26

Images of her childhood, her first kiss, her friends, her family—her life—trounced across Kate’s vision in silent cinematic Technicolor, ending with Tom’s face telegraphing an urgent message. A message her fuzzy brain couldn’t decipher.

Then suddenly the sound reel kicked in.

“Move!” Tom yelled.

Kate dove off the side of the hospital bed and scrambled to her hands and knees. The IV pole toppled after her.

Keith scooped an arm around her waist and scuttled her toward the door.

Tom lunged for the syringe lodged in the mattress.

Edward grabbed Molly by the forearms and shook her mercilessly. “You? You killed Daisy?”

She struggled against his hold, her fiery gaze burning into Tom as he secured the evidence that would convict her.

Tom slapped a handcuff onto one of Molly’s wrists, then pried her arms free from Edward’s grip. “You’re under arrest for the murder of Daisy Leacock and the attempted murder of Kate Adams.”

Edward looked like he might be sick. “Why, Molly? You said you didn’t care if I had money.”

“I don’t.” She twisted and squirmed in the handcuffs. “This isn’t what it looks like. You don’t know my father.”

Tom shoved her out the door. “Let’s go.”

Kate clutched a blanket over her hospital gown and, avoiding Molly’s smug gaze, met Tom’s eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered.

Everyone from patients in hospital gowns to nurses in uniforms to visitors in street clothes crowded the hallway.

“Step aside, please,” Tom shouted over the hullabaloo.

The crowd parted and Hank and a slew of uniformed officers raced up the hall toward them.

Tom handed Molly over to the chief. “Here’s your murderer.”

Molly wore her waitress uniform, and Hank skeptically looked her up and down. “The coffee girl?”

Molly lifted her chin. “The daughter of Jeremiah Gilmore.” She paused long enough for the realization to sink in that she was the heiress to a diamond empire.

Tom’s jaw dropped in sync with Hank’s and the collective gasp of the gathered crowd.

Molly sniffed in that snooty way the very rich seem to master soon after birth. “There’s not a judge in the country who’ll believe I killed an old woman for money.”

A chill shivered down Kate’s spine. A chill that had nothing to do with her bare feet on the cold marble floor. With the money Molly had behind her, she’d make bail by morning. Then what might she do?

A head bobbed at the fringe of the crowd, a Jimmy Stewart–like mug Kate recognized from the features page of the Port Aster Press. He snapped a couple of photos of Molly with his cell phone and then pushed past the people lining the hall and shoved a digital voice recorder into Tom’s face. “Sir, can you tell us how you solved the murder?”

“No comment.” Tom clamped his jaw shut and marched Edward out of the hospital room and handed him over to Hank. “You’ll want to question him too.” Tom shot a sideways glance at the reporter and lowered his voice. “I’ll fill you in at the station. My dad’s getting the rest of the evidence.”

Keith emerged from the adjacent room with the laptop and syringe.

The reporter jockeyed past Tom and Edward to get to Keith. “Sir, can you tell us what proof you have that Miss Gilmore committed mur—?”

An alarm sounded at the nurses’ station. The crowd in the hall pressed their backs to the wall as nurses and doctors rushed past pushing portable machines. In the confusion, three officers hustled Molly, Edward, and Keith out of the building, away from the reporter’s clutches. A fourth officer cordoned off Kate’s room with crime scene tape.

As Kate looked at the yellow plastic tape crisscrossing the door—the same way Daisy’s house had been cordoned off—the reality of how close she’d come to losing her life sunk in hard and fast. Her entire body shivered uncontrollably.

The spectators soon dispersed. But not the reporter. He hovered, a vulture scouting for its next prey.

“We’ll need Miss Adams to come in too,” the chief said to Tom. “As soon as the hospital okays her release.”

That was all it took for Mr. Reporter to zero in on her. He snapped her photo with his cell phone and then swooped in front of her, voice recorder in hand.

Great. Just great. Not only had she become the number one enemy of the wealthiest family in the country, but thanks to Mr. Reporter and the inevitable media circus he’d stir up, the most unbecoming photo of her was about to be plastered across the evening news of every major city in North America.

Tom, her hero for the third time today, motioned to hospital security who quickly intercepted the vulture—definitely a vulture—and asked him to leave the premises.

She should have told them to confiscate his cell phone too.

A nurse brought Kate the clothes she’d arrived in and directed her to an empty room across the hall.

Concern blazed in Tom’s eyes. A concern she’d have to decide how to respond to—sooner or later. Preferably later.

Kate pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. “I’ll just get changed.” She slipped into the hospital room and closed the door. The movement of her reflection in the bathroom mirror as she passed by made her jump. Scolding herself, she scrutinized her reflection.

No wonder Tom had looked so worried. Even her lips were white. She looked like the blood had been sucked from her body and replaced with milk of magnesia.

She tugged on the string of her hospital gown, but the thing wouldn’t untie. Her hands shook so badly she couldn’t make her fingers work.

A tap sounded at the door. “Kate? You all right?”

“Yes.” Her voice squeaked. She cleared her throat. “I’ll just be another minute.”

She yanked her pants on underneath her gown and then tried to shimmy the gown over her head, but the opening was too small. She twisted it around so she could see the knot in the mirror.

“Kate?” Tom called again, his tone more anxious than before.

“Almost done.” She pried at the knot for another minute and steeled herself against the urge to believe his concern went deeper than that of a cop’s for a victim.

For crying out loud, she was still working on forgiving him for arresting her. What was she doing letting a little chivalrous behavior get her all muddleheaded?

She gave the string one hard yank, ripping it from the gown, and quickly finished dressing. Her confidence had long ago leached away, but when she opened the door, she managed to lift her chin and say in a voice that warbled only a fraction. “I need to grab my purse and then—”

She made the mistake of meeting Tom’s gaze. The worry radiating from his red-streaked eyes unraveled what little grasp she had left on her emotions.

“It’s okay.” He gathered her into his arms. “You’re okay. You did good.”

The gentleness of his touch and tenderness in his voice unleashed the emotions she’d tried so hard to dam.

Beneath her cheek, his shirt grew damp. His heart ker-thumped a little too loud and a little too fast.

After a long while, he pulled back and cradled her face in his hands. “If you ever pull another stunt like that, I’ll slap the handcuffs on you and haul you into jail so fast your head will spin.”

She planted her hands on her hips. “On what charge?”

“Trying to kill me!”

Tom’s cell phone rang, breaking the sudden silence in the hospital hallway.

“Son, you better get down here.”

“On my way.” Tom hurried Kate out of the hospital and to his car, trying to ignore the way her scent clung to his shirt. When she’d let him gather her into his arms, emotions overwhelmed him—anger and horror at how close her crazy plan had come to costing her life, and relief that she was safe.

Her surrender to his touch gave him hope that they might find a way back to the friendship they’d started, but he knew better than to take advantage of her vulnerable state. He just wished he hadn’t resorted to humor to end their embrace. He didn’t know what to make of her stunned silence afterward.

He’d take up the crazy plan part with her later. Tom shifted the car into gear and headed for the station. Glancing at Kate, he noticed her smile. “What’s up?”

“The sky seems brighter somehow. Don’t you think?” she said, her gaze on the passing scenery. “Look at those tulips. Have you ever seen such vibrant colors?”

He chuckled. He’d experienced the exact same hyperawareness the first time he’d looked death square in the eyes and lived to tell about it. Unfortunately, he needed to cut in on her reverie and get some answers before he faced Molly’s high-priced lawyers.

“Do you know what Molly had in that syringe?”

“Ladder-to-heaven is another name for lily of the valley.”

“Is it as lethal as it sounds?”

“Its bulbs are very toxic when ingested. Experts claim that even water holding the cut flowers becomes toxic. Maybe that’s what she loaded in the needle, but I doubt it.”

“Why?”

“She didn’t try that hard to conceal what she was doing, which tells me that she expected the poison to act instantly.”

At her detached tone, as if they weren’t talking about her life, he ached to pull her back into his arms. Instead, he tried to match it. “She must’ve been counting on Edward not turning her in.”

“That too,” Kate said softly.

“The lab will tell us what’s in the needle. The fact she brought it with her proves premeditation.”

“My guess is potassium. If she’d managed to push it into my IV, it would’ve stopped my heart instantly.”

Tom’s heart lurched at the thought. “How would she have known that, let alone gotten ahold of some? More likely she was counting on her lily of the valley water being more potent than it is, especially if injected directly into the bloodstream.”

“Maybe, but she was a pharmacology student before she quit to nurse her dying aunt.”

“Is that what made you suspect her?”

Kate shifted her gaze to the road ahead. “At Sumpner’s Falls, Edward told me that Molly’s dad bribed Edward to disappear, and that Molly defied her parents to fight for their love. But I’d overheard her talking to her dad on her cell phone the day after her engagement. She’d said something like, ‘Everything is going perfectly.’ If she were at odds with her parents, she wouldn’t talk to them that way.”

Tom took the highway to expedite the return trip to Port Aster. “So why didn’t you let me arrest Edward at Sumpner’s Falls?”

“I didn’t remember the phone conversation at the time. It wasn’t until yesterday that I realized Edward’s story didn’t add up. Then I had to devise a way to figure out if Molly and Edward were in on the murder together.”

“Whoa. Back up. What made you think Molly was behind the murder?”

“Her dad called her on the tea shop phone.”

Tom’s face must’ve registered his confusion because Kate looked at him as if he were thicker than a tree.

“A call on the shop phone instead of her cell phone meant her dad knew she was in Port Aster. If he’d bribed Edward to stay away from his daughter and then found out she’d run off to the same town, I figured they wouldn’t have cheery conversations about how perfect everything was going unless he knew why Molly was really here.”

Tom scrunched his face, trying to make sense of what Kate was saying. He shook his head. “I’m not following you. Edward lied about why he was here, but you still suspected Molly?”

“No, he didn’t lie. Weren’t you listening? She came here for revenge. That’s why her dad didn’t stop her. And what better way to make Edward pay for hurting her than to make him go to jail for a murder he didn’t commit?”

Tom slanted a glance her way. “I think all that adrenaline shooting through your brain is misfiring a few cells. The woman almost killed you to keep you from sending Edward to jail.”

“Sure, because after Daisy died Edward turned to Molly for comfort and she realized how much she still loved him. When the police declared Daisy’s death a suicide, everything turned out hunky-dory for them until I came along and messed up their happily ever after.”

“So when the journal surfaced and we figured out Edward was an alias, she hired a kid to impersonate Gord to implicate you in the murder, instead of Edward.”

“Yeah, but I can’t figure out how Molly knew about Gord.”

“That’s my fault. The night I was at the Pizza Shack, she heard me mention I was looking for him.”

“And she probably asked Edward who he was.”

Tom exited the highway and took the mountain access road south. He drummed his thumbs on the steering wheel. “How can we be sure they didn’t plan the murder together? If Gilmore cut Molly off, her expensive baubles would last only so long and then they’d need money. Daisy’s money.”

“You saw Edward tackle Molly in the hospital room. He was horrified by her admission.”

“Or he’s a good actor.” Tom rounded the police station and parked in the back lot. “Don’t worry, we’ll figure this out. I need to take over Molly’s interrogation, so another officer will take your statement. Just tell her everything you told me.”

Keith met them in the hall. “We reviewed the video from Kate’s hospital room. Molly didn’t actually confess to Daisy’s murder. She told Edward that she’d do anything so they could be together. She now claims that she was talking about stopping Kate from exposing Edward’s past.”

Kate took a step back, her hand reaching blindly for the wall. “But she said I’d ruin everything because of what I knew.”

Tom squeezed Kate’s arm. “Don’t worry. We’ve got her. We’ll hold her on the attempted murder charge while we piece together a case against her for Daisy’s murder.”

Tom left Kate with Dad and joined Hank in the room adjoining the interrogation room. On the other side of the two-way mirror, Molly sat next to a smug-faced lawyer who by the look of his Armani suit raked in a grand an hour. Tom shot Hank a questioning look. No way was Molly’s lawyer gonna let her talk.

“They’re up to something,” Hank said, watching Molly through the glass.

Tom leaned against the back wall, crossed one leg over the other, and folded his arms over his chest.

“My client wishes to make a statement,” the lawyer said in a blue-blood accent straight out of Boston.

“This ought to be good,” Hank grunted.

“Go ahead, Miss Gilmore,” the detective inside the interrogation room said.

Molly conferred with her lawyer in a whisper, then cleared her throat. “I’m sorry for threatening Miss Adams. I didn’t want her to get my fiancé in trouble. I wouldn’t have really hurt her. I just wanted to scare her into backing down.”

“So you’re saying your fiancé, Edward Smythe, also known as Jim Crump, killed Miss Leacock?”

She glanced at her lawyer.

“My client has nothing further to say.” The man picked up his notebook and pushed to his feet.

“Wait,” Molly cried out. “I put the bad marigolds in Daisy’s tea. She called an order in to the shop and I mixed a few of the wrong type in.”

“That’s enough,” the lawyer ordered.

Molly ignored him. “I didn’t mean for her to die. ” A smirk teased the corners of her lips. “If that’s what she died from. I just wanted her to get sick so she’d realize I was telling her the truth about Edward.”

Tom uncrossed his legs and kicked a foot back against the wall. “She’s confessing to manslaughter so we’ll drop murder one.”

“At least you’ve got a confession,” Hank said.

“You saw her smirk when she added ‘if that’s what she died from.’” Tom flicked his hand toward the two-way mirror. “Kate’s been telling us for more than a week that tagete wouldn’t kill anyone. And she’s the expert. Her lawyer will have a cakewalk convincing the jury that there’s no proof. Or he’ll argue that she lied in a desperate attempt to protect Edward.”

“So we hammer hard on the attempted murder charge. We have a roomful of witnesses and a syringe with her fingerprints on it. One way or the other she’ll do her time.”

“I want a search warrant on her apartment before her slimy lawyers have a chance to clear out any evidence. Or plant it.”

Tom took a deep breath, pasted on what he hoped would pass for a smile, and opened the door to the hallway.

Dad and Kate looked at him expectantly.

“We have our confession.”

Kate lifted her arms in a V and let out a whoop.

Tom averted his gaze, not wanting Kate to see his doubts that they’d see justice served.

“What aren’t you telling us?” Dad asked.

Tom’s jaw clenched. He shot his dad a glare. “She claims she only wanted to make Daisy sick.”

“A jury won’t buy that,” Kate exclaimed confidently. “Ricin’s too deadly.”

Tom steered them toward a quiet corner. “She didn’t admit to giving Daisy ricin, only tagete.”

“But you saw how she reacted when I accused her of lacing the tea with ricin.”

“Yeah, but we don’t have proof, and she knows it.” Tom let out a heavy sigh. “With no criminal record and a father who has money to burn, she’ll likely get off pretty light.” He squeezed Kate’s shoulder. “But you accomplished what you set out to prove—your friend didn’t kill herself.”

Kate shrank from his touch, tears springing to her eyes. “It’s not enough.”