He shakes his head. “I know. But why?” he asks. “What possible reason could there be?”
“I wish I knew. I’ve been going over it again and again in my mind and I don’t have a clue.”
28
Gabe and I don’t arrive home until close to one in the morning, but we’re not surprised to see the house ablaze with lights. Marcus had texted Gabe to say that everyone would be waiting up for us in the living room. Everyone but Wendy, that is. According to Marcus, she’s being held without bail.
I’m totally spent by now, and though the Tylenol has eased the pain a bit, my head feels like it’s been wedged between two boulders. Still, I know I need to greet the family. They’re desperate for answers.
Even from the hall I can see how distraught everyone is. As we enter the living room, Keira, Marcus, Nick, and Blake all jump up, begging to know how I’m doing, and form a loose circle around Gabe and me. Ash, looking pale and exhausted, remains seated, though, and Hannah hangs back, clearly shaken, her face even redder than before.
“Summer, what in god’s name is going on?” Blake pleads. “I’ve been going out of my mind.” His hair is standing on end, as if he’s been raking his fingers through it for hours.
“Blake, I’m so sorry,” I say, though I know that nothing I tell him will offer any consolation. “Wendy followed me out of the house and struck me as hard as she could. And she would have killed me if Gabe hadn’t come along.”
“But it wasn’t her,” he says. “She saw someone else strike you and she was coming to your rescue. She told me. We have to make the police understand that.”
“Blake, I saw her with my own two eyes.”
“But it was dark,” Ash interjects from the armchair. “Can’t you be mistaken?”
“I saw her, too,” Gabe says. “As I came running down the rise, she had her arm raised, ready to hit again.”
“But what earthly reason would she have to hurt you?” Blake says, his voice flushed with anguish.
“I have no idea, I really don’t. But she clearly wanted me dead. She was using some kind of tool, like a hammer.” As I say the last word, my mind fixes on a thought I had while lurching back to the house with the trooper. “And I think she killed Jillian, too.”
The room fills with gasps. I see Gabe’s mouth drop open in shock.
“No, no.” Blake throws up his arms. “That’s even crazier. My wife is not a murderer. And she barely knew Jillian.”
“Yes, why?” Ash demands. “Why would she have any reason to kill Jillian? This isn’t making any sense at all.”
I shake my head, which only makes the throbbing worse. “I don’t know. But she was going to try to make my death look like a failed sexual assault, too. So we’d all think the predator had come back.”
The room goes utterly silent, and I rack my brain for answers once again, but come up empty.
“I think I know why.” To my shock I realize it’s Hannah speaking. She’s still standing outside the circle, and as if choreographed, we all pivot to face her.
“What?” Nick says.
Hannah bites her lip hard, then takes a deep breath. “Because Wendy thought it was me down there by the stream. I was wearing the same coat as Jillian that day.”
So maybe it’s true, that the wrong woman was killed. But that doesn’t explain why Wendy would have wanted Hannah dead.
“My god,” Blake shouts, now angry as well as befuddled. “This is starting to sound like theater of the absurd. What could her motive possibly have been?”
Another bite of her lip. It’s not for effect, I realize. She’s totally rattled.
“Because . . . because of something I overheard,” she says. “I’d gone outdoors Saturday night to sneak a cigarette by the side of the house, the side near the carriage house, and I heard Claire and Wendy talking on the patio.” She looks at Blake. “Uh, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Wendy’s been having an affair with some guy she met in Palm Beach and Claire knew because she saw them together there a few months ago. After you told everyone about the baby that night, I guess she decided to corner Wendy. She said that if she didn’t come clean with you, she would. She’d make sure there was a DNA test because she thought the baby might not be yours.”
Blake lets out a wail that could shatter the windows, and Gabe and Marcus rush to him. I stay where I am, pleading with my brain to work faster. It was a confrontation between Claire and Wendy that Henry overheard. Not Claire and Hannah. And it was Wendy who was threatened by the knowledge that Claire possessed, not Hannah.
Nick steps closer to Hannah, his eyes narrowed.
“How did Wendy know you’d overheard?” he says.
“I . . . I told her.”
“Why?”
“I was just trying, you know, to help her—because I felt so sorry for her. I said I’d keep it to myself, and she promised to have my back when no one else could be bothered. I had no idea she’d try to kill me, for god’s sake.”
She’s clearly floundering, out of her depth on this one.
“Jesus, Hannah,” Nick says. “Wendy betrayed my brother. You didn’t think I should know?”
“I didn’t want to interfere. It didn’t seem like any of my business.”
“None of your business?” Nick yells, his face reddening. “Aren’t I your damn business?”
Her expression morphs from flustered to wounded, and she turns on her heels and flees the room.
I take off, too, pursuing her down the wide front hall and then along the corridor that runs past the den. When I catch up to her, she’s almost at the side door leading from the house, and she stops abruptly, clearly realizing she has to either venture out into the darkness or talk to me.
“What the hell do you want?” she demands angrily.
“Tell me what you know about foxgloves.”
She purses her pillowy lips, bare now of her usual lipstick and gloss. I can see her sense of superiority surging back. “Seriously? You’re asking me about flowers at a time like this?”
“Yes, now. If you know what’s good for you.”
“Okay, okay. I know they’re poisonous. Claire told me when she gave me a tour.”
“But you pretended you didn’t know that when I spoke to you in the carriage house.”
“I was just messing with you. You’ve been a total bitch to me from day one, and you know it.”
“Did you pick foxgloves from the garden by the cottage on the morning Claire died?”
“What? No.”
“Prove it.”
“I wasn’t out flower picking. Ask Nick. Or ask Marcus. He had me meet him outside that morning so I could hear how furious he was about me marrying his brother, and then when I was done listening to him spew, I played tennis with Nick and hung by the pool.”
Then who . . . ?
My god. I’ve had it all wrong. It was Wendy who was threatened by Claire. And it must have been Wendy who picked the foxgloves and made the tea. Wendy who poisoned Claire.
If I’m remembering right, Blake went for a drive that morning, so Wendy had the carriage house kitchen to herself. That would have allowed her time to cut the flowers, dry the leaves in the oven there, and make the tea without being seen. And she would have had the house kitchen to herself, as well, in order to make the substitution. She was the one who told me Bonnie wouldn’t be in until late.