Chapter 6
The golf course was quiet when we got there.
Empty, except for a lone figure on the ninth green, leaning on a putter, staring out at the trees.
Harold.
Ethan and I walked across the grass toward him.
He heard us coming.
Turned.
His face crumpled when he saw Ethan’s black eye.
“Son,” he said, his voice breaking. “I’m so sorry. About your eye. About everything. She told me you’d left. That you’d run off with that girl.”
He looked at me.
His eyes were full of guilt.
“Lila,” he said. “I am so, so sorry about your mother.”
I stopped a few feet from him.
“You know she didn’t die in an accident,” I said.
It wasn’t a question.
Harold closed his eyes.
Nodded.
“I was driving,” he said.
The words hung in the air, heavy and terrible.
“It was raining,” he said. “Victoria had found out Eleanor was going to the DA. She made me follow her. Said we needed to ‘talk some sense into her.’ I pulled up next to her car at a stop sign. Tried to get her to roll down her window. She wouldn’t. I panicked. Hit her back bumper. Just a little tap. I didn’t mean… I didn’t think she’d lose control. She swerved. Hit the tree. I called 911. But it was too late.”
He was crying now.
Tears streaming down his face.
“Victoria told me to say I’d never been there. That if I told anyone, she’d take Ethan away. That she’d tell the police I’d done it on purpose. I was scared. I was so scared.”
Ethan stepped forward.
His face was hard.
But his voice was soft.
“Dad,” he said. “We have the ledgers. We have the police report your wife threatened her. We have the key to the safety deposit box. We’re going to take her down. But we need your help.”
Harold looked at him.
“Anything,” he said. “Name it.”
“First,” I said. “You need to call the bank. Tell them the hold on the safety deposit box is fraudulent. That the box belongs to my mom. That you’ll testify to it in court.”
“Done,” he said, pulling out his phone.
“Second,” Ethan said. “You need to write a full, signed affidavit. Admitting everything. The embezzlement. The accident. The cover-up. Everything Victoria made you do.”
Harold nodded.
“I will,” he said. “I’ll write it all down. Every last detail. I’ve been waiting twenty years to tell someone.”
He paused.
Looked at us.
“What happens to me?” he said.
Ethan and I exchanged a look.
We’d talked about this.
On the drive over.
“If you testify against her,” I said. “If you help us put her away for the rest of her life… we’ll tell the DA you cooperated. That you were under her control. That you’re willing to pay back every penny you stole. You’ll probably get probation. Maybe some jail time. But you won’t die in prison. Not like her.”
Harold let out a long, shaky breath.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
He called the bank right there.
Spoke to the manager.
Told him the hold was a mistake.
That box 714 belonged to Eleanor Carter, and that I had every right to access it.
Then he wrote the affidavit.
Sitting on a park bench by the clubhouse, using Ethan’s notebook and a pen he found in his golf bag.
He wrote for an hour.
Page after page.
Detailing every crime.
Every threat.
Every moment of guilt he’d carried for two decades.
When he was done, he signed it.
Dated it.
Handed it to me.
“Thank you,” I said.
He shook his head.
“Thank you,” he said. “For giving me a chance to make this right.”
We were halfway back to the car when Harold’s phone rang.
He answered it.
His face went white.
“It’s the hospital,” he said. “Victoria… she had a heart attack. She’s in the ER.”
We ran to the car.
Drove as fast as we could to the hospital.
My mind was racing.
This couldn’t be happening.
Not now.
Not when we were so close.
We ran into the ER.
A nurse met us at the desk.
“Victoria Hale?” she said. “She’s in room 302. Stable. But she’s asking for her husband and son.”
We took the elevator up.
The door to room 302 was slightly ajar.
We stopped outside.
And heard Victoria’s voice.
Cold.
Sharp.
Fully awake.
“You idiot,” she was saying to someone. “You were supposed to make it look like an accident. You nearly killed him. If he talks, we’re both done. I don’t care how much it costs. Finish the job tonight. Before he signs anything else.”
I looked at Ethan.
Looked at Harold.
Harold’s face was ashen.
She hadn’t had a heart attack at all.
She’d lured him here.
To kill him.
Before he could testify.
Ethan pushed the door open.
Victoria was sitting up in the hospital bed, phone pressed to her ear.
A man in a black leather jacket stood by the window.
The same man who’d been outside the bank.
The same man who’d thrown the brick through Marge’s window.
They both froze when they saw us.
“Security!” Ethan yelled. “Call security!”
The man ran for the door.
Shouldered past us, down the hall.
Victoria threw her phone at the wall.
“You,” she snarled at Harold. “You ungrateful little worm. I gave you everything. And you betray me for them?”
Two security guards ran into the room.
Followed by a nurse.
“Arrest her,” Ethan said, pointing at Victoria. “She just tried to have my father murdered. I heard her. We all heard her.”
The guards looked at each other.
Then at Victoria.
At the phone smashed on the floor.
At the way she was shaking with rage.
One of them pulled out his radio.
“Need the police up here,” he said. “Now.”
Victoria lunged at me.
The guards grabbed her, held her back.
“I’ll kill you!” she screamed at me. “I’ll kill you both! That ring is mine! The box is mine! You’ll never win!”
I looked at her.
Really looked at her.
For the first time, I didn’t see a powerful, scary woman.
I saw a small, sad, broken person.
Who’d spent her whole life hurting people to get what she wanted.
And now it was all slipping away.
“I already won,” I said.
May you like
And for the first time in my life.
I meant it.
