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“Oh, he’s smart. He’ll figure it out. He’ll come. And when he does, I’m going to kill him.”
“Like you did your mother.”
“And Frank.”
“How… how did you manage that, Dawn? You were at the safe house.”
“Well, I didn’t pull the trigger. But it was my plan.”
“Who pulled the trigger?”
“Mom. See, that way, I had a perfect alibi. But today the cops kept saying that Frank must have known the ‘unknown assailant’ because there were no signs of ‘forced entry’ and that the weapon had been fired at ‘close range’ and that there were no ‘defense wounds,’ and the ‘time of death’ was ‘curious.’”
Elle remembered Compton mentioning “discrepancies” that she wanted to check with Calder and her. Did they relate to Frank Whitley’s murder? She thought it probable.
“Mom had done exactly what I’d told her. She got over there soon after the deputies had taken me away. Frank was distraught. She made out to comfort and reassure him. He never felt a thing. It was supposed to be an imitation of the staged suicide at the fair. But,” she sighed, “all that questioning about the crime scene was making her edgy. That’s when she began suggesting that maybe we should call it quits.”
“Who shot up the safe house?”
“Well, duh, Elle. Mom!” She kicked Elle’s inoperative phone aside and sat down on the sofa. “See, after we moved down here from Iowa… Do you know about that?”
Elle shook her head.
“Well, it’s a long story. I won’t bore you. But we came down here for the purpose of killing Calder Hudson.”
Elle swallowed with difficulty. “Why?”
“He ruined our lives.”
“How so?”
Elle didn’t mind if it was a long, boring story told by a deranged individual. She had to give them—Calder—time to find her. She’d texted him only that she was going to see Dawn. He would have assumed that she meant at the hospital. She glanced at the clock on the dusty mantel. Three minutes till five o’clock. When she failed to arrive at the house in time to—
“So I put him out of his misery.”
The jarring statement pulled Elle from her thoughts. “I’m sorry? What?”
“Daddy. After he got the boot from Maxwell, he couldn’t find another job, especially not after the accident, which fucked up his back something awful. He could barely walk, much less work.
“Our car had been repossessed, which is why he was riding that damn motorcycle. Medical bills piled up. We had to sell the house and move into this crappy apartment. All because Mr. Calder Hudson had gotten Daddy fired. He’s to thank for him getting hooked on the meds, too.”
Elle remembered that one of the men in the photograph had died of an overdose. “Opioids?”
“Yes. Daddy was pitiful. Pathetic. One day he told me he would be better off dead.” She shrugged. “I agreed.”
“You put him out of his misery.”
“Eventually he probably would have offed himself, accidentally or on purpose.” She leaned forward and reached for the TV remote. “Show time.”
Elle looked at the clock. One minute till five.Soon, soon.They may all already be there. They would be calling Glenda to ask where they were, what the holdup was. But not even Glenda knew that she hadn’t stayed at the hospital.
She hadn’t told her because she hadn’t wanted an argument against this visit with Dawn. With misplaced compassion, she’d felt she owed it to the younger woman for leaving her at the safe house.
She’d planned to make it a brief courtesy call, then return to the hospital before anyone realized she’d come here. Then she would have called Glenda to come pick her up and begged forgiveness after the fact.
“I feel like I should be popping popcorn.” Dawn grabbed a throw pillow and hugged it to her chest.
As Dawn had said, Calder was smart. He would figure it out. Compton and Perkins would have people—
