cold Grave
Grave Secret
THE CEMETERY GIRL MYSTERIES, co-written with Christopher Golden
Pretenders
Inheritance
Pretenders & Inheritance Omnibus Edition
Haunted
ANTHOLOGIES, co-edited with Toni L. P. Kelner
Many Bloody Returns
Wolfsbane and Mistletoe
Death’s Excellent Vacation
Home Improvement: Undead Edition
An Apple for the Creature
Games Creatures Play
About the Author
Charlaine Harris is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Midnight, Crossroad trilogy, recently adapted for television by NBC as Midnight, Texas, the Sookie Stackhouse books, the basis for the critically-acclaimed HBO show True Blood, and the award-nominated Aurora Teagarden mysteries, now a series of movies on the Hallmark Movies Channel. Her latest novel is An Easy Death, the first book in her new Gunnie Rose series. She has lived in the South her entire life. Visit her on the Web at charlaineharris.com and facebook.com/CharlaineHarris.
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