To spill it into his car. To stage his own death.
“Can you imagine?” she says. “I think Gabrielle is up at the cottage on Plum Lake with our sons. Suddenly, she stops answering the phone. I rationalize it. Cell service isn’t reliable that far north, and if they’re out on the water, they won’t be answering the land line. Then there’s a plane crash. I learn from the news that Micah’s missing, and there might be a link between him and the crash. And I want to go to you, but Gabby doesn’t come home when she’s supposed to come home, and then there’s a report. Three bodies, and not one of them is Micah. The police had a theory: Gabby had been lying to me, that she and Micah were having an affair and that they were running away together. Can you believe that?”
I can. That seems to be their standard explanation for everything. I shake my head in anger and disbelief. Guidry should have told me these things.
“And then, when the autopsy revealed lake water in their lungs . . .” She breathes deeply. “They were murdered, Veronica. Murdered. Who would do such a thing?”
“I thought it was Micah,” I say.
“He wouldn’t . . . no.”
“I thought the lies got to be too much for him, and he couldn’t juggle two families anymore. But now that I know that isn’t what was happening . . .”
“I didn’t know what to think, except Gabby and the boys were at the wrong place at the wrong time. But why the request to draw blood? None of this makes sense.”
“He spilled the blood in his car,” I say, “so it would look like he bled out there.”
He even switched the license plate to another car . . . maybe so he could drive to C-Way airport and catch a flight out of there before whoever killed Gabrielle could catch up with him.
But how would someone manage to smuggle three dead bodies onto a plane? There was no flight plan registered; I guess it would be possible to do, if the plane were in a hangar somewhere and not at an airport.
“But why?”
“I don’t know.” I look her in the eye, and I know for certain now: from the moment she fell across my threshold, we became obligated to each other.
Papa Hemingway jumps into my lap.
“But something big is going on.” Quickly, I fill her in on everything I know.
Diamante and de azul.
The men posing as federal agents.
The smoking man.
The whispering caller.
Micah’s debt and the accusations he stole from Mick and Diamante.
“How much money are we talking?” Natasha asks.
“Too much to fathom,” I say. “And I think they’re here looking for it.”
Our eyes meet, and she covers her gasp with a hand.
“Do you . . . do you know where it is?”
“They’re here,” I say. “Looking. Looking in Chicago, too.”
“Is it here, then? Or back home?”
“It could even be at the lake house.”
“But that would mean . . . Gabby and the boys.” She swallows hard. “God, if they were looking for the money there and found my family . . . Do you think they were killed because Gabrielle couldn’t give them what they want?”
I open my mouth to answer, but I quickly clam up. If it’s true, the rest of us are in for the same fate. I can’t bear to utter the words.
“But Shell . . . she wouldn’t allow that money at the lake house.”
I used to think the same thing, but lately . . . “I’m not sure anymore.” I tell her about Shell’s odd text, asking if I have Bella.
“Do you think she knows where Micah is?” Natasha asks.
I hesitate. “Maybe. When he first went missing, I called her in a panic, but she was rational about it. She didn’t fall apart until I told her what the agents said—that he was dead. And then later, when I learned he wasn’t, she was furious with me and refused to talk to me. Refused. She wouldn’t listen to my explanation.”
“Then again,” I say, “everything’s void of explanation. Even my neighbor . . . he was squatting in a house through the alleyway, and he up and disappeared. Wait. He said he knew you. Christian Renwick.”
She shakes her head. “I never met him.”
“He referred to you as Tasha. He knew about Mimi.” I gauge her expression, but it’s clear she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. “He said you weren’t usually gone this long. He said you asked him to look after the cat.”
“We don’t have a cat. Miriam’s allergic.”
Didn’t Bella tell me as much?
“And much to Gabby’s disappointment, we didn’t live here, but only vacationed here twice. Once with Micah and Bella, and before that, for our anniversary.”
I frown. “So the pottery stuff . . . it isn’t Gabby’s?”
Natasha shakes her head. “I think it was here when Micah bought the place.”
“The cat, too? This cat was here when I got here. The neighbor said Tasha asked him to look after it. Have you ever seen this cat here before?”
She shakes her head. “I assumed the cat was yours.”
Simultaneously, Natasha and I look to the table, where our daughters are giggling.
Judging by what happened to Gabrielle and her sons, our daughters’ survival—and ours—depends on our finding the $5 million Micah owes Diamante—Diamond Corporation—before Diamond Corporation runs out of patience.
“I’m pretty sure Micah’s on the island,” I say. “Bella’s seen him a few times. I could have sworn he came in the other night.”
“If he came for the money, is there any chance he took it? And took off?”
“Maybe.”
But I suspect its ashes sit at the bottom of my kiln.
“Maybe I’m naive to consider this, but I wonder if all this was an exit strategy for him. The blood in the car, dropping hints to Elizabella to come here . . .”
“You mean life got too big for him?” Natasha asks. “He wanted out?”
“I don’t know. But could he hope I’d collect the death benefit? Could he hope I’d listen to Bella and show up here, so we could leave the country? By boat?”
“I just can’t believe he never told you anything. Think, Veronica. What are we missing?”
Maybe he stashed money in the kiln so he could disappear without us, and if I burned it, he can no longer get out.
And because that money doesn’t belong to him, Diamante is coming after it. We won’t be safe until they get back what Micah took.
Where else can I find that kind of money to save our lives?
Chapter 55
December 9
It’s after two in the morning.
Papa Hemingway snakes around my legs as I follow the sound of Natasha’s quiet tears to the back porch, where she sits, overlooking an empty pool.
I scoop up the cat and join her.
She looks up at me. “Girls still asleep?”
“Yeah.”
It’s a calm night, filled with cricket choirs and soothing breezes, both of which overtake the space between us.
I sit.
After a few minutes, Natasha speaks. “I was working in the city the week Gabrielle and the boys went to the lake house. Miriam had school, but she’d begged to tag along. To think that if I’d let her go . . .”
I know what she’s feeling. Near miss. “But you didn’t.”
“But I had before.”
And if Claudette Winters hadn’t been there the day Lincoln and his sidekick showed up to convince me my husband was dead, would I have ended up at the bottom of the ocean, too?
Natasha sniffles. “I find myself feeling grateful—”
“Of course you do.”
“When I’ve lost them. They were my children, too. And Gabrielle was the reason my world turned.”
“But to think Mimi was spared . . . of course you’d feel grateful for that.”
“But if all of this is really about money . . . If I lost my family, if you lost your husband because of money . . .”
“I can’t imagine what else it might be,” I say.
“Then they won’t stop until they get it.”
“No,” I agree. “Or until they have Micah.”
What I can’t figure out, however, is why Micah would’ve taken that much money. And how Lincoln would’ve gained access to the Shadowlands and my home, unless he trespassed through the county property, hopped the fence at night, and broke in.