I cringed away up the bed until my back hit the headboard. It was hard to fathom someone so clearly psychotic.
“I’ve also staged a robbery or two in my time,” she continued, “and no lawman has ever suspected that it was me. I’m just a lonely old woman who’s had a series of tragic things happen to her, and this’ll be just one more. The police will come, they’ll look around, and they’ll tell me as I cry on their shoulders that it was probably some drugged-up junkie who broke in here, started rummaging around my murdered son’s stuff when my only grandchild and his girlfriend walked in, and he shot them both. Tragic stuff happens to good people all the time. Maybe they’ll even set up a fund to help me while I grieve.”
Cole hadn’t moved a muscle since his grandmother pulled out the gun, and while I trembled on the bed, he stood rigid and still. I didn’t know what was about to happen, but I prayed for Cole in that moment. With every ounce of me, I prayed that he could do or say something that would make her lower the gun.
What he said next came out slowly in an almost gentle tone. “Gram, do you remember last summer when I went to DC and took that future-agents-in-training seminar at Quantico?”
She didn’t answer him. Instead, she glared hard and raised the gun a little higher while her gaze focused on his chest. I thought she might’ve been aiming for his heart, which made me almost physically sick. She was considering shooting her grandson in the same place she’d shot her own son.
“Anyway,” Cole said, and I saw that his stance had suddenly relaxed, “the agents took us through some weapons training on the last day we were there. And the funny thing about that gun in your hand, Gram, is that it’s not going to hurt anybody.”
Her eyes narrowed and her lips thinned.
“Don’t believe me?” he said, widening his stance and crossing his arms. “Go ahead. Shoot me.”
Something awful glinted in Mrs. Spencer’s eyes and before I could even shout, “No!” she extended her arm slightly and pulled the trigger.
The gun clicked harmlessly.
She pulled the trigger again and caused it to click harmlessly a second time. Then again. And again, until Cole reached out and grabbed the barrel, twisting the muzzle up and away. With his other hand he pried it out of her fingertips and tossed it to the floor. Then he grabbed his grandmother and held her by both wrists.
Pulling her close to him he said, “You left the safety on, Gram. I’ll be sure to mention that to Detective Hasslett when he shows up.” Looking over his shoulder at me, he added, “Lily, could you get all the evidence together and the gun—use a sheet to pick it up so you don’t get your fingerprints on it—and head to the kitchen to call Detective Hasslett? Don’t tell anybody else but him what’s going on.”
With my heart still pounding hard in my chest, I hurried to do just that.
Several hours later, I sat in front of my own grandmother, my mother at my side, feeling nervous but determined.
“Well, Lily,” my grandmother said tersely. “What is this little meeting that you insisted we have together?”
I decided to go for the blunt truth. “I know about the lake house in Bumpass,” I said.
My grandmother’s eyes narrowed a bit. “What about it?”
“I know that David Bishop has been living there rent-free for the past thirty years, and that you’ve held that over my dad’s head as leverage as much as he’s held it over yours. It’d probably wreck your world to have it leak out that Dr. James Bennett cheated on his SAT scores and committed fraud to get into Yale. It could even lead to his medical license being revoked, right? And I bet it’d be even worse for you if it also leaked out that you knew about it, covered it up, and persuaded the police to blame Amber Greeley for the murder of Ben Spencer.”
Grandmother sat up and leaned forward angrily. “Such a petulant young lady,” she snarled. “What do you want, Lily?”
“I want you to make up with Dad,” I said. “I want you to stop trying to control all of us. I want you to talk him into settling the divorce with Mom so that we can move out of the guesthouse, and then I never, ever, ever want you to get involved in our business again.
“I don’t want to take over the Bennett enterprises,” I continued. “And I don’t want this estate or anything to do with it, except for one thing, which, to you, will probably be pretty small, but, to me, will mean everything.”