“Are you saying I’m a suspect?”
“I’m not saying anything,” Grace clarified quickly. She remembered Navarro’s warning about pushing too hard. “I’m telling you that if you’re sure you’re not Penny’s biological father, let us help you prove it. If it’s what you say it is, then we don’t bring it up to the police, and they don’t investigate you and maybe find more than just your … DNA.”
Grace felt she’d gone as far as she could. She wasn’t about to reveal what Navarro had shared regarding Vince’s illegal auto parts scam. A strong hint would do the job just fine, she told herself. She rested her arms at her sides. That was it. She’d made her big play, her big bluff, and had nothing more to offer. The smell of cigarettes, grease, and fried food tickled at her nose.
Vince didn’t seem to know how to react, but a smile played at the corners of his mouth. He took another step forward, putting himself within arm’s reach of both Annie and Grace. The cigarette butt was visible now, but it might as well have been a mile away. Vince’s two buddies stayed back, keeping an eye on things like good handlers should.
“You are one gutsy bitch,” Vince said, almost with reverence. “I’ll give you that.”
Grace didn’t bother responding.
“Let me get this straight,” he said. “I give you some DNA right here, right now, or you go to the police and try to get them to shake me down? And you think shaking that tree’s gonna get them something else … like my private affairs, that it?”
“That’s it,” Grace said, lifting her hands like they were two scales for Vince to weigh his decision.
He thought a moment. “I was with my wife and kids the night your crazy bitch-ass daughter killed my girl.”
“And you do know you’re not supposed to have a wife and a girlfriend at the same time,” Annie said to him—like that would make him suddenly sprout a conscience.
“Well, I ain’t got no wife no more. Don’t see my kids much, either, not after all that shit went down and the news people decided to drag my name through the mud,” he snapped at Annie. He raised his hand to show off a finger without a wedding band. But as his arm lifted, Grace saw something else, a better look at his silver necklace, that made her take note.
“You don’t know what you’re messing with, ladies, but I’ll tell you right now, it’s not a smart move.”
“Rachel needed investment money for something she thought was going to make her rich. That’s what she told Morgan, her bartender buddy at Lucky Dog,” Grace said, breathing quickly. Every muscle in her body was telling her to go, but her legs wouldn’t budge.
She studied the necklace again as the pendant around his neck caught the light. Her resolve strengthened as her fears melted away. Vince scared her, but she had something on him now, something potentially game-changing. It bolstered her confidence to go for broke.
“Now—and I’m thinking out loud here, Vince—but maybe you didn’t know Penny was your biological daughter. They’d just reconnected, so maybe Rachel was excited to share the news. But you—you snapped. It happens. You killed her in a fit of rage. Or, I like this even better—you and Rachel had a little falling out. You tried to break it off, but she needs you to keep paying her rent, so she decided you could be her banker instead.”
“What would she have on me?” Vince asked.
“You’ve been before a judge quite a number of times. I’m sure there’s something in your closet Rachel knew about, something you’re involved in, that you’d like to keep out of the public eye. That was a secret she wanted money to keep.
“You show up at Rachel’s place. There’s a fight, some altercation, whatever, and you kill her. But you don’t know that Penny’s also in the apartment, hiding in a closet, because Rachel knew there could be trouble when you showed up, probably unexpected and uninvited. Penny overhears you stuffing Rachel’s head into a bucket of ammonia, torturing her with those fumes to get her to back off her threat—maybe that’s when you told her to leave town, to ‘be gone and gone for good.’” Grace used the same words Penny had said to her, and thought she saw a flash of recognition bloom in Vince’s eyes.
“But Rachel’s a tough one. She doesn’t respond to your intimidation tactics, so out comes the knife. You thought Rachel was dead, but she could still call nine-one-one, even with her throat slit open. Now, the hard part is that the police already did their investigation, and they were happy with your alibi. As far as they’re concerned this is in the past. But if you’re Penny’s father, you get a hard second look, and I get a second chance to make my case to them. Might go your way again, might not—or maybe something else comes of it. Either way, if you’re not Penny’s birth father, I’ve got nothing new to give the police, we go to trial, and I hope for the best.