Page 90 of We Already Dug the Grave

Baby.

I love you.

Fuck you. You think you can do this to me? You’re nothing. Less than nothing.

Frances. I love you. Please come home.

And then the last one, possibly the most chilling.

You can never get away from me.

“Shit,” I breathed and passed the phone back to my sister.

“Yeah,” Frances said. “Welcome to my life.”

“Did you change your password?” I asked.

“Of course.” She gave the phone to Bunny, who put it away.

Frances bounced her hands on the table. “What do we do now?”

“I’m going to get us a sweet treat.” Hattie-May pushed up from the table and un-looped her oxygen tube from her face. “We deserve it.” She shuffled to the pie safe in the corner of the room and retrieved a coffee cake. She brought it to the counter and began cutting and plating it as if we were having Sunday lunch.

A confused quiet settled over the group, not wanting to interrupt Hattie-May. I shot a questioning look at Ruth, who shook her head and mouthed, It’s fine, before catching Frances’s eye, my lips almost wanting to quirk.

“The Instagram post has me thinking.” I took a saucer of cake and a fork from Hattie-May and poked at it. It was moist, with a crumbly topping of brown sugar and pecans.

“If it looks like Frances is staying with me in Persimmon Key, and assuming my original plan doesn’t work—”

“Oh honey. It’s not going to work.” Hattie-May shook her head sadly, sliding a saucer in front of Frances. I ignored her.

“If it doesn’t work, then we can decide where we want to…to lure Burt. If we, you know, have to do this, then we must be smart about where and when. Plan it all. And if it looks like me and Frances are together at the beach, then we’ll have a built-in alibi, right?”

“What are you saying, dear?” Aunt Hattie paused, cake knife in hand. “You want to bring him here, to Puddle Creek and—”

“God no. Not here.” I drummed my fingers against the table and glanced around my aunts’ home. The room was clean but cluttered. The kitchen counters were littered with canisters of sugar and flour, jars of pickled things like beets, quail eggs, lumpy pink pig feet, and, of course containers of tea. Tidy stacks of Hattie-May’s sketchbooks were everywhere, and every inch of wall space held one of her drawings, the most recent additions frenetic and messy. “No. Definitely not here.”

This wasn’t a place where people came to die. It was an old person’s house, full of strange smells and a lifetime’s worth of memories. “It should happen somewhere random. Somewhere we have no ties or connection to.”

“Like a motel,” Bunny said, nodding. “Men get up to some sketchy shit in roadside motels.” Her tone held the kind of authority you couldn’t fake, the kind that only came from experience. “Specifically,” she continued, “the kind of stuff that leads to overdosing and not being found until the next morning.”

We hadn’t spoken on how we would kill Burt, but Bunny’s idea proved we were on the same page. If this death were going to happen, there was only one way. Poison.

Of course it would be poison. Hattie-May had spent her life getting rid of pests for others. Now she’d do the same for Frances.

“Yeah, a motel.” Frances nodded eagerly. “Do you know a place?”

“Matter of fact, I do.” Bunny took a slice of cake from the counter and brought it back to the table. She sat down and dug in. “Across state lines. In Alabama. The type of place nobody notices unless they go looking for it.”

“That sounds perfect,” Frances said excitedly, and I wondered where the haunted, pale woman had disappeared to. “There’s one thing I’m not sure about.”

“What?” I asked.

“It’s only…the poison. Seems risky. What if he survives?”

Hattie-May chuckled as if my sister had said something funny.

“No. Poison’s least risky.” Bunny spoke evenly and unbothered, as if she were deciding on where to grab dinner. “Shooting him or stabbing him would be the wrong move. It would be messy and would be immediately investigated as a homicide the moment the body was discovered.” She forked another bite of cake and chewed thoughtfully.