Chapter 57
“It’s been my experience,” Mick says, “that alcohol lowers the inhibitions. So you drink until you talk. If you don’t talk, maybe you sleep. If you sleep, maybe you’ll wake up. Or maybe you won’t. And you”—he points at me—“have a lot of arrows directed at you, don’t you? Your husband has other children. Your husband is worth more dead than alive. Insurmountable debt. Enormous life insurance policy. Motive, motive, motive. The ordeal with your mother—yes, I know more about your mother than my son does—can only serve to prove your culpability, and if you end up sleeping at the end of it all, we’ll be certain to plant your empty medication bottle in your hand.”
Pieces fall into place.
I think of the rare nights I’d taken sleeping pills, the nights when Micah was traveling, and I hadn’t slept in days. I think about the time I woke up, feeling as if someone had been in the house.
My daddy doesn’t know that man in the kitchen.
I wonder if the man in the kitchen in Old Town was my father-in-law. I wonder if he came to see what went wrong at United, if that’s the night my family changed.
And if Micah’s father owns the Shadowlands house, he likely has the gate code out front, so he could have been there, too.
“You’ve been in my home,” I say.
“Just keeping an eye on my assets. Micah was always too much of a loose cannon not to. Always like to know where those assets might be in case I need to use them.”
Assets equal me and Bella.
But I made things difficult when I ran.
They figured out where I was going when I exited the freeway in Wisconsin. Maybe it wasn’t too difficult to discern, if they knew about this house. Guidry found it pretty quickly. Ownership of a house is public record. Maybe Christian Renwick was here upon my arrival for a reason.
But if he were planted here, waiting for me, why not get to the bottom of things right away? Why not kill me then, instead of weeks later? Unless . . . unless they assumed I would imbibe the rum they left on my doorstep—which I didn’t.
“Drink,” Mick insists.
“I can’t.” I shake my head. “Ask your wife. I’m a fertility patient. I—”
“Drink!”
Natasha puts her glass down, empty, and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. It’s only a matter of time before she passes out, which means it’s only matter of time before they sink her to the bottom of the ocean.
I can’t take a sip.
Bella’s face is buried in my chest. “Want my daddy.”
Lincoln’s gun is out of its holster again, and this time, it’s aimed at the back of my daughter’s head.
“No, no, no.” My hand covers her hair, as if I could stop the bullet if he happened to fire.
“Drink,” Lincoln says.
“Drink it,” Natasha whispers.
“Okay, okay.” I lift the glass to my lips and slowly drain it.
Lincoln, with firearm still aimed, pours another round.
It’s clear that eventually, when they know all we can possibly tell, or maybe because we don’t know anything at all, they’ll allow us to drift off to sleep, thanks to the medication crushed and dissolved in the rum.
And at that point, we’re as good as dead. And I’ll be the scapegoat, suspected of masterminding the entire thing: the death of Gabrielle and my husband’s sons; the death of my college roommate, with whom my husband had never cut ties. My prescription medication would be my assumed weapon.
It would look like a murder-suicide. Eerily similar to what my mother tried to pull off when I was seventeen years old.
Mick’s men had baited Micah with Gabrielle and the boys, who just happened to be vacationing at the lake house. What if Micah had been on his way up north to warn her? Or even to return the money? But Diamante got there first.
He’s been planning his escape since he bought this house, and that’s why he put it only in my name—I’m certain of it. I wonder if he really had planned to take Bella and me—maybe after we’d implanted a healthy embryo. It makes sense that he wouldn’t tell me his plan, in order to keep me safe—legally speaking. If I don’t know anything, I’m not responsible for whatever he’s done. But he planted information with our daughter to ensure we arrived in Key West.
Mick doesn’t budge, save to nod toward the small glass of rum in front of me.
I don’t have a choice. The gun is pointed at my baby’s head.
I down the shot.
Lincoln pours another.
The fat cat that lives here meanders back into the kitchen, as if nothing in the world is wrong or out of place.
The cat that doesn’t belong to anyone.
The cat with six toes on his left front paw.
Someone lured me down here. Someone wanted the rest of Micah’s children, and their mothers, to convene here.
Who would’ve done such a thing, if not the one person who’d want to save us?
The one person who’s been watching me, warning me by cell phone, and interrupting me when I was about to cross the line with another man?
Who else could have known what disasters were about to come? Who could’ve told Bella to insist on coming here?
Her father.
But that doesn’t explain why the cat is here.
Papa Hemingway winds his way through the kitchen and brushes against my legs.
His collar scratches against me, and when he props himself against me, with his paws on my leg, I manage to straighten the tag hanging at his neck. JAMES BROLIN.
My thumb brushes over an odd buttonlike thing attached to the underside of the collar.
I catch my gasp before I release it.
I massage the cat’s head and trail a hand down his back, as if he needs calming down, too. I’ve gotten most of the snarls out of his fur over the past couple of weeks.
Hemingway cats sometimes have six toes.
Hemingway cats are named after famous people.
This cat doesn’t belong here. He wasn’t Natasha’s. He wasn’t Gabrielle’s. He’s a transplant from the Hemingway house over on Whitehead Street. Someone planted him here to serve a purpose.
The other day, I was listening to Buffett in the studio. The cat was in the studio. I paid Christian Renwick a visit. He was humming a Buffett song.
Was it more than a coincidence? Was he listening to Buffett because it was playing in my house, and he heard it through the bug he’d fastened to the cat’s collar?
Suppose Christian was sent here to serve a purpose: to keep me safe. Mick couldn’t show up until after Christian had gone.
Guidry said he’d have eyes on me here in Key West. What if Christian Renwick was working undercover, spending the nights camped on my porch? And when I showed up at his house unannounced, and his nieces allowed me into his bedroom, I saw the notes on the case. His cover was blown. He cleared out.
But the house hadn’t been rented . . .
Or so the cops say.
Or maybe this scenario is only a face in one of Mama’s jeweled pins, sticking its tongue out at me, as I swallow the line, hook, and sinker.
I whisper to Elizabella, “It’s going to be okay.” I follow the statement with something else, whispered at an even lower decibel: “One, two, three, fly.” She looks up at me with a confused expression, but nods and reaches for Natasha’s hand.
If the authorities are listening, why haven’t they come in yet? I get that they need to gather as much information as possible before they pounce in and save the day. But they don’t know about the rum. They might not know about the gun. I have to find a way to communicate the dire situation we’re in.
Or maybe they aren’t listening all the time. Maybe they’re checking recordings at the end of the day, to see what I might have revealed. If that’s the case, they might not hear any of this for several hours, and by then, it might be too late.
Or maybe Buffett was a coincidence, and the bug is the work of Diamante.
If that’s the case, we’re screwed.
There’s only one way to find out.
“I’ve done what you’ve asked,” I say. “I’ve drank. I’ve encouraged you to tear this house apart, looking for whatever it is you want. Please. Take the gun off my child.”