Page 70 of Poison Apple Crisp
Rachelle closes her eyes a moment. “I hated that nickname.”
“Because she was close to exposing you, wasn’t she?”
Her eyes flash like fire, and Thirteen does his best to pounce onto her but ends up leaping right through her body instead.
Rachelle bucks as she clutches her chest. “Look, Lottie, I don’t know who you spoke to but—”
“I didn’t speak to anyone. Besides, the only person who knows your secret is dead. That is why you poisoned her, isn’t it,Irene?”
A sharp gasp comes from her.
I take a bold step forward. “You broke into my house, didn’t you? It wasyouwho stole that book from my living room.”
She shakes her head. “I had to do it, Lottie. I needed something from it.”
“That envelope. You wrote that ransom note, didn’t you?”
“Oh my God.” She glances to the woods to our right.
“That’s right, I know. And so does Detective Noah Fox. That’s what Brenda had on you, isn’t it? She knew you were Desmond Meadows’ girlfriend, and that you came to Honey Hollow and changed your identity in hopes to start a whole new life.”
“Ididstart a new life,” she riots. “I have everything I could ever want now. A perfect husband, a son by marriage, a wholesome new beginning. But Brenda had to dig until she uncovered the truth, and then she made my life pure hell from there.”
“How in the world did she discover it?”
Rachelle’s chest bucks. “She was a quicker study than you, Lottie. She came over one afternoon, and I found her fishing around in my private things. She found that signed copy. She saw my picture, and she put two and two together long before you ever did.”
“What about the envelope? How did she miss that?”
“I don’t know. She shoved that thing in her safe so fast maybe she never opened it again. All I know is that she used what she knew and turned my new life into an even bigger hell than the last.”
“What happened to Robin Meadows? What did you do with that woman’s body? You owe it to everyone to set the record straight.”
“I don’t owe anything to anyone.”
“What about those little boys of hers? Don’t you think they deserve to know what happened to their mother?” My voice hikes a notch as she wraps her arms around herself and closes her eyes.
“They don’t want to hear the truth, Lottie. It was grisly what he did to her. I wasn’t there. Nobody would believe me. Desmond called me after he dismembered her body. He wouldn’t tell me what we were throwing away, but once I saw the red tinge on the bags, I knew. Iknewhe was a monster, and I wanted to get away right then and there. And I ran. As for him, he was dead within months.” She shudders. “My fatal error was hauling that stupid book with me all the way to Vermont. I never should have touched it. I should have burned it along with that ridiculous ransom note.” She nods to the woods. “It was Desmond’s idea that we try to siphon some money from Robin’s mother. She’s a wealthy woman. We just needed some cash to live off for a while. He figured he’d never see his kids again. And he regretted everything right away. He really wasn’t a bad person. But we never got that far. We should have destroyed the letter.”
My hand touches my stomach. “I’m a mother now myself, Irene. And I have no sympathy for the devil.” I think on it a moment. “For you, though, I do. You were desperate to get that book back. I bet you were sorely disappointed when you saw that the envelope was missing.”
A dark laugh strums from her.
Thirteen floats by her head. “Oh dear, Lottie. Do run. Haven’t we been here a touch too many times? Clearly, she’s losing her mind.”
Rachelle,Irene, steps my way, forcing me to back up a notch.
“I didn’t need the book anymore. But the person who the sheriff’s department will arrest for Brenda’s murder—she did need it.”
A breath hitches in my throat. “You framed Cokie, didn’t you? You donated those crime fiction books. That’s where the box came from in her office. She wasn’t lying.” I glance back at the gym. “They’re in there interrogating her right now. You tipped the detectives off, didn’t you?”
A smile flickers in the dark. “Now you’re catching on.” She takes a few steps my way, and I match her steps as I move backward. “I’m sorry, Lottie. But I have a nice life in Honey Hollow. I wasn’t going to let Brenda ruin it, and I’m not going to let you ruin it either.”
Her brooch catches the moonlight, and the green mask of goo over the apple reveals it for what it’s supposed to be—a poisoned apple.
“You put the cyanide in Brenda’s apple crisp. Where did you get it?” I shake my head. “That’s not an easy substance to come by, I take it.” Not that I would know. It’s nothing I’ve added to my shopping list as of late.
“I went apple picking the week before. A family trip. My husband and our son. It was a beautiful afternoon. And then I baked an apple pie. I mined the cores for the seeds. Each apple yielded about ten seeds. Did you know it takes ingesting over two hundred seeds to be lethal for a human being? Roughly twenty apples is all it took. I ground them to mulch and sprinkled them over your apple crisp. It was so perfect. It was almost as if we had coordinated our efforts.”