Lemon Tart (30 page)

“Finished?” Carrie repeated. “Then give it to me now. You have
your confession, the case is over.”

Everyone was silent. Even Pouches who was lying on Sadie’s
feet—weird cat. The flippancy in Carrie’s voice was shocking.

“So you’re aware of your husband’s confession?” Detective
Madsen said carefully.

Sadie leaned toward the voices, but Pouches protested loudly,
so she kept her feet steady.

“I know all about it,” Carrie said, and the calmness in her
voice was more of a shock than her anger had been a few moments before. “He
told me last night, before he turned himself in. Now give me my key.”

Last night?

Sadie knew Carrie had known about Jack at least
twenty-four hours longer than that.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Madsen said. “I can’t give you the key.”

She continued to argue about it, and he continued to refuse
until Carrie stormed up the steps and slammed the door, clicking the lock into
place once she did so. Sadie tried to listen for Madsen’s retreating footsteps,
but couldn’t hear them over the rustling leaves, then realized he’d see her if
he decided to knock on her door again. She’d have to go through the back, which
meant walking to the end of Carrie’s backyard and using the gate Jack had put
into the fence when they had all their kids at home.

She nudged Pouches off her feet, no longer worried about the
cat’s protests, and walked quickly, picking her steps along the grass
carefully, well aware that Carrie was on the inside of the wall she was using
as a guide and Madsen could take a few steps to his right at any time and see
her shirking away. When she was around the back of the house and under the
kitchen window she finally allowed herself to breathe.

Water ran in the sink above and behind Sadie’s head. Wasn’t
there somewhere else Carrie could go for just a minute? Sadie looked down the
length of the yard. The gate was on the right side, just past the apple tree.
If she headed for the fence now, Carrie would see her from the kitchen window.
She couldn’t take that risk. Not only could she not afford Carrie’s suspicion
of what Sadie knew, but Carrie was mad about the key. And Sadie did feel very
bad about that.

After a couple minutes of listening to Carrie move around in
the kitchen, Sadie heard Carrie start humming.

More than anything else she’d put together in the last hour,
the humming made Sadie’s blood run cold. Carrie killed her husband’s mistress,
allowed her husband to take the blame, and now she was in her kitchen, doing
dishes—humming as she did so. What kind of woman had Jack
married?

Even more important than that—where was Trevor?
He’d been here, but she didn’t think he was anymore. If Sadie had only been
able to get into Carrie’s house!

The humming stopped and Carrie spoke. It took a few words
before Sadie realized she must be on the phone.

“Hi, dear, how is everything? . . . Good, that’s
exactly right.” Her voice moved out of range as Carrie left the kitchen.
Despite her curiosity about the phone call, Sadie ran for the back gate as fast
as she could, wishing she could just keep running and leave all these unwelcome
thoughts and feelings about the people she loved behind her. But she couldn’t
outrun any of it. She went through the gate and came to a stop when she reached
her own side of the fence. She rested her back against the wood and took a deep
breath, nearly screaming when her cell phone rang in her jacket pocket.

She fished the phone out of her pocket with her free hand, the
plate of cookies still in the other one, and saw it was Breanna.

“Oh, Bre,” she breathed once she answered, resting her head
back against the fence. “I’m so glad you called. You got my text?”

“Yeah,” Breanna said. “I got it as soon as I finished the lab.
What’s going on?”

Sadie searched her mind, trying to remember what it was she’d
wanted to ask Breanna about. Oh, yeah, Trina. “Did Trina drive Carrie’s car
home last night?” She was careful to keep her voice down so as not to draw
anyone’s attention.

“She did,” Breanna said. “Uncle Jack explained it after we left
the house. I couldn’t figure out what the big deal was, and why they were in
such a hurry to leave if we were taking separate cars, but he said he was
worried about Trina driving back by herself and wanted to make sure I followed
her until we got back to town.”

Now Sadie understood why Jack was so hesitant about her coming
over last night. They must have sent Trevor with Trina, using the darkness to
cover up what they were doing. And they couldn’t have buckled Trevor in a car
seat or else Breanna might have noticed. How horrible—and irresponsible,
especially in regard to Trina’s emotional state at the time. Sadie wondered
where Trevor was now—hiding in Trina’s dorm room? It didn’t seem likely,
but what else would she do with him? She tucked the information away and
returned to her questions.

“Did they, by chance, open the trunk?” Sadie asked, still
trying to catch her breath for a multitude of reasons.

“No,” Breanna said after a short pause. “Why?”

Sadie closed her eyes and argued with herself. The last thing
she wanted to do was get Breanna involved in this, and yet the clock seemed to
be ticking faster. “I need a favor,” Sadie said. “I need you to look inside
that trunk. I think Carrie loaded a two-drawer black filing cabinet
into the back of the car.” She paused. “It belonged to Anne.”

She and Breanna briefly discussed what Sadie had learned. Once
Breanna felt sufficiently informed, she promised her mother she’d call as soon
as she learned anything. Sadie put the phone back in her pocket and headed up
her back porch steps, her feet and her heart heavy. She had her hand on the
doorknob when she remembered Trevor. Could he have been in the car with the
filing cabinet? Sadie was pretty sure he hadn’t been at the house last
night.

So many questions.

Once inside, she shut the door quietly, not wanting anyone to
hear it slam. She let out a ragged breath and after a few seconds, headed
toward the phone in the kitchen so she could call Detective Cunningham.

She was stepping past the bathroom when a movement caught her
eye. She automatically turned to look into the darkened room only long enough
to see the light reflect off his hair. Before she could do anything else, his
hand was over her mouth and the plate of cookies fell to the floor as she was
pulled against him.

“Don’t scream,” Ron said in her ear as her heart raced all over
again. “I need you to understand that I didn’t mean to do it. It was an
accident.”

Chapter 31

“You won’t scream?”
Ron asked after a few seconds.
Sadie
shook her head. He hesitated a moment, then removed his hand from her mouth,
but he immediately grabbed her arm and held on tight. Sadie knew panic should
be coursing through her, sending a rush of adrenaline, but she barely reacted
at all. Ron had been waiting for her, she still believed he’d been involved in
Anne’s death—in fact he’d just said as much—and
he was wanted by the police for questioning. Big deal.

“I’m not going to run, either,” Sadie said, rubbing her mouth
where she still felt the pressure from his hand.

She turned her eyes on Ron, who now stood a few feet away,
carrot cookies at his feet. He didn’t look anything the part of the
cold-blooded killer she still thought him to be, but he didn’t look
like the man she’d been planning to share her life with either. His deception
and his anger at the restaurant clouded the vision of the future that had at
one point seemed so clear. Instead he was shifting his weight, running the hand
not clamped to her wrist through his hair. There were bags under his eyes and the
lines of his face seemed deeper.

“I’m not going to run, Ron,” she said again.

His face reacted at her use of his name and it showed her that
she still had some power. She wondered how much he knew she knew and yet the
details she thought she understood an hour ago had shifted thanks to the
information she’d gathered about Carrie. But at least she was finally in a
place where someone was going to offer her some answers. “What do you mean it
was an accident?”

Ron finally relaxed his hand, but his face was tight, his eyes
full of turmoil. She kept a distance between the two of them and couldn’t stop
her mind from reviewing all the possible fire escapes she and the kids used to
drill through once a year in case she had to make a break for it.

“She was threatening him—both of us really.”

“Both of you?”

“She was going to tell you,” Ron said, turning his tortured
eyes on her. They were still standing in the hallway; she realized he was
likely hesitant to go into the living room with so many windows. Being in a
small space forced his face closer to her than she’d have liked. “She was
slowly cornering us, Sadie. She’d already found a job at Riggs and Barker, and
she was going to start next week. Jack had dipped into his 401(k) and done all
he could. He felt there was nothing else to do but to tell everyone the truth.
But he wanted to wait until after the conference to do it.”

Sadie said nothing, but continued to hold his eyes.

“It wasn’t just about Carrie,” he continued, his tone rising.
“He’s got three grown daughters. He has neighbors, friends . . . you.”

“Me?” Sadie said. “Jack knows that if anyone is going to stand
by him no matter what, it’s me.”

Ron’s expression showed a moment of frustration, as if his
being so familiar with all the details made her unfamiliarity with them hard to
understand and empathize with. “But he didn’t want you to have to stand by him,
Sadie. He was humiliated, and full of so much remorse for all of it—for
everyone. He’d tried so hard to set something up where he was the only one that
suffered, but it was falling apart. On the way to Denver he said he was going
to call his kids and have them come down on Saturday. He’d tell Carrie first,
of course, but he felt he needed to let everyone know. I think . . .
he was almost relieved to finally have an end to it. He seemed lighter.”

“But you went to Anne’s house Monday night,” Sadie said,
realizing his visit would have been several hours after Carrie confronted Anne in the parking lot.

“She called me,” Ron said. “Monday evening. She called and said
she’d waited long enough. She demanded that Jack come see her that night.” His
shoulders slumped and he shook his head slightly as his arms hung limp at his
sides. “I didn’t even tell Jack. He had a presentation in the morning, and
he was already under so much pressure getting ready to tell
his family. I thought maybe I could reason with her one last time, help her
understand that he wasn’t giving her any more money—he
couldn’t.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and continued to stare at the
floor. “She was so unreasonable,” he said. “She finally admitted to me that
everything she’d done wasn’t about the money. She wanted to be a part of his
life. When I told her that wasn’t going to happen, she lost it. She said that
in the morning she was going to tell you first thing. She felt that once you
knew, Jack would be forced to come home right then and face everything and
everyone—her, Carrie, his kids.”

But Carrie already
knew, Sadie said in her mind. Ron didn’t know that. Did Jack?

He looked up and met Sadie’s eyes. “I was horrified, Sadie. I
knew you wouldn’t understand.”

It was the most insulting thing she’d heard all day—and
she’d already been told by Cunningham to go knit something. “Why does everyone
keep thinking that I somehow live on a different planet?” Sadie interrupted,
throwing her hands up in the air for emphasis. “For heaven’s sake, I’m not an
idiot.” Though a quick review of all the things she’d missed challenged that
pronouncement. “If you all had been honest this would have taken care of
itself, and for a man who asked me to marry him, you had an awful lot of
secrets. I don’t know how to rectify that.”

“I know,” Ron said, looking down at the ground. “It seemed so
straightforward in the beginning when I agreed to go along with Jack. It made
so much sense. If Anne had just stayed in Boston . . . if she’d have
just stuck with the original deal, none of this would have happened.”

Sadie stiffened. “This is not Anne’s fault,” she said evenly,
pointing her finger at him as though he were a student. “She was a young woman
trying to do her best with—”

“She was not some kind of hero, Sadie. Don’t put her on a
pedestal just because she’s dead.”

The harshness of his words silenced her and she dropped her
hand. She didn’t know what to think or how to feel. One minute he was
explaining it as if he had been a victim in all this, and the next minute he
was angry and spiteful. Could both sides be true?

“And why is she dead, Ron?” she asked calmly, reminding herself
of all the questions she needed answered. “What happened?”

His face went slack, a haunted expression flashing in his eyes
just before he looked away. “We were arguing, and she was being completely
unreasonable. She was demanding—”