Элизабет Чандлер - Don't Tell

“Holly, what are you saying?” Aunt Jule cried She leaned on the wooden back of a chair, her arm rigid, the rest of her body sagging against it “Do you think I would hurt Lauren?

Do you think I would hurt anyone for money?”

Holly straightened her shoulders, steeling herself. “If her name was Sondra or Lauren — yes. I think that you killed Sondra first.”

“I did not!”

“You fought with her constantly that summer,” Holly said, her voice becoming stronger in response to her mother’s denial. “The night she drowned, the arguing was awful.” She turned to me. “Do you remember?”

I saw the curtains move and for a moment was afraid Nora would reply, but she remained quiet.

I looked from Holly to Aunt Jule, not sure whom to believe.

Each seemed shocked by what the other had said. Then suddenly the piece that didn’t fit, one tiny observation, slipped into place. Why would a person who planned as well as Holly use a traceable object to strike Nora? Because the lamp was Aunt Jule’s and would have her fingerprints on it What if it wasn’t Nora who was to be framed for my death, but Aunt Jule, who had the most obvious motivation?

“Yes, there was a lot of fighting,” I admitted, “but I know your mother wouldn’t have hurt my mother or me. And I can’t believe she’d ever hurt Nora. I won’t believe it,” I added, “not without some kind of evidence — stains or fingerprints.”

“Did you look for the weapon?” Holly asked McManus.

“What weapon is that?” he asked.

“I thought that Nora was struck—” Holly stopped midsentence.

She had been too quick to point the investigation in the direction of the lamp, too eager for the sheriff to follow the plan she’d laid out for him.

When she didn’t go on, McManus said, “I told you that Lauren found Nora unconscious. I didn’t say how she got that way. She could have fainted, could have been poisoned.”

I saw the curtain move again, its long cord swinging loose.

“She could have,” Holly agreed. “But I figured it happened the way it does on TV.”

The cord swung as if in a breeze. Nick turned his head slightly. Aunt Jule noticed it. But McManus’s eyes were on Holly, and hers on him.

“I’m not a detective,” Holly went on. “I’m not trained to think of all the possibilities. Like Lauren, I can’t believe my mother would do this. It — it horrifies me. It doesn’t seem real.”

The cord swung like a pendulum, closer and closer to Holly’s right arm.

“And Frank — he’s like an uncle to me. I trusted him! I trusted both of them.”

“Holly,” Aunt Jule cried, “why are you turning on me?”

The tip of the cord curled upward as if invisible fingers had twisted it.

“You’ve got it backward, Mother,” Holly argued. “ You turned on us. My sister is dead. And if I don’t say what I know, Lauren may be next.”

Tears ran down Aunt Jule’s cheeks.

Holly’s face hardened. “Stop faking it, Mother. Who else would want to kill Lauren?”

The moving cord suddenly twisted upward and snaked around Holly’s wrist. It coiled twice and knotted itself, tying Holly’s forearm to the wooden arm of the chair.

McManus rose from his seat, his notebook sliding from his lap. “Good God!”

Holly sat still and appeared perfectly calm, but her arms prickled with goose flesh.

There was a long ripping sound. The curtains on the other door fell and the cord flew across the room. It twined itself around her wrist. Holly’s skin paled, her eyes widened with fear. She struggled to get free of the rope, rocking back and forth in her chair, knocking into the glass door. “Stop it, Nora!” she screamed. “Stop it!”

Two officers stepped into the room.

“Move aside, Nick,” McManus said.

Holly’s eyes darted over the room, as if she expected Nora to come back from the dead.

“Nora, you can come in now,” McManus called.

Holly wrenched around in her chair and stared at Nora as she came through the door, then she turned to me. “Witch,” she said, with unnerving calm.

I didn’t reply. I had no answer for the hate in her eyes.

“You’re such a fool, Lauren,” Holly said. “Did you really think that anything had changed between us during the last seven years?”

“I hoped we had both grown up.”

“You will always be rich and stupid, just like your mother,” Holly said. “You don’t deserve what you have. You don’t deserve your money and you don’t deserve my mother’s sickening admiration. I have always hated you.”

“Enough to attempt murder?” McManus asked.

She ignored him. “I told Frank you were an idiot and would be easy to take in. You trusted him like a puppy dog.”

“I guess I am naive,” I answered. “I never imagined that you could hate me so much you’d make your mother and sister suffer for it.”

“Who doesn’t help me, hurts me,” she replied coolly.

“They stood in the way.”

“Of the inheritance?” McManus asked. “Perhaps, Holly, you figured that if both Lauren and Nora were dead, and your mother charged with double murder, the money would be yours. At least, you’d be given control over it.”

“You’re smarter than the rest of them,” she said.

“Of course,” McManus continued, “it would help to have Frank moving things along legally. What was he supposed to get out of this?”

“My mother’s property for a good price.” She sounded proud — she sounded absurd, as if there were no difference between a murder plan and a yearbook layout.

“The boathouse was Frank’s idea,” Holly went on. “He saw it was in his best interest to help out. I knew Frank was in bad financial shape — he leaves his papers all over his home office, like he thinks a teenager can’t read. He’s got several banks and some real unhappy investors breathing down his neck. He was desperate to have something to offer them.

“I want a deal,” she told the sheriff. “I’ll give you the evidence you need on Frank, but I want a lawyer with brains to represent me and a good deal from you.”

“We’ll talk about it back at the station,” McManus replied.

Holly eyed Nora. “You let me down, Nora,” she said bitterly. “You screwed your own sister.”

Nora stepped behind me, as if needing my protection.

“I am the one who let you down,” Aunt Jule said, “all three of you. It’s way past time that I tell you why I asked Lauren to come back to Wisteria.

“Seventeen years ago, when Sondra came here pregnant and terribly upset, I myself was pregnant for the third time.

Sondra lost her child. Her baby is buried next to her in the churchyard.”

That was the grave I had seen, the one I’d thought was mine.

“Meanwhile, I had a child I couldn’t afford. We agreed that it would be best for all three children if Sondra took Lauren and pretended she was hers. I knew that Lauren would receive all that a child could want and that Sondra would love her dearly. Sondra sent money every month to help support us here. As part of the agreement, my little girl was to visit each summer.

“But as Lauren grew older and Sondra more troubled, Sondra and I began to fight about how Lauren was being raised. When they came that last summer and I saw how painfully confused Lauren was by Sondra’s behavior, I was furious. We fought about Lauren day and night, as you all well know.

“It’s hard not to be overly critical and jealous of the woman raising your child. But I loved Sondra. I did not kill her. Still, I knew Nora had problems and feared that she had. I was afraid that in therapy, that secret would be discovered and they would take Nora away from us. I thought if I could keep her safe here at home, everything would be all right.