“You poisoned your husband?” Evan asked. “I don’t understand.”
“I don’t either, Aunt Francesca,” Andrea added in a rush. “Why live with him all these years—take that from him—and not leave him, or not, well, not do this? Before now, I mean.”
She shrugged. “I didn’t leave him, I suppose, because somehow I felt I couldn’t. You were always stronger and smarter, even though you were barely a child. I couldn’t leave as you did. So I suppose I felt I deserved it.”
“That’s absurd,” Andrea said swiftly. “He was the evil one, not you.”
“Was he? I thought he was. And I suppose I didn’t kill him because, well, because I thought my immortal soul would be lost if I did.”
“Yeah, well,” Evan said, “I’m going to go out on a limb here and say I don’t think St. Peter’s exactly holding open the Pearly Gates for your husband. And anyway, you killed him to save Andrea, I mean Athena.”
“Did I? I could have just called the police. Or told your brother. He really did call, you know, and it was clear he was worried. Something about you not coming back to your hotel room. But I knew Freddie was searching for you, Athena, ever since that old fool Tottingham put him on to you. I knew he was sending men after you, but I always felt you were too smart to get caught by him. Or maybe I was just making excuses for my own cowardice. I don’t know. In any case, I always stayed out of it. But when Freddie got the call tonight and I overheard him say you were here, right here, I knew he would kill you tonight. I knew he would.”
“So you saved me,” Andrea whispered.
Francesca shrugged. “Maybe I’ve just lived with a monster long enough to become one myself. Maybe I wanted him dead and that’s all there was to it.”
“Look, however you feel,” Evan said, “you don’t need to go confessing right now. A coroner is going to see this as a heart attack. I’ll make sure of that.”
“Oh, I’m not confessing anything.”
“Francesca, was what Freddie said at the end true? Is it true I’m not a Stavros?”
She shook her head. “He never told me anything like that. But I suppose in his warped brain it might have been true.”
“That’s certainly easy enough to find out.” Evan looked dispassionately at the corpse. “DNA tests work just as well with the dead. But, ah, do you think maybe we could get out of bed and get dressed?” he asked Frannie.
She winked. “Be my guest.” A beat, then, “Oh, you’d like some privacy.”
One of the gunmen trotted down the stairs and at Frannie’s glare, said quickly, “There’s a police boat approaching. What do you want me to do?”
Frannie looked back to Andrea and Evan. “I have the feeling there’s going to be a lot of reeducation needed with Freddie’s workforce or else there’s going to be a lot of involuntary terminations.”
The man blanched and she added, “That just means firing, not shooting, by the way, you dolt. Anyway, if the police are approaching, then fine, let them board. We have nothing to hide. My husband had a heart attack.”
“And those guys?” Evan asked, fingering his head.
“Well, how about in exchange for my little favor here tonight we stay silent on that, shall we? As I said, I’ll be doing some reorganization of the Stavros organization. I don’t think we need to involve the authorities in that, do we?”
The gunman went back up and Frannie followed with a smile. “Don’t you two dally down here!”
They barely had their clothes back on—and clothes in Andrea’s case still meant that barely-to-her-thighs dress shirt, since the investment banker seemed to have no female guest clothes on board—when the first person from the police boat came down.
And it wasn’t a policeman.
“Evan! Oh my heavens, are you all right?”
Feeling a little less surprised than he should have been, he kissed his mother’s cheek. “Fine. What are you doing here?”
Michael and Vanny brought up the rear, Michael talking in low tones to a policeman—not the captain Evan had talked to that afternoon but a policeman he’d never seen—who then immediately went to Stavros’ body.
“Hi there,” Vanny said. “We came to rescue you but I think we’re a beat behind.”
Evan grinned at her as Michael said, “Miss Prentiss. Nice to see you again.”
Andrea grinned herself. “You too, Mr. Reynolds. Hi, Vanny.”
Vanny shot forward and hugged Andrea, hard and fierce, taking her off guard and making her laugh.