Page 97 of Not a Word

“Has she talked to him?” Crane asked, pressing.

“I don’t think so. There’s . . . there really isn’t any reason for her to.”

“You’re being naive. With this development, she’ll want to talk to everyone.”

“He was a child! There’d be no reason for her to talk to him!”

“But if she does—”

“He’s kept it a secret this long.”

“But has he?”

“You don’t have to worry about him.”

“Of course. A mother should know.”

“He won’t— Hang on, I’m getting another call.”

Alicia was on a break. There was a staff room at the back of the grocery store where employees had their lunch or sat and scrolled their phones or read a book or just sat on the old, vinyl couch and closed their eyes for a few minutes, taking a nap.

She could use one. Working the checkout, scanning groceries, bagging them, dealing with people who were dumber than shoes, might look easy but standing there, hour after hour, was murder on your back and your feet. She’d been ready to throttle the last customer before she put up the “Sorry Closed Use Next Checkout” sign on the conveyor belt. He’d waited until the last item had been scanned and bagged before he started searching all his pockets for his wallet to bring out some cash, like it hadn’t occurred to him until that moment that he was going to have to pay for all this shit.

When Alicia came into the break room, one of the young kids who stocked shelves was sitting at the lunch table, playing a game on his phone. Everyone called him Corky, although Alicia thought the C would be better replaced with a D.

“Hey,” Alicia said.

The boy didn’t so much as grunt, transfixed as he was by what was happening on the screen. Alicia went over to the coffee machine, poured herself a cup, then sat down opposite him.

“I think Wilkins was looking for you,” she said. The store manager.

The boy glanced up. “Huh?”

“You piss him off somehow?”

He paused the game and pushed back his chair. “That asshole,” he said as he shuffled out of the room. He’d be gone a few minutes, she hoped, trying to track down the boss, whom Alicia knew wasn’t even in today.

Long enough to make a phone call.

She didn’t really have a plan as she brought out the burner phone from her purse. Nothing more than keeping Catherine Chartwell off-balance.

Holden’s account of her visit to his place on Friday made it clear she was pretty shaken up. Who wouldn’t be, after learning your husband was found dead in bed with his whore. Holden had gone a little manic, too, so relieved his mother was alive that he tried to talk her into a cruise.

All of which confounded Alicia. Hadn’t he wanted her dead in the first place? Hadn’t Alicia persuaded him he’d never be free until the witch was toast? They’d come so close, and when things took a turn, he couldn’t have been happier. All that guilt, lifted.

And she’d done such a good job of getting him to that place. Bit by bit, little by little. Planting the seeds.

Talking him into doing a line here and there. Softening up the old brain, making him susceptible to her suggestions.

And finally the kicker: “I mean, you’ve got the gun right there.”

Wouldn’t it be fitting? That Catherine Chartwell be shot with the same gun she’d used to kill Alicia’s aunt? Balance in the universe, that’s what it was.

Holden would be her instrument. That had been the plan. Get him to do her bidding. It wasn’t like she was too chickenshit to do it herself, to kill this woman she’d never actually met, never actually seen, but there was something poetic about having her son take her out.

One day, she had pocketed the gun without Holden’s knowledge, found a guy who could supply the right ammunition. Brought the gun and bullets home, loaded it just the way the guy had showed her. “Be very, very careful,” he’d advised her. “That thing’s got a light trigger.”

That night, when she and Holden were in bed, she said, “Got a surprise for you.” He thought it was going to be some kind of sex toy when she opened the drawer of the bedside table. But what she brought out was his gun.