Authors: Sara Rosett
“Not at all.”
“But he’s your registered agent for Forever Wild.”
“Oh, that. Whatever. He’s just on the paperwork. We paid him five hundred dollars, a one-time fee, to file the paperwork.” Diana rolled her eyes again. “But, of course, Brent had to go and screw that up, too. I told him always use the debit card. Cash.
Cash.
But no, he forgot to make the withdrawal, so he just wrote a check. No big deal, he said. But, wouldn’t you know—Jeff took the check to the squad, Cass saw it, and it set her off.”
So the check had Forever Wild printed on it. That’s what Cass was so upset about, not a hunting lease like Jeff said. But if Jeff was only peripherally involved, why did he lie?
I hit the blinker and slowed for the exit ramp. Diana shifted in her seat, more alert and watchful. It only took a few minutes to drive the climbing, winding road to my
street, but it seemed to pass in seconds. What am I going to do? I searched frantically for options, but couldn’t think of anything. I couldn’t wreck the Cherokee or make a run for it, not with Livvy strapped in the backseat.
I pulled into the driveway and searched the sidewalks for a walker, a jogger, anyone. The neighborhood was quiet except for the rain pounding a steady rhythm on the Cherokee. I turned to her. “You can’t do this. You know three deaths in the squadron within a few weeks won’t be overlooked. It will be investigated.”
“Three?”
“Cass and Friona.”
“Oh, Friona.” She flicked her hand. “I’d almost forgotten about her. That was tedious. It was so boring waiting for her. And messy. I don’t want to have to do that again,” she murmured to herself. “No blood this time. I don’t have time to change.”
I tightened my grip on the door handle, so stunned that I couldn’t move. She’d just admitted to killing Friona. Her precise, analytical assessment of why she wouldn’t kill me with a knife chilled me. To Diana, killing wasn’t wrong, it was just too messy with a knife.
Lost in thought, she gnawed on her fingernail. Then she seemed to come to a decision and roughly nodded her head. “Suicide.” My look of disbelief must have shown on my face. “You’ll leave a note,” she said. “You’re distraught, exhausted, overwhelmed with the responsibility of raising your daughter. All that, on top of the move—it was too much for you. They’ll conclude post-partum depression.”
“I would
not
do that. Mitch will know. I’d never do that to him or Livvy.” Diana’s face was hard, her eyes stony. I tried another approach. “We don’t own a gun. I
hate blood, so I’d never slit my wrists, and there aren’t any drugs in the house because I’m breast-feeding.”
Diana stopped chewing on her thumbnail. “Stop it!” she shouted. “Stop talking. You’re making me nervous.” Great, I was making a crazy woman holding a gun on me nervous. “I need time to think and to make a plan. Pull in the garage,” she ordered. She seemed to calm down a bit. “There’s other ways.”
“The garage door is broken,” I lied.
“All right. Get out. Get the car seat. I’ll follow you.”
T
he rain splashed my face as I opened the back door of the Cherokee. I could hear Rex’s barks and whines. He was ready to get out of the basement. We were going to buy a kennel, but hadn’t done it yet, so he was back in the basement since the weather was too bad to leave him outside. Diana awkwardly climbed over the console and got out the driver’s side. She kept the gun on me the whole time. She stood with her back against the Cherokee and watched the street while I struggled with the releasing mechanism of the car seat. “What’s taking so long?” she asked. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw she was drenched. She had to use her coat to cover her gun, so her hair was plastered to her head and her cardigan, soaking up water, hung heavy from her shoulders.
“There. It was stuck.” I flipped a thick blanket over
the car seat and slammed the door. A car swept down the street, splashing water. Diana stuck the gun into my lower back around the vicinity of my kidney and pushed me toward the house and away from the street.
She marched me to the door. I started up the steps. It’s now or never. If I go in that house, I’m not coming back out. Excited barks sounded and Rex, a furry, wet, black shape, rounded the corner of the house. He had escaped again. I was only slightly surprised. We didn’t seem to be able to keep him confined anywhere. I looked back over my shoulder and saw Diana glance at Rex.
I raised the car seat and rammed it into Diana’s chest. She clutched at the car seat, missed, and landed with a hard splash on her back on the sidewalk. The gun arched through the air and plopped into the grass a few feet away. I dropped the car seat and ran down the steps. Rex danced back and forth between us, unsure how he could join us in our game. Diana grabbed my ankle and I fell. Stinging pain exploded from my right knee and radiated through my leg. I heard Rex growl behind me.
Diana made a wheezy, hollow sound as she tried to get her breath back. She rolled over into a crouch and looked for the gun. Water from the grass soaked through my jeans to my knees as I scanned the ground. I concentrated on the fresh, earthy smell and tried to ignore the sharp pain that stabbed from my knee up my leg. I saw the dull glint of the gun and scrambled for it. A rumbling growl sounded behind me. Diana roughly shoved me away from the gun.
Before I could get up, Diana half-wheezed, half-screamed. She writhed, trying to get away from Rex. He gripped a corner of the sleeve of her cardigan in his
teeth. With his paws planted, he used his weight to pull Diana away from me. He twisted his head back and forth and I heard a muted ripping sound as the material tore at the shoulder seam. Diana shrugged out of the cardigan and Rex lunged for another bite. Angling across the yard, Diana grabbed the lowest branch of one of the pines in our yard and scrambled up.
Rex danced around the base, delighted with this giant squirrel he’d treed. I heard footsteps splashing up the driveway and I focused on plaid rubber boots coming toward me. Mabel pushed back the hood of her orange poncho and calmly asked, “What’s all the fuss?”
I realized Diana was screaming at me to call off my attack dog. She yelled she was going to sue me for not keeping my dog restrained.
I pointed at Diana. “She tried to kill me.”
Mabel lifted her poncho, unzipped her fanny pack, and punched three numbers on her cell phone.
I made my way on noodlelike legs to the Cherokee. I opened the door and Livvy’s screams filled the air. I gripped the door as a wave of relief surged over me. She was crying; she was fine. I was thankful that the rain had covered the noise when I left her there. Mabel reached in, picked Livvy up off the floorboard, and handed her to me. Too shaky to stand, I climbed into the backseat of the Cherokee and cuddled Livvy until she popped her thumb in her mouth.
A car screeched into the driveway. I assumed it was the police or an ambulance until Mitch elbowed Mabel out of the way and leaned into the Cherokee. “What’s going on?”
I glanced at the tree. “It’s a long story.” My voice quavered. It was as shaky as my legs. “What are you doing home? I thought you had a class.”
“Canceled. The instructor’s wife went into labor, so he dismissed us. I didn’t have anything else to do at the squad, so I thought I’d come on home.”
“Slacker,” I teased in a more steady voice. “Taking off in the middle of the afternoon. I’m glad to see you, though. You can explain this to Thistlewait. I’m sure he’ll show up here soon.”
“He opened the basement window.” Mitch took a bite of his double chocolate ice cream and waited for a reaction.
Abby’s voice was incredulous. “A basement window? Those are at least six feet off the floor.”
“We’re changing his name to Houdini,” Mitch joked. He’d passed his check ride that morning and was in a good mood.
I put my fork down beside my chocolate raspberry torte. I liked my Hershey Kisses, but this was serious chocolate. “Don’t keep them in suspense any longer,” I said. “Rex jumped up on the dryer, and, well, you know how the dryer vent in our basement is fixed to go out one of the windows?”
“Just like ours,” Abby said. The basement windows of the bungalows in our neighborhood opened at an angle and had three horizontal panes. With one pane removed, the dryer vent went in the opening and plywood filled the rest of the pane.
“He jumped on the dryer, pushed the plywood out, the vent tube fell off, and then he wiggled out the opening,” I said.
Abby took another drink of her cappuccino and said, “He’s never liked that laundry room in the first place.”
“Considering he shredded the linoleum the other time we left him in there, I guess not.” I laughed. “He won’t be staying down there anymore.”
“Joe’s not taking Rex with him?” Abby asked. Joe’d put in for a transfer to a new base.
“No, he didn’t want to take Rex. Too many memories. Looks like we have a dog for good.” Mitch smiled.
I stretched my leg under the table. Even after twenty-four hours my knee ached and it wasn’t going to stop anytime soon. It was Tuesday evening, one day since the showdown in my yard. After dinner, Mitch and I had walked to the neighborhood café and bakery, Cobblestone, with Abby and Jeff. It was the perfect place because it had something for everyone: ice cream for Mitch, chocolate for me, and coffee for Abby and Jeff. It was a relief to talk freely to Abby and Jeff. The tensions and undercurrents were gone.
“The whole thing was so bizarre. I can’t believe it happened,” Abby said.
I took my last bite of the torte and said, “I can’t either. I feel like it was a dream. No, a nightmare.” But the ache in my knee reminded me it was real.
“What’s going to happen to Brent?” Abby asked.
“The police found him at his house yesterday afternoon, right on time to pick up Diana per her orders. Apparently, when he realized that Diana hadn’t killed me, he started talking and hasn’t stopped. Of course, he’s saying Diana planned everything and did it all herself,” I said sarcastically, which basically backed up what Diana had told me, but what else would he do? He’d never admit to any of it.
“What’s going to happen to Diana?” Abby asked.
“They’re untangling the jurisdictions, but everyone wants her,” I said.
“Why?” Jeff asked.
“Cass died on-base, so the OSI wants to interrogate her. The Vernon police want her because of Friona. Brent says Friona tried to blackmail Diana. Get this, Friona saw Diana in the Vincents’ house while Joe was out of town for the funeral. Diana was there searching for the box they mistakenly gave to the garage sale.”
“But Friona worked for them, too?” Abby asked. “This is too confusing.”
“It is,” I replied. “They drafted Friona, just like they drafted Jeff, to be the official name on the paperwork to hide their involvement in the corporations that were buying land and granting easements.”
I left the statement hanging. I knew Jeff had talked to the OSI again and they’d released him, but I didn’t know if he was cleared or still under investigation.
Jeff wiped his hand over his face. “Yeah. I didn’t know what I was getting into. Brent asked me to be Forever Wild’s registered agent. He said his brother-in-law lived in Seattle and was a developer who wanted to expand his business over here in Vernon. Brent said there’d be a huge hassle if his brother-in-law found out Brent and Diana were involved in a development here. He wanted to keep the whole thing quiet. He said I’d be doing him a favor. I’ve known Brent since the Academy. He was in my squad.” Jeff shrugged. “Not one of my better investment decisions, let me tell you.”
“But your argument with Cass. Why did you say that there were different ways to do things?”
“She saw Forever Wild on the check and lost it. I tried to calm her down. You were there and saw the whole thing. A few months after I filed the paperwork for Brent, I asked him how things were going. He said there was some opposition. People, like Cass, who didn’t
want any progress. He described how the development would preserve open space. It sounded good to me. But I knew she opposed any development and I tried to tell her there were other viewpoints besides hers.”
“Did you cash the check?” Mitch asked.
“No. Couldn’t do it. After she died, I started to wonder if everything with Forever Wild was really on the up and up. Then the OSI started asking questions and I panicked. I said it was about a hunting lease. I’d just mailed the check for the lease the day she died, so it could have been that check that set her off. She didn’t like hunting either. I hoped the OSI would buy that and leave me out of the rest of the investigation. I put the check Brent had given me in my wallet. Never cashed it. It was a relief to give it to that Thistledown guy and explain everything.”
“Thistlewait, that’s his name, not Thistledown,” I said to Jeff. I felt myself flush as I remembered my search of Abby and Jeff’s bedroom. No wonder I couldn’t find anything. He’d had the real check on him all the time. Risky, if he was arrested, but I could understand how he wouldn’t want to let it out of his reach. I checked Abby and Jeff’s faces. Abby leaned back in her chair, her face relaxed, and Jeff looked relieved if a little shaken. He’d come so close to getting involved in a dark scheme with people who wouldn’t hesitate to take him out if he caused problems. Apparently they didn’t know about my snooping. Hopefully, they’d never know I suspected Jeff of murder, either.
Abby sipped her coffee, then said, “But I still don’t understand what they were doing wrong. Besides murder, of course. What is this conservation easement thing?”
“I did a search last night on the Internet and found
out there’s nothing wrong with a conservation easement,” I said. “It’s a way to protect or limit development on a piece of land. It depends on how the easement is written. Cass thought this easement gave a cursory nod to environmental issues while basically allowing the builders free reign on the land. Brent and Diana funneled the profits from the land sales to their offshore account, where they also deposited money he’d scammed from military families. Evidently he used the insurance scam to grease some palms in the city and the county. That’s why the development went in so fast. The real problem was that Brent and Diana also owned Forever Wild, which oversaw the easement. Most conservation easements are set up with an independent foundation, a nonprofit, or a government agency. Their job is to enforce the easement. Essentially, they were checking up on themselves.