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He hadn’t any idea what she meant until the father came up to his son and spoke.Not loud, but loud enough for him and Jade to hear what he said as they were that close to them.
“Don’t worry, son.It’s going to be just fine now that they’re both going to be blamed for what happened to the girls.”Mick told his dad that his mom had killed his wife.“That’s fine too, right?Now we have them, and the girls will be just ours now.”
Jade didn’t say a word but looked at the officers that were with the medical examiner right now.Barkley didn’t know what was going on yet, but he was sure it was something huge.And he’d bet anything that this ‘incident’ that had happened today had been planned out.Perhaps not that the wife of the man being killed, but it seemed to be all right with the two of them that it had happened for some reason that sent shivers down his spine.
~*~
“Carrie, there’s a phone call for you.Something about your sister.”She told her secretary to take a message.“It’s the police, honey.They said they can only speak to you.”
“Christ.”Punching in the numbered line the call was on, Carrie barked out her name and told the person on the other end she wasn’t going to bail her sister out, no matter if she only needed money for a ticket.“Also, tell Matty that since she married the fucking prick, then she’s going to have to deal with whatever has happened to her.I’m not going to get caught up in her drama again.”
“I’m sorry to tell you this, Ms.Boone, but Madeline Cartwright was killed yesterday evening by her mother-in-law, Jane Cartwright.Who was then killed by the police when she wouldn’t put her gun down.”Well, that was nothing she expected, and she told the man that.“I thought not.Right now, the babies, you did know she had a set of twin girls, didn’t you?They’re in protective custody.”
“I had no idea, to be honest with you, that she was still alive.”He didn’t say anything, for which she was grateful.She thought that she sounded cold and heartless.But she couldn’t deal with this.Not anymore.“Look, Mr.Strong.I can’t help you out with anything, including the babies.My sister parted ways with us a long time ago, and we’ve not spoken in…let me think.At least fifteen years.I can’t raise her children or even take them in.I just can’t.If you’ve been able to find me, you’ve more than likely found out Mattie has four brothers.They’re not going to help with them either.You can ask them if you want, but I know they’re going to tell you they can’t do it either.Mattie is…was a handful when we were children, and she burnt all her bridges and used up all the goodwill she might well have had from us a long time ago.Thank you for informing me of her death.But I’m sorry.I won’t be able to help.”
Putting the phone back in the cradle, she sat there for a while, thinking of her last conversation with Mattie.It really had been fifteen years ago.Carrie herself had only been ten or eleven at the time when Mattie had had her arrested along with her parents.She claimed that they’d had her chained up in the basement of the home and had starved her over the last six months.
While she was in jail on those trumped-up charges about abusing her older sister, Mattie had gone through the family home and stolen everything of any value.Including Mom and Dad’s social security check, their bank card and credit cards.It wasn’t until they got out that they saw what they’d lost.
Picking up the phone again, she called Robert.He wasn’t working today, so she knew she had a fifty-fifty chance of getting in touch with him.His life partner answered on the first ring.
“Hello, my lovely.What can I do for you today?”She asked if Robert was home.“No.He’s gone to the—what’s happened?You sound very upset.”She told him everything.
“I don’t know what the guy wanted for me to do.I didn’t ask him, but I’m not going to take on her issues anymore.She hasn’t been a part of our lives forever, it seems.”Dan agreed with her.“I’m going to call the others and let them know what is going on.Could you please tell Robert for me?You’d more than likely be nicer than I’d be telling him that she’s gone.”
“I will.But I can almost guarantee you he won’t want anything to do with—did he tell you she called here about five months ago?She wanted money, of course, and said that he had to pay her for all the pain and suffering she had to go through being a sister to a faggot.I kid you not, Carrie.I thought he was going to blow a gasket.But all he did was hang up, and he asked me to have our number changed.I did that the very next day.”She asked why he hadn’t told her.“You have your own demons about Mattie, honey.I’m sure that was the only reason he didn’t tell you.But it’s all water under the bridge now, and we’re going to keep going the way that we were before.She’s not been a part of our lives for so long.We’ve gone on without her.Right?”
“Right.”She didn’t feel bad about her sister dying, not even the way that she had died.It had been too long, as Dan said.Carrie pulled out her cell phone and called the others.None of them, as she had predicted, wanted anything to do with Mattie.Not after all that she’d done to all of them over the years.
Going back to work, she was just finishing up for the day when Robert called her back.He wasn’t upset either but invited her over for dinner.Any chance she had at not having to cook for herself or go out to eat was something she would jump on.Telling him she’d be there in twenty minutes.She was just leaving the office when her phone rang again.She didn’t know the number that came up and almost didn’t answer it.When she did, she had to sit down on the floor.
“This is Mick Cartwright, your dead sister’s husband.I need to make a few things clear to you.Are you coming here to try and take my precious daughters from me?”She asked him what he was talking about.“My daughters.I’m sure you’ve been notified by now that Mattie is dead.My mom is too.Stupid cow.Sunny and Bethany are staying with me.I’m their father, and you’ll keep away from us.Do I make myself clear?”
“As mud.Why would I want to have anything to do with mydead sisters, as you put it, kids when I’d had nothing to do with her long before you were in the picture.”He laughed and told her she’d better be thinking that way forever.They were his daughters.“So you keep pointing out.Why is that, I wonder?”
Pulling out her cell phone, she messaged Robert, telling him to just listen in on the conversation.Then she called him to have him listen too.As Mick went on and on about how he was going to be raising his daughters, she had a feeling that there was something off about him and the conversation.
He spoke to her for another thirty minutes.Mostly it was to threaten her about coming around, but he also made it a point to tell her, several times, that he and his father were going to raise the twins and there wasn’t anything she could do about it.Again, she had an eerie feeling he was trying hard to brag to her about something, and it was up to her to guess what that might be.
“I’m going to have her cremated too.That way, there isn’t going to be exhuming her body later down the line when you or your brothers get a burr up your asses about something and try and sue me.I’ve won.”She told him congratulations.“You bet your sweet ass it’s going to be congratulations all around for me once I get her insurance money.”
“I’m assuming this was all planned?That my sister was to die at your mother’s hands, and you’d get to collect on both their policies that you just happened to have taken out a few months ago?”She sat at her deck and looked up the name Strong.The man who had called her to let her know that Mattie was dead.She had to ask what Mick said when she realized he was probably waiting on an answer from him.“Well, did you?Take out the policy just to have your mom kill her?”
“I guess we’ll never know.And I hadn’t expected my mother to be killed.It’s a shame but nothing that we can’t overcome.”She asked him what that was supposed to mean.“Well, I’ll tell you this, it’s going to mean that we have to find us someone we can trust to watch over my daughters while Dad and I make plans for them.”
The most profound feeling of sickness rolled over her.While he didn’t come right out and say it—and hopefully, she was wrong—but it sounded to her like he was going to be selling off his daughters to anyone with the right amount of money to have them.They were just babies.
Finding the newspaper article, just a few lines about a mall shooting, had her thinking that it was about Mattie.As she and Mick spoke, mostly him doing the bragging about shit, she found the name of a Strong family nearby.Looking up his phone number with the tools she had at her disposal, she also found a phone number and address for the Strong Foundation.Taking a chance, she emailed a plea for someone to call her back in about an hour.She needed desperately to talk to someone about her sister’s husband and daughters.
Putting her phone back in the cradle again, she sat there for several minutes thinking about the shit he’d said to her.When her cell rang, she was glad to see the face of Robert there.The first words out of his mouth were that he’d recorded every word of what was said between her and Mick.
“Thank you for that.I’m going to have to talk to this Strong guy that called me this morning.Also, I’d like to be able to get in touch with the insurance company that is holding the policy on Mattie.”Robert asked her if she could do that, find the policy.“Yes.I mean, that’s what I do.Find information on insurance policies and determine if they are bogus or not.Do you suppose they lived in the little town that the shooting happened in?”
As she did her research, Robert told her he was going to look into something as well.That he’d call her back in a bit.While still searching for where the policy might be held by, her cell phone rang again.It was the same number that had called her earlier that had started all this.
Without waiting for the person on the other end to speak, she launched into her feelings that she’d had about Mick.She also asked him if he possibly knew who the insurance company was so she could put a hold on that.
“Also, he told me he’s having Mattie cremated, so I couldn’t come back later and have her exhumed for whatever reason.I’m not sure what he thinks I’d do that for, but now that’s all I want to do.Or am I too late to have her get a full autopsy?”The man laughed, and she felt stupid, which, as usual, flared up her temper.“Listen here, you bastard.I was doing just fine in my life, not having a clue about what Mattie was up to or, as I said, even if she was alive.She was the most horrific person I know—knew.Now that you’ve opened up this can of worms, you’re going to be helping me out so that whatever plans that idiot has for those children, I can put a stop to.I’m serious here when I tell you that I think he’s going to be selling them off for sex to perverts.And if he does that, I’m going to kill him myself.”
