I didn’t see the guard. Didn’t see anyone. I felt woozy but forced myself to stay focused. Mia pressed the icy muzzle into the hollow of my neck. As she did, the truth became clear.
I said, “That night, you went to my parents’ house to get the promissory note.” Had Mom filed it in my father’s office? That would explain why both hers and my father’s offices had been tossed. If Mia had found it, that also explained why Ulyssa Thaller didn’t have a record of it and why the value of my parents’ estate was less than it should have been; they’d refinanced the house to help out Tammie, but she’d never been forced to repay the loan. Again, I became suspicious of Tammie playing innocent. She had to have known what Mia had done. How else could Mia have come up with the paperwork to absolve her mother from debt?
“You believed that if you could destroy the note,” I went on, “then my mother would have nothing to hold over your mother’s head. Tammie wouldn’t have to pay the loan with interest. She could leave the business and start fresh.”
Mia dragged the barrel of the Glock to the spot between my shoulder blades. “Good guess.” I heard a click. She’d released the safety.
“Sweetheart,” Tammie began. She had stuck to Mia like glue.
“Mom, I told you to leave. Aspen”—she poked me—“keep walking.”
Fearful that this time she really would shoot, I moved cautiously ahead. “After you found the note, however, you decided to search for my parents’ insurance policy. The silver dollar. Your mother had told you about it, hadn’t she?”
Tammie choked back a sob.
“I get it, Mia,” I continued. “You were angry at my mother. You wanted justice. Revenge. Why not rob her of everything you could?”
I flashed on the cherrywood puzzle box, the one Mia’s daughter had thought contained a treasure. Mia must have stolen the box and given it to her mother, which meant she must have told Tammie about the robbery. Had she lied, saying that she hadn’t been anywhere near the place when the murders had occurred? Had Tammie bought the lie?
“Am I close, Mia?” I dared to glance over my shoulder. Her jaw was trembling. I’d struck a nerve. Maybe she was second-guessing her decision to kill me.
“Don’t look at me.” She kicked the hollow of my knee. I buckled but recovered.
Come on, Aspen. Get her to talk. Get her to unload the burden she’s been carrying around for years.
Softly, I said, “Mia, I’m not going to walk any farther. I’m going to turn around.”
“No!”
“Yes. I’m turning slowly.”
“No!” She whacked me on the right shoulder.
Searing pain spiraled down my arm. Even so, I pivoted. Mia leveled the gun at me, but she didn’t pull the trigger. Her eyes were fluttering, her jaw twitching.
In a soothing voice, I said, “You scoured the dining room, thinking that was where they’d hidden their wealth. Where there’s silver, there must be gold. But you didn’t find the coin, did you?”
I was certain she hadn’t. If she had, her daughter wouldn’t have thought the treasure was in the cherrywood box.
I continued. “Frustrated and sensing you had spent more time than you ought to in the house—I mean, someone might notice you skulking about, right?—you gave up on the treasure and decided to take the silver. You might as well have something for your trouble. Plus, that would make your incursion look like a simple robbery. No one would suspect that you’d taken the promissory note. But, to your surprise”—I let the silence hang for a moment—“my parents showed up.”
Mia whimpered. Tammie covered her mouth, fighting tears.
“Walk me through what happened next, Mia,” I said. “Dad entered first. What did he—”
“He roared at me,” she shrieked. “He scared me. He demanded to know what I was doing. He . . . He . . .” She scraped her lips with her teeth. “Before I knew it, the gun went off.”
“Shooting him was an accident?”
“Yes!”
“Except you shot my mother when she threw herself on top of my dad.”
“No. Listen.” Mia blinked. “Lily yelled at me, too. ‘What have you done, Mia? What have you done?’”
Mia used her hands to replay the event, but even though the Glock was no longer pointed at me, I wouldn’t charge her. I had to time it right.
“See, I couldn’t explain to her why I was there.” Mia’s voice quavered. “I wasn’t wearing a mask, but I was dressed in black, and the silver and the note were in a pillowcase by my feet, and . . .” She rubbed her neck with her free hand. “Lily begged me to call 911, but I couldn’t. The police would arrest me. My mother would be so ashamed. So I . . . I . . .”
“You killed her.”
“No, that’s not what happened,” Mia cried.
I flashed on my mother’s last words to Rosie: You’ll never get it.
“No, it’s not,” I whispered. “You’re right, Mia. First, you hovered over my mother and demanded that she tell you where the silver dollar was. Mom wouldn’t say, so you threatened her. She wouldn’t relent. She said, ‘You’ll never get it. I’ve hidden it where you’ll never find it.’ Or something like that, am I warm?”
Mia hiccupped.
“You spotted items in the cabinet with the medals and curios, and it dawned on you that she’d displayed her other prized items in the master bedroom. On the bureau. You demanded to know which one. She wouldn’t say. But believing that she had betrayed herself by saying she’d hidden it, you killed her and gleefully went in search. When you picked up the cherrywood box and shook it, you felt you’d found what you were after.”
“Gleefully?” Mia spat, nostrils flared. “I wasn’t gleeful.”
“Of course you weren’t,” Tammie said.
No fingerprints flashed in my mind. Now I understood why that clue had bothered me.
“You were wearing gloves for your foray, Mia, weren’t you? But, even so, you cleaned up afterward. Now I know why. To protect your mother, like you always have. Because you didn’t want her fingerprints to be there. You were worried she’d be suspected of murder.”
“No.” Tammie blanched.
“No,” Mia echoed.
“Yes,” I said. “What I don’t understand, Tammie”—I swiveled my aching head in her direction—“is why you didn’t break open the box the moment she handed it to you? Mia must have demanded that you do so.”
Tammie’s chest rose and fell. “Because I knew what was inside, and I knew it was worthless.”
“How’s that for irony?” Mia snapped. “Your mother, in her dying moment, stuck it to my mother one last time. All she had to do was tell me where the valuable coin was. If she had—”
“You still would have killed her,” I cut her off.
Mia heaved a sigh and her face went slack, as if drained of all emotion. “Enough chitchat. Move.”
“One last question.”
“No,” she barked.
“Did you attack Herman Hoek?”
“Who’s that?” Tammie asked.
I stared at Mia. “Answer the question. You overheard me mention Herman’s name when I was on the phone at your mother’s place. You overheard me say that he had information for me.”
Mia grunted.
“You’ve been following me.” I wasn’t paranoid. I had picked up on a tail, as elusive as it may have been. Mia had followed me in her blue car. “You must have persuaded the nanny to work a lot of overtime.”
Mia didn’t respond.
“You took note of who I was questioning. You left a Go Home message on my windshield at Big Box after I met with Antoine Washington, didn’t you? And you knew I’d visited Herman Hoek.”
She didn’t deny it.
“Hoek said he had information about a debt,” I said. “I’m presuming he found out about your mother’s gigantic liability. If he invited scrutiny from the police, your mother could have become the primary suspect in my parents’ murders. But no, Mia, you set off to protect your mother yet again.”
“Mia?” Tammie whispered.
With pain zinging through me, I landed on another thought. At the hospital, when I’d asked Hoek if any of the suspects’ names had sounded familiar, he’d muttered Brandt. Seconds later, he’d added the word plant, the same word Patel had said to his fiancée. The two men had been trying to suggest the name Laplante.
“Did you tell him you were there to avenge your mother?” I asked.
If Mia had revealed that she was Tammie’s daughter, Hoek might have been trying to implicate her by saying plant, not knowing that Mia’s surname was Smith.
“Mr. Hoek is going to live,” I said. “He has a concussion and he can’t remember what happened, but he will in time.”
I glimpsed Mia’s blue car in the parking lot, and one more piece of the puzzle fell into place. Viraj Patel had seen what he’d thought was a green car driving through the neighborhood looking shifty, but he had been color blind. He could have mistaken the color of Mia’s blue car for green.
“Did you also kill Viraj Patel and set fire to his house?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “Don’t be absurd.” But the tremor in her voice suggested she was lying.
A moment at the storage facility the other day flashed in my mind. “Your mother heard me talking to Patel on the phone. I’d uttered the word debt out loud. She went to fetch water for us and contacted you, didn’t she? Which leads me to you, Tammie.” I peeked at her out of the corner of my eye. “You’re not innocent, no matter how much you try to fake it. You knew what your daughter had done because you were keeping her in the loop.”
“I didn’t mean to, I . . .” Tammie stammered. “Mia kept asking how your investigation was going. I thought she was curious because you girls used to be such good friends.”
I didn’t say what a load of bull, but I thought it.
“One thing mystifies me, Mia,” I said, remaining focused on her. “Why did you return my grandfather’s gun to the hope chest? Why didn’t you take it with you to protect yourself when you went to hawk the silver?”
Mia lifted her chin defiantly.
“Wait.” I held up a hand. “I’ve got it. Because you thought if Rosie leaked anything about the gun, and the gun was found in its puzzle box, then she would become the main suspect. Who else besides her would have known about it? You could deny, deny. Very clever.”
A siren wailed in the distance. Hope leaped up my throat.
Mia stared wild-eyed at me. “What did you do?”
Lying, I said, “I called the police before I came here.” How I prayed that the police car was truly heading in our direction.
Within seconds, however, the wail receded and grew faint. The vehicle was continuing on toward the Santa Cruz Mountains. Dang it. Did Mia or Tammie realize that?
Bluffing, I said, “Why don’t you give me the gun, Mia? If you do, when they arrest you, I’ll ask them to be merciful.” I held out my hand. The pain in my shoulder made it hard to keep my arm from shaking. “You’ll serve time, but you’ll—”
“No!” Tammie shrieked and dove at me. “My daughter will not go to prison. Ever.” She clawed my face.
I howled and grabbed her in a bear hug.
Tammie yelled, “Mia, run!”
But Mia didn’t budge. She aimed the gun, looking uncertain about taking the shot.
“Mia, go!” Tammie repeated. “Run!”
“Mom,” Mia screamed, “get out of the way.”
Using all my weight, I yanked Tammie to the ground. Neither of us lost our grip. We tumbled on the grass, away from Mia. Ten feet. Twenty feet. I dug my heels into the grass and clambered on top of Tammie, pinning her beneath me. “Tammie, give it up. This won’t end well.”
“Yes. It. Will.” Tammie writhed to get out from under me.
Mia yelled, “Aspen, get off her or I’ll—”
Grunting, Tammie propelled me to the left, winning the advantage.
At the same time, Mia fired. The bullet hit Tammie in the arm. Blood spurted. Tammie yelped like a wounded animal. I shoved her off of me. Mia sprinted toward us, Glock raised. I extended my right leg and connected with her ankle. She stumbled and careened backward. I scrambled to my feet and dove at her.
Gripping her wrist, I squeezed until the Glock fell from her grasp. I nabbed it, straddled her, and pointed the gun at her.
“Aspen, no,” Tammie wailed.
“Don’t worry. I won’t kill her. Do you know why?” Through clenched, bloody teeth, I said, “Because I want you to spend the rest of your life in prison, Mia, thinking about how you not only destroyed my family’s life, but how you ruined your daughter’s life, as well.”
Heavy footfalls. Fast approaching.
I dared to take a peek. Not the guard. Not the police. A man in a black overcoat was hurtling toward us. Over his shoulder, I caught sight of a RAV4 in the parking lot. Kurt Brandt.
He thrust his gun at Tammie to keep her at bay and eyed me. “Are you okay, Miss Adams?”
“Yes. How did you—”
“You kept spotting me, so I resorted to putting a tracer on your car. When I saw you’d come here, I figured your mother must have found a secret place to stash the treasure. A place only you and she would know.”
“Sorry, Mr. Brandt. My mother and I never came here. We always went to Tahoe if we were in the mood to see a lake.” I smiled at him. “But I appreciate the backup. Would you mind contacting the police?” I rattled off Quincy’s telephone number.
But Brandt didn’t have to call him. A Los Gatos Police Department patrol car whizzed into the parking lot, lights flashing.
Nick, bless his soul, must have deciphered my SOS.