Mother-Daughter Murder Night(106)

Beth watched, confused, as Martin and Di locked eyes again.

“Thirty years I’ve been hiding, Di,” he said. “Thirty years since Mom died.”

Diana’s voice came out slowly, cautious. “The fire chief said that was a freak accident. High winds and dry grass on a hot day.”

“Did you believe him?” Martin sounded sulky, like a petulant teenager. “Because you left, Di. You put six thousand miles between us.”

“I . . . I was grieving. That wasn’t about you.”

It was as if Martin hadn’t heard his sister. His voice was getting louder, wilder. “You left, and then it got worse. Dad turned his back on me. He replaced me. He gave everything he had to Ricardo.”

“That’s not what happened.” Diana took a careful step toward him.

“Stay back!” Martin pulled a plastic lighter from his pocket and held it out in front of him, like he was warding off vampires.

“Martin.” Diana’s voice softened, shifting from anger to sadness. “Daddy and I. We loved you. I still do.”

“You wouldn’t love me if you knew what really happened—”

“I knew.”

Martin stared at her.

“I knew right away, Martin. You were always messing with those model rockets behind the barn. I was up on the cow pasture when Daddy found you down by the creek after the fire, sobbing and scrubbing your arms in the freezing mud. I saw him comforting you there.”

The picture was starting to become clear to Beth. The barn fire. The deaths. The painful secrets families hang on to for decades. She imagined a teenage Martin, terrified and ashamed of what he’d done. The man in front of her retained some of that fear. But none of the shame. It had twisted into something else, something that had festered and seethed within him for thirty years. He looked swollen with it now, like there was a wasp’s nest behind his eyes, anxious to get out.

Diana was still trying to get through to him. “Daddy took care of you, Martin. He cleaned up the evidence. He convinced the detectives no one was involved. He protected you.”

“You don’t know what he told me.” Martin’s voice was heavy, dark. “You left—”

There were tears in Diana’s eyes now. “Daddy said I should give you space. That you’d tell me about it when you could. Maybe that was wrong. Maybe I should have told you right away that I knew. It doesn’t matter. Whether it was dry grass or model rockets, it was an accident, Martin. A horrible accident. And we loved you. Daddy loved you.”

Her voice got louder, more confident. “He wouldn’t stop talking about you. Even now. That’s probably why Ricardo wanted to take you along to show him the drawings. It would have been Daddy’s greatest dream, the three of you building something together.”

For a moment, Beth thought Diana might have succeeded. Martin’s eyes were filmed over, as if he were rewatching his own history, searching for a different story in the tape. A story where his father cared for him. Where his family protected him. Where he had been a young man with a terrible secret, and they loved him anyway.

He dropped his head, directing his words to the gun and lighter in his hands.

“You know what he told me, Di? That day by the creek, while he was—how did you put it—comforting me? He said he would always love me . . .”

“Yes—” Diana took a step closer to him.

“But he would never forgive me.” Martin whipped his tortured face up to hers, his eyes glittering. “Will you forgive me, Di?”

He stepped to the open door of the barn and flicked the lighter into flame.





Chapter Fifty-Three




“Jack! BOAT!”

No one could ever accuse Paul Hanley of running a tight ship. But there was one thing he insisted on all his employees doing properly: carrying a kayak. If he ever caught someone dragging when they should be lifting, or using their back instead of their knees, he’d rip up their time card. Jack had often heard Paul muse that it would be the perfect Olympic sport: synchronized kayak lifting. From the ground. From the water. From the racks. He trained his staff to do it all.

And so, on her mother’s command, Jack Rubicon, at 105 pounds, with a messed-up knee, lifted the double kayak from its hook, swung it around, and slammed it into Martin Rhoads.

The fiberglass hull made contact below his shoulder blades, driving through his jacket and lifting him off his feet. The gun and the lighter shot out of his hands, and Martin tumbled to a landing face-first by Lana’s side.

Jack watched as her mother scrambled to grab the gun, which skittered sideways toward the open door.

But it must have hit something. She heard a bang, and a scream.

Jack whirled around to see the barn wall behind Lana explode in a sea of fire.

It was fast, it was big, and it was everywhere. There was no dim copper glow anymore. Bright yellow-orange flames cartwheeled across the barn. Fire danced up the wall. The hay bales in the stall behind Lana were crackling, shooting sparks and jets of steam into the air. Her mom was screaming at her to get to the door. But her grandma was lying there in the middle of the chaos, the smoke and flames racing toward her.

Jack ran to Lana, ignoring the fire, ignoring her mother, ignoring the pain in her knee. Before she got there, though, she was thrown forward by a blast of pressure. A tremendous hiss filled the air and everything went white.