CHAPTER 27
My heart thudded in my chest. Blood was rushing in my ears, and I felt dizzy. “Brad, please. You don’t have to do this.”
“Oh, but I do. I promised my investors that they’d have those waterfront properties, and they don’t like it when they don’t get what they’ve paid for. And they’ve paid me a lot of money.”
I was so scared I could barely hear. In spite of my fear, my only chance of getting out of this was to keep him talking. “What happened to the money? Maybe you could give it back.”
“You can’t be that dumb.” He gave a snarky laugh. “Give it back? I can’t give it back. I spent it. Where do you think I got the money for this car and my own beachfront condo, not to mention expensive dinners at French restaurants and six-hundred-dollar bottles of wine? Just because I’m among uncultured hicks who don’t know the value of beachfront property doesn’t mean I have to live like it.”
“Brad, please. Just let me go. I promise I won’t—”
“You won’t what—tell anyone? You won’t tell that idiot of a sheriff friend of yours that I killed Garrett Kelley? Or tell that overzealous boyfriend of yours that I shot him?” He snorted. “You really do take me for a fool.”
“Did you kill Aunt Octavia?”
“I would love to take credit for knocking off that nosy busybody. Sadly, I only came up with the idea, but the execution of the plan was . . . left to someone else.”
“What do you mean? Who?”
I stared into his eyes. As when Hannah disappeared, the person I knew wasn’t there. However, the one that stared back at me was unhinged. “Are you saying someone killed Aunt Octavia?”
He was silent, but his smirk spoke volumes.
“Why? She was just an old lady.”
“She was nosy. She kept asking questions—too many questions. She wouldn’t stop. She kept looking for records about the landfill, even when it was too late. Even after construction was over, she just kept digging and digging, trying to get answers. We destroyed the records at city hall, but she sent away for that environmental report.”
“Someone pushed her.”
“I would have loved to have been the one to take her and Cujo out, but maybe when I’m done with you, I’ll go and take out that dog of yours.” He chuckled.
“Did you set the fire at the bakery, too?”
“No. That was Rivers, the idiot. I told him she wouldn’t keep any important papers at the bakery.”
“So you killed him?”
“Oh, no. I can’t take credit for killing Rivers. That was all Garrett Kelley. Although, I might have played a minor role.”
He grinned. “I might have implied that Rivers was responsible for killing Octavia.” He laughed. “Yeah, Garrett was head over heels in love with your aunt. All I had to do was drop a hint or two, and he took it and ran.”
“Are you saying Paul Rivers killed Aunt Octavia?”
He snorted. “That wimp didn’t have the guts to do what needed to be done. He was too much of a coward.”
“Then who killed her?”
“You ask too many questions. She’s gone. What difference does it make who did it?”
My brain hurt from the effort of trying to push down the fear and figure a way out of this nightmare. So far, the only thing that kept going through my mind was that I needed to keep him talking. The longer he talked, the longer I stayed alive. “Why kill Garrett?”
“I couldn’t take the chance that he’d figure out that Rivers didn’t kill Octavia. Besides, I needed a fall guy. Originally, I planned that Garrett Kelley would be so distraught over killing Rivers that he would commit suicide. I even had a nicely worded confession, but you showed up with Gomer Pyle, so I had to improvise. If I’d shot you both, then Garrett Kelley would have confessed to that, too. Before he hanged himself, of course.” He glared. “Why did you show up?”
“He sent me a text message, asking me to meet him.”
He hadn’t expected that. “Why?”
I hesitated, and he pushed the gun into my temple.
“I don’t know. He was going to tell me when I got there.”
He eased up on the pressure. “What’s that tapping?”
I froze. “I don’t hear anything.”
He paused and listened, then he put the gun back to my head. “This is taking too long. I need to finish you and get out of here.”
“What?”
“It’s time to say goodbye, Maddy.”