“You don’t know that! She was vindictive, Kara, and she didn’t like me, and she was pissed that Zelda and Dad didn’t approve of Chad. Dad even paid Chad to break up with her. Did you know that? I bet not!”
“No.” Was that possible, or was Jonas just spitting out half-baked theories he’d concocted while spending year after year behind bars?
“And let’s not forget Natalie.” He was seething now, fury emanating from the darkened back seat as the snow-crusted landscape passed by in a blur and the tires hummed over the icy pavement.
“Your mother,” she said, disbelieving. “You think your own mother . . . ?”
“Why not?”
“For one thing she had an alibi.”
“But she could’ve hired someone. And she loathed the fact that Zelda had sneaked around behind her back and carried on a hot affair with Dad. You know, it was exactly what she’d done to Dad’s first wife, so to have the tables turned? To have Dad cheating on her, she never forgave him and even had a short, hot affair with Walter Robinson, did you know that? The two exes consoling each other. God, what a shit show.”
Everything he said was meant to shock and it did. She had pieced together much of the story about that tragic night over the years, read the books and articles, seen the made-for-TV episode on a true crime program. Of course she didn’t know all of the truth, no one did, but still, she didn’t buy into Jonas’s twisted, malicious theories.
“Nothing became of the affair, though. It was just a way to get back at Dad for getting involved with Zelda,” he said. “So it died a quick death.”
That didn’t sound right.
“But you think your own mother could have set up the murders and let you take the fall? Go to prison.” That was nuts.
“You know how she is. It’s all about Natalie. The sun and moon and stars revolved around her. She doesn’t give a shit about anyone else. Including me.” His laugh was ugly.
“But you’re her son.”
“She gave up on me years before. At the divorce. That’s how I ended up living with Dad. Didn’t you think that was weird I wasn’t with my mom?” he said with such venom Kara’s skin crawled. “It was her choice.”
“She defended you,” Kara said, remembering seeing footage of Natalie in tears that her son was being arrested.
“All for show.”
She remembered Walter Robinson being interviewed by a television crew, how he’d denounced Jonas, claimed Jonas had killed his only son, Donner, and was the reason his daughter went missing. “He’s a bad seed,” Walter, a tall, broad-shouldered man, had claimed. Clean shaven, he hadn’t flinched, but stood soldier-straight as he’d stared straight into the camera’s lens. “He knows what went down and he’s not saying. Just to save his own miserable, cowardly hide.” Then his eyes had narrowed and he’d addressed Jonas directly, as if Jonas could hear him. “What happened, you murdering bastard? What the hell happened, and where is my daughter?”
Kara thought of Merritt lying in his own blood. Deep in her heart, she didn’t believe Jonas hadn’t killed him, she really didn’t know what he was capable of, did she? Winding him up, bringing all the anger that had simmered for twenty years to a boil seemed dangerous. She needed to take it down a notch, so she changed the subject and asked, “What’s at the truck stop?”
“I told you: a ride.”
“To . . . ?”
“Wherever,” he said brusquely. “And don’t give me any crap about talking to the cops again.”
“They’ll find you. And they’ll think you ran.”
“I am running.”
“But you need to talk to them,” she said, catching his eye again. “To tell them why you were at Margrove’s trailer.”
“Sure I do,” he said sarcastically, his smile—cold and deadly—visible in the mirror’s reflection. “My first priority.”
“You have to explain.”
“Explain what? That I was supposed to meet him up there? It was all arranged. And I showed up and he was dead, his damned throat cut ear to ear?”
“Yes!”
“Like they would believe me.” He snorted his disbelief as Kara took the first part of an S curve a little too fast. She hit the brakes for the opposing turn and felt the back end of the Jeep shimmy before straightening out. “Hell, you don’t even believe me.”