Bouquet of Lies Part 32

Of course, maybe Randy had taken it with him on the honeymoon.

Look, honey, what I brought along. And I blew up this picture of your sister. Won't it be fun? You can practice shooting her in the head. Yes, the head. You've already pretty much broken her heart.

Lacey succeeded in pulling into the street this time. She was determined. If the gun was in Darla's room she would find it. She would take it and . . .

A flaw in her plan. Take it and Randy would just get another.

She propped an elbow on the door and leaned her head on her hand. Yeah, he would get another. At least, as things were now, she had an idea when her death was supposed to come down the pike. She could take steps to protect herself. The question was, what steps?

She could get Darla alone and talk to her. She'd tell her everything she knew. Maybe she'd be able to destroy Randy's brainwashing before it destroyed the both of them. Hopefully.

She took a deep breath. Yeah, hopefully. That's what she needed now. Hope.

Her phone beeped and she checked it. Another text from Dan. She answered him: Forgot something. Have 2 stop by house.

She drove home as fast as she could and immediately headed for Darla's room.

Randy was a monster. A psychopath. A textbook snake charmer. She had to stop him. She would stop him.

And what about his accomplice? What about their mother?

Jake watched Randy leave the motel room right on schedule. Eleven o'clock. He watched Randy cut across the parking lot in the direction of the swimming pool. When he was out of sight, Jake moved in.

He positioned himself in front of the door to the honeymoon room and took out his cell phone. He pulled up the camera feature and waited.

It seemed like forever and a year, but finally he heard footsteps. They were light and quick. A woman's. He readied the phone and when she appeared on the walkway he took a picture.

She froze and exclaimed, "What the h.e.l.l!"

Jake put the phone to his side. She was a pet.i.te woman. A blonde. She wasn't standing near any illumination and it was tough to tell more than that.

"Sorry. Didn't mean to startle you. You're not a ghost, are you? I heard this place was haunted so I thought I'd roam around and take a few pictures. I'm not an actual ghost hunter, per se. You know, not a member of any team or anything like you see on TV." He looked slightly to the side of her. "Is that an orb?" He raised his phone, but before he could take another shot, she scurried away.

Jake smiled. He kept his voice low. "Run. Scurry. Scamper like a rat, Rat." He walked to the parking lot and saw her crossing toward the pool. She wouldn't be back. He moved to his hiding place before Randy showed.

Grinning to himself at the image of the rat running, he put his b.u.t.t on the ground behind the tree and turned his head. He could see the honeymoon door through the foliage.

Randy soon appeared, frazzled movements saying he was bugged. After looking about for several seconds, he entered the room.

Lacey could have sworn she saw the light beneath the door to Darla's room switch off. But that was ridiculous. No one else was in the house. Her heart began to pound as she came close and she talked to herself to calm her nerves.

"Get a grip. Boogeyman and conspirator are out of town."

She pushed the door open, went in, and flipped on the light. No one. She felt her body relax just a little.

Swiftly, she moved to Darla's dresser and plopped her big purse on top of it.

"Sock or underwear drawer?"

She pawed through both and came up empty.

"Okay, T-shirt and shorts." She took a deep breath. "Good thing you're going to Dan's because I think you're really a lot more nervous than-"

She opened the drawer and there it was, the gun placidly lying on top of a pristine white T-shirt. She stared at it. A 9 mm Smith & Wesson pistol, the weapon of choice for her demise.

No poker for her. No banging her on the head. Wasn't Randy thoughtful? Quick and easy. Bam. Bam. Good-bye, ma'am. Make that: Bang. Bang. You're dead, Lacey.

For a second she pictured herself staring down its barrel, Darla on the other end. She fixated on the mental image. Frozen.

She didn't like guns any more than Darla did. She'd gone shooting a few times. One of her boyfriends had loved guns.

That had been a shoot-'em-up summer. Well, a couple of weeks of one summer. All her boyfriend had wanted to do was shoot. Shoot at the firing range. Shoot out in the desert. Shoot soda cans. Shoot road signs. Destroy state property. He couldn't wait for hunting season. Lacey couldn't get into shooting defenseless animals for sport, or even defenseless road signs for that matter. She broke up with him pretty quickly.

She took a deep breath and picked up the gun. She checked it. Yep. It was loaded. The safety wasn't even latched.

"Lacey."

Gun in hand, Lacey whirled around. Her heart dropped out of her chest.

There in the flesh was the woman who had bore her. The woman who had deserted her. The woman she had searched the house to find any remnant of.

It was also the woman she saw as a child, cuddling Darla in the middle of the night. It was the woman in Maggot's photo.

It was her mother, there was no mistake. Crystal. Tiffany. Whatever her name was. Here she was alive, standing in the middle of Darla's bedroom.

Thirty.

"I DIDN'T EXPECT open arms, but . . ." Tiffany's eyes were focused on the gun, her hands in the air up to her shoulders in the cla.s.sic pose.

"What? This?" Lacey wiggled the gun, but didn't put it down. "This is what happens to little girls when their mother deserts them and they're raised in a house by a couple of liars who give them no love."

"Lacey, please."

"A man comes along. A real charmer, and he turns one sister against the other. He gives the fragile daughter a dangerous weapon. People get murdered. A father. A maggot. A roommate. A grandfather." Lacey tapped the b.u.t.t of the gun against her chest. "With more on the way."

"What?" Tiffany relaxed her hands, but left them in the air.

"Murder! Lots of it." Lacey wiggled the gun again.

"I know, but . . . you're blaming me?"

"Why not? You weren't here to keep us on the straight and narrow. You weren't here to intervene with Edward. You weren't here to love us, protect us, teach us. You weren't here to change the course of things. Do you hear that operative phrase? You . . . weren't . . . here."

"And you think I wanted it that way?"

"How would I know what you wanted? You. Weren't. Here."

Lacey's cell phone beeped. With gun in hand, eyes on Tiffany, she pulled it from her purse and glanced. A text message from Jake: Mission accomplished. See photo.

Lacey pulled it up, copping brief looks at her mother, until the image of a pet.i.te blond woman walking toward the camera mesmerized her. Jake had let Randy's accomplice get close enough so that the flash highlighted the woman's hair and face. The face was Crystal's, placidly frozen. But something was "off" about it. Still. There was no doubt. It was her. She lowered the gun without thinking.

"How can you be in two places at once?" She raised her eyes. Tiffany was gone.

She hurried to the open door and saw no one. She could give chase, but probably wouldn't find her now. And what was she going to do, anyway? Point and shoot? She didn't have the energy or the inclination.

She sank onto Darla's bed, reached out her hand and let go of the gun. Then she stared at the picture on the phone and enlarged it. The face looked real, but it didn't. Especially the eyes. They were . . . staring through slits.

The woman was wearing a mask.

Her mother wasn't the accomplice. Her mother was here while this look-alike was there. She closed her eyes and let the thought wash over her again and again. Someone else was helping Randy.

Relief was short-lived. Masks were on Randy's list. He knew enough about their mother to have masks made that looked like her? What else did he know? How much research on the family had he done?

She picked up the gun and moved to the dresser, to the open drawer. So what was the plan? How would she stop Darla from killing her? She stood thoughtful for a while.

Darla. Darla. How do I convince you not to shoot me?

She heard Tiffany's voice. Her mother was coming back. She didn't need to be afraid of her. She wasn't a threat. She wasn't the accomplice and must have decided Lacey wouldn't really shoot her. Lacey dropped the gun in the drawer and shut it. She wouldn't scare her away again.

She turned toward the door. Dan entered with Tiffany, his hand clutching her arm.

"This answers my question," he said.

Thirty-one.

THEY SAT IN a small room at the police station: Lacey, Dan, Uncle D, and Tiffany. All four had Styrofoam cups of bad coffee in or near their hands. No one actually needed the caffeine to keep them awake. Tiffany's story was compelling enough to do that job. She didn't hold back.

"Edward's gone now," she said. "I heard it on the radio. I didn't have to be afraid. I could come back to the house. I was safe to connect with my girls."

Lacey held her tongue and let Uncle D do the talking. Or questioning, rather. He ignored her explanation and focused elsewhere.

"Tell me about Honey," Uncle D said.

"I'd known Honey for years. Off and on. She was a good person. When things got hard because, well, because of a lot of things. She was there." Tiffany paused, eyes glistening. "See." She closed her eyes. "See, Harper sent money for a long time. For years he sent money. He knew where I lived. Kept tabs on where I lived, in fact. A caged bird doesn't sing."

"What does that mean?" Lacey asked.

Tiffany looked at her, shook her head and went on with her story. "He sent enough so that I was comfortable. Had a nice place until . . . Well, I'll get to that.

"Anyway, the money stopped. Harper wouldn't have stopped it. It had to be Edward. Either way, I . . ."

She squeezed her lips together.

"Okay. I moved. I had to move. I couldn't afford the rent. I was hooked on crystal meth. I moved in with Honey. I didn't tell Harper my new address."

"Because?" Uncle D asked.

"Because I didn't want Edward to know where I lived."

"Why not?"

"I'd gotten it into my head to let Edward know what I thought of him. Stupid, I know. But when you're high, you do stupid things. I sent him this letter. I threatened him."

"Threatened him with what?" Uncle D asked.

"I'll get to that. Unless you want me to go there now."

Uncle D waved her on.

"Like I said. I was high." She paused. "You might have guessed, that's where most of the money went. Not at first. But, you know, later on. So I was blowing off steam. Years and years of steam." She paused again. "I had to move. And change my name.

"It was a few months after that this guy, this d.i.c.k, cornered me. He gave me some money. A thousand bucks to share any dirt I had on Harper. Harper? I said. You've got to be kidding. He's a straight arrow, unlike his father. And I, being high, told him the one thing I knew Edward wouldn't want shared with anyone."

Tiffany looked up to the ceiling. "A thousand bucks. I was so stupid. At that point, I would have told him for nothing. I'd never breathed a word of it. I was too scared to. But now I figured they didn't know where I lived. Didn't know my new name. Anyway, when I came down, I realized, if this guy could find me, Edward could find me. And it was the drugs that had made me write that letter to Edward in the first place."

"After having been cut off from your payoff?" Lacey heard the sarcasm in her own voice.

Tiffany grimaced, but didn't comment. "That's when I decided to clean up my act. And it was working out. I felt better about myself. Lined up some houses to clean. I was saving some money. Everything seemed fine for a few months. And then Honey told me you'd come by."

Tiffany looked at Lacey.

"I panicked. I decided to move right away. And then Honey got murdered and I thought Edward did it."

"Edward?" Lacey's brow dipped.

"I knew about Harper's murder. I thought he'd done that too. Maybe Harper had left everything to him. I didn't know. But then I realized Edward would have known Honey wasn't me. I thought, maybe it was a coincidence. Just some freak. But she'd taken my ID and so that didn't jibe."

Tiffany shook her head. "I was scared. Really scared."

Words flew out of Lacey's mouth. "If you thought Edward was so dangerous, why'd you leave two babies with him? Your babies. Why'd you leave us? Why'd you abandon us?"

Tiffany's eyes looked hot and wet. She gazed at Lacey and rubbed her lips together. "Because Harper made me leave."

"He wouldn't do that."

"He did do that. Blood is thicker than water, no matter what. He took Edward's side. Don't think it helped that Harriet didn't exactly approve of me and wanted you two little girls for herself. She didn't love her son, but she protected him. She loved her grandson and she loved you."