“I can't believe it was Dale all along,” Katy said to me as she dipped her paintbrush in her tray and went to work on painting some trim.
"Me neither. I mean, I did when I first heard about the insurance, but then he and Susan's sister made a convincing argument. I really believed that she needed that money for a kidney transplant. The lengths that some people will go to," I said, shaking my head.
"Who would've thought anything of it? It wasn't crazy that he would spend time with his sister-in-law after his wife died, since they would both have common grief, but who would’ve thought that they would have been in cahoots to get rid of Susan, get her insurance money and then ride off into the sunset to live happily ever after."
It had all clicked in the place once I realized Scott was a criminal, but financially motivated, not a murderer, and Jenni was just hopelessly in love with the jerk. When I was at Mi Casa and saw Dale with Megan, I had initially thought they might be on a date of some kind because their mannerisms had not been those of grief-stricken relatives. But when I found out who she was and then later why Dale had upped Susan’s life insurance, I just hadn't thought much about it.
When we had gone back into the event barn, Dale and Megan had just been standing there with everyone else, waiting for the winners to be announced, not a care in the world. They really had thought they had gotten away with it.
After Dale realized he was caught, he sang like the proverbial canary, saying that he and Megan had fallen in love, and he had killed Susan for the insurance money so they could live happily ever after. The kidney transplant excuse was a lie. They planned to be long gone before they ever gave the sheriff the papers proving her medical disability that didn’t exist. They were waiting for the insurance money to be paid out, not for a kidney transplant. Megan was in perfect health.
Dale had known exactly what the flower cooler setup was, having been there several times over the years with Susan. He also knew she had a weak heart and was a bit claustrophobic, and had banked on the fact that locking her in the cooler would freak her out enough to kill her.
Hayden Haynes, who was leaving as we got down there, had all of Josie's arrangements and files, and when the sheriff asked him why he was leaving so soon, he had said he had already won. He had killed Josie using Jenni's pink shears to throw suspicion on her. Pretty genius plot. The sheriff let me ask him why Josie even entered the flower contest and Hayden said she thought it would be good for her image, make her seem to care about more than just big prize money, to win a small-town event. If I hadn't got out of the cooler when I did, Jenni and Scott would have gotten away with thousands of dollars of the Adams Creek Farms money. Dale and Megan, and Hayden would have got away with murder.
But as it was, the bad guys were all behind bars and now and the biggest thing on my agenda was finishing painting our house so Cooper and I could start the arduous task of moving. Normally I didn't relish moving, but moving into our dream home was going to be completely worth it.