Chapter 7 - The Price of a Mother
“Let me talk to her,” I said.
Dad laughed quietly. “You sound just like your mother when she's trying to be brave.”
He held the phone closer. Mom's lip was split, but she looked straight at the camera.
“Nora, don't give him anything.”
He pulled the phone away. “Nine tonight. The old Riverton greenhouse. No police.”
The call ended.
I turned to Mara. “We have five hours.”
“Then we use them.”
She copied the drive and logged the original as evidence. She also contacted the state investigative bureau, because the files pointed to old deaths and financial crimes far beyond her county. For the first time since the funeral, somebody had a plan that didn't begin with panic.
At Mercy General, Elise listened while I repeated the call. She tried to get out of bed, but her knees buckled. I caught her beneath the arms.
“Stay here,” I said.
“She's our mother.”
“And you're the reason she still has two daughters. Don't make me choose which one to save.”
Elise closed her eyes. “I thought he'd changed when I found him. He hugged me. Called me his baby girl.”
My throat hurt. “Then what?”
“He asked what I'd found at the courthouse. I told him I knew there was another man's body in his coffin.”
She pulled back the collar of her hospital gown, showing another bruise.
“He wasn't angry until I said I could prove it.”
Mara asked whether she had seen where she'd been held. Elise remembered an underground room, cold pipes, the smell of wet soil, and a humming sound like a broken refrigerator.
“Could it have been the greenhouse?” Mara asked.
“I don't know.”
Elise caught my fingers. “There's something else. Dad didn't tie me up himself.”
“Who did?”
May you like
Her lips moved once before the word came.
“Vivian.”
