Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 163802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 819(@200wpm)___ 655(@250wpm)___ 546(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 819(@200wpm)___ 655(@250wpm)___ 546(@300wpm)
“How are you, babe?” I snuggled into her side—the two of us buried under a mountain of blankets, chocolate, and funny movies in the second living room. “And I mean a real how are you?”
She gave me a trembling smile. “I’m okay. The detectives couldn’t get me in front of a judge, so they kept me in the holding cell the whole time. Lantana isn’t exactly a hotbed of crime, so except for the occasional drunken public nuisance that needed some time to sleep it off, I was in there by myself. Boring as shit,” she dropped. “But not too traumatic.
“No, what freaked me out was knowing someone hated me so much they put a bloody knife in my bag and framed me for murder.” She chomped a huge bite out of her white chocolate bar. “Why would Mrs. Finley do that to me? Did she blame me too for what happened to Colin? Did she think I helped you get away with it or something, so she wanted to take us all down?”
“No, but I bet she throws that lie on top of the rest to help sell that she’s the killer.”
She paused mid-chew. “Excuse me?”
“She didn’t do it, Courtney,” I announced, finally voicing the truth I tried to tell Davis the day before, and lost my nerve when I tried again with Alex. “She didn’t kill Mrs. Prado or my mother, so it’s highly unlikely she ever came anywhere near the murder weapon to put it in your bag.”
Huge eyes swallowed me. “Sarah, what are you talking about? The woman confessed. She got her nephew to help her get inside. She tried to kill you!”
“All of those things are true.” I climbed out from under the blankets. Crossing my legs, I sat up and faced her. “But when I asked her why she killed Mrs. Prado, I could see in her eyes that she didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. Then, she made it worse by claiming Mrs. Prado got in her way.
“It’s just vague enough that Detective Dumb and Dumbass might swallow it, but it doesn’t make sense. Colin was still alive when Mrs. Prado was murdered,” I said. “Mrs. Finley still had something to live for—someone to live for. She had a child who needed her, so why would she risk everything by knifing an innocent house manager in the back? With her in prison, Colin would have no one, and she just wouldn’t have done that to him.
“And I know that because she’s hated my mother and my family for ten years, but she never once tried to take revenge until—”
“Colin died,” Courtney whispered, slowly bobbing her head. “You’re right. Shit, Sarah, you’re right. It doesn’t make any sense that she’d just get up one day and kill Mrs. Prado for no reason, but are you sure?” She scooted closer, dropping her voice. “Are we sure that Mrs. Prado was killed by the same person? The police still don’t have a motive for either murder, so how can you be sure?”
“I’m sure.” My voice was firm. “My mother’s murder was clearly premeditated. The party, the guards, the frame job, the escape—all of it was executed too perfectly to be random. I think the killer used Christie and the parade of staff she brought that morning to blend in and scope out the place. What they weren’t planning on was Mrs. Prado being there—front and center to see them arrive.
“She must’ve recognized him,” I insisted. “Knew that he wasn’t some waiter for an event planner in New York, so what the hell was he doing strutting around my manor in a waitstaff uniform?”
Her head bobbed harder, following along with every word. “That makes sense! Mrs. Prado has been a house manager for forty years. She’s worked for most of the rich families all up and down the coast. She’d definitely find it strange if she saw one of her former rich-boy young masters here pretending to be a waiter. So strange, she’d mention it to you.”
“And just like that”—I clapped—“she had to be silenced.”
“Wow,” she breathed, leaning back. “It does sound less and less like Mrs. Finley had anything to do with this, but then why confess?”
“I have no doubt that Mrs. Finley came here that night with the goal of doing something final,” I said, rubbing my neck. “But I also doubt she ever came close. What I think really happened is that Finley got lost.”
Her brows rose up. “Lost?”
“Yep. My mother’s room was in the east wing on the second floor, but Micah saw her skulking around the guest rooms on the third floor of the west wing—about as far from my mother as she could get. She was lost,” I cried. “Stressed, grieving, breaking down, she didn’t come here with any real plan, so of course, she got lost in this maze of a place—searching frantically while trying not to be seen.