I snuck a last peek through the kitchen window, before lowering the binoculars. Aimee’s phone sat on the table beside her, the screen still dark. She never so much as glanced at it as she and Theresa spooned food onto their plates and started eating.
Vero pushed onto her hands and knees.
“Go on,” the woman said, prodding me between the shoulder blades with the barrel of her gun. Vero looked at me askance as we rose to our feet and the woman nudged us toward the house. I guess we knew who the third glass of wine was for. Carl and his wife may have been estranged, but she was no stranger to his empty home.
We marched through the frosty grass in silence. Mrs. Westover called out as we neared the house. Theresa’s and Aimee’s heads snapped up, their eyes darting to the window. Theresa shot to her feet and met us at the door.
“What the hell are they doing here?” Her face paled as if she’d seen a ghost. Aimee’s fork dropped to her plate with a clatter.
“Saw a light up on the hill. By the graveyard.” The woman pushed us into the kitchen with a bump of her shotgun. “Sit down,” she barked, directing us to the table.
Aimee gawked at us as Vero and I took seats across from her. Her phone was still dark on the table beside her. Her eyes were welling as if she might cry. “Finlay, what are you doing here?” she asked, a slight tremble in her voice.
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”
“You know exactly what we’re doing here,” Theresa snapped, making Aimee jump in her seat. “We needed a place to hide, and no one was going to look for us here. No one except you, obviously. Because somehow, you continue to be the bane of my freaking existence!”
“This is her? This is Steven’s ex-wife?” Mrs. Westover asked.
Theresa threw up her hands for dramatic effect. “Mom, please! I can’t deal with this now.”
Mom?
“Hold up a minute,” Vero said, looking between Theresa and Mrs. Westover. “If Carl’s wife is your mom, then Carl is your—Jesus, Theresa. You chopped up your dad?”
“Stepdad!” Theresa argued. “He was my stepfather. And for your information, I never even lived with the man. My mother married him after I left for college. Lord only knows why,” she added, rolling her eyes. “Obviously, Carl and I were never close. And before you ask, no, Feliks had no idea Carl was related to me when he killed him, and I wasn’t about to offer up that information to him after what he did. Feliks doesn’t like loose ends, and the last thing I wanted was for him to come after my mom.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Mrs. Westover said firmly, dragging out a chair at the head of the table and plunking herself into it. “I told you, I can handle this Feliks person. And I can handle the police. It’s all handled, Theresa. You’re not going to prison for that man. It’s over. Carl’s buried and in the ground.” Mrs. Westover jabbed her finger on the table. “As far as everyone outside this room is concerned, Theresa’s stepfather died of cancer in August. I have a death certificate to prove it.”
Vero chuckled darkly. “The doc who signed off on that was missing a big piece of information. Pretty sure it’s in the trunk of our—ow!” She yelped as I kicked her under the table.
“How did you manage to get a death certificate?” I asked. If Theresa and her mother could get away with burying the body without the police suspecting anything was amiss with Carl, then that solved one of our more pressing problems.
“It’s all about who you know,” Theresa said coyly.
“Who you know, or who you sleep with?” Vero muttered. Wine splashed over the table as Theresa launched at her.
“That’s enough!” Mrs. Westover shouted. The rest of us stilled, stunned silent by the sudden appearance of her mom-voice. No one reached for the overturned wine bottle as the contents slowly dribbled out. “Sit down!” she said to her daughter, her tone leaving no room for argument. Theresa slid into the empty chair beside Aimee with a huff.
Mrs. Westover got up and brought a fresh bottle of red from the cabinet. Then two more glasses. She uncorked it, pouring a little into each before topping off her own. “Carl was dying of cancer,” she explained. “His doctor had given him only a few months to live. That was why Theresa took Feliks to see her stepfather in the first place. Carl’s treatments were expensive, and his insurance didn’t cover much. Theresa thought he could use the money. She had no way of knowing that Carl would refuse. Or that Feliks would hurt him. Theresa is not at fault. She was swept into all this. I don’t blame her for what happened to my husband, and I won’t see her go to prison for what that horrible man did to him.