“She didn’t care about him,” Bethany said, her voice hollow. “Cecelia didn’t care about anyone except herself. She was jealous of her sister’s relationship with their father. It drove her crazy that he thought Olivia was the good daughter and Cecelia was always making mistakes.”
“What kind of mistakes?”
“Missing curfew. Getting caught trying to sneak back in the house. Stealing her mom’s jewelry. Skipping school. Passing out at some party and having to be picked up. She just wouldn’t keep her shit together. We were kids, we all screwed up, but she just didn’t care or was too arrogant to put forth the effort to stay out of trouble.”
“She was a screwup,” Finley said. “I’ve got that. But that’s not telling me what her fascination was with Holmes.”
Bethany stared at the floor a moment. When she looked at Finley once more, she asked, “Is she still missing?”
“She is.”
“Then you don’t know where she is, and you can’t protect me from her.”
Now, this was new. “Are you concerned that what you know could make you a target?”
“If she’s out there and still alive, you’re damn straight. She will kill me if she finds out I told.”
A one-eighty from her last version of her and Cecelia’s relationship. Not that Finley was surprised. Every damned one of the women involved in this case was lying about something.
“If what you know is so dangerous for you, why haven’t you gone to your father? He would see that you were protected.”
“Because I can’t tell him about her without telling him about me.”
Well, there was a motive and a half. One Finley knew well. “She has something on you too.”
“I was the one in love with Charlie.”
Finley hadn’t seen that one coming. “Okay.”
“I was afraid to talk to him at first, so Cecelia helped me out. I became deeply involved with him for a few weeks. But then he grew tired of my neediness, so he blew me off for another of the fools hanging on to his every word. I mean, we still hung out, but the physical relationship was over. The problem was, I ended up pregnant. Cecelia went with me to the clinic and had me over at her house that night. She really helped me out.”
Whoa. Briggs would have a cow if he heard about this.
“Did Holmes ever know?”
“No. I was afraid he would try and make me keep the baby or kill me for killing it.” She drew in a big breath. “This was another reason I needed to hang around. To make sure he wasn’t suspicious or anything.”
“This is the reason you don’t want to spill whatever it is you know about Cecelia?”
“Isn’t that enough? I did awful things. And she knows. She could ruin my life.” She glanced at the door, knowing her fiancé was out there wondering where she was. “If she doesn’t kill me first.”
They were at a standoff. Finley had to think fast, or Bethany was going to rush out of there without telling her anything.
“Look, there are ways to find out things if you know those things in advance,” Finley explained.
At Bethany’s confused expression, she went on. “Say if you stole something from someone’s house and the homeowner didn’t know—but your best friend was with you. If your best friend told someone, that someone could go to the homeowner and ask to see their security footage, which would show you entering the house. They could use seeing that footage to explain how they knew about the theft without ever mentioning your friend.”
Bethany nodded slowly.
“What I’m trying to say is that if you tell me what Cecelia did or whatever it is you know that could change the course of my case, I can guarantee you that I will not use your name or the information unless I have no other choice. Keep in mind that I’m very good at coming up with ways to get information and to explain in a roundabout way how I got it.”
Hopefully she’d proven that skill.
“Cecelia wanted to hire Holmes for a job.” Her hands flew to her face, fingers rubbed at her temples. “She will kill me if she finds out I said this out loud.”
Jesus Christ, could she not get on with it?
“Anyway, I guess something went wrong, because the next day her father was murdered and Charlie was arrested for killing him.”
“Are you saying that Cecelia hired Holmes to kill her father?”
Shit. Jack wasn’t going to like this.
“No.” Bethany shook her head adamantly. “She wanted to hire him to kill the bane of her existence. Her sister.”