It had always been a long shot, a circumstantial case. They simply didn’t have any proof.
The DA, who’d outkicked his coverage with his Hail Mary pi?a colada accusation, was forced to withdraw the charge of first--degree homicide. He tried to get Aubrey to plead to manslaughter. She refused. A not-guilty verdict was returned in under an hour, the jury thanked for their service, and Aubrey sent blinking into the light of freedom with her reputation sullied but not entirely smeared black.
Today
Aubrey stretched, curled her legs underneath her. “And that’s the whole story. Linda gave me my job back, I endured the whispers and stares, and then, people . . . forgot.” She played with her now empty teacup. “I never did,” she whispered.
Chase leaned over and gave her a supportive kiss. “Troublemaker.”
He had a knack for making her feel less pitiful about the whole thing. “I guess I was.”
“What did you do when you were a kid, to get into so much trouble?”
But Aubrey heard something, looked up. “What in the name of God?”
CHAPTER 24
Daisy
Today
Daisy stared at the gaunt face in the mirror and wondered when she’d gotten so very old. She had a tennis game this morning, then an appointment with her lawyer to finalize the paperwork for contesting Josh’s life insurance policy. It had started as a simple $50,000 underwrite. Something the bank suggested she and Tom do for Josh while he was a child. He could cash it out when he was thirty-five, and it drew a bit of interest each year.
Two weeks before he disappeared—died, Daisy, died—Josh had changed it to term life, upped the policy to $5 million. And put Aubrey’s name on the beneficiary line.
Five million dollars. And he’d left it to that tramp. Well, she wasn’t going to get any of it if Daisy had her way.
Daisy needed the money. It could give her an escape. A divorce. A new life in a different city where no one would recognize her, no one would know that she was the mother of a missing boy. Where no one would talk behind her back and be solicitous to her face to the point of arrogance. Where no one would pity her.
Tom wouldn’t fight her. He’d probably be relieved. They hadn’t been happy for a long, long time, and Josh’s disappearance—No, Daisy. His death. Josh’s death—had made things that much worse. Tom didn’t approve of the fact that Daisy felt she should keep the money. They’d gone rounds over it, but Daisy would always have the last word.
“Josh would have wanted me to have it,” she told him. “After everything I’ve done for him, he would want me to be happy. He made me the beneficiary, after all. It was a technical mistake by the bank that put that girl’s name in my place. We have to correct the mistake, is all.”
Oh, screw Tom and his judgment. Josh was her son, hers, not his.
She slipped into the kitchen and grabbed an apple and a bottle of water from the refrigerator. She tried not to think about the vodka bottle in the freezer, just inches away from her hand. But the second her consciousness acknowledged it, her brain remembered the feeling of numbness, the oblivion it could bring, how good the chilled bitter liquor felt sliding down her throat, and she could think of nothing else.
No one needed to know.
She opened the freezer, pulled the bottle from its shelf, and took a belt. The glass was freezing on her hands and lips. She took one more shot for good measure, let the strong taste flood her tongue. She swallowed, then raced back upstairs and brushed her teeth. Wouldn’t do to have the women at the club smell vodka on her breath, though God knew how many of them were doing the same thing right now.
Hypocrites. They were all a bunch of flaming hypocrites.
She slammed back down the stairs, grabbed her bag, and threw it in the back of the CLK. The bag tipped sideways, dumping yellow balls and her locker key on the floor. She’d worry about it when she got there.
She whipped the car out of the garage and headed toward Richland Country Club. Spring was beautiful in this part of town, with the wide, hilly lawns, the centuries-old trees leafing out, languorously shading the huge, multilevel brick homes. Radnor Lake was only a few miles away. She used to take Josh there, to walk around the beautiful nature preserve. He’d hold her hand and pick up rocks for her to admire.
She wasn’t going to escape the memories of her son this morning, so she let them in and wiped her eyes carefully when she was finished.
She was nearly to the club when her cell beeped. She hadn’t noticed that there was a message—sometimes they got no reception in the house. She played the voicemail: Bobbie, her tennis date, had to cancel. She’d just gotten an emergency call from her daughter, who needed her to go babysit.