Julianne’s hands were trembling. She clasped them together to steady them, her fingers bunched so tightly that her knuckles jutted out, white as bone.
“Is that why you went to Sofia’s house, to plead with her to keep the secret? Maybe you didn’t plan to kill her. For that I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. But you brought a hammer with you that night. Just in case.”
“She wouldn’t listen!” Julianne sobbed. “All I asked her to do was keep quiet. To let us go on with our lives…”
“But she wouldn’t, would she? She refused because she knew it was wrong. So you pulled out the hammer and took care of the problem. Then you broke the window in the kitchen door, stole a few items to make it look like a burglary. You must have thought you’d covered every detail. Until James Creighton showed up looking for his daughter. And you had to take care of that problem as well.”
“That was self-defense! He attacked us.”
“No, he didn’t. You staged that attack. You called his burner phone and invited him to meet you at the lake house.”
Julianne snatched up her cell phone and thrust it toward Jane. “Here. Look at my phone log. You can see I never called him.”
“Not from your cell phone. You’re not that careless. We have the records from Creighton’s burner phone, and you called him from a pay phone. It’s not easy to find pay phones these days, but you found one at a turnpike rest stop. Unfortunately for you, rest stops also have surveillance cameras, and there you are. Standing at that pay phone at precisely the time the call was made to Creighton’s burner phone. Did you promise him he could talk to his daughter? He was dying of cancer and he had less than a year to live. He must have been desperate to see the little girl he thought he’d lost, so of course he showed up at the lake. Because you invited him there. Except it was a trap. You lured him, stabbed him to death, planted the hammer in his car. You even bruised your own daughter’s neck, to make us believe he attacked her. You tied up all the loose ends.”
“I did it for us. I did it for Amy.” Julianne took a deep breath and said softly: “Everything I’ve done was for her.”
Which Jane did not doubt. There was no more powerful force in the world than a parent’s love for a child. A beautiful, terrible love that had led to the murders of two innocent people.
“Mom,” said Amy. “What do you want me to do?”
Jane turned and for the first time she saw the gun in Amy’s hands. Her finger was already on the trigger and her grip was unsteady, the barrel wavering. A frightened young woman on the edge of making a terrible mistake.
“We’ll do what we always do,” said Julianne. “We’ll get past this, darling, and we’ll move on.” She stood up, took the gun from her daughter, and pointed it at Jane. “Stand up,” she ordered. “Amy, get her weapon.”
Calmly Jane rose to her feet and held up her arms as Amy pulled the gun from Jane’s holster. “I take it we’re going for a drive?” said Jane.
“I won’t have blood in my kitchen.”
“Julianne, you’re only making things worse. For both of you.”
“I’m just fixing things. The way I’ve always done.”
“Do you really want to pull your daughter deeper into this? You’ve already made her an accomplice in James Creighton’s murder.”
“Go,” Julianne ordered her. “Walk to the front door.”
Jane looked at Amy. “You can stop this. You can stop her.”
“Go.” Julianne’s hands tightened on the weapon and unlike Amy, she had a steady grip and unwavering aim. She had killed before; she certainly wouldn’t hesitate to kill again.
Jane could feel that gun aimed at her back as she walked out of the kitchen and up the hallway toward the foyer. She could not outrun a bullet; she had no choice but to comply. She reached the front door and paused. Turned to look once again at Julianne and Amy. Though they weren’t related by blood, these two women were mother and daughter all the same, and they would protect each other.
“One last chance, Amy,” said Jane.
“Just do what my mother says.”
So this is how it’s going to be, Jane thought. She opened the door and stepped outside. Heard Julianne suck in a gasp as she saw who was in the front yard: Barry Frost and two Boston PD patrol officers, who’d been poised to move in upon Julianne’s arrival.
“It’s over, Mrs. Antrim,” said Jane.