Hidden Depths(69)

Athena, and now Andrea, had never wanted to believe Francesca had known what Uncle Freddie had done to her, or to her mother.

But here she was, so obviously part of this.

“And who is this absolutely handsome young man we find you in bed with, Athena?”

“You know who it is, Frannie.” Her husband seemed to be wearying of whatever game she was playing.

“Well, I don’t think it was very smart of you to plan to kill a member of the Reynolds family, Freddie, right after he visited you too. My goodness, his father would have your head.”

“It’s going to look accidental,” Freddie muttered.

“Not if there’s a bullet hole in him when he washes to shore.” The little titter she gave at that sent a shiver down Andrea’s spine. Evan took the hand Frannie wasn’t holding and squeezed it. She shrugged, no more sure what this meant than he was, no doubt. “Well, in any case, you’d best get down to it. His brother apparently is in town.”

Freddie muttered a vicious Greek swear word.

“He called right before I came out here and, my, my, he seemed agitated when I said you weren’t available.”

“Do you think if you’re going to arrange my death, I might get up and get dressed first?” Evan asked calmly.

“Oh please do.” Frannie dropped her hand and stepped back. “I can’t wait to see what you have under those covers, you beautiful young man.”

The slap Freddie whipped his wife’s head back with took them all by surprise and the Greek he spat at her needed no translation even for Evan. Freddie was calling his wife the worst kind of whore as she delicately brought her fingers up to her bleeding lip.

“Take care,” she responded in Greek. “This is going to show, my dear.”

“Enough!” Freddie snapped in English again.

“There’s another reason why you treated Athena as you did,” Francesca said conversationally. “Isn’t there? She knew what you did to her mother. Not the ‘special’ care you gave her and me, but something less ‘loving’, you might say. Poison is a woman’s weapon usually, isn’t it, Freddie? But just as effective as your fists.”

Andrea swallowed hard. He had known.

“And when she tried to tell her mother what you were doing to her, well, we know what happened then, don’t we? So you not only needed Paul’s half of the fortune, you needed Athena’s silence too, didn’t you?”

The blood from the split lip blended with Frannie’s lipstick to make a garish, joker-like smile.

“Take Athena back to the house,” Freddie growled at one of the guards. “My wife will go with you too. We’ll deal with the girl there.”

“I’m not leaving Evan.”

Freddie charged toward them, trying to yank her up, and Evan socked him in the jaw, causing a yelp of pain from the older man and a powerful conk on Evan’s head from one of the gunmen who joined the fray but then fell back at a word from Freddie.

“Fine! You want to see him die, Athena? You’ll see him die. Hold him up!”

The order was no more than out of his mouth when Freddie’s face suddenly turned an eggplant shade of purple and he clutched his chest, sinking to his knees.

“Mind your heart, Freddie,” Francesca said in a low singsong voice as she watched her husband crumple to the floor, his henchmen immediately falling beside him, frantically loosening his necktie as it became clear he struggled for breath.

“Oops,” Frannie said. “Anybody know CPR?”

“I do,” one of the gunmen said and Frannie snapped, “Then stay the hell away from him.”

Confused, the man looked to one of his compatriots.

“Look at that,” Frannie observed as with one last rattle, Freddie went still. “He’s dead now anyway. So who do you think you work for?”

After a second, the men fell back.

“Go on,” she persisted. “Go back up on deck and wait for me there.”

“But, ma’am—”

“Now!”

When they were gone, Francesca said, “It’s so hard to get good help these days.”

Smiling down at the corpse of her husband, she said, “My, did I get the dosage wrong.”

Andrea and Evan looked at each other in astonishment.

“Oh yes,” Francesca confirmed softly. “I’m what you might call the ‘deus ex machina’ in this little play, although I must admit I expected the shot of poison I gave him to kick in much earlier. I couldn’t believe it when he was still able to get on the motorboat and come out here, so I thought I better follow along. Good thing I did, I suppose, don’t you think?”