Missing Pieces(85)

“Jack,” she managed to croak.

A figure stepped into her line of vision and Margaret Dooley’s plump, pleasant face leaned over her.

“She’s awake,” Margaret reported to someone that Sarah couldn’t see. Margaret’s voice sounded hollow and far away. She turned back to Sarah and murmured something that Sarah couldn’t understand.

“I can’t hear you,” Sarah said. Her lips were chapped. Her mouth was dry.

“From the shotgun blasts,” Sheriff Gilmore said loudly, stepping into view. “It’s just temporary. It should improve in time.”

“Jack?” Sarah asked again.

“In surgery,” Margaret said. “He’s going to be okay,” she added quickly.

Sarah closed her eyes and breathed out a sigh of relief. He was going to be okay. Jack had been innocent all along. It was Celia who had brought so much pain and loss to the family, and Jack was just another one of her victims.

“I’ll go get you some water,” Margaret said, and left the room.

Gilmore pulled up a chair next to the left side of Sarah’s bed where she could see him with her uninjured eye. “That’s going to take some time to figure out.”

“Is she dead?”

“Yes.”

“I tried to get the gun away from her, but it must have gone off.” Gilmore looked down at her with his cool, unreadable gaze. Sarah knew she should have felt relief or even regret for nearly taking the life of another human being. But she didn’t. She felt nothing.

“You didn’t shoot Celia,” Gilmore said. He rubbed his chin and for the first time Sarah noticed the gray stubble on his chin, the deep grooves of exhaustion that lined his eyes. “Jack was able to get the shotgun away from her and hit her with it. She was knocked to the floor and struck her head on the concrete. She died during surgery.”

Margaret stepped back into the room with a plastic cup filled with ice water in her hand. She came to Sarah’s bedside, pressed the control on the bed to slowly raise Sarah’s head and held the cup while Sarah took a small sip from the straw. The cold water felt good on her throat. Margaret set the cup down and pulled up a chair next to Gilmore. “After we met at the library, you never called me like you said you were going to. I tried to get ahold of you and you didn’t answer. Finally, I called the sheriff, told him that you were planning on going to Celia and Dean’s.”

“You owe Margaret here your life,” Gilmore said seriously. “It took some convincing, but Margaret is persistent. She told me how you thought the three blind mice from the emails were the farmers’ wives. John and Lydia, Hal and Julia, Dean and Celia.”

Sarah nodded, pain coursed through her head and she gave a small cry.

“Do you want me to call a nurse?” Margaret asked in alarm.

“No, no, I’m fine,” Sarah insisted. She knew the pain medication would cause her to become sleepy and she wanted to know what had really happened.

“Well,” Margaret went on, “after you left the library I realized that Celia wasn’t the final farmer’s wife. You were.”

“Me?” Sarah gave a small laugh. “I’m not a farmer’s wife.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Gilmore said, taking up the story. “Technically, the farm belongs to Jack and Amy. Dean and Celia just rented the house and the land from Julia.”

“But Celia wasn’t ever a suspect,” Sarah recalled. “She was only, what? Fifteen or sixteen years old?”

“A very disturbed fifteen-year-old,” Gilmore said.

Sarah thought a moment. “Celia put the watch on my windshield to make everyone think that John was back.”

“Or to make everyone think that Jack put it there, or Amy. She didn’t care as long as it didn’t point back to her. Remember, Jack was our number-one suspect for a time and Amy, well, Amy’s had a troubled past.”

“All along she was the one sending me the emails.” Sarah gave a small laugh. “Some investigative reporter I am.”

“Don’t feel too badly. Celia was living right here in town for decades and I didn’t know what she was capable of, either.”

“She lured me down to the cellar to make it look like Jack attacked me and I shot him in self-defense.”

“That way both you and Jack are dead, out of the way.” Gilmore stood. “By the way, when you get a chance, you should call that newspaper man from Montana. He’s pretty worried about you. He’s called here about ten times in the past twenty-four hours.”

Sarah remembered one of her last conversations with Gabe. “He told me something about Lydia’s murder not being a spur-of-the-minute killing—that it was planned. How did he know that?”

Gilmore crossed his arms in front of his chest. “There were traces of rat poison in Lydia’s system. Not enough to kill her. At the time we thought John had first tried to poison her and then ended up bludgeoning her to death when that didn’t work. Obviously we were wrong. She was slowly being poisoned just like Julia—three blind mice,” Gilmore said grimly.

Sarah thought of Elizabeth and Emma and tried to sit up. “What about the girls? Did anyone call Elizabeth and Emma? Do they know that we’re going to be okay?”

“I hope you don’t mind,” Margaret said almost shyly. “I called them and told them what happened. I told them you both are going to be just fine.”