Justin straightened and smiled at me, but it wasn’t friendly. “Where did you get this?”
There was no point in bluffing. “Under the mattress, where you hid it,” I said. “It doesn’t belong to you.”
He squeezed my wrist, twisting outward just a little. I bit my cheek so I wouldn’t make any sound.
“Yeah, well, it doesn’t exactly belong to you, either, does it?”
The front door was in front of me, across the open floor. The back door was behind me, through another room. If I ran out the back door Justin could easily go out the front and head me off.
I glanced down. He was wearing heavy boots, much like the ones I’d come in with, so stomping on his instep in my sock feet wasn’t going to work. I swung my foot, connecting with the side of his left knee. He shouted an obscenity and let go of my arm.
I hugged the bag close to my body and ran for the front door, knocking Justin off balance and onto the floor. I grabbed the doorknob, twisted it hard and pulled, but the door didn’t give. I twisted it in the other direction, pulling with both hands, but nothing happened. Justin was already up. I bent my knees, braced my feet and frantically twisted the knob, willing down the panic that was spreading throughout my body.
Justin caught me by my hair and yanked me back from the door. He winced as he shifted his weight onto the leg I’d kicked, and pulled a key from the pocket of his jeans.
He dangled the silver key in front of me. “Ah, gee. I locked up behind myself.”
My eyes flicked for a second from him to the back of the cabin. Justin pulled on my hair, hauling my head back so hard, my teeth came down on my tongue.
“Oh, see, you’ve been thinking you should have gone for door number two,” he whispered, his mouth so close to me I could feel the warmth of his breath on my neck. “Just to make you feel better about your choice”—he turned my face toward him—“it’s only fair to tell you, I locked that one, too.”
He kept his fingers laced through my hair, gripping tightly on my scalp, and frog-marched me to the sofa. He gave me a push and I landed sideways on the couch, shifting my weight at the last minute so I wouldn’t land on Owen in the bag.
Justin sat on the arm of the sofa, slapping the end of his closed fist against his palm. “Who knows you’re here?” he asked.
“Lots of people,” I said.
“Now, you see, I don’t think so.” His tone was conversational. “Because if lots of people knew, then lots of people would be here with you, and they’re not.” He extended his arms and looked around the room with that same unsettling smile. “Ruby told you I was going to be out of town, didn’t she?”
I didn’t say anything.
He tossed the key up in the air and caught it. “Yeah, I lied about that. Sometimes I just need a little space.”
“How did you manage to get a truck just like hers?” I asked.
Justin laughed. “The fact that my old truck is like Ruby’s is just bullshit luck.” He held up his hands like a doctor who had just scrubbed for surgery. “The fact that it’s running is because I’m good with my hands. I told you that when I was in juvie I learned how to hot-wire a car. I learned a few other things, too.”
“You killed Agatha,” I said.
“Miss Marple.” His eyes narrowed. “You didn’t think I was that well-read, did you?” He shook his finger at me. “The village busybody. I should have guessed it would be you. You are a librarian.” He said “librarian” like the word left a bad taste in his mouth.
Suddenly his hand shot out, pulling the strap of the messenger bag from my hand. “What’s in the bag, Miss Marple?”
I swallowed hard. “A flashlight,” I said. I hoped the cat was invisible, but if he wasn’t, I hoped he’d launch himself out at Justin’s face, because I wasn’t going to waste another chance on either door. I was going to grab the old chrome chair in front of the rolltop desk and launch it through the window.
Justin peeked in the bag and then tossed it back on the couch. Owen didn’t make a sound, but I was guessing he was mightily pissed. And he was probably plotting his revenge.
“Why did you kill Agatha?” I asked. I was going to have to stall him until I figured out what to do. My voice didn’t shake, although I was struggling to keep the rest of me from trembling.
“I didn’t kill her. Not on purpose. It was an accident.”
The creepy joviality was gone like that. He was still fidgeting.
“People will understand that.”
“What the hell was she doing in that damn alley in the middle of the night, anyway?” He yanked both hands through his hair. “It was dark. She was wearing that big, dark coat. How the hell was I supposed to see her?”
I nodded. “It was an accident.” The taste of something sour filled my mouth. Even if Justin had hit Agatha by accident, he was drinking and driving and he had literally left her there to die. “You took Eric to the restaurant rather than home. That’s why you were in the alley.”
“I didn’t know she was going to leave me the money in her will.” His eyes darted around the room. I wasn’t sure I believed him.
“But you knew she had money,” I said. “How? No one else did.”
He started smacking his hand with his fist again. “Post office was holding a bunch of mail for her. Ruby picked it up. I saw the return address on one of the envelopes and I knew it was an investment firm. Didn’t mean anything to Ruby.”
“You opened it.”
He shrugged. “You’d think a fancy place like that would spring for envelopes with better glue.”
Maybe if I kept him talking he’d let down his guard and I could make a break for it. “You told Ruby how worried you were about losing your funding, banking on her telling Agatha. What were you planning to do? Use Ruby to convince Agatha to invest?”
“What if I was? What the hell was she going to do with all that money?” he said derisively. “She was just sitting on it.”
I shifted on the sofa, moving a little closer to the edge. “And the truth is, you took the envelope Agatha wouldn’t let out of her sight, because you figured if she was holding on to it so tightly, it had to have something to do with the money.”
He looked past me, out the front window. “You know what’s true? Some people really can’t drink, and Eric is one of them.”
“You spiked his drink.”
His eyes came back to me. “Very good. Yeah, I did. I was trying to make a point.” His jaw tightened. “It didn’t work out quite the way I hoped. Eric’s not like me.”
“You can have a drink or two. You can stop.”
“What? You don’t believe me?”
“You’ve had a drink or two since the accident,” I said. “Haven’t you? I couldn’t tell.”
He came down off the arm of the sofa and paced in front of me. “That’s because I’m not an alcoholic. That’s a load of crap they’ve been trying to feed me since I was sixteen. I’m not like Eric. For God’s sake, he doesn’t even remember Wednesday night.”
“So why don’t you just explain what happened to Agatha? Explain it was an accident.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I can’t do that.” His hands were everywhere. “I’m really sorry about the way things worked out for other people. But I can’t do that.”
“You mean Ruby.” I pulled the bag closer. “And Eric.”
“Like I said, I’m sorry, but sometimes stuff happens. Sometimes people have to make sacrifices.”
“Or be sacrificed,” I said softly.
He stopped in front of me. “Yes, or be sacrificed.” He wiped his hand over his neck. “Do you know how hard and how long I’ve worked to make this place”—he gestured around the room, but I knew he meant the camp, not the space we were in—“a reality?”
“I probably don’t.”
“No, you don’t,” he said. “There are so many kids who need a place like this. And everywhere I turned people got in my damn way.”
I nodded.
“This place is going to change lives. It’s going to save lives.” He pulled the chrome chair out from the desk and straddled it. “So that makes it worth it. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”