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One of the techs knocked on the door and brought her a folder, which she took one glance at and smiled, making Don sweat even more profusely. He could feel the noose tightening around his neck as she walked back to her seat across from him.
Celia was glad that one of the things she’d pushed for when coming to work in the small town was an up to date computer system. There had been a lot of noise about that from the mayor and others who thought that since there was hardly any crime in their little enclave that such state of the art hardware wasn’t necessary, now Detective Sparks was glad that she’d stuck to her guns.
There was information on Stella going back almost fifty years, some of it just hearsay, but given today’s events, Celia planned to go through it all with new eyes. She kept reading until she came across something that caught her interest. “How did your mom die, Don?”
“What? What does my mother have to do with this?” Don fidgeted in his seat, not quite sure where she was going with this.
“Were you aware that before your father died, he had opened a case of inquiry into his late wife’s death, citing your new stepmother as a suspect in her suspected murder?” She watched carefully for his reaction, and from the way his face blanched, she knew he had no clue what she was talking about.
“That doesn’t make sense; mom was sick…”
“Says here that she was getting better in the weeks prior to her sudden death. The coroner never did an autopsy, but your father was getting ready to have her body exhumed.” Don was shaking his head before she was through talking.
“That can’t be. I know she killed those girls but not my mom. She couldn’t have...”
“How many?”
“What?” Don blinked as if to bring her back into focus as his mind had gone to a different place. What she was implying could not be real. He couldn’t have been screwing his mother’s murderer for the past almost forty years.
“You said she killed those girls, how many did she kill?” The question was so blasé she could’ve been asking him for the time. But she knew that she had him cornered; it was time to pull back and let him do the talking. If she pushed too hard now, he might clam up. But thinking that Stella might have killed his mom might be just the catalyst to send him over the edge.
“I…tell me about my mother.”
“Sure, as soon as you tell me what I want to know. By the way, I’m going to put in an order to have both your parents exhumed. It seems like the circumstances around your father’s death might also be a bit suspicious.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean that days after your dad went to see a judge about having your mother’s body exhumed, he died. You inherited everything, but your stepmom has stayed in your life all these years and seems to live lavishly.” Celia decided to go out on a limb. As sickening as the thought was, she had to ask.
“When did you two become lovers? Was it before or after your dad died?”
“Before, wait… I mean…” Don knew from the look on the detective’s face that there was no backtracking. He held his head in his hands as everything around him seemed to be crashing down, and he couldn’t get a grip.
“Stella couldn’t have killed my mom.”
“Why is that?”
“Because she used to work for my dad, she didn’t know my mom. They weren’t close.”
“Did she ever come to the house?”
“Yes, but that was just to see how mom was doing…Oh, hell.” Don rushed for the trashcan in the corner and expelled the contents of his guts. Propriety had to take a backseat this time as his mind was in turmoil.
No matter how much he threw up, he still felt sick, and he wished he could escape the hell of his own thoughts. He knew Stella was more than capable, had known for a long time that the face she’d shown him, in the beginning, hid a more sinister being, but his parents? As he recalled the sweet, gentle woman who’d given birth to him, the woman who used to bake him cookies and kiss his brow whenever he was sick, anger like he’d never known overwhelmed him, and he got to his feet.
“I’ll tell you everything.” Celia didn’t change her expression though inside she was doing cartwheels. She knew of the two that he would be the easiest to crack since she was almost certain that he hadn’t been the killer. She also knew that pushing the narrative about his mother being murdered though she didn’t have all the information and very little evidence save for a gut feeling, would do the trick of getting him to open up.
