Софи Келли - Hooked On A Feline

Behind me a voice said, “Yes, he is.”

chapter 19

I turned around slowly. Jonas was standing in the kitchen doorway, pointing a gun at me.

“You’re very smart. I knew you’d figure it all out,” he said. “I wish you hadn’t, though.”

I swallowed against the sour taste in the back of my throat and tried not to panic. Owen leaned around the side of the chair and stared with curiosity at Jonas.

“Mike figured it out, too,” I said.

“Not at first.” Except for the gun, Jonas seemed just like the man who had come into the library, who had shown me around his garden, who had laughed with us all at Eric’s.

“Leitha figured it out first.”

He nodded. “She never let me forget that my mother was really my stepmother and I wasn’t a real Finnamore.”

“And she was going to tell Lachlan,” I said.

Jonas loved his nephew—his son. You had to spend only a few minutes with them to see that. It was the only reason I could think of that could explain why he had killed Leitha, because I was suddenly sure he had.

“Lachlan adored his mother and father and they felt the same way about him. If there were any fairness in the world, any justice, they would be alive and Leitha would have died years ago.” He took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “It’s her fault they’re dead, you know,” he said.

The lines around his mouth tightened. It was the only sign of what he was feeling. I suspected Jonas had learned to keep his emotions to himself a long time ago.

“Leitha kept pushing Colin to get more involved in the family business,” he continued. “She still had shares in Black Dog and she convinced him to go and vote her proxy. The accident happened on the way home. She would have ruined every memory Lachlan had of them. I couldn’t let her do that. And I couldn’t let her cut him off from the trust money for his education.”

My phone was on the table. There was no way I could reach it before he shot me. The only thing I could do was keep him talking. I was Miss Marple in the drawing room of an English country manor, I told myself. I was Hercule Poirot on the Orient Express .

“You laced your tea with potassium chloride and put sugar in it so Leitha wouldn’t notice the taste.”

“Potassium chloride tastes a little salty and slightly metallic, but the sugar hid that quite well,” Jonas said. The shoulders of his jacket were damp. It must still be raining, I realized.

I put one hand on the back of the chair next to me, gripping it tightly so Jonas wouldn’t see my hand shaking. “How did she figure it out?” I asked. I genuinely wanted to know the answer.

Jonas rubbed his face with his free hand. “It was that study she was part of. They were looking into the genetics of heart disease, looking to see if there was a connection to common physical traits like eye and hair color, and how cilantro tastes to someone. Leitha outlived her brother and lived longer than her parents and her grandparents. She had the Finnamore green eyes. They had become less common over the years.”

I nodded. “I remember Mike saying that.”

“She didn’t want the Finnamore line to die out. It drove her crazy that Eloise had adopted instead of having biological children. I can’t remember when she wasn’t at Mike to get married and have babies. He’d just laugh and say one of him was enough for the world.”

I almost smiled. I could imagine Mike saying that.

“And she was always pestering Colin and Ainsley to have more children. She didn’t know that they had been trying for years to have a brother or sister for Lachlan. It just never happened.”

I could see the pain in his eyes. “It was only one time with Ainsley, a momentary lapse on both our parts. Colin was the only man for her.”

“And she was the only one for you,” I said. It was a guess but a good one.

He nodded.

Jonas had slept with his brother’s wife—a huge betrayal. The fact that he had been in love with her forever probably would have made things worse if the truth had come out. But Lachlan was the result. How could Leitha even have considered telling him? It seemed too cruel even for her. As Jonas’s child, Lachlan wasn’t entitled to any money from the family trust because he was not a biological Finnamore. Did money really matter more to her?

“Did you know Lachlan was your child from the beginning?” I asked.

“Not at first. But when they couldn’t seem to have more children, I got suspicious. I finally confronted Ainsley and she admitted that I was Lachlan’s father. She didn’t want him or Colin to know and neither did I. I didn’t want to break up that family. Colin was Lachlan’s father. The only father he knew. The only father that mattered. I didn’t want to do that to my . . . to Lachlan and I never wanted Colin to know that I had betrayed him. I wanted to be the big brother he believed in.”

“Leitha wasn’t going to let Lachlan have the money for college from the trust.”

Jonas shook his head. “The DNA shouldn’t have mattered. Lachlan was Colin’s child in all the ways that were important, but Leitha was the trustee and her belief was that only blood Finnamores were entitled to the money. Eloise’s daughters should have gotten the money for their education as well. If Leitha wouldn’t release the funds for her own grandchildren, she wasn’t going to give it to Lachlan and she was determined to tell him why.”

“So you decided to kill her,” I said. How was I going to get out of this? What would Jonas do when he got to the end of his explanation?

“Yes,” he said. “I won’t insult you by saying I had no other choice. There were other options. I just didn’t like any of them. I knew potassium chloride could bring on a heart attack. I started college as a chemistry major.”

“Leitha gave you an ultimatum, didn’t she?” I took a step closer to the chair and dropped my hand onto Owen’s back. He meowed softly.

“She had given me forty-eight hours to tell Lachlan the truth or she said she would. On the day of Mary’s presentation at the library, I had just a few hours left. She was a miserable old woman and the world isn’t any worse off with her dead. It was easy to get the potassium chloride at the university. I faked drinking the tea when I was talking to Rebecca. It was that simple.”

“And then Marcus got suspicious about two deaths so close together in one family.”

“I really wish he hadn’t done that,” Jonas said. He looked like he felt bad, but the gun he was pointing at me didn’t waver.

“When we were at Eric’s, I knew the minute the words were out of my mouth that I’d made a mistake with that comment about not liking sweet things. I knew you’d pick up on that. Marcus had told me about the contents of Leitha’s stomach. I knew he would have told you as well. And you don’t miss details like that.”

“So what happens now?” I said. I was surprised how steady my voice sounded since both of my hands were shaking and my chest felt as though an elephant had just sat on it.

“We’re going for a ride,” he said.

“Where?”

“Out to Wisteria Hill.”

My heart sank. He’d heard my conversation with Roma when we’d been at Eric’s.

He nodded his head as though he’d read my mind. “Yes, I heard enough of your conversation to know that Dr. Davidson and her husband won’t be there. And I know that you’re looking after the cats that live out there. For some reason you wanted to check on them tonight. It’s been raining hard and you were just worried about them. You’re a very kind person.” His eyes hardened. He gestured with the gun. “Let’s go.”

“I need my keys.”

“And bring your phone,” Jonas said.