Charlotte walked Nick to the door. When she opened it, Caroline Carter was standing there.
“Is this a bad time?” she asked uncertainly.
“Of course not,” Charlotte said.
“I’m on my way out,” Nick said. “I’ll call you later,” he said to his mother.
I struggled to my feet. “Caroline, come in, please,” I said.
“Detective Andrews called me,” she said, her fingers playing with the fringe of the long, rust-colored scarf she was wearing. “I just wanted to see if you and Rose were all right.”
“We’re fine,” I said. “Please sit down.”
She took Nick’s empty chair. Mr. P. quietly got up and headed for the kitchen. In a moment he was back with a cup of tea for Caroline. I mouthed a “Thank you” at him.
“You’re hurt,” Caroline said to me.
“A twisted ankle and some skin off the back of my hand,” I said. “It’s nothing.”
“Did you really go after Daniel with a shovel?” she said to Rose.
Rose nodded.
Caroline smiled. “Good for you.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe he killed Lily.”
“I’m not making excuses for the man,” I said carefully. “But I think his grandson’s disappearance broke something in him. He thought Lily knew what happened to Caleb, and he got fixated on that.”
Caroline pressed her lips together and looked at the ceiling for a moment. I saw her swallow a couple of times, and it was clear she was fighting back tears. And in the split second before she spoke, all the pieces fell into place for me.
“She did know what happened to Caleb,” Caroline said. “I killed him.”
Chapter 24
I think you could have heard the proverbial pin drop.
“What happened?” I said finally.
Caroline put both hands flat on the table. “He came to the bakery to talk to Lily. He wanted to get back together, but she didn’t like how possessive he’d gotten. He grabbed a knife off the counter, backed her into a corner in the basement and cut her, right here.” She put hand to her collarbone. “There was a pair of scissors I’d been using to cut string to put around the recycling on top of a box. He was going to cut her again. Or worse.” She dropped her head. “I stabbed him.”
Liz reached over and laid a hand on Caroline’s arm. “You were protecting your child. No one would have faulted you for that.”
“Daniel would have,” Caroline said. “Lily was terrified about what he’d do.”
I thought of Swift out on the deck, determined to get rid of me. I didn’t doubt Lily’s conclusion. But I couldn’t miss the irony that Lily was dead because Daniel Swift was convinced she knew what had happened to his grandson, and he’d been right.
Caroline swallowed hard. “We got his body into one of the tea chests we kept for storage and got it on the dolly. I put on Caleb’s hoodie. I knew the Levengers had a security camera and it would record me leaving. I was banking on the fact that the quality of the image would be poor because the old man was pretty cheap.”
“What did you do?” Liz asked.
“I got his body onto the Swift Current. I used to sail a lot when I was younger. I took the boat out to deep water at the mouth of the harbor.” She stopped and swallowed again. “I weighed down the body and . . . dumped it overboard.” Her voice had lowered to a whisper. “Then I swam to shore and Lily picked me up.”
No one said anything. Pain was etched in every line of Caroline’s face. “The knife Caleb attacked Lily with is wrapped in plastic and buried under the concrete next to the floor drain in the basement. Lily kept it in case we ever needed to prove he’d attacked her.”
“That’s why Lily wouldn’t sell,” I said softly.
“She was protecting me,” Caroline said. “I didn’t care about myself, but I was afraid she’d go to jail for helping me cover up what I did. She was afraid of what Daniel would do to me.”
Tears began to slide down her face. “Whatever he would have done to me could never have been worse than this.”
Caroline had come to tell us the truth before she went to the police. Liz convinced her to stay with us and wait for Michelle. And she called Josh Evans. By the time Josh and Caroline had left for the police station with Michelle, I was finding it hard to stay awake.
“Sarah needs to get some rest,” Liz proclaimed. “Time to clear out.”
Avery and Mr. P. cleaned up and loaded the dishwasher.
Mac blew up the air mattress for Jess, and Rose made her a bed with two of my grandmother’s quilts.
Rose wrapped me in a hug. “I’ll be in my apartment. If you need me, send Jess to get me and I’ll be here with bells on . . . and a shovel in my hand.”
I laughed and hugged her extra hard.
Jess ran me a bath, poured in about a third of a bottle of patchouli oil and left me to soak.
“You don’t have to stay,” I said, admittedly halfheartedly.
“Yeah, I kinda do,” she said. “I don’t think your snow shovel can take it if Rose decides to go all kung fu on someone else with it.”
Once I was settled in bed, I couldn’t sleep. It looked like the North Landing project would go ahead now, but there was nothing to celebrate. I kept thinking about Lily’s desperation to protect her mother and Daniel Swift’s to find out what had happened to his grandson. It was all so sad.
With everything going on, I’d forgotten about the package Nick had given me. I’d brought it into the bedroom and left it on the chair. I got up and brought it back to the bed. Inside the bag was something wrapped in white tissue. I undid the paper. It was a Mighty Morphin Power Rangers T-shirt.
I could hear Jess snoring softly in the living room. I didn’t want to wake her up, but I wanted to talk to someone. The phone was on the nightstand. I reached for it and punched in a number. He’d told me to call if I needed anything. It rang three times and then he answered.
“Hi, Mac,” I said. “It’s me.”
Read on for a special preview of
the next Second Chance Cat Mystery,
A WHISKER OF TROUBLE
Coming in February 2016 from Obsidian.
Elvis regarded breakfast with disdain.
“Oh, c’mon,” I said, leaning my elbows on the countertop. “It’s not that bad.”
He narrowed his eyes at me, and I think he would have raised a skeptical eyebrow if he’d had real eyebrows—he didn’t since he wasn’t the King of Rock and Roll or even a person. He was just a small black cat who thought he was a person and as such should be treated like royalty.
“We could make a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich,” I said. “That was the real Elvis’s favorite.”
The cat meowed sharply, his way of reminding me that as far as he was concerned, he was the real Elvis and peanut butter and banana sandwiches were not his favorite breakfast food.
I looked at the food I’d pulled out of the cupboard: two dry ends of a loaf of bread, a banana that was more brown than it was yellow, and a container of peanut butter, which I knew didn’t actually have so much as a spoonful left inside because I’d eaten it all the previous evening—with a spoon—while watching Jeopardy! with the cat. It wasn’t my idea of a great breakfast either, but there wasn’t anything else to eat in the house.
“I forgot to go to the store,” I said, feeling somewhat compelled to explain myself to the cat, who continued to stare unblinkingly at me from his perch on a stool at the counter.
Elvis knew that it wouldn’t have mattered if I had bought groceries. I couldn’t cook. My mother had tried to teach me. So had my brother and my grandmother. My grandmother’s friend Rose was the most recent person to take on the challenge of teaching me how to cook. We weren’t getting anywhere. Rose kept having to simplify things for me, as she discovered I had very few basic skills.