“Sorry.” Rachel felt all her optimism drain out of her. She stood aside and gave Mia time to collect herself. Before Mia could order her to leave again, Rachel said, “Look, I just have two questions for you. First, Ethan. Tilly said you called him and—”
“I know what she said. The police asked me about it.” Mia sighed. “I never had an affair with Ethan. I mean… it's a stupid, laughable idea.”
Rachel bit her lip, not wanting to ask who. “I believe that,” she said. “But Gina was blackmailing Ethan too, wasn’t she? That’s what you meant on the phone when you said, 'We have to do something about her.' You wanted to do something about Gina.”
Mia looked away. “I know how it sounds. But I didn’t mean I wanted to kill her. I just wanted all of us to meet her together, look her in the eye and say we wouldn’t pay anymore.”
“All of you?”
“Ethan knew others who were being blackmailed by Gina. He just wouldn’t tell me who. He didn’t have a very high opinion of me. Thought I’d start blackmailing them too.” Mia gave a sardonic laugh. “Maybe I would've.”
“No you wouldn’t,” Rachel said.
“Well bless your heart, you believe in the best of me.”
“Wait... are you drunk?” Rachel stared at her, suddenly noticing the red eyes, the slight slur, and the way Mia wobbled a little as she stood.
“What else would I be? I told Tricia to get out of my life,” Mia said. “Stupid little fool. Ready to fight the entire world for me. Why? There’s no point to it.”
“Well, before I tell you the point, you should tell me why I shouldn’t believe you and Ethan were having an affair? It makes sense, right? What else would Gina be blackmailing him about?”
“That's crazy. Gina’s the one who had an affair with Ethan. That’s what caused her marriage to break up. But this was before Ethan met and married Tilly. Gina was furious and started blackmailing him. She knew that if Tilly found out Ethan had been with a married woman, she would leave. Ethan was terrified of that.”
“So he never cheated on her, though?”
“Ethan? He was head over heels in love with Tilly. He didn’t cheat on her. He never would. Especially not with me.”
“Why not with you?”
“Well, it wouldn’t be possible.” Mia sighed. “I’m in love with someone else.”
“With Tricia?”
Mia looked startled. “She told you about us?”
Rachel shrugged. “She didn’t go into details, but she did say she loved you.”
Tears sprang up in Mia’s eyes. “I hate her. I hate this world.”
“Wait... didn't you just break up with her?”
“I told you. Swaddle is her world, and she was ready to throw it away for me. I wouldn’t allow it. I told her… I told her some beastly lies.” Mia’s voice hitched. “I made her hate me. So, at least now, I’m free to be hateful too. None of this stupid love business tying me down.”
“Mia you complete and absolute... Where is Tricia?”
“Who knows? Went to cry on her best friend’s shoulder, probably.”
“Her best friend’s shoulder?”
“Annie.” Mia gave her a horrible grin. “Annie the Ice Queen, I call her. But man, this town has too many. Emily’s one too. Competing ice queens— imagine that. This town ain’t big enough for the two of them.” Mia threw back her head and began laughing at her own joke.
Rachel froze. “Ice queen.”
“You’re supposed to laugh,” Mia said helpfully.
“Ice queen,” Rachel repeated. “Mia, I’ve been a fool.”
“So have I. Fool for thinking I could escape my father’s sins… fool for—” But Mia caught herself, and squinted at Rachel. She waved a hand in front of Rachel’s face. “Hello? You drunk too?”
“I have to go,” Rachel’s voice was robotic. “I, I need to go find Tricia.”
“Wait... what? Why? Was it something I said?” Mia seemed to be sobering up.
Ignoring her, Rachel sprinted out the door, and down the road. She had to find Tricia, and fast.
*****
Chapter 20
Knowledge is Easy, Wisdom is Hard
Annie had irritation on her face as she opened the door. Rachel had been ringing it continuously for at least five minutes.
“Hi,” Annie said, stepping back to let Rachel in.
“Tricia—is Tricia here?” Rachel asked, gasping for breath. She’d run all the way to Annie’s, three blocks from Mia’s house.
“You just missed her,” Annie said. “Sorry.”
“I almost missed you, too.” Rachel pointed at a suitcase that was standing near the door. “Planning to take a little vacation, Annie?”
Annie’s smile widened, only there was no friendliness in it. “Well, Swaddle’s been so… unsafe lately.”
“It’s about to get more unsafe,” Rachel said. “For you. Isn’t that right?”
“You think the killer could be targeting me next?” Annie gave a little shiver.
“Give it up, Annie. I know you did it,” Rachel said, her voice harsh. “Now tell me where Tricia is.”
Annie’s face hardened. Her lips pressed together. “You should watch your mouth before you get another black eye, Rachel.” Her voice was smooth, dangerous.
“Where’s Tricia?” Rachel thundered. She tried to rush at Annie, but Annie sidestepped her.
“You’ve clearly lost your mind.” Annie’s smile was back, mocking Rachel. “I’ll tell you where Tricia is, but not before you tell me your ridiculous theory.”
“Is that a promise?”
“Something like it.” Annie grinned. “Go on.”
“It never made sense to me,” Rachel said. “Exactly how the poison got into Mrs. Bingham’s cake. I just couldn’t figure out how. Until it came to me… all my fundamental assumptions were wrong.”
“Do tell.” Annie grinned.
“The forensics reports said the murder occurred between 10am and 11am,” Rachel said.
“I was in Shoreline Park at the time. I’ve got multiple witnesses to confirm it,” Annie said, still smiling like a cat that had licked up the cream.
“Exactly. Which is why I never suspected you. Gina emailed several people around 11am, too. So in my head, the timeline went like this: Gina receives the cakes at nine, has breakfast with you from nine to nine thirty. You leave. Gina is still alive. She then emails Mrs. Bingham and Mia and asks them to come over. She eats some of Mrs. Bingham’s cake. The cake is poisoned and she dies.”
“Sounds like a pretty good timeline to me.” Annie smiled.
“But it all falls apart, doesn’t it? Once you realize that it’s so easy to access someone’s emails from a different device. Sure you were at Shoreline Park. You have witnesses too. But it would be easy for you to use your phone and send emails from Gina’s account at 11am.”
For the first time, Annie’s composure cracked a little. “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “The forensics lab says the murder happened between ten and eleven. I wasn’t there.”
“But you wouldn’t need to be. It was poison.” Rachel smiled. “You could easily have poisoned the cake when Gina had her back turned to you.”
“I still wouldn’t have known she would eat it!” Annie exclaimed. “This is nuts.”
“True.” Rachel smiled. “That threw me off, too. Why would a killer who planned everything so carefully leave it all up to chance? After all, Gina might not have eaten the cake—she’d gotten caught last year. So you did something even smarter. You poisoned the croissants and coffee you got her for breakfast.”
Annie’s face was red, and a vein pulsed in her forehead. “You have no proof of it.”
“Don’t I? That’s how you did it, right Annie? Met her for breakfast, smiled as she ate a poisoned croissant. Then, when she died, you posed her body with the cake, and injected the cake with the poison too. That way, the police would think the cake killed her.”
“It’s not true!”
“You put ice on her, so that the forensics reports would be misled,” Rachel said. “They’d think she died at ten instead of nine thirty. Mrs. Bingham saw the ice when she came into the house, but by the time the sheriff arrived, it was all water. You’d posed a jug too, so that we’d think it had spilled when Gina fell to the floor.”
Furious, Annie clenched her fists and repeated, “You have no proof!”
“That’s what finally helped me connect everything,” Rachel said. “When Mia called you an Ice Queen. I remembered how Mrs. Bingham mentioned nearly slipping on ice, and suddenly asked myself—why ice? Once I answered that, all the other answers followed one after the other. It would be easy for you to manipulate or erase Gina’s library records, wouldn’t it? You acted so well that day—completely shocked and afraid. I got taken in, just like Tricia.”
“The police got taken in too.” There was a triumphant smile on Annie’s face.
“When I finally put it together, I also remembered that you’d lied to me. You told me that you didn’t know anything about Mia’s past. But Tricia knew. So someone had told her. I assumed Mia, till I found out otherwise. Naturally, you could be the only other person who would tell your best friend about her new love. Following that, obviously you learned it from Gina.”
“So you know everything. Except my motive,” Annie said. “You don’t know why I did it. Do you?”
“I can guess,” Rachel said. “You mentioned how desperate you were to get away to Thailand or Indonesia after years of taking care of your father. But money is so hard to come by nowadays. Gina boasted to you, didn’t she? How much money she was making off these fools? You got jealous, I’m guessing.”
“Not jealous,” Annie said. “I got smart. Gina was a shark. She was morally bankrupt. People like me: people who work hard all their lives; we’re left with nothing. While her? She enjoyed luxury vacations and fancy cars. Do you know how much money she made off the people she blackmailed? It all adds up. But it wasn’t until she started trying to blackmail me for a few pennies I’d lifted here and there from the library fund, that I decided to kill her. Gina played a dangerous game, and she deserved what she got.”
“And Ethan?” Rachel asked. “Did he deserve it too?”
Annie looked away. “Ethan just got in my way,” she said. “He knew I was being blackmailed by Gina. He was too 'honorable' to spill my secrets, but he was trying to persuade me to go to the police. I had to get rid of him. I didn’t want anyone to find out I was being blackmailed. Once the police started looking into my bank accounts, it’d all come crashing down.”
“That’s why you tore the house upside down? Looking for the proof Gina had stashed away?”
“That’s right.” Annie smiled.
“And when you didn’t find what you wanted, you looked in the boutique,” Rachel said. “You burned it down.”
“Honestly, it was a little thrilling.” Annie smiled. “But like I said, I couldn’t risk anything being tied back to me. My world would come crashing down.”
“Well, give up, Annie. Your world’s already come crashing down,” Rachel said. “Mrs. Bingham gave Gina cash that day, but it was missing from her body. You took it. You spent some of the money you stole, presumably, and those numbers are all going to be traced by the police.”
“Marked notes, hmm?” Annie smiled. “Thanks for the heads-up. Though I suppose it won’t matter if I spend them. Not where I’m going. No. Extradition laws are a boon.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Rachel said. “Not if I can help it.”
“Oh, but you can’t help it.” Annie smiled. “Plucky little Rachel. Always the good girl, running to help the needy. Were you always this insufferable, or did you take a class?”
“I don’t need a class to know right from wrong. Pity you never took one.”
Annie laughed. “Good one. Not bad. Well, you did your part. You told me your 'theory.' Now, I suppose I need to tell you where Tricia is.”
“What have you done with her?” Rachel’s eyes were wide.
“I really didn’t want to do anything with her,” Annie said. “I like Tricia. Thing is, she asked me today, a little too casually, why I don’t wear my favorite gray jacket anymore.”
“Because you left a scrap of it in Gina’s boutique when you burned it down.” Rachel put a hand to her forehead. “That was from your jacket, wasn’t it?”
“Correct. I panicked when your stupid dog started barking. I got careless. It cost me.” Annie shook her head. “You know, I’ve grown up reading murder mysteries. It’s always so easy in the books. Nobody tells you that in real life, you’ll have idiots that have to be forced to eat your poisoned croissants, and dogs that bark in the middle of the night when you’re trying to get some work done.”
“Arson isn’t work.”
“No? It felt like an awful lot of work to me,” Annie said. “Now enough with the chitchat. I’m going to tell you what happens next. Tricia’s in the basement. The longer we talk, the more likely she dies. Head wounds are tricky, you know.”
“The basement!” Rachel looked around, desperate.
“You have a few minutes still. You can either spend them trying to stop me, or you can spend them trying to save her. Your choice.”
Rachel didn’t hesitate. They could always catch Annie later, but if Tricia’s life was at stake, she had to act, and act quickly. She rushed past Annie, heading to the basement. She gave a little yell as a foot tripped her up.
“Oops,” Annie said as Rachel went sprawling on the floor. Rachel rolled onto her back, and looked up, only to see Annie holding a vase high above her head.
“Sleep tight.” Annie smiled. “Idiot.”
The whole world went black as the vase crashed down onto her.
*****
Chapter 21
Blaze
“Rachel! Rachel!” Something was shaking her. Rachel groaned and shifted onto her side. She’d been dreaming about baking a lemon bundt cake. But the supermarket only had fresh ingredients, no pudding mix. No cake mix. The batter just wouldn’t come out right.
“Rachel, wake up! Please!”
There was desperation in this voice. Just the way Rachel was desperate to get her hands on the right ingredients. The dream shifted, and she was in Mia’s kitchen. Only Mia was trying to convince her to use beer instead of milk.
“It won’t work,” Rachel said.
“Rachel, wake UP!”
Now Scott was there too, but the dream was rapidly turning into a nightmare. He had a wound in his chest and was looking at Rachel accusingly. “You did this,” he said. “You stabbed me in the heart with a key. It’s all your fault.”
“No,” Rachel protested. “No!”
“Rachel!!” A sharp slap across her face had Rachel gasping as she sat upright. Someone threw their arms around her and wept.
“Oh, thank goodness. You’re alive!” Tricia said. “I was so afraid. Annie kicked you down the stairs. There’s blood all over...”
Rachel felt a little woozy. She blinked. “This isn’t a dream, right? I’m not dreaming.”
“No. I wish you were. But no.” Tricia hugged her again. “Listen, we have to get out of here. I’ve spent the last hour sawing through rope with a shard of glass I found lying here. But we don’t have much longer.”
“Wait. Where are we? How did we get here?”
“Annie’s basement. She tied me up and locked me in here,” Tricia said. “I can’t believe she was the killer all along. I’ve known her all my life!”
“People can surprise you in all sorts of ways,” Rachel said.
“Anyway, look. I’ve been trying to find a way out of here, but Annie’s put a metal bar or something across the basement door. I can’t get it to open. We need to get out.”
Rachel patted her pockets, then frowned. “My phone. She took my phone.”
“Mine, too. No luck there,” Tricia said. “I think... I think she’s planning to burn the house down, Rachel.” There w
as a tremor in Tricia’s voice. “I can smell gasoline.”
Rachel touched her forehead, and her hand came away slightly sticky. She had a dull pain radiating out from one side of her head, pulsing intermittently. Her thoughts kept scattering.
“Rachel!” Tricia shook her a little. “Come on, focus. What do we do? I need you here.”
“Right. Here. We need to escape.” Why was it so hard to think? All she wanted to do was lie down and fall asleep. It was so pleasant down here in the basement. It wasn’t damp at all. In fact, Rachel felt quite warm. Beads of sweat were gathering on her forehead.
“Rachel?” Tricia looked worried.
The blood loss was making her weak. That was all. Rachel shook her head to clear it, and found that this was a very bad idea. She stumbled, suddenly dizzy, and nearly fell back. Something clattered by her feet. Tricia squatted down. Rachel had knocked over a cardboard box, and a thin metal rod had fallen out.
“We can use it to try and pry apart the door,” Rachel managed, even though she was still dizzy.
“Worth a try,” Tricia said. They ran up the stairs and began attacking the basement door. Tricia tried to grab it by the handle at first, but took her hand away with a yell as soon as she made contact with the doorknob.
“It’s hot!” she exclaimed. “Burning hot. Annie’s set fire to the house already.”
“She’s mad,” Rachel said. “But smart. If we die here, by the time our bodies are identified, and they figure out she’s missing, she’ll be in another country.”
“We can’t let that happen,” Tricia said. Furiously, she attacked the door with the metal bar. A few of the planks gave way, and Tricia gave a yell of triumph. Soon, there was a big enough hole for the two of them to crawl through.
But when they managed to crawl outside, Rachel realized what a terrible idea it had been. The house was on fire, and somehow, they had been insulated down in the basement. Now, smoke came at them from all sides, blinding and disorienting them.
“Rachel!” Tricia cried.
“Get out!” Rachel shouted. She fell to the floor, trying to crawl, but not knowing if she was going deeper into the house or not. “Tricia, get out!”
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