“If I’m not going to die from this, can we make a detour before the hospital?” I asked. “I need to talk to Sandra’s sister, Nadine.”
“As long as we go to the hospital afterward, and you promise to do what the doctor says.”
I did an air cross of my heart.
He opened the car door for me and buckled me in so I didn’t have to use my sore hands. They felt a bit better already after the flush with the garden hose.
The garden center wasn’t as busy on a Sunday afternoon as it had been the other times I’d been there. Nadine was the one at the cash register, but she was staring off into space. There weren’t any customers waiting.
We walked up to the table, and she jerked slightly. She rose slowly to her feet.
I’d been wondering all the way here how to get her to admit what she’d done. She’d worked so hard to hide it up to now.
My one idea for how to do it seemed cruel, but it was the lesser of two evils over wasting police resources as they hunted for a killer that didn’t exist or sent an innocent person to prison. If Chief McTavish was wrong and they dismissed the charges against Dean, Ken would likely be their next person of interest thanks to his relationship with Sandra.
I tucked my hands behind my back to keep from holding them strangely and making her suspicious. “I wanted you to hear it from me first. Dean has an alibi, and the police think Ken is the one who really killed Sandra.”
Nadine sank into her chair. “Have they arrested him?”
“The prosecution doesn’t think they can make the charge stick because Ken shops at a different grocery store. His lawyer is saying he wouldn’t have had a bag that matched the type used to suffocate Sandra, and since she kept reusable bags, he couldn’t have gotten one there. It looks like he’s going to get away with it.”
A jumbled mess of fear, confusion, and anger rolled across her face. If I were her, I’d be weighing my options. There was a chance that if she admitted to what she’d done, the police would accuse her of killing Sandra rather than trying to frame someone else for it. She could also be charged with obstruction of justice or even perjury if the officer took a sworn affidavit from her about how she discovered Sandra’s body.
She twisted her wedding ring around on her finger. I could almost see her thinking about her children and what it would do to them if she went to prison.
I was wagering a lot on how much she loved Sandra and wanted to see her killer brought to justice.
“I think I need to talk to the police about the plastic bag.” Her voice wobbled. “Whoever killed Sandra didn’t put it there. I did.”