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“So you hit him with your car?”
“What else could I do?” Sunny looked disgusted. “I knew he’d never keep his fat mouth shut. He’d be blabbing all over town that the skeleton was my mother. It’s a pain in the ass he didn’t die like he was supposed to.”
“A loose end we need to tie up,” Jolene drawled, as if Drew was a piece of trash, not a young man she’d known since he was born.
“Yes,” Sunny agreed, an ugly smile twisting her lips as she glanced down at Kaden’s unmoving form. “When we’re done here.”
Lia shuddered. She’d always wondered whether it was nature or nurture that formed the personality of a child. After all, she didn’t have any connection to her father’s family. Did that mean they had no impact on who she became as a person?
Now she knew without a doubt.
Sunny didn’t have any blood ties with Jolene, but she’d developed her psychopathic tendencies.
Imagining the girl’s pleasure when she rammed into poor Drew with her car, Lia abruptly recalled a question that had been nagging at her.
“Did you steal Drew’s pocketknife?”
“Yep. I gave him five hundred dollars to get him to hand over the birth certificate. I wanted it back,” Sunny readily admitted. “After I ran him over, I got out of the car and pulled the money out of his pocket. I didn’t know I had his knife until I was driving away.”
Lia was still puzzled. “Why did you use it to vandalize Kaden’s Jeep?”
“I wanted your boyfriend out of town.”
“How could slashing his tires get him out of town?”
Sunny shrugged, as if she hadn’t really given her impulsive decision much thought. “I hoped it would scare him.”
“Is that the same reason you threw a rock at me?”
Without warning, Sunny released a high-pitched giggle. As if the memory of hitting Lia with the rock was hysterical.
“I was hoping it would bash your head in.”
Lia felt another shudder race through her. It was no wonder the sporadic attacks had all seemed so strange and childish. Sunny was a spoiled, immature brat who wallowed in her unstable emotions.
The question now was what other crimes she had committed.
“Did you kill Judge Armstrong?”
“Of course I did.” Sunny glanced toward her mother, as if seeking the older woman’s approval. It was only when Jolene offered a small nod of her head that the girl returned her attention to Lia. “I overheard a meeting he had with my dad. It was obvious he intended to squeal like a pig to whoever would listen to save his own neck. As if he had anything to live for, the senile old shit.” Sunny stuck her finger in her mouth, as if she was gagging. “I couldn’t risk having anyone with actual brains poking their nose into our business.”
Lia narrowed her gaze. It wasn’t much of a reason to kill the old man, she conceded. As Sunny had pointed out, the judge wasn’t as sharp as he’d once been and few people took him seriously. It was doubtful he could have done much damage.
Had Sunny decided to murder him simply because shewantedto? That seemed the most reasonable explanation.
“So you hid in the garage and bashed in his head,” Lia said, using Sunny’s own words. “Then you placed something on the accelerator to make it look like an accident, right?”
“Very good. Cord taught me that handy-dandy trick.”
“He knew what you were doing?” Lia’s brows snapped together. Cord Walsh could be a troublemaker, but he was usually following Drew’s lead. And she’d never heard that he was violent.
“That idiot? Hardly.” Sunny rolled her eyes. “We were at a pizza party together and he was telling some kids that he was going to ram his truck into a tree to get the insurance money. He said all he had to do was wedge a brick against the gas pedal and put it in gear. It seemed simple enough. Not that the loser ever did it. He’s still driving around that piece of shit.”
“If he’s such a loser, why spend time with him?” Lia demanded.
“Because he did anything I asked. And I meananything. The stupid idiot is like an eager puppy, falling over his own feet to make me happy.”
Ah. That certainly made more sense than Sunny being interested in a boy who was destined to be a dairy farmer.
