Chapter 66
Sheila had been to the police station and jail before, but never to visit an inmate. They were keeping Theresa in Cumberland Creek until her trial. No bail had been posted, but mostly for her own safety. Theresa was on suicide watch.
Sheila shivered as she took her place behind the glass. How did Annie do this kind of thing? Look at criminals through glass, stare them in the eye, ask them questions? Well, if Annie could do it, so could she.
She steadied herself and folded her trembling hands, placing them in her lap. She had had to beg and plead to see Theresa, and of course they would be watched every minute. There were guards posted in both rooms and a camera in each corner.
She just needed to know.
But as the guard escorted Theresa in, Sheila felt deflated. Theresa seemed different: hair unbrushed, hunched posture, and no makeup, of course.
“Hello, Theresa,” Sheila finally said.
Theresa nodded, opened her mouth as if to speak, but didn’t.
Silence ensued as the two women sized one another up.
“How are you?” Sheila finally said.
“I’m back on my meds,” Theresa replied, after a moment. “Believe it or not, I’m glad to see you. I just . . . wanted to say . . .” Sheila sat forward. “My life sucks. I have four kids who’d rather live with their cheating bastard of a father than me. When I met Sam, um, I mean Sharon, it seemed he really understood.”
“What happened?” Sheila asked. “Why did you kill her?”
Theresa shrugged. “I’m not a killer.” She breathed deeply, as if she were willing away tears. “She switched my medicine. I thought I was losing my mind. It turns out that I was.”
“She switched your medicine?”
“We met in a support group for schizophrenia. Mine has been very controllable with meds. But she swapped out my regular medicine. I was taking empty pills.”
Sheila was flabbergasted by Sharon’s deviousness. “But I started to figure things out, even in my muddled state.” It seemed as if each word was an effort for Theresa. She looked drained, as if someone could breathe on her and she’d fall right over.
“Please go on,” Sheila said.
“I felt so stupid . . . when I realized . . . it was you, not me she was obsessed with. And when I was questioned by the FBI about the scrapbook, I realized what she had done. Sam . . . I mean Sharon, had used me to get to you.” She managed a weak smile. “To get to your scrapbook to poison it.”
“But why?”
“We develop obsessions,” Theresa said, looking over at the guard, who watched them intently. “Steve broke her heart all those years ago and she thought it was your fault.”
“Most people would get over it,” Sheila said.
“You don’t understand Sam. I mean Sharon,” she said, and sniffed. “Extremely delusional.”
“Yet she was smart enough to manage all of this,” she said.
“Ha,” Theresa said. “I keep asking myself—was she so smart or was I just stupid, seeing what I wanted to see?”
Sheila’s heart sank. Was Theresa as much a victim as she was a killer? Annie often said that she felt many people would kill, given the right circumstances. Sheila didn’t think she had a killer inside her—but if someone were to hurt her kids or come after them, she didn’t know what she’d do.
“I look back and wonder how I didn’t see that Sam was a woman, that the reason he wasn’t interested in pursuing a physical relationship with me was because . . . well,” she said. and shrugged.
“She’d taken a trip to Virginia the same time that the ship had first set sail. She met the ship the next day, at the second port, and met me onboard.
“I was standing in your basement when I put it all together. I realized she’d been to your house before. She was stalking you. I figured it out when I noticed that she knew her way around your basement. Then something happened. Something switched in me. I don’t know. I reached over and tried to take the ricin from her and we fought. Her shirt came off and I saw the straps around her chest. . . .” She took a deep breath. “I was trying to save you and your family, even before I knew he was a woman. But in that moment something snapped. I held her down—God, I don’t know where I got the strength, something just came over me—and I force-fed her the poison.”
Her eyes were ablaze now.
Sheila sat back as fear ripped through her. She and her family had come so close to being poisoned. Sharon had been to Cumberland Creek, knew her home, and probably had left the postcard in her box when she was visited right before she boarded the cruise, later than the other passengers.
The guard moved toward Theresa.
“I’m so sorry,” Theresa said as she hunched over more, wilting as the guard moved toward her. “I wish . . .”
Theresa didn’t finish her sentence. But it wasn’t necessary. Sheila knew what was in her heart.