Софи Келли - Hooked On A Feline

“All right,” I said. I felt a frisson of hope. If I had my phone, there was a chance I could get help. I leaned down and kissed Owen on the top of my head. “It’ll be okay,” I whispered. I wasn’t sure if the words were for his benefit or mine. At the edge of my vision, I could see Hercules peeking around the living room doorway. At least they were both safe.

We walked out to the truck. “You drive please,” Jonas said. He had such nice manners. How could someone who remembered to say “please” and “thank you” kill another person?

“I could put the car in the ditch,” I said through clenched teeth as I fastened my seat belt. Anger was beginning to replace my fear.

“And I could shoot you,” he said. “I think that puts us on even ground.”

“If you’re not going to shoot me, what are you going to do?” At least out at Wisteria Hill I had a chance. I knew the woods around Roma and Eddie’s house well. Out there Jonas and I were no longer “on even ground.” Out there I had an advantage.

“I told you, you’re going to drive out to Wisteria Hill to check on the cats. You’ll discover one of them is missing and you’ll go looking for it in the dark and have a nasty and deadly fall into the brook.”

“No, I won’t,” I said, forgetting for a moment that he was holding a gun on me.

His dark eyes narrowed. “If it comes down to choosing between Lachlan and you, between Lachlan and anyone, it’s an easy decision.”

I needed him to think about what he was doing. I needed him to think about what he had already done. That meant asking him the question I didn’t want to hear the answer to. I tried to take a deep breath but I couldn’t. My chest was tight with anger. Still I managed to get the words out. “Why did you kill Mike?”

He didn’t say anything.

I glanced in his direction. The pain was raw on his face. Part of me felt compassion for the man and part of me wanted to hit him. I started the truck.

“I kind of understand about Leitha. I’m not saying what you did was right, but she threatened your child, so that part I get. But Mike would never have hurt Lachlan. Never.”

“He didn’t see that what he wanted to do would hurt Lachlan.” His voice was flat, empty of emotion.

“Maybe Lachlan would be happy to find out he still had one parent,” I said as I pulled out of the driveway.

“No. Lachlan adored Colin. He would be devastated to find out Colin wasn’t his father.” For a moment Jonas didn’t speak but I could feel his gaze on me. “Mike was one of those people who saw the best in everyone and he had this idea that the rest of the world did the same thing. You’re like that, too.”

“He just wanted to tell the truth.”

I saw Jonas nod his head out of the corner of my eye. “It was an accident,” he said. “It wasn’t like Leitha. Mike and I were arguing. He shoved me a couple of times and then I hit him back. He lost his balance and went backward. When I close my eyes, I can still see his head hit the mantel above the fireplace.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why didn’t you call nine-one-one? It was an accident.”

“He was dead.”

I was gripping the steering wheel so tightly, I felt it might snap in half. “You’re not a nurse or a doctor. You don’t know that.” Anger gave my voice a raspy harshness.

“I know how to check someone’s pulse. He was dead. And I panicked. I wish I hadn’t.”

I glanced over at him again. The hand that was pointing the gun at me was shaking.

“I wish I hadn’t punched him. I wish I hadn’t gone over there. I wish I hadn’t . . .” He didn’t finish the sentence and I wondered if he’d been about to say he wished he hadn’t slept with his sister-in-law.

We drove in silence for a few minutes. I needed to get Jonas talking again. I needed him to see me as a person and not an obstacle to be dealt with.

“Did Mike think Leitha might not have been a Finnamore?” I asked.

Jonas nodded. “You saw his notes. Yes. For a while he did. He found something in a diary of a midwife. Leitha was a surprise baby, coming years after her brother. She was supposed to have been born premature, but she was a robust eight pounds plus at birth according to the midwife.”

“Her mother had an affair.”

“Maybe. Celeste married John Finnamore on the rebound after a broken engagement. It seems she carried a torch for her former fiancé for the rest of her life.”

“Mike tried to work out whether or not Leitha was a Finnamore by looking at eye color.” We were almost at Wisteria Hill. All I could think was Keep him talking .

“The Finnamore green eyes,” Jonas said. “It’s ironic that Lachlan probably got his green eyes from me and I’m not a real Finnamore.”

He was still holding on to my phone. He looked at it and then set it on the floor by his feet. “Eye color was just too complicated. Too many factors involved. Then Mike looked at the type of everyone’s hair, which told him that Leitha was a Finnamore—her mother’s previous beau had straight hair.”

“Which meant Leitha would have had wavy hair, not curly,” I said.

He nodded. “But the old eye-color thing had him intrigued. He was trying to work out when green eyes first showed up in the family tree. He wouldn’t let it go. He wanted us all to take those DNA tests so we’d know more about our genetic makeup. I couldn’t dissuade him.”

“You were afraid the truth would come out if Lachlan did the test.”

“I gave him every logical reason not to that I could. You know what Mike was like. He told me I was too much of a worrier and everything would be fine.”

“He got suspicious because you were so adamant.”

“No,” Jonas said.

I saw him shake his head out of the corner of my eye. I didn’t believe him. I’d seen what Mike was like when he sank his teeth into something, the way he had been with researching his family tree. He wouldn’t let go until every question he had was answered.

“He went back to his Punnett squares,” I said, “while he was trying to change your mind. And at some point he started looking at everyone’s hair again.”

“People have always commented on Lachlan’s curly hair. It’s been like that since he was a baby.”

“But his hair isn’t curly. It’s actually wavy. Curly hair is spiral and wavy is S-shaped. The interesting thing is that hair type is an example of what’s called incomplete dominance. It means that if you have one of each version of the gene, you end up with a mix of the two: not straight, not curly, but wavy hair.”

“I see why Mike liked you,” Jonas said.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re a lot alike. You notice things other people don’t. And you have a strong sense of right and wrong.”

He was right. Were our similarities going to get me killed, too?

“I couldn’t let the truth come out. I wanted Lachlan to at least be able to get an education.”

“Why didn’t you just pay for college yourself?” I looked over at him again.

“I can’t. Without the trust there is no money for Lachlan’s education. There isn’t even enough money to hang on to the house much longer.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It took every cent Colin and Ainsley had to pay for her care after the accident. It took every cent I had and everything I could beg or borrow. Lachlan is as entitled to that trust money as anyone.”

“So you finally just told Mike the truth.” My eyes were on the road but I could watch him in my peripheral vision. The gun was still pointed at me.

“The night he . . . That night . . . Yes. He didn’t think it was such a big deal. He told me we’d figure out college. Lachlan could take out a loan or better yet we could challenge the terms of the trust. He didn’t understand that it would blow up Lachlan’s life. I swear to God, I didn’t mean for him to get hurt.”