Chapter 30
“Help me understand,” Emmaline said to Meg. They sat in an interview room at the sheriff’s station. Miguel and I stood on the other side of the one-way mirror, observing. “You were in the States on a tourist visa?”
“I was here on an H1-B visa as an international teacher, but it expired. Grant and I, we were engaged. We had Kevin. We left him here with Grant’s parents while we went back to Ireland so I could . . . then we had the . . .”
“The accident,” Em finished.
Meg swiped away a tear. “I almost died. My mam nursed me back, but by the time I was well, so much time had passed. I had to save money to come back—my mam and I, we’re just ordinary people. And then I didn’t know how to prove I was . . . that I am Kevin’s mother.”
I could see Em’s blood boiling. It was as if the stars had aligned against Meg reuniting with her son. “The Naders wouldn’t help you?”
She scoffed through her tears. “Help me? They wouldn’t even acknowledge me. They acted like they didn’t know me. And then one day when I showed up at their house again, Grant’s mother—Tammy—she . . . she threatened me.”
“Threatened you how?”
Meg swallowed. Hard. Swiped at her tears. “She told me she would never let me take Kevin away from her. I b-believed her.”
“What did you believe she’d do?” Em asked.
Em looked up. Down. Everywhere but at Emmaline. She tried to school her face, keeping more tears at bay. “Kill me? Hurt Kevin?” Her face collapsed. “I don’t know. I was scared.”
“What did you do?” Em asked quietly.
Meg wrung her hands. “I went home.”
“To Ireland?” Emmaline asked.
She looked back up at Emmaline, the tears flowing now. “What else could I do?”
“And you came back when—“
“My mother and I, we saved enough money to come back.”
Emmaline nodded. Paused, then changed directions. “Tell me about Sandra Mays.”
“Is Kevin safe?” Meg asked. “Is he still with them?”
“Kevin is safe. He is with a foster family. Ben Nader does not want to press charges. With the extenuating circumstances, a judge will take that into consideration. He’s safe, Meg. I want to get him back to you, but you need to help me.”
Meg dragged her hands under her eyes and sniffed. “I didn’t do it.”
“Tell me about Sandra,” Em said again.
“I don’t know Sandra. I never met her.”
Emmaline pressed. “Did you plan a meeting with her on the roof at Yeast of Eden?”
Meg shook her head emphatically. “No! Never. I did not do that to her. I did not kill her!”
Em took a breath. “Okay. Let’s go back to the hit-and-run. Tell me about that.”
“I didn’t do it,” Meg repeated. “It wasn’t me.”
“Meg, it was your car that hit him. We’ve had forensics go over it. We’ve compared it to the video we have. It was your car. You hit Ben Nader.”
Meg had her elbows propped on the table and cradled her head in her hands. “But I didn’t. You have to believe me. I didn’t hit him.”
Emmaline paused. Regrouped. I could see her patience wearing thin and I didn’t blame her, but Meg was convincing. I kind of did believe her. Or at least I wanted to.
“Your car was in the shop, is that right?” Emmaline asked.
“Right. It needed a new bumper.”
“And how did you get the damage to the bumper?”
Meg had been looking at the table, but she looked up suddenly, something in her eyes. Clarity? Understanding? “Oh no.”
It hit me at the very same moment. That day at the shelter. The keys. “Oh my God.”
Miguel turned to me. “What is it?”
“It wasn’t Meg.”
“What?” He stared, first at me, then through the mirror.
“It wasn’t Meg. It wasn’t Meg!” I backhanded his arm. “Let’s go.”
I pounded on the door of the interview room. I knew Emmaline would get there eventually with Meg, but I also suspected that the young woman would do what she could to hide the truth she’d just realized. Emmaline cracked open the door, looking more than a little irritated.
“We’ve got it wrong,” I said. “We have to go to Crosby House.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, we arrived at Crosby House like a mini caravan. Two cruisers, Emmaline in her police SUV. Miguel and me in my pearl-white Fiat crossover.
We parked along the street, out of sight. Standing on the sidewalk, Emmaline put on her stern I’m the sheriff expression as she adjusted the wide black hairband that held back the tiny Z curls of her hair. “You need to wait. Don’t be going all Dirty Harry.”
I scoffed. It was only because Billy was a huge Clint Eastwood fan that she even knew about Dirty Harry. “You need to update your pop culture reference for vigilante,” I said. “Maybe don’t go all Walt Kowalski.”
“That’s Eastwood, too,” Miguel said.
“And who the hell is Walt Kowalski?” Em asked.
“Gran Torino,” I said.
“Still Clint Eastwood, so might as well be Dirty Harry—”
“Bryan Mills?” I interrupted. “Much more current.”
They both looked at me, Em with perfectly arched raised eyebrows. “And who is that?”
“Liam Neeson? You know, in Taken?”
She rolled her eyes. “The point is, which I know you know, but to underscore it . . . Wait. For. Me.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
And then I froze. Thought. Ma’am. Or was it Mam? “I’m so right, by the way.”
One of the deputies handed Miguel and me each a Kevlar vest. “You want to come along to capture a murderer, you wear the gear,” Em said.
Miguel was already putting his bulletproof vest on over his button-down shirt. “You won’t get any arguments from me.”
She waited while I put mine on. “No arguments from me, either.”
“She does not have a gun,” Meg said through her sobs, but I wondered if she could know that for certain. She fumbled as she put on her vest, barely holding it together.
Emmaline ordered Miguel and me to stand back as we all approached the building. Her team was at the front entrance to the shelter, guns drawn. She stood slightly off to the side with Meg next to her.
One of the deputies knocked on the door and called, “Vivian Cantrell!”
Miguel inched closer to me, edging his elbow slightly in front of mine. He was in protection mode. If either of our shoulders got shot, his would be first. “How’d you figure it out?” he asked, his voice low.
Finally, I got to explain. “It was all there from the beginning, but I wasn’t connecting the dots. Vivian gave Meg a set of keys the first time I was here. I realized later that they had to be the keys to Meg’s car.”
“So she’d planned it?” Miguel mused, more to himself than as a question to me. “She made sure Meg took it to the shop, then Vivian went to get it, hoping the rest of the damage would pass as part of the first.”
“Right. That’s basically what the mechanic thought,” I said, remembering what he’d said about it looking like someone had taken the car for a joyride.
“So it was revenge?”
“It makes sense. The Naders took her daughter’s child.”
“But how did you figure out Meg is her daughter? Since they have different last names?”
“It was one thing, actually. I remembered the first time I saw Meg and Vivian together. I couldn’t hear their whole conversation, but I did hear Meg say, “Thank you, ma’am. I’d thought she was so polite, but that wasn’t it. She called her mam, like mom. Her Irish accent came out more then. Vivian’s got a little accent, too, but I couldn’t place it. She worked hard to disguise it. Meg’s ebbed and flowed.”
Shouting came at us from the entrance of Crosby House. Vivian Cantrell stood there with her arms up.
Miguel and I strode toward them. The standoff had started and ended peacefully with Vivian standing stoically as Emmaline read Vivian her Miranda rights. She let Em take one arm down behind her back, then the other, cuffing them together.
Meg sobbed. “Why, Mam? Why?”
“Why? Margaret, I went to them on your behalf. That woman, she threatened to kill me if I didn’t take you and leave here. When I went to Ben and told him what his wife had said he said he couldn’t do anything. There was nothing they could do. She would never give Kevin up.”
“Why Ben?” she asked. “He might have come around.”
“They took your son from you. They took my grandson.”
Vivian had gone from calling her daughter Meg to calling her by her given name. That simple act seemed to underscore the woman Meg used to be. The woman who’d lost everything thanks to the Naders.
“And Sandra Mays?” I asked, suddenly believing Tammy’s declaration that she hadn’t killed Sandra.
Vivian’s face had collapsed, ten years of grief suddenly imprinted on her. “That woman was vile.”
I thought about all Sandra’s attitude and how difficult she’d been. I couldn’t argue with Vivian’s assessment, but being an awful person shouldn’t lead to murder.
“She knew what the Naders did and she let it happen. She should have gone to the police,” Vivian continued.
The reason for Tammy and Sandra’s falling-out so many years ago.
Meg stared at her mother. “She knew they took Kevin?”
She was calm. Cool. Collected. She’d been on a mission. Only Tammy had been left.
“She knew everything.”
“Did you try to blackmail Tammy and Ben?” I asked, suddenly putting another piece of the puzzle together.
“Me, blackmail? Pah! No. I confronted Ben one day outside the bread shop. Esmé—she was very helpful, letting me know the filming schedule,” Vivian said. “I told him that I would take Kevin back. I was done waiting. He cried. He said he was trying to fix things, but his wife wouldn’t agree. When I left, that woman . . . that Sandra Mays . . . she’d been there. She heard the whole thing. After the car . . . accident . . . she sent me a message telling me to meet her. To climb a ladder and meet her on the roof. Ridiculous, but what could I do? It was poetic, she said, because Ben had told her about the ladder and the roof. She was going to vindicate him there.”
So Ben had told Sandra. I knew he had.
“Mam,” Meg said through a sob. “You didn’t . . .”
“She said she knew what I’d done to Ben. That she saw me in the car.”
“You took the car from the shop?” Meg asked, sniffling. Trying to control the emotions crashing through her. On one level, she had to be destroyed by what her mother had done for her, but on another level, she knew she’d be getting her son back, and that was thanks to her mother. I didn’t envy the poor woman . . . or Kevin.
“I picked it up from the shop. Ethan Bishop, he never saw me. I did that for several days, following Ben. Waiting for the right moment. And then there it was. He came out of the shop and crossed the street. There were no other cars in the way. I didn’t even know for sure that I was going to do it, but my foot hit the pedal. I was outside of myself. I ran him over and drove the car straight back to the auto shop.”
I wondered how this petite woman, who was slight and willowy, could have overpowered Sandra on top of the roof. As if she’d read my mind, Emmaline asked the question for me, but Vivian shrugged as if she didn’t know the answer. Couldn’t possibly explain it. “It just happened. I did not plan it. She threatened me and I pushed her. She fell and hit her head and was . . . was . . . gone. I didn’t mean for her to die.”
And there it was. The attempted murder of Ben and Sandra’s accident were connected after all.