Thick as Thieves(99)

The back door was locked, as she’d left it. That, too, boded well. She used her key and slipped inside. She smiled at the basket of dyed Easter eggs in the center of the table. She’d promised Arden that tomorrow they would bake a layered coconut cake using the recipe written in their mother’s hand.

Please, God, for Arden’s sake, let Dad go one day without drinking.

With that prayer, she silently climbed the stairs and went into her bedroom. It couldn’t have gone any better, even taking into account that stupid confab Rusty had conducted in the ditch. She had left the house undetected, and had returned undetected.

She would figure out a way to get her money from Rusty sooner rather than later, but so far, so good.





Chapter 39



By the time Lisa had finished, Arden’s knuckles had turned white, and she had to pry her fingers open in order to let go of the chair back. She looked over at Ledge. Throughout Lisa’s account, he hadn’t moved, either.

Her voice husky with emotion, she said to him, “You should have told me.”

“She should have told you.”

“But since she hadn’t—”

“God knows I wanted to.”

“But you couldn’t without giving yourself away.”

“That’s not why,” he said, looking pained that she would think that. “You had lost your baby. You have no other family. I didn’t want to be the one who messed up what you have with her.”

She held his steady blue gaze, then looked at Lisa, who sat with head bent. If she’d heard their exchange, she gave no sign of it. Arden said, “Lisa, what were you thinking?”

Lisa pushed the fingers of both hands up through her hair and held it back for several seconds before letting it go. It resettled like a curtain framing her face. The hardness of her expression defied them to censure her.

“I was thinking how badly we could use that money to get us out of the red. I was thinking how helpful it would be to have that cash squirreled away when you became my responsibility, which was inevitable, considering the rate of Dad’s decline. I was thinking that I was protecting you from Rusty’s clutches as well as securing a better future for you.”

“And you.”

“All right, and me!” she shouted. “And why not?”

Then, reining in her temper and her tone, she said, “Dad wasn’t providing. I was a college student with no income. The state could have taken you away. Would you have rather been placed in foster care?”

Arden rounded the chair and sat down. “Did you make up the part about Foster’s phone call, catching Dad with the money bag?”

“No,” she exclaimed. “My encounter with him here in the kitchen happened exactly as I described it. Everything Dad did after that phone call from Foster was just as I’ve told you, except that he was doing damage control for me, not for himself.

“Having recovered the money, he urged me to turn myself in. Giving back the money and turning state’s witness against my accomplices might prevent me from being charged. Besides, that would be the right and moral thing to do, he said. Also, as a witness to Foster’s death, he had an obligation to report it to the authorities.

“Of course, he was right on all scores. But in all honesty, his appeal to my conscience didn’t affect my decision as much as learning that Rusty had had a hand in Foster’s dying, whether or not he’d killed him outright. That shook me because it gave backbone to his threats toward you. He wasn’t just a smarmy, spoiled brat. He was sick. Psycho. Evil. My worst transgression, even above the theft, was my na?veté regarding his depravity.

“So I agreed with Dad. However, he and I knew better than to call the sheriff’s department. Dad told me that he would call the Texas Rangers, maybe even the FBI. But he suggested that we wait until daylight. He wanted to clean himself up, get cold sober and clear-headed. He said we had to place ourselves in the best possible bargaining position for my clemency.

“He told me to go upstairs and try to sleep. He held my face between his hands and apologized for all his shortcomings. He blamed himself for driving me to commit a crime, and told me he would make certain the authorities understood that desperation had led me to do it. He kissed my forehead.

“Obediently I went to my room. I was nervous and frightened. Even if I surrendered and threw myself on the mercy of the law, there was still a chance I would go to prison.”

She reflected for a moment, then shook off her pensiveness and shifted her position in the chair. “I never saw Dad again. He’d seemed so contrite over his failings. There were even tears standing in his eyes. It never occurred to me that his mea culpa was a ploy.”

No one said anything; then Ledge prefaced speaking by clearing his throat. “When did you discover that he was gone?”

Lisa looked at him, then at Arden. “When Rusty nearly beat down the door looking for him.”

“You’re lying.”

“Rusty was here that night?” Arden asked.

She and Ledge had spoken in unison, but it was his accusation of lying that Lisa addressed. “I’m not lying! I was in my room, but it was a ridiculous notion that I could sleep. When the pounding on the door started, I was afraid it was lawmen, here to arrest me.” She looked at Ledge. “I thought perhaps you’d done as Rusty had feared, that you had turned on the rest of us to save your own skin.”