“Meaning?”
“We have to allow for the possibility that three different people hired Monk, and that, for whatever reason, he decided to kill the victims all at the same time.”
He had to admit she was right. “One thing is certain. Monk was paid a hell of a lot of money to kill these women. He doesn’t come cheap. If he has lumped them together, the real question is, who wants your aunt dead?”
He expected her to immediately tell him what a sweet, lovable woman her aunt was and that she didn’t have an enemy in the world.
“Lots of people dislike my aunt. Some, I would imagine, hate her.”
He wasn’t prepared for that. He actually smiled. “Yeah?”
“Carrie can sometimes be . . . abrasive.”
“Is that right?”
Avery nodded. “She’s in a cutthroat business.”
“Oh? What business is that?”
“Commercials.”
“Excuse me?”
“She makes commercials.”
He laughed, the sound harsh in the confines of the car.
“However,” she continued, ignoring his reaction, “none of her business associates would go to such extremes to get rid of her.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I just am,” she said.
“Okay, then that brings us back to your uncle Tony. How strong is their marriage? Any problems you know about?”
She was suddenly feeling sick to her stomach. “Carrie thinks Tony’s cheating on her.”
“Ah.”
“They’ve been seeing a marriage counselor.”
“Is that right?”
“Tony loves Carrie,” she said.
“How well do you know your uncle?”
“Not as well as I should,” she admitted. “I went away to boarding school and was only home during the summer, and then I worked in Carrie’s office. Still, I think I’m a good judge of character. Tony would never be unfaithful.”
“Wives usually know.”
“Carrie isn’t your typical wife. She’s got a very suspicious nature. I think, deep down, she can’t believe any man could love her. She’s . . . insecure, and that’s why she’s often abrasive. She doesn’t want anyone to see her vulnerability.”
“So that leads us right back to . . .”
“If they are separate contracts, and one person hired Monk to kill Carrie and me, then . . .”
“Then what?”
“I know who he is.”
Chapter 11
THE FIRST HOUR WAS A NIGHTMARE, AND THEN IT GOT WORSE.
The crazy woman had almost blown them to kingdom come. Anne’s hand was on the doorknob when Carrie tackled her to the floor. She was so skinny she went down hard, and Carrie landed with a thud on top of her. Both of them were screaming. Carrie had her hands full, and it was impossible to get the woman to listen to reason. Twisting and turning, Anne tried to claw Carrie’s eyes with her long, tapered, acrylic nails. She made it to her knees and nearly got away from Carrie when Sara grabbed her by her ankles and dragged her from the door.
As thin and frail as Anne appeared, her rage gave her almost superhuman strength, but fortunately it was quickly spent. Panting from exertion, Carrie kept the woman pinned to the marble floor by sitting on her spine. She held Anne’s head down with both her hands pressed against the back of her neck.
“Find something we can tie her up with,” Carrie shouted to Sara so she could be heard over Anne’s screeching.
Ten minutes later Anne was sitting in a chair at the round table in the breakfast nook. Her wrists were tied to the arms of the chair with two phone wires.
“How dare you treat me this way. You’re not going to get away with this. You just wait and see. I’m going to report you.”
Carrie, exhausted, fell into the chair adjacent to Anne’s. She covered her brow with her hand, her elbow propped on the table, and calmly asked, “How do you plan to do that, Anne?”
“You bitch,” Anne railed. “I’ll call the police.”
“Be my guest. Use the phone. Oh, wait. You can’t because the damn phone’s dead.”
“You’re lying.”
Carrie turned to Sara, who was leaning against the counter, watching. “Is she just on another planet? I think her mind’s completely snapped.”
“Perhaps,” Sara said. “Shock will sometimes make a person . . . irrational.”
“What in God’s name are we going to do?” Carrie whispered.
Sara pulled out a chair and sat down across from Anne. She folded her hands on the tabletop. “Now, Anne, it won’t do for you to continue to pretend that everything is all right. We’re all in trouble here, and we need your cooperation.”
Anne’s immediate response was a glare. “Leave me alone, you fat pig.”
“Charming,” Carrie muttered.
“Bitch,” Anne shouted at the top of her voice.
“If you continue to scream every word, Anne, I’m afraid I’m going to have to gag you,” Sara warned. “Are you going to calm down?”
Anne’s glare grew even stronger.
“Anne, where’s the letter that was left for you?” When Anne turned her head away, Sara asked, “Are you giving us the silent treatment now?”
“Wouldn’t that be a blessing?” Carrie scoffed.
Sara leaned back in her chair, adjusted her silk robe to cover her gown, and said, “You know, Anne, if you didn’t get a letter . . .”
“I didn’t,” Anne snapped.
“Then you could be an innocent bystander who just got caught up in our . . . dilemma.”
Dilemma? Carrie was about to take issue with Sara’s poor choice of words. For God’s sake, they were sitting inside a bomb. But then she caught Sara’s eye and decided to keep quiet when the older woman gave a quick shake of her head.
“You see, Anne,” she continued in a calm tone. “As a judge, I put away a good number of hardened criminals over the years. I had a reputation for giving harsh sentences, but in all of those cases, the men and women who came before me were career criminals. I don’t have any regrets.”
Anne finally looked at Sara with icy disdain. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because it’s important. Over the years there have been numerous threats against my life, but I’ve never given any of them a second thought.”
She went into the living room to get the letters she and Carrie had received. She returned to her seat at the table and read her letter to Anne. When she was finished, she held the paper up in front of Anne’s eyes so she could see she was telling the truth.
“And you think one of those criminals is making good on his threat?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I think. Either there’s an ex-con behind this, or someone still in jail has gotten outside help.”
“Where would an ex-con or a prisoner get the money to hire a killer?”
“Who cares where he got the money,” Carrie interjected.
“I’m not talking to you, bitch,” Anne hissed.
Sara raised her hand for silence. She didn’t want Carrie’s temper to trigger another tantrum.
“It’s a valid question,” Sara said. “I don’t know how he got the money. Perhaps a relative came into an inheritance or . . .”
“And maybe you put away an innocent man, and those relatives know it.”
“Yes, that might be how it happened.”
Carrie was gritting her teeth to keep from interrupting. She wanted to tell both women that right now they needed to find a way to get out of the house, and then, once they were safe, they could speculate on the who, how, and why until the cows came home.
“Carrie’s letter wasn’t like mine,” Sara said. “Hers was signed.”
Anne looked intrigued. “So he wanted you to know how much he hated you before you died?”
“Not ‘he,’ ” Sara corrected. “She.”
Carrie nodded. Anne still wouldn’t look at her, but Carrie didn’t care about that. “My letter wa
s written by my sister, Jilly.”
The announcement so shocked Anne she couldn’t continue her stony silence with Carrie any longer. “Your own flesh and blood wants you dead?”
“Yes.”
Appalled, she asked, “What kind of a family do you come from?”
Carrie held her temper. “Dysfunctional, Anne. I come from a very dysfunctional family. My sister’s crazy.”
“Good heavens,” Anne said. “Wait a minute. Are you lying? I mean, if your sister is really crazy, why hasn’t she been locked away?”
“I was told years ago that Jilly died in a car accident. The funeral home wanted to send me her ashes. Jilly, it turns out, was much smarter than I thought. She’s waited and planned all these years to get even with me.”
“Why? What did you do to her?”
“She thinks I stole her child.”
“Did you?”
“No, Jilly abandoned her when she was a baby. My mother and I raised her.”
“And your sister never came back?”
“Oh, yes, when Avery was five, Jilly came back with a sleazebag of a boyfriend named Dale Skarrett. She thought she could just waltz in and take Avery away. She’d already used extortion to get money out of my mother. That’s true,” she said when Anne looked so appalled. “My mother had to pay to keep Avery. I was home when they came, and while I physically tried to shove Jilly out of the house, my mother called the police. When Dale Skarrett heard the sirens, he grabbed Jilly and took off. I moved to California the following morning. While I was off building a career, Avery stayed with my mother. Then, when Avery was eleven, Jilly sent Skarrett to the house to kidnap her. Avery wasn’t going to go quietly. She fought him tooth and nail, and he used his belt to beat her within an inch of her life. She was so young . . . and helpless. I guess I sort of thought of myself as her mother, but when it mattered, really mattered, I wasn’t there to protect her the way a mother should.”
“What about your mother? Didn’t she do anything?”
Carrie looked down as she continued. “The police chief was a friend, and he had given mother a gun, taught her how to use it too. She was in the backyard and didn’t hear the screaming until she came into the house. My mother had become hard-of-hearing,” she added. “From what the police were able to ascertain, mother tried to shoot Skarrett. She must have given him warning because he grabbed Avery just as she fired. The bullet struck my niece.”
The words came out in a monotone, but there were tears in her eyes. “I left an old woman to take care of my niece, knowing that Jilly was out there.”
“But surely you couldn’t have anticipated . . .”
“Oh, but I did know what Jilly was capable of,” Carrie said.
“What happened to your mother?” Sara asked.
“She suffered a massive heart attack. She was dead by the time the police got to the house, and Avery was hanging on by a thread. I caught a flight from L.A. to Jacksonville. By the time I got there, Avery had already had surgery and was in ICU. The first thing the doctor told me was that Avery would recover, but he didn’t give me time to rejoice because he said she wouldn’t be able to have children. A hysterectomy at age eleven. That has to be some kind of record,” she said bitterly.
Sara looked startled, and Carrie assumed she was reacting to her morbid account of that awful day.
“That poor child,” Anne said. She sounded genuinely compassionate.
“I remember her,” Sara whispered.
“What?” Carrie all but shouted.
Sara nodded. “The names . . . there were so many over the years; it isn’t possible to remember all of them. And I didn’t remember Avery until you mentioned the hysterectomy at age eleven. I’ll never forget reading the transcripts of the trial.”
“I don’t understand,” Carrie said. “Why would you read the transcripts? Judge Hamilton was the judge at the trial.”
“Yes, but Hamilton died before the sentencing date. He had a massive stroke, and the case was given to me. I’m the judge who sentenced Skarrett, and he has every reason to want me dead. I gave him the maximum.”
Astounded, Carrie sat back. “So there’s the connection between the two of us. Dale Skarrett . . . and Jilly.”
“Jilly was never charged with any of it, was she?” Sara asked.
“There wasn’t any proof to go after her. Besides, she had vanished,” she explained. “It was Avery’s sole testimony that got Skarrett convicted of second-degree murder. A few weeks after his sentencing, I got a call from a funeral home in Key West asking me what I wanted done with Jilly’s ashes. That’s how I found out she was dead.”
“Except she isn’t dead,” Anne said.
“No, she definitely isn’t. I saw her in living color last night,” Carrie said emphatically. “She hasn’t aged much at all. She’s still beautiful . . . and still frickin’ nuts.”
Sara went to the kitchen cabinet and took down a cup and saucer.
“I always wanted to have a daughter, but my husband didn’t want children. He convinced me that it would cramp our lifestyle,” Anne said.
“What was your lifestyle?” Sara asked as she poured the hot coffee.
“Work. Just work. I felt guilty about that,” she confessed. “And so I gave in to my husband on all the little things.”
Anne considered having children a little thing? “I see,” Carrie remarked.
“Eric is ten years younger than I am,” Anne continued. “But age never mattered to him. He loves me very much.”
“I’m sure he does.”
“He’s taken over operations. You know, the mundane office managerial tasks, and he’s so clever. He found a new health insurance carrier with a group rate that was less than half of what we had been paying.”
Carrie couldn’t understand why Anne wanted to talk about this now. Sara untied Anne’s left hand and placed the cup of coffee in front of her. “There isn’t any milk,” she said. “But I found some sugar if you want it sweetened.”
“No, thank you.”
Carrie couldn’t put up with the nonsense a second longer. The two were acting as if they were at a tea party. “What the hell are we going to do?”
“Find a way to get out,” Sara said. “We’re three smart women. We should be able to think of something.”
Anne didn’t seem at all interested in that topic. “Sara? What did you mean when you said I could have been an innocent bystander?”
Sara refilled her cup and sat down. “If you didn’t have a letter on your nightstand . . .”
“I didn’t,” Anne rushed to assure her.
“Then I think I know what happened. Your plane landed just a few minutes before mine did, remember?”
“Yes.”
“And didn’t you tell us that you were irritated because the driver from the spa was waiting for me at my gate, but there wasn’t anyone waiting for you? In the car you said that, if you hadn’t seen the man holding up the sign for Utopia, you would have had to carry your own luggage and get a taxi.”
Anne nodded. “Yes, I certainly do remember, and I was extremely put out. I’m still going to register a complaint with the manager. There should have been a driver waiting for me at my gate.”
“Therefore,” Sara continued as though Anne hadn’t gotten sidetracked, “perhaps you weren’t meant to be part of this. However,” she hastened to add before Anne could interrupt, “the fact remains that you are going to die when this house blows up.”
“But why? I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“And we did?” Carrie asked.
Anne shrugged.
“Answer me,” Carrie demanded. “Do you honestly think we deserve to die like this?”
“I don’t know,” Anne said. “You must have done something pretty awful to make your sister so mad, and, Sara, you might have sent an innocent man to prison.”
Carrie had thought that Anne was going to be sensible, but her comments indicated she was still in Lala Land.
“I still
don’t understand why he brought me here,” she said.
“Because you saw his face,” Carrie muttered. “How could you have run a business? You ask such stupid questions.”
“I don’t like you.” Anne took a dainty sip of her coffee after making the childish remark.
“I don’t give a damn if you like me or not.”
“Ladies, this isn’t getting us anywhere,” Sara interjected. “Anne, the killer couldn’t leave you behind. You had also met me, and if you had gone to the spa, you would have complained to the management, and that would have signaled an alarm . . . since they obviously didn’t send a driver to the airport.”
“You also could have given a description of the man to the police. It was much too risky for him to leave you behind,” Carrie explained. “And you could have told the police where he was taking us,” Sara added.
“Oh, I’m sure he lied about where we were going. He lied about everything else, didn’t he?” Sara asked. She suddenly looked weary, and her voice trailed off.
“No, he didn’t lie about that.”
Both Sara and Carrie frowned at Anne. “How do you know?” Carrie asked.
“Because I saw the sign. It was a tarnished brass plaque in the center of the iron gate. The driver pushed the button on that remote control gadget, and I read the sign as the gate was swinging open. Land Between the Lakes. So he didn’t lie about that.”
“That was very observant of you,” Sara said.
“For all the good that does us,” Anne said. “We can’t tell anyone.”
Carrie’s head snapped up. “Oh, my God, I did tell.”
“What did you say?” Sara asked.
“I called my niece from the airport. I was in the ladies’ room, and I remembered I had my cell phone in the pocket of my blazer, so I called her. Her voice mail picked up and I left a message telling her where we were going to be spending the night. What a fool I am. I went on and on about the famous guests who had stayed here before. Monk—if that is his real name—must have done his research.” Tears flooded her eyes as she whispered, “That’s why he was telling those stupid stories about movie stars. He knew I’d be impressed. I’m such a shallow fool.”