Page 119 of Take Your Breath Away

“Go on,” Hardy said.

“And as we’ve been getting closer, and I’ve kind of opened up to her more, I told her how worried I’ve been about my mother, how she was going to die without ever knowing what happened to my sister. Whether Brie was alive or dead. Whether someone had killed her or she’d gone off and found a new life for herself, for whatever reason. I mean, the questions that tormented my mother are the same ones that have tormented Isabel and me, but maybe one day we’ll get some kind of answer. It wasn’t likely my mother was going to have one before she died.”

Hardy slowly nodded, like she knew where this was headed.

“And so … I had this idea,” Albert said. “What if … what if my mother could die with some hope?”

“An illusion of hope,” Hardy said.

“Yes, that’s fair,” Albert said. “At one point, early on, I’d wondered about whether to send a fake letter to my mother, as if it were from Brie, but my mother’s always been something of a skeptic. She worked in the news business, and she was always the type of person who needed convincing, evidence, you know? She probably made a lot of reporters’ lives hell, demanding they nail down their sources, get more confirmation, that kind of thing. So I knew my mother would take some convincing when it came to tricking her into thinking Brie was alive.”

“Okay,” Hardy said.

“I told Candace there needed to be witnesses. People who could claim to have seen Brie. Maybe Isabel, or her husband. Or others Brie knew. Maybe even, if there was a way, for Elizabeth to see her in the hospital. But then Candace had this idea, a way of kind of kicking it up a notch.”

“And what was that?”

“Well, like I said, I’d told her the whole story, including how the cops, like you, always thought it might be Andy who killed her, you know? I’ve never been as sure as my sister that he had anything to do with it, but Candace was, like, maybe there’s a way to give my mother some peace of mind and shake up Andy at the same time. Get some idea of whether he was guilty or not by how he reacted.”

“And how did she propose to do that?”

“She’d do one of her appearances as Brie on his turf—well, his former turf. Show up where he used to live. Get seen by people who’d alert him.”

“Someone like … Brie’s old neighbor. Max.”

“Yes,” Albert said. “Candace had this idea of showing up in her car with groceries, then freaking out that her house was gone. I’d told her that the house had been sold, torn down, a new one built on the site. I thought it was too risky, but she was getting so excited about the role, really thought she could pull it off. That she could show up, then take off before anyone could really figure out what was going on.”

“That part worked,” the detective said. “How about the plan to rattle Andy?”

Albert shrugged. “I guess we wouldn’t really see how that part would play out. That’d be where you come in.”

Hardy’s nod was one of understanding, not approval.

“Anyway,” Albert said, “we thought an extra appearance or two would really bring it home when it came to convincing my mother. So Candace appeared in the hospital parking lot, which would fool Isabel and Norman. More real witnesses. Then finish it off with something big, by appearing at the hospital in the middle of the night. By that point, I figured, even someone as hard to convince as my mother would believe Brie really was alive.”

“Audacious,” Hardy said.

“I suppose. How she got in and out of the hospital at night without being seen—I don’t know how she did it. Oh Jesus, I can’t believe it.”

He clapped a hand over his mouth, stifling a cry. After a moment, he continued. “I think, in a way, that our mother passed yesterday because she’d found peace. She let herself go, because she believed Brie was alive. It didn’t matter that she didn’t know why Brie had disappeared, why she’d been missing for six years. It was enough to know that she wasn’t dead.”

Albert sighed and bowed his head. “Because that’s what I’ve always believed, and still do, that she’s dead. But if Mother could die believing something different, I thought that was a good thing.”

“And you were saying your sister didn’t know. Does she now?”

Albert shook his head. “No. And no. I didn’t want anyone else to be in on the plan because they might have given it away, told Mother by accident.”

“So you’ve given her some false hope, as well.”

“I was going to explain it to Isabel later, hoping she’d understand I … I was well intentioned. But I don’t understand. How could what we did end up getting Candace killed?”

“You let the genie out of the bottle,” Hardy said. “The law of unintended consequences.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You start out intending to do one thing, and end up causing something else to happen. Mr. McBain, creating the impression that Brie was still among us may have comforted your mother, but it clearly unsettled someone else.”

“Last night,” he said, “she told me she thought maybe someone was following her. I think maybe she was being paranoid, on edge, you know? But before she came to the Mo—”