Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 78598 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78598 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
“Scott did?” I asked.
She pressed her lips tight. “Who convinced me Andrew Clein had to be responsible after I got that autopsy report back? He’d been in my ear from the beginning—manipulating me. I didn’t even think about the fact that Scott had access to Gran too. Why would I? I didn’t know he had anything to gain.”
“Cavendish killed her.” As I said it, I knew it was true. “Triggering the release of her estate and a chance for him to get his hands on that deed. I bet that was too far for Ellis. If he was willing to resort to murder, we’d all be dead already. He wasn’t interested in getting in bed with a murderer, so he backed off and continued his plan through Foundry—without Cavendish.”
“Wasn’t like Cavendish needed him anymore,” Jacques admitted. “Once Ellis told him about Amadeo, Scott had all the information he needed. He set to work manipulating Ivy and his band of psychopaths. Anything Ellis tried to take, he would get back.”
Ivy scrubbed her face, suddenly looking bone tired. “That was his plan. Jack told me the letter said to hand the deed over. A new will was about to appear that said Rainey and I inherited, but Cavendish was our executor. He’d run my estate until I turned twenty-five, and if Rainey and I died before then, it would all go to him.
“I was never going to make it to twenty-five. When that will appeared, we wouldn’t have lived past Tuesday.”
“But that was another thing that never happened.” I cut to Dad. “Why?”
“Because there were three forces at play. One of them I now know to be Steven Ellis. At the time, all I knew was that I received an anonymous phone call stating Scott Cavendish killed Abigail de Souza. I accepted this right away. Between the letter, the forged will, and the way Scott Cavendish seemed to hover around Ivy, it had to be the truth.”
“You didn’t arrest him,” Roan accused.
“There was no proof. I thought she died of natural causes, so I closed the case pretty quickly. It was Ivy that suspected more. I suspected nothing until I got that letter and phone call. By the time she came to me with the autopsy report, I had already worked out a deal to protect her”—he flicked to me—“and you.”
“Protect me?”
“I arrested Scott Cavendish. Brought him into an interrogation room and said the case would be reopened, and he’d go down for what he did. Cavendish sat in that chair... and laughed,” Dad spat. “The twisted little shit laughed himself sick, saying unless I planned to bury my son, he wasn’t going anywhere other than home.
“I served a new master now, and while the Sisters wouldn’t kill Cairo for my disobedience—any refusal to do what he said, and he would. The next time he came back, holding that fake will, I was ready for him.
“I told Cavendish I entrusted everything to a friend. The deed, the true will, the town’s history, the Sisters, the Men of Honor, Abigail de Souza’s death, and who killed her. If anything happened to me, Cairo, Rainey, or Ivy, he was to send it to the news station. Cavendish walked away, shouting his threats, but I honestly thought it was over. He was beaten.”
“He wasn’t,” Rainey croaked. “Cavendish keeps his word. When you refused him, he tried to get me to kill Cairo. I wouldn’t do it, and my sister paid the price.”
“I didn’t know this, Ivy. I swear I didn’t.”
“Dad, you didn’t think it was weird when she suddenly lost her memory and started going by her sister’s name?”
“Of course I did,” he cried. “But it wasn’t as though she came to me saying there’d been another death. She kept saying her sister took off to Chicago and wasn’t coming back. That she was calling her sister by her own name worried me. But I went out to the farm and there was no sign of foul play. One room was empty as if someone packed. Plus, Ivy seemed fine other than whatever delusion gripped her.
“I concluded that Rainey left, and in her grief at being abandoned by the last of her family, Ivy had a mental breakdown and tried to keep her sister around the only way she knew how.”
Very close to what actually happened.
“Rainey was eighteen and, to be frank, safer away from Cavendish and Bedlam. I thought I was doing the right thing by not tracking her down, and turning Ivy over to Doc Nash’s care.”
“You could’ve told her the truth of who she was.” You could’ve told me, went unsaid.
Dad was shaking his head. “Doc Nash said not to. It could do more harm than good to try and force someone out of a delusion. I’d either be wasting my time, or cause their mind to react violently against me reintroducing the trauma it’s trying to protect her from.”