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Chapter 20
I’m not sure why I did it. My head certainly wasn’t telling me to abandon Blythe on the edge of the lake and make my way back out into the water. A sane person would’ve let Ian shoot that murderer, but I found myself putting a hand on Ian’s shoulder, begging him to put away the gun.
“Don’t kill him,” I said, my eyes drawn to the man standing only ten feet away with a jagged rock clutched in his hand. Mostly naked and drenched, he looked even bigger than when we’d met in the Jazz Club. “Mr. White deserves justice. He needs him alive.”
“Get back,” Ian hissed at me, his arm muscles taut under my hand. “You and Raven need to get back. This is police business now.”
I dropped my hands to my waist and planted my feet. “I’m not going anywhere. Not until he gives up.”
Drew threw his head back and laughed. It was a harrowing sound, like a man at the end of his rope. He was mad. And yet, I felt a sudden surge of sympathy for him. I couldn’t say why, but I knew he was hurting. Pain lived in the tension of his forehead and his bottomless brown eyes. It scrunched up his pointed nose and drew in his cheeks until he appeared almost skeletal.
As I examined his features, something nagged at my consciousness. Something familiar. The more I looked at Drew, the stronger it became. I knew those eyes. I knew that nose. It was suddenly clear.
“Allen White was your relative, wasn’t he?” I asked, tentatively taking a step toward him.
“Hazy…” Ian whispered in a warning, shaking his head.
He wasn’t going to get to the bottom of this with the end of a gun. We had to find the truth. My Grammy Jo had been arrested because of Drew. I needed to know why.
Drew frowned at me, distrust evident in his glare. “He’s no relative of mine. I’d never claim him.”
“But I can see the family resemblance.” I took a deep breath. Ian shifted closer behind me, the gun still pointed at Drew. “You have his eyes.”
“I have my mother’s eyes,” he hissed, clutching the rock closer to his chest. “Just because he was her father, doesn’t mean he was my grandfather. That man never did anything for us. He kicked my mom out of the house when she got pregnant with me. Because of him, she’s dead.”
And there was the pain, plain as day, written across every one of Drew’s features. It weighed heavy on his shoulders, making him hunch with the effort to stay upright. Within the pain was a layer of shame that clouded his eyes.
“What happened to her?” I asked, genuinely concerned. I couldn’t imagine losing my mother. “How’d she die?”
“Cancer.” He closed his eyes against the water dripping down from his wet hair. “Ovarian cancer. Her doctor wanted to send her through this brand new treatment program, but it was expensive. She wouldn’t beg her own father for the money, so I did it for her. That rat turned up his nose at me as if I was some kind of bug. Wouldn’t even look me in the eyes. Just called me riffraff and kicked me out. ”
I hated to admit it, but part of me kind of hated Allen White after listening to Drew’s story. What kind of man would let his own daughter die if he had the ability to save her? Maybe he deserved to die. But murder hadn’t been the answer.
“So, that letter Mr. White wrote to Angie Pine had been partially about you,” Blythe said, coming in beside me. She’d pulled a towel around her thin shoulders, but walked with a strong step. “He said he wouldn’t give money to her or any other riffraff that came begging for it. He was talking about you.”
Drew cocked his head to the side, fixing his gaze on her. The longer we talked, the more the madness died in his eyes. “That wasn’t even the worst of it. On her deathbed, my mom asked me to take her home to be buried with her mother. She died when my mom was only a kid. She’s buried in the White family mausoleum, in the cemetery just over the hill.” He nodded to the right.
I knew from my many years of roaming the lake during my childhood that a small cemetery lay just up the road and through a wide clearing. Raven, Blythe, and I had spent more than a few nights playing ghosts in the graveyard and pretending to summo
n spirits. The White mausoleum was a large crypt built into the hillside and facing the south. It was layered in beautiful white speckled marble that shined in the sunlight. Centuries of Whites were laid to rest behind the wrought iron gate that kept out the rest of the world.
Drew flared his nostrils and swept out his hands. “I buried my pride and begged him for one last favor. One last kindness to my dead mother, his only daughter, but he refused. He took her ashes and flung them at me. Told me to go bother someone else.”
I gasped and he fell to his knees, burying his head in his hands. At this point, I really couldn’t blame Drew. If anything, I pitied him and his mother. What a horrible family. He was all alone in the world. It was no wonder he had snapped.
“You killed him by dusting the roses with ricin, didn’t you?” Raven asked from the other side of Blythe. She still had her hand up, ready to send a burst of energy. “You learned it during your military training.”
“Very good,” Drew spat out bitterly. “You’ve all got me figured out. That man loved his roses more than he loved his family. I figured it was poetic. The thing he loved most killed him. It was too easy. I just had to stick around town until any suspicion died down, then I was going to hit the road.”
“The ricin?” Ian dropped his gun just enough to point it toward the water. The tension was still present in his shoulders. “Where’d you get that?”
That was a good question. After Andy Jenkings’ white canvas bag turned out to be just a bag of fertilizer, it was still puzzling how someone could find a poison like ricin in the Midwest.
“Grammy’s plants,” I said suddenly. Yes, it made sense. “He’s the animal that’s been digging in Grammy Jo’s plants. He took them from her castor bean plant.”
Raven nodded beside me. She had known the animals were innocent. If only we’d listened to her.
“Yes,” Drew said, dropping the rock with a splash. “I stole them. Made the poison. And now that poor excuse for a man can rot in his precious crypt. My mother was too good for him, for all of them. I spread her remains around town. She’s home again. And that’s the end. The end of my story. Do me a favor and just kill me now.”
