THIRTY-THREE

“How long have you known?” Erin asked quietly.

“I figured it out when I was in the basement.”

“I should have locked you down there with that stupid dog. She served her purpose of keeping you distracted. I should have turned her loose in the streets. Let this building take the blame for two more deaths. Or three? Where’s your dog?”

“He’s with a friend.”

“Shame. What about the key log?”

“You misspelled her name. And Suzy didn’t have a key. Her sister Clara said Suzy depended on her to get in during off hours.”

Erin nodded slowly, like she was processing everything that had happened since she’d let me out. “I kept hearing her name associated with the factory, but it wasn’t in the ledger. I thought it would be poetic, or maybe give the conspiracy hunters that one little clue that made them think there was more to her murder than a malfunctioning steamer.”

“Those people are looking for the truth. Sid Krumholtz is probably watching the factory right now.”

“Sid Krumholtz is out having dinner with Nasty. See, Madison, you gave yourself away too. You never called her, and she’s not on her way here. You know she invested in Sid’s company, right? They’re having a business dinner at my suggestion, only I may have gotten the name of the restaurant wrong and sent them to two different places. That means neither one will have an alibi for tonight. Pity.”

The innocent act was gone. What I saw in its place was how Erin had managed to get in here without being questioned. She was dressed as I dressed. The flat shoes, the vintage outfit, the ponytail. The gun was the only accessory that didn’t fit.

“Put the mannequin arm down,” Erin said.

I bent down slowly and set the appendage on the floor, and then stood with my hands up. “Do you want to do this? Take another life? The police won’t stop looking for you when they find my body. I figured it out. They will too.”

“They won’t find your body,” she said. “It’ll be burned in an unfortunate fire that destroys the whole building. Including the records in the basement.” She looked behind me. “Too bad there’s no electricity. We could have had a reenactment of the steamer malfunction.”

“And then what? You don’t own the building. You can’t collect the insurance.”

She laughed, but the gun didn’t waver. “I don’t need insurance money. The only thing I need is to destroy evidence that we were here tonight. I almost wish Donna was on her way here. I could have framed her for your murder. So many people, so many possible frame-ups. It’s been fun watching everybody run around doing exactly what I wanted them to do.”

With two murders already committed and one looming in my near future, there was no doubt Erin was crazy. “Why did you kill Vernon Stanley and John Sweet?”

“Nobody was supposed to die. Everything was fine until John started thinking on his own. I did hear about you from my agent. When I saw your name in the will, I knew you’d be trouble. John came up with a whole plan to plant a gun in a storage locker and send you on a wild goose chase of rumors about Suzy Bixby and Grandpa George. He tricked his own partner into believing there was some great truth to expose.”

“There’s no truth to expose. The steamer did malfunction. I found a file with all the information downstairs. The reports about the malfunction, the equipment repairs up to that point that showed negligence on behalf of the maintenance company, and the lump sum payout George made to the Bixby family that forced him to close down the factory. He didn’t have to make restitution, but he did. He couldn’t bear knowing his company had been responsible for her death, so he made a private settlement and closed Sweet Dreams so nobody else could get hurt. All these years, Alice knew. She could have told the world and gotten George out from under the rumors, but she respected his wishes to keep it quiet so it didn’t look like a publicity stunt.”

“She was old. She knew she was going to die.” Erin’s detached articulation of Alice’s last days was chilling. The woman in front of me wasn’t interested in family or inheritance or legacy. She had no remorse for anything she’d done. It was at that moment I understood how slim my chances of surviving the night were. “She could have just kept quiet and let the family inherit what was rightfully ours and everything would have been fine. But she didn’t. When you left the law firm that first day, Mr. Stanley started asking a lot of nosy questions. Apparently, he knew Gran better than any of us thought. John got scared and shot him. He called me, freaking out, but he said he could hide the gun in the storage locker he set up for you. It never occurred to him that you’d get out there before he could hide the gun. What is it with men? Why can’t they ever see the big picture?”

“What did you do?”

“I told him to keep you busy to give me time to hide the gun in the locker. He just handed it over to me. That was his mistake. He got sloppy and acted on his own. I couldn’t risk those kinds of mistakes. I needed time to move our inventory.”

Inventory. It’s how I referred to the build-up of mid-century modern knickknacks, accessories, and furniture I acquired at estate sales and kept in storage. It’s how I thought of the bags of pajamas that were organized by size and stacked in the cubby holes by the desk.

It was how Erin Haney referred to guns. Guns that, if put into the wrong hands, would kill people.

There’d been guns everywhere I looked: one in Alice’s storage locker, one in John Sweet’s hand, one involved in Nasty’s DUI, and a whole bunch hidden in a bag underneath the men’s XL pajamas with the conversation heart print. Not to mention the one pointed at me now.

“You’re trafficking in guns,” I said.

“Not a bad way to make a living,” Erin said casually. “Though I do owe some credit to John. He found out his boss was running guns and got in on the action.”

“I don’t believe for a second that Mr. Stanley was running guns.”

“Not him, the other one. Mr. Abbott. Apparently for years too. John found out when one of Mr. Abbott’s clients got busted by Nasty for drunk driving and she saw the gun in his car. I was here visiting John and we got the idea together.”

“John killed Don Abbott? And made it look like a suicide?”

“I pulled the trigger. John wrote the note. That was the only way to be sure we could trust each other. He had access to Don’s letterhead and could fake his handwriting.”

“Is that where you got the idea to fake Alice’s letter to me?”

She nodded. “She came to John with a will already written and asked him to execute it. That’s how we learned about this place. I struck up a pen pal relationship with Grandma—excuse me—step-grandma. I thought being family would mean something.”

“You thought she’d change her mind and leave Sweet Dreams to you.”

“She should have. What are you to her? Captain of the old person’s swim team?”

I didn’t answer. I tried to remember the order of events from the day Tex and I had found John’s body.

“John shot Mr. Stanley. He wanted to hide the gun in my storage locker but you knew if I got there before the gun was planted, I’d know what happened. You told him to get me to plan Alice’s memorial—keep me busy—to give you time.”

“I’ll give you credit. You’re half right.”

“I’m not finished. You—you didn’t want any loose ends so you planned to meet John here and you shot him. Only you’d already locked up the gun he used to kill Mr. Stanley, so you had to use a second gun. You tried to make it look like John killed himself after killing Mr. Stanley but you got sloppy when you dropped shell casings.”

“John was never supposed to kill Vernon. Who do you think was going to take the fall for all this? We needed a scapegoat and we had enough on his dead partner to frame him. But John lacked focus. He let little things distract him. You know what I mean?”

I slowly moved my head from side to side.

“The only thing that mattered was keeping our stash of guns hidden. That was all. But Vernon Stanley accused John of being involved with something shady and John panicked. Instead of worrying about the guns, he worried about getting caught and shot his boss. Good thing I can think on my feet. You’ve been to the law firm multiple times. You even sent the cleaning woman in to find his body. You were the perfect person to frame.”

“Vernon Stanley didn’t need to die. He was an innocent man.”

“Oh, Madison. Just when I thought you were smart.” She pointed toward the stairs with her gun. “I don’t have time to catch you up on everything. What does it matter anyway? You’re going to die too. I always finish what I start.” She tapped her temple with the hand holding the gun. “I have focus.”

“There will be evidence,” I said.

She pointed the gun back at me. “Of what? You being here? Sure. You were here two weeks ago. Besides, you called Captain Allen and told him you were here tonight. Evidence of the gunshot? The police already know a gun was shot in here. Getting rid of you is going to be easier than I thought. Now turn around and walk.”

I still had my hands up. I lowered them. “Keep them where I can see them,” Erin said. She kept the gun leveled at me. It didn’t flinch; it didn’t shake.

She had focus.

I walked as slowly as I could across the worn factory floor, favoring my bad knee even though I was experiencing no pain. It allowed me time to think. Erin knew what she did about me from research done by a Hollywood studio. She might think I lacked the strength to fight. I might be able to use that to my advantage.

But she knew there was something I’d missed. My mind was racing with questions she hadn’t answered. I pushed them aside. The only thing I needed to worry about right now was getting away from her.

I scanned the interior of the factory ahead of me. We were weaving our way between vacated sewing stations that had been stripped down thanks to the crime-scene investigation. How I wished for a pair of scissors! To my left sat the iron steamer that had caused Suzy Bixby’s death. Even if there were electricity in the building, the steamer would be of no use. It had been out of operation for over half a century. It was a dinosaur, a relic of what once was.

I didn’t know how tonight was going to end, but I didn’t want to die without answers. I didn’t want to die, period, but somehow, not knowing, not having any control over the situation, not being able to protect the legacy of the building Alice had kept secret all these years made everything worse. I thought about the people I’d met since being told I’d inherited the building, about what I’d learned from Nasty, from Tex, and from Erin herself since Alice had died, and a picture emerged.

I stopped walking and almost immediately felt Erin’s gun in my back a few inches below the hook of my bra. “You were hiding the guns here, but after you shot John, you got them out. The police went over the factory for evidence. You thought you’d be in the clear after they released the building to me. You were going to let me come and go and if anything turned up—anything suspicious at all—you were going to use me.”

“This place was perfect for what we needed. It would have worked too, if Gran hadn’t had her own little secret.”

“Vernon. That’s it, isn’t it? That’s why he was so surprised that first day when I told him why I was there. He recognized Alice’s name. You never expected him to pay attention to what you and John were doing, but he did. Because of their friendship.”

“Affair was more like it. No wonder my grandpa chased the models who worked here. Alice didn’t deserve him.”

My hand flew out and slapped Erin across the cheek. I was almost more surprised than she was. Almost. Caught off guard, she dropped her gun and put her hand on her face. I kicked the gun. It skidded across the factory floor, disappearing under the inoperable iron steamer.

Erin cursed. She reached out for my head with her fingers splayed like claws and grabbed my ponytails. She yanked my head down. I closed my eyes and turned my head at the last minute. Her raised knee connected with my cheekbone. Bright spots of stars appeared in front of me and I stumbled a few steps to find my footing. My brain shouted out commands: Run. Hide. Flee. Escape. I couldn’t outrun a bullet, but I had a chance to outrun Erin now that she was unarmed.

I turned away. The door was fifteen feet ahead of me. I ran. Erin tackled me. I fell. The seam on my jacket tore. My arms broke my fall. I turned over and kicked at her with my pink sneakers. Guttural sounds came out of my throat. My vision blurred from tears and dizziness, but I couldn’t stop fighting against her, even after she stopped fighting back.

Strong arms wrapped around me from behind and lifted me from the floor. I struggled against them. A voice spoke in my ear.

“Night. Calm down. I’m here. She can’t hurt you anymore.”

It was Tex. He’d seen a raw, uncontrolled side of me. Through choked breaths, I said, “Rocky and another dog. In the basement downstairs.”

“They’re safe. I got your text,” he whispered against my hair. “It’s going to be okay.”

The fight left me. I turned around and laid my head against his chest. I vaguely remembered my tears drenching his shirt before everything around me went dark.