“Go ahead.” She calmly slides the papers back to me. “By all means, take these documents and go running to the police. Tell them I killed your cousin to keep the fortune. That I poured your poison down my father’s throat to set you up for murder. You have my blessing. Please, tell the sheriff everything.” Lorelei fans her hands open wide.
I’m a bit stunned, not sure why she’s making such a show or what she’s trying to get at. Of course, I’m going to tell the sheriff everything I know.
“Are you sure you want to do that, though? Because it looks to me like you didn’t read the fine print. If you or anyone in your family reveal who your father is, then you don’t inherit a dime.” She punctuates the last word as if that little fact matters to me.
I don’t give a fuck about the money. I’m about to open my mouth to say just that, and she keeps going.
“Look, here’s the thing,” Lorelei continues. “Stone was a bastard of a man who couldn’t give two shits about Ellis or me, and apparently not about you, either.” She says this rather nonchalantly. “Sure, he did his fatherly duty and covered up my little...blunder.” A wry smile slips onto that smug-ass face of hers. “Then he found out my blunder was just a little bit on purpose and he freaked out. Couldn’t believe I would do such a thing, and over something as trivial as money. But you try going without once you’ve had a taste, seen what life can be. I wasn’t about to let any more than necessary slip away, not if we didn’t have to. You know how fast money can go? When your brother, the artist, is setting himself up to be nothing more than a drain on family resources, your aunt needs special round-the-clock care, and the tours of the mansion barely bring in enough to cover the electric bill. I was doing him a favor. Did you a favor, too!” She throws her hands up as if she’s given me a gift. “Both of us would be out a lot more money. This way you get a little, and I get a little more, it’s a win-win.” She leans forward. “So you’re not going to tell a damn soul what I did,” she says through gritted teeth.
My nails bite into palms as I stew in a pit of my own anger. She sits back, confident she’s bought my silence.
“So why not buy Adaire off? Why not throw her a little bit, too, keep her quiet. You didn’t have to kill her.”
“I didn’t plan to, but she came in here one day with proof. That letter that spoke to how much they loved each other, how she was carrying his child, how she planned to keep you. Adaire knew too much, enough to tell the whole town who you really were. Father tried to reason with her, told her she’d be hurting you and your future. But she wouldn’t hear it, left here in a rush and was on her way to tell you everything. And I couldn’t have that, couldn’t have her ruining our name and reputation.
“Father would have never won a reelection once everyone found out. My mother would have divorced him and we wouldn’t survive a disgraced mayor and a nasty divorce. We already have a crazy lady in the family. Who’s going to pay money to tour the once-esteemed Sugar Hill? Plantations are already falling out of favor with folks. If the tour buses stop coming, and more and more of our money is being leeched out to dirty little beggars like you, where would that leave me? You’ve no idea what it takes to keep this family together, what it takes to keep our heads above water. Father just smiled through it all, through the bills that piled up and the debts, through my mother’s drinking binges when she’d disappear for weeks, locked away in her room—imagine that, yet they called her sister crazy, said she was the one with a problem. I did what I had to do for my family, what do you know about that?”
I fall back in my chair in disbelief. “So it really was just about the money—that was enough of a reason to kill my cousin? Your own brother.”
“That was an accident. He wouldn’t listen to me, just like Adaire. He planned to tell the cops everything. He’d have given all our money to you if it were up to him, he didn’t care a lick for it. Imagine that—Ellis, the weak link from day one, thinking he knows how to take care of our family better than me! He couldn’t see the bigger picture the way I could. And Adaire as good as sealed her own fate, running off like she did. I only wanted to talk. Barely nudged her tire to get her attention, but we were going too fast—”
My blood begins to boil, I know what’s coming next.
Lorelei huffs a laugh. “You should have seen the way the bike twisted around her broken legs.”
Anger jolts through my body.
“It was wrong to let her suffer like that. So I put her out of her misery and ran over her properly the second time—”
I don’t even understand how it happens.
One minute, I’m on this side of the desk. The next my hand is gripped around Lorelei’s throat.
“Shut your fucking mouth.” My words spit in her face. She scrabbles at my hand, trying to loosen my grip.
The murderous death stain of Adaire seeps from Lorelei’s pores. It grows deep inside her like a black fern, uncoiling itself.
I taste it now, the sweet lick of anger. Like a blue flame, I feed on it. Except it isn’t anger that burns inside me. Or rage.
It’s death.
Death that has rotted away in my bones from years of death-talking.
It lives there in the marrow and blood. Patiently waiting. I draw upon it, the power of my death-talking, and let it find the evil that resides in Lorelei Rutledge. I never considered that if I could talk the death out of someone, maybe I could talk the death into them.
So I listen.
I listen for that exact sound I heard when her twin brother Ellis died. That sweet violin of sadness from his soul-song. Except Lorelei’s violin is sharp and shrill. The winding grind of the Devil’s fiddle, playing a tune for the demons that live inside her. I know the second I find it because the glass in the chandelier begins to rattle. The objects around the room vibrate as I tune into her soul-song.
I glare at Lorelei under hooded eyes. She gasps as I hook my deathly finger into her black soul. Open and vulnerable, ready for me to fill it with death.
Then something soft touches my shoulder. Don’t.
A gentle, ghostly hand that draws out all the anger from me. It tells me everything is going to be okay. That I can let it go now. Nothing more needs to be done. No one else needs to be hurt. It’s finished.
I release Lorelei from my grasp.
She coughs and sputters, trying to catch her breath. I leave her there on the floor. I need to get away from her, this house, and anything to do with these vile people. It doesn’t matter what those papers say; these people aren’t my family. Never were. Never will be. I’m down the stairs and making my way through the kitchen when I hear Lorelei raging behind me. Something about how lawyers and judges won’t believe trash like me.
A hard whack clips the back of my head, and I stumble forward. A blue floral vase crashes against the floor.
What the hell?
I look back just long enough to see her lunge for the butcher knife. I bolt out the back door and crash into Davis.
“You’re here? But how?”
Blue lights from Oscar’s Bronco flicker, as he steps out of the driver’s side.
“Please tell me you didn’t murder her,” Davis mumbles to me.
Lorelei rushes out the door behind me, knife gripped tight, screaming profanities, then she stops cold when she sees Oscar.
“Arrest her!” Lorelei points to me. “She assaulted me and broke the restraining order.”
Both her claims are true. I press a hand to the knot rising on the back of my head, grateful it’s not bleeding at least.
Oscar walks over. I sigh, holding out my hands for him to take me in because I’m done with all this. Ready for it be over.
