Get a Clue(100)
Stacy rocked so fast she became a blur.
“I panicked,” Shelly admitted. “Stacy was just staring at me like I was her whole world—” She swiped at her tears. “God. I’d threatened him. Everyone had heard me. And here he was, dead. But I couldn’t go to jail—what would happen to Stacy?”
Stacy stopped humming and dropped her head to her knees.
“I knew I had to make it look like an accident,” Shelly said. “I tried to drag him to the cellar stairs. They’re steep, and it seemed like a good idea to make it look like he’d fallen. So . . .”
“You pushed him,” Cooper guessed.
“I intended to, but I had a problem. He was heavy—he got stuck around that tight corner of the dining room. He got blood on the wall. He’d lost a shoe.”
“So you got help,” Cooper said.
“She didn’t ask,” Dante told him firmly. “But yeah, she got help. I carried him to the stairs on my own. I pushed him.”
“I cleaned up the blood,” Lariana said.
“And then shoved the towel you used beneath the sink.” Cooper looked at Dante. “You left the gloves you wore beneath Shelly’s bed.”
“We were going to dispose of both when the roads cleared,” Lariana told him. “But the roads never cleared.”
“How did Edward get the hole in his chest?” Cooper asked.
“That would be me,” Patrick looked grim. “When I saw how terrified Stacy was—” His voice cracked. “She couldn’t even talk, man.”
Stacy’s fingers were white as she clenched and unclenched her hands. She’d begun to shake. Breanne stroked her back, feeling utterly helpless.
“I lost it,” Patrick admitted. “I just happened to be holding the gun—I’d been scaring away a few squirrels. I looked down at the son of a bitch lying there, knowing he’d ruined all of us, and I shot him.”
“You know that wouldn’t have killed him,” Cooper said.
“Aye, I know. But he’d said those things to Lariana, he’d terrified this poor little thing—” He gestured to Stacy. “The fucker deserved to die, mate.”
Cooper sighed, scrubbed his hands over his face.
“You don’t think so?” Dante demanded.#p#分页标题#e#
“It doesn’t matter what I think.”
“Since when?” Dante asked.
Cooper looked at him for a long moment. “Look, the guy was an asshole, the worst kind. We all know it. But him dying wasn’t for any of you to decide.” Cooper dropped his hands and looked at all of them. “Why the hell didn’t someone turn him in for harassment? Employee abuse? Hell, anything . It didn’t have to get to this.”
“Please don’t tell the police what Stacy did,” Shelly whispered. “Please.”
Cooper let out a long breath, filled with tension and unhappiness, while everyone waited.
Breanne ached for him, and the decision she knew he faced. For Stacy, and her sweet, helplessly contagious smile.
When the doorbell rang, it was like a collective shot in the room; every single person jumped.
Dante and Patrick stood.
Cooper did as well, and stared at both of them. “Let me do this.”
Neither man budged.
“Sit down,” Cooper said in his cop voice. “Please,” he added softly when they didn’t move. “Trust me.”
“You’re a cop,” Dante said as if trust and cop couldn’t go together in the same sentence.
“Yeah, to the bone, I’m discovering,” Cooper said dryly. “But at the moment, I’m not anything but a guy on vacation, Dante.” He waited until the tough butler looked at him. “Trust me,” he said again.
Dante stood for another long moment, then slowly sank back in his chair, arms crossed, the picture of arrogant punk.
Scared arrogant punk.
“Here’s the thing,” Cooper said to all of them. “The evidence never lies. You have the bloody towel, the gloves. Where’s the vase that Stacy hit him with?”
Stacy turned her head. “I didn’t hit him with the vase.”
Everyone went still.
The doorbell rang again.
Cooper walked to Stacy and hunkered down beside her. “You didn’t hit Edward with the vase?”
She shook her head, her wild hair flying about her face. “I don’t hit.” She leaned in with a conspirator’s whisper. “I’m not allowed.”
Cooper gave her a lopsided smile that Breanne felt to her toes. “Good girl. How did Edward end up on the floor?”
“He did this.” Stacy stood up, clutched her chest, bugged out her eyes and stuck out her tongue, then fell sideways to the floor, gasping for breath. After three seconds of writhing, she sat up with a smile. “Like that.”