Quilty as Charged, page 17
Heather was sitting on Lydia’s bed, her hand clenched around something Lydia couldn’t quite see, and Auden was standing near the bathroom door, shotgun raised and pointed at Heather. Lydia knew absolutely nothing about guns, but clearly Auden did. He knew how to hold the shotgun and, with his lean body taut, with the gun raised, even Lydia felt a frisson of fear.
Heather turned toward the door, gasping, “Oh, Lydia, thank god you got here. I was right. There is a murderer in the house. Bu it’s not Clark! It’s Auden!” and at that she pointed at the gun, seemingly hysterical and afraid.
Lydia, however, knew better.
“Heather,” she said sadly, “it’s over.”
Heather aged ten years in that moment. The bright red hair that had once seemed so rebellious and fun looked stark and harsh against her snarling face. The sharp angle of her chin, that had seemed impish before, suddenly looked cruel. It was not a quirky face now, but a bitter one. But before Lydia could say anything, Heather lunged, dropping the pill bottle in her hand and picking up Lydia’s seam ripper from her bed. Before Lydia even reacted, Auden had stepped forward and pointed the shotgun at Heather, stopping her in her tracks. But that didn’t keep her quiet and she didn’t drop the seam ripper. Standing completely still, she shouted at Lydia.
“Over? You’re going to try to tell me it’s over? What do you know about over? What do you know about me? Do you know how long it took me to find her? And when I did? You!” she spat the word at Lydia. “Just when things were working, you showed up … traipsing all over her life—my life—our life! You. Ruined. Everything. It was my turn. For all of this! And the worst part? I was going to tell her. I told her. I mean, I was telling her. You were busy running around giggling about weather alerts, and I was ready to have a mother. I was ready!”
Heather stared at Lydia with hatred in her eyes.
“Do you know what she said? She said, ‘I know.’ She already knew. She knew I was her daughter. She’d hired someone to find me when she found out she was dying. I had waited for so long. And all she had to say to me was that she knew? Then she said, ‘Don’t worry, nothing has to change.’ Can you believe that?’ Heather screamed.
“I had been dreaming of that moment ever since I tracked her down and found that stupid shop. It wasn’t easy, moving to Peridot, learning to sew, hiding who I really was. But I learned the hard way that you can’t just assume people are good. I had to know who she was before I told her. You can understand that, right? Why I had to lie? And now all the lying could stop. I could live here, in the Laurels. She told me, you know, late one night as we coded inventory. How she had wanted the house to stay in her family. That she was hoping to find a long-lost family member. That was me! She must have been talking about me!”
“And then she got sick. I knew she was sick. You can’t hide terminal cancer. It was now or never. And then she could die knowing the house had come to me. Her daughter. Me. Just like she wanted. I told her everything.
“Then she had the nerve to … she actually.…” Heather stopped for the first time, gulping air like a swimmer in rough water. “She said nothing had to change. As if I should be thankful she wasn’t mad at me, wasn’t going to chuck me out. HER mad at ME?”
At that point, Heather looked at the seam ripper still in her hands. “You have to understand: The plan was never to hurt her. She decided. She decided that we couldn’t be a family. That was her choice, not mine. I didn’t mean.… It was never the plan. She said she forgave me. She was smiling. I had to make it stop. So, I did. It all has to stop.”
“This house is mine, Lydia. This life is mine.”
Suddenly the room was silent. All three of them looked at the water bottle on Lydia’s nightstand, the fentanyl pill bottle on the floor.
Lydia had known she would be next. If she was right, if her plan worked, then Heather would do anything to keep the house from going to Lydia. That had been Lydia’s whole plan, to scare Heather into trying to kill her and have Auden catch her in the act. Why was she still so surprised? No one spoke. Auden kept the gun trained on Heather.
“But why try to kill me? You could have contested the will.” Lydia finally asked, breaking the silence.
“God, how stupid are you? Because of your stupid socks. Because of your stupid T-shirts. Because you actually like pom-pom trim. Because you are not her daughter! And this is not your house! Because the damage was done; there was no going back, and no one had any suspicions. Except you. It wouldn’t have hurt, Lydia. I’m not a monster. And everyone would have understood why you had to kill yourself. You felt guilty. About Fran, about the house, about so blatantly stealing her whole existence. You were already apologizing to us. I would just explain to the group that you had taken the pills from Amy’s room and killed yourself. It wasn’t perfect, but I could have figured something out. You just needed to die. You just need to die.”
At that point, Heather looked wrung out, like all her rage had drained her to a shell of her former self. If Lydia hadn’t just heard the confession, she would have pitied the weak, vulnerable woman in front of her. But she didn’t pity her, and the confession wasn’t over.
“Okay, Heather, I get it, you hate me. It wasn’t just me, though, was it? What happened to Amy? It wasn’t an overdose, was it? You spiked her water and staged the overdose, just like you were going to spike mine. Why? What did Amy ever do to you? I don’t understand,” Lydia asked, her voice close to breaking. It was all too much.
Heather let out a soft laugh. “Of course, you don’t understand. What have you ever understood?!” Lydia winced at the edge in Heather’s voice. “What do you even know about Amy? She’s Cynde’s friend. What do you actually know about her? Did you even talk to her?!”
Heather stopped to get her breath, and Lydia had to admit she had a point; Lydia didn’t know really anything about Amy, just Theo Von and Crazy Bread, and the sad loss of her brother. Before Lydia had even started to castigate herself, Heather was back at it. “Amy worked in the Peridot court part time. That was how she knew Cynde. She told Fran the truth about me. She even knew about Fran’s plan for a new will. She told me as much after Fran was dead, tried to console me. Stupid, useless woman. She was thrilled she had something to contribute. Something that would make her interesting. Mentions over cookies, Oh, Heather, did you know about Fran’s will? It was too easy to keep her talking, to tell her of course I knew all about it. So, then she says, Oh, so you knew she was thinking of changing the will? Crazy, huh? I took the minutes of the meeting about it, but for some reason she just acted like we’d never met before, when I got here.
“That was how she said it, think of changing, not changed. How was I supposed to know Fran had already made it legal? It should have ended with Amy.
“She didn’t suffer. I just needed the will to stay the same. I’m owed this. Why can’t you see that? Once I realized Amy had to die, it all made sense. A ‘suicide’ would solve everything. I could tell that you didn’t buy my story about someone trying to kill me with carbon monoxide poisoning. This tied up all the loose ends and might finally shut you up. Why can’t you ever just shut up?” Heather whispered.
There was nothing more to say.
Chapter Sixteen
Auden was still holding the gun. He gestured from the seam ripper to the floor, and Heather dropped it, a soft thunk against the rug. The seam ripper wasn’t much of a weapon, but it still felt better to see Heather empty-handed. Then Auden pointed to the bed. Heather took the hint and sat down. While Auden kept the gun pointed at Heather, Lydia took the pills and the seam ripper and then tied Heather’s hands behind her back with leftover bias binding. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it was good enough. Auden lowered the gun, and they walked out together, leaving Heather alone in Lydia’s room. Then he locked the door and sat in front of it, legs crossed, hands shaking ever so slightly.
“I’m going to wait here until the power comes back on. Then we call the police. You should tell the others,” he added, gun laid across his lap. Auden said it with such authority that Lydia just nodded, placed the pills and the seam ripper on the floor next to Auden and went back to the kitchen.
Heather’s broken plate was still on the floor.
The group had clearly heard yelling, but they just as clearly hadn’t heard the actual words.
“Poor girl, she’s just overwrought, that’s all,” Mary offered, assuming Heather had been yelling at Lydia about the cards.
Clark added, “I don’t blame her for being mad. You had no right reading those cards, Lydia.”
“I know, and I’m sorry. Like I said, I was scared of what was happening. It just didn’t make sense to me that Amy would kill Fran. I had to keep digging. The cards were too perfect an opportunity to pass up. But that doesn’t mean I was right to read them. You’ve all read them now. You know they don’t say much. Heather isn’t mad about the cards. We all have secrets that need to come out.”
“Then she’s mad about the house,” Clark interjected, “and honestly, I can’t blame her. I mean, really Lydia. What makes you so deserving of the Laurels? Why did you get a house when the rest … after the way she treated us … when the rest of us just got pathetic apologies? You just admitted you’ve been keeping secrets from us; who’s to say there isn’t something else you’re keeping back?” Clark stopped himself, realizing he had started yelling at Lydia in front of the rest of the group. He blushed with anger or shame; she couldn’t tell which.
Lydia wanted to scream right back at him to stop being an ass. That, she knew, was a battle for another time. She wasn’t done telling them all the truth. Lydia took a deep breath. At least they were all still sitting down. Lydia then tried to explain the impossible, again:
“Heather killed Fran.”
Oooof. Okay, her delivery still hadn’t improved. She started again. “Heather lied to us. She isn’t twenty-five.” She could tell the group was lost. Why was Lydia talking about age? The girl was young, end of story. “Actually, she’s thirty-five. And it matters because she’s Fran’s daughter.”
She may as well have said Heather was the new Queen of England. Lydia kept going, “Fran got pregnant when she was a teenager and gave the baby, a girl, up for adoption. That girl was Heather. Heather tracked her down and lied to get close to Fran. When she revealed herself, something went wrong in the conversation, they argued, and Heather hit Fran. Then,” and at that moment she turned to Cynde, “then she killed Amy and framed her to make it look like Amy had killed Fran and then herself.”
Cynde looked strangely relieved, and Lydia thought she knew why. True, she had still lost her friend, but at least Amy was who Cynde believed her to be, not who Heather had tricked them into thinking she was. In short, Amy was Amy, not a murderer. Lydia kept going; there was still more to explain.
“It was never about you, Cynde. It was always about Fran. And about the Laurels. I read Fran’s card to Heather, where she admitted to being her birth mom. Then, I read my card from Fran last night, and when I realized that Fran had wanted me to get the house, it raised questions, doubts. I wasn’t sure, but I started to wonder if Heather was involved. I wanted to be wrong, I really did, but there were too many unanswered questions, too many loose ends. I told Auden my suspicions last night, and this morning he helped me set a trap.”
Lydia realized she had to tell them about the gun. Sigh.
“I asked Auden to wait in the bathroom next to my room with his gun and catch Heather if she tried to do anything. Because Auden has a gun. A hunting rifle. It was Fran’s. He knew where she kept it and has had it hidden under the couch the whole time.”
If Lydia had expected a sharp reply from Clark, she underestimated how overwhelmed he would be with the new information. Grateful for the silence, she plowed on:
“I was right. Heather was so mad about Fran leaving the house to me that she went into my room and tried to poison me with fentanyl in my water bottle, just like she poisoned Amy. Auden caught her, and at first, she tried to come up with some excuse. But even then, even when there was still a tiny sliver of a chance I was wrong, Heather proved me right. She grabbed my seam ripper and tried to stab me. Auden stopped her in time. I’m fine. But she’s tied up in my room with bias binding, and Auden is guarding the door. With his gun.”
Still silence. Lydia couldn’t blame them. She had known since last night, she had even laid the trap for Heather, and she still almost didn’t believe it.
“Heather?” Cynde squeaked. “No. I don’t believe you. Heather loved Fran, and she barely even knew Amy. Lydia, you’ve got this all wrong somehow. Because if Heather did this.…”
Lydia finished the thought for her friend. “It had nothing to do with you, Cynde.”
Cynde started to cry, not a horrible gasping sob, like when they had found out Fran was dead, but a soft, steady cry that covered her cheeks in tears.
“It had nothing to do with me,” she repeated to herself, and she stood up and went to sit, alone, in the summer room.
Mary, Martha, and Clark watched her go.
Mary was the first to break the new silence, offering, “I always thought there was something wrong with that young lady.”
“Pish, posh,” Martha replied. “Just yesterday you said she was a credit to her generation.”
“Well, true, I thought she had good manners. But I also knew something wasn’t right. Her hair? Those boots? She practically told us she was deviant. We should have paid more attention,” and Mary seemed to aim that last comment at Lydia.
Surprisingly, Clark came to Lydia’s defense, saying, “That’s not fair, Mary, and you know it. Red hair and Doc Martens don’t make someone a killer. We all loved Heather.”
Lydia breathed in sharply, realizing they had all started to refer to Heather in the past tense. Heather wasn’t dead. But she was lost to them. Should she tell Clark that Heather tried to make Lydia think he was the murderer?
“We all loved Heather,” Clark repeated. “She should have told us. We’ve all done things we aren’t proud of.…” He paused and made eye contact with Martha. “And we would have understood why she lied about her real identity. Fran wasn’t her only chance at a family. We could all have been her family.”
It occurred to Lydia, in that moment, that there was still so much she didn’t know about Clark. True, she had “overheard” about his dad’s drinking and a younger sibling. But why didn’t she know more? Was he close to his family? Did he ever date anyone? She had let him live in her mind as a sort of caricature: fastidious Clark with his fancy snacks and sharp outfits. Clark was right about family. Heather couldn’t be a part of it anymore, but they could all do better by each other, and she could take better care of the friends she had left. She could even treat the M’s …
“I still say, it makes me think of poisonous insects,” Mary cut into Lydia’ s thoughts. Insects? Why were they talking about insects?
“Insects have bright colors to warn people. Heather had that bright red hair. We should have realized she was dangerous,” Mary concluded, pressing her lips into a thin line of righteous insight.
No one had anything to say to that. And then, blessedly, noise. The generator was back on. Who knew that the whir and thump of the old machine could sound so sweet? In that moment the digital clocks came alive across the kitchen. Sure, they were all blinking out of sync. Sure, they all had wrong times flashing. But clocks! Clocks meant … and before she could finish forming the thought in her mind, Lydia grabbed the phone, stretching the coiled cord to bring the handset right to her ear.
Lydia was quickly making a new list of sounds she loved. Generators. Now she added dial tones.
There was still so much to say. A million questions remained unsaid, unanswered. But in that moment, they all simply looked at the phone, the dial tone pouring out into the silence, as if an angel had appeared. Lydia raised her hand to the group, pointer finger up, in the classic teacher gesture of, “Class, be quiet.” She didn’t need to, no one was talking, but it felt right as she used her left hand to dial 911. She was so happy to hear another human’s voice that she probably sounded way too chipper to be calling about two dead bodies.
“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”
“Two people have been murdered.”
“What is the location of your emergency?”
“We’re at 841 River Road, Cherry Log.”
“Okay, ma’am, dispatch has been alerted and the police and ambulance are on their way. Is anyone hurt?”
“No. I mean. Two people are dead. And the murderer is tied up. But the rest of us are Okay.”
“Have you checked for a pulse?”
“Yes, I am trying to tell you. They are dead. And we need the police. Now.”
“Ma’am, officers are on their way. Please stay on the line with me until they arrive.”
Lydia nodded, sat down at the table with the phone pressed to her ear, and waited.
No one else moved. She was waiting for questions from the 911 operator. Everyone else was simply waiting. It didn’t take long. Less than an hour later, Mary, Martha, Cynde, Clark, and Lydia huddled in the living room, clustered near the still-burning fireplace, as the uniformed men came in to take the bodies away. Auden was still outside the room, shotgun now unloaded, explaining his role in the whole affair to one of the many officers. Mary and Martha both turned away to face the huge windows as two stretchers were rolled out, each carrying a zipped-up black body bag. Cynde and Clark, strangely enough, sat together on the large couch, talking quietly.
More men and women in uniform streamed in. Lydia half wondered if they were setting up a crime scene recreation in the bedrooms. It seemed impossible. This was nothing like CSI or Law & Order. She didn’t feel excited or even scared—just completely and utterly exhausted. She was staring into her empty white-and-blue coffee mug and standing by the fire even though she still felt cold, when she heard someone clear her throat.
