The Bones She Buried: A completely gripping, heart-stopping crime thriller(89)

“What in God’s name are you talking about?” Laura cried.

“Laura,” Noah said, shooting her a look that said be quiet.

“She didn’t tell you what it was, did she? That’s why you couldn’t find it. She wasn’t lucid, so she told you she buried it. That’s why you had her out in the yard with a shovel, isn’t it? What were you going to do with it when you found it?”

“Shut up,” Grady said.

“Is this true, Grady?” Laura whimpered.

Josie said, “I’m thinking you were going to use it to blackmail Mr. Sutton. That would have paid off your gambling debts, wouldn’t it?”

“Grady,” Laura said, her voice small.

Grady said, “Laura was being groomed to take over the company. I was trying to protect her. If something like that came out, it would ruin Sutton Stone Enterprises.”

“Oh my God, Grady.” Tears streaked Laura’s face.

“Colette was getting worse. She would have popped off about it eventually to the wrong person. I had to stop her.”

“You son of a bitch,” Noah said.

“Did you go there with the intention of killing her?” Gretchen asked. “Or did you just want the evidence?”

“I never meant to kill her,” he said.

But Josie didn’t believe it for a second. She also didn’t believe he’d been protecting Laura’s position at Sutton Stone. “Grady,” she said. “You’re under arrest for the murder of Colette Fraley.”

Before she could finish reading him his rights, he lunged forward and grabbed Laura’s upper arm, yanking her to him, his chest pressed tightly against her back, his arm wrapped around her neck. With his free hand he fumbled on the counter behind him until his hand touched the butcher’s block. Beside Josie, Gretchen drew her weapon and shouted for him to freeze. But his fingers had already found the handle of the largest knife in the block. The room erupted into shouts as he unsheathed it and pressed the point against Laura’s distended belly.

“Grady, stop,” Noah yelled. He stood on his good leg, using the back of his chair for support.

Josie said, “Don’t do this. Put the knife down.”

Laura sobbed in his arms. “Grady, what are you doing? Stop. You’re going to hurt the baby. Grady, please. Stop this. Don’t hurt the baby.”

Gretchen kept her weapon trained on him. “Put the knife down and move away from her.”

Josie raised both her hands in the air. She reached over and pressed down on the barrel of Gretchen’s gun, easing it downward so it pointed to the floor. It wasn’t a clean shot anyway, not even at close range. Too much could go wrong, and Josie wasn’t willing to risk killing Laura or the baby—or both. “Noah, sit down,” she instructed.

From her periphery she saw his fists clenching and unclenching. “Please,” Josie said. “Sit.”

He glared at Grady for a long moment before sitting back down on the chair. Still, Josie could feel the tension rolling off him in waves. She took a step toward Grady, but he needled the point of the knife harder into Laura’s belly, causing her to cry out. A tiny pinprick of blood bloomed on her shirt.

“Look at me, Grady,” Josie said.

“Shut up,” he yelled.

“Grady, look at me. I’m not armed. Gretchen’s not pointing a gun at you. No one here is a threat to you.”

“You came here to arrest me.”

“I did,” Josie said, keeping her voice calm, reasonable-sounding. “That’s my job. You know that. Listen, right now you’re in a lot of trouble, but I can help you.”

“Oh fuck you,” he spat. “That’s what all cops say right before they screw you over.”

“Well, sure, that’s true in a sense,” Josie said. “And if you weren’t holding a knife to your wife’s belly right now, I probably wouldn’t be inclined to help you, but it’s also my job to make sure innocent people don’t get hurt, you understand?”

His wild eyes flitted all over the room, but he nodded.

“I don’t want anyone to get hurt,” Josie said. “You know what I mean, right? Just like you didn’t want anyone to get hurt. That’s the truth, isn’t it, Grady? You never intended for anyone to get hurt.” She pointed to Laura who was sagging in his grip. “Especially not Laura or your baby.”

She didn’t even know if he realized he was doing it, but his head kept nodding along with her words.

“Everyone in this room knows you never meant to hurt anyone. Especially Colette. She was your mother-in-law. She was good to you, wasn’t she? Her sweet potato casserole that we had last year at Christmas dinner, that was your favorite, wasn’t it?”

“Stop,” he said, as tears glistened in his eyes.

Josie pressed on. “You knew that if Colette had something that incriminated Zachary Sutton—something as bad as what she was babbling on about—none of you would be safe once her dementia took hold. You knew the safest thing for all of you was to find whatever evidence she had for yourself so you could decide what the best thing to do was, didn’t you?”

“I wasn’t going to hurt her,” he said. “I swear. But when she wasn’t lucid, she didn’t make any damn sense. I only went there to find whatever it was she had. Laura was at an all-day work event. No one was going to know. I was just going to get it. That way even if she started saying all these crazy things, people would just think it was the dementia. I would have turned it over to the authorities, I swear.”