Just as Laurie had suspected, Tom staged the scene at the house to resemble a robbery gone bad. Tiffany cried on the sofa while Tom knocked over lamps, tore pictures from the wall, and stuffed small mementos in a canvas shopping bag he’d found in the kitchen.
“Stop looking at me,” he barked at Tiffany. “You make me nervous. And when I’m nervous, bad things happen.”
Laurie knew that he was panicking and could end up shooting both of them before anyone arrived. She knew that she had to try to calm him and slow the situation down. She was sure her father had understood she was in trouble and was figuring out a way to rescue her and Tiffany. But she had to somehow make sure there was enough time for the plan to work.
Instead of confronting Tom, Laurie looked away. It had been a stroke of luck that he had not listened in on her conversation with her father. She prayed the gamble would save their lives.
But now Tom had stopped ransacking the house. The scene was sufficiently staged for his purposes. All he was waiting for was the arrival of the recording of Tiffany’s statement. Once the recording was destroyed, he would shoot them and flee.
“Your aunt was wrong about you,” Laurie said, seeing an opportunity to get him talking. “Once your cousins gave you a chance, you ascended quickly through the corporate ranks. Anna was telling me she didn’t know what she’d do without you.”
“That’s all I was trying to tell my aunt that night,” Tom said, his voice becoming increasingly agitated. “She should give me a chance at the company. I saw her slip away alone and go onto the elevator. It stopped at the roof. You had run off somewhere by that point,” he said, pointing the gun at Tiffany. “The guard by the staircase had taken off. I used the stairs to the roof to find Aunt Virginia alone. I just wanted her to hear me out. I had tried already when dinner ended, but she blew me off. I thought once we were alone, away from the crowd, she might listen to me. All I wanted was a role in the business. I wasn’t asking for my father’s half—even though I felt entitled to it. I thought she’d be willing to make things right, the way Uncle Bob never did. Half that company should have been my father’s.”
“Carter told me how cruel she could be,” Laurie said, egging him on. “She told him that he needed to grow up, and he wouldn’t be anywhere without the family name.”
“That’s nothing. My aunt treated me like a piece of garbage. She was even colder to me than Uncle Bob. When she saw me on the roof that night, she called me a gambler with no control over my life. She said I would never have been admitted to the party except that Uncle Bob had turned the Wakeling name into something valuable.”
“How awful for you,” Laurie said, feigning sympathy.
“Do you know what her last words were? ‘Tom, you’re even more useless than your father.’ ”
“And then you pushed her,” Laurie said.
“No, I didn’t. She was trying to leave, and I reached to stop her. I wanted her to see that I was a human being with dreams and plans. She jerked away from me and fell backwards. She was just so small. It was all an accident.”
It was possible that Tom had actually come to believe this version of the facts over the years, but he was lying to himself. Laurie had seen that ledge. She tried to imagine the terror Virginia must have felt when he picked her up and hoisted her over the railing.
Laurie gasped at the sound of a knock on the door.
Tom swung the gun away from Tiffany and pointed it at her. “Open it.”