Chapter 40

Melender tried to process what her uncle said to Smith, but the words didn’t make sense. Even after hearing Jillian and Jared on the recording, she was sure Jesse had been buried where his body would never be recovered, casting suspicion on her forever.

“The little tyke’s final resting place was underneath his wife’s prized roses,” Smith said, the gun still resting comfortably in his hand.

“Cat’s got your tongue, Quentin?” Smith glanced at Melender, swung his gun toward Quentin, who tightened his lips into a firm line. “I get it. You don’t care to repeat it in front of the niece you threw to the wolves.”

Smith paced a few feet toward the only window, moving the faded curtain aside to peer out. “Your uncle wanted Jesse close by, though he was the only one who knew exactly where the body was buried. Well, except for me. After all, he doesn’t like to get his hands dirty, figuratively or literally.”

Melender hoped her face didn’t show revulsion. All these years, Jesse had been buried in the Thompson’s backyard. Another thought rolled through on the heels of that revelation. Jillian’s nightmare wasn’t a dream at all. Was Smith the man Jillian had seen taking Jesse out of the crib?

The truth was much uglier than anticipated. Once the recording came to light, Jillian would come to know she had accidentally killed her baby brother. When Melender set out to clear her name, she hadn’t wanted to destroy her cousin in the process.

“Got nothing to say, Harman?”

Smith’s question jerked Melender out of her thoughts. “About what?”

“Surely you know by now your uncle orchestrated the events leading to your arrest and conviction.” Smith waved his gun as he spoke. “What punishment should Quentin get for his role in putting the blame for Jesse’s disappearance on you?”

Melender turned to look at Quentin, but he stood with his body angled away from her. Her pulse quickened at the slump of her uncle’s shoulders and the scent of despair permeating the shed. From her prison experience, hopelessness made people do the unexpected, often with disastrous results.

“Quentin paid your attorney to put up a minimal defense and funnel inside trial information to him. Then your uncle prepped the family witnesses to testify in a way designed to put you behind bars.” Smith’s voice had an admiring tone. “I knew Quentin could be devious in his business dealings, but I had no idea how diabolical his mind worked until I got a firsthand glimpse during your trial. It was a masterful handling of the case. And no one suspected a thing. Especially with Ruby wailing and gnashing her teeth at you for killing her baby boy. Truly a work of art.”

Hearing about her uncle’s machinations turned her stomach, but Smith’s adulation for Quentin’s shenanigans poured acid on her churning insides.

“After you served your sentence and came back here,” Smith continued, “you started poking around, wanting to find out what happened. I knew it was only a matter of time before you picked apart the flimsy evidence that sent you away.”

“Quentin called you to clean things up once and for all,” Melender interjected.

“By Jove, she’s got it.” Smith touched the side of the gun to his forehead in a mock salute. “I told Quentin you had brains as well as beauty. You and your boyfriend nearly figured everything out. If Jared hadn’t panicked, the cops would still be in the dark.”

“You leave my son out of this,” Quentin snapped, turning to face Smith.

Smith snorted, derision tightening the lines of his face. “All you rich people are alike. Covering up for your offspring.”

As the two men argued about Jared, Melender shifted, her shoulders aching from her wrists being secured behind her back. She tried to reposition on the plastic sacks, but with her feet bound, she slipped onto the dusty floor, and her hands brushed against something hard. Rotating her shoulders up and down brought her fingers into contact with the object. Tentatively, she explored the outline. Gardening shears. Maybe she could maneuver the shears enough to cut the plastic ties around her wrists. To even attempt it, she would need to distract the men from her movements. Fanning their animosity toward each other ought to work.

She broke into their argument. “It wasn’t Jared who brought the cops to the Thompson house with a search warrant.”

Both men turned to stare at her.

“What are you talking about?” Smith narrowed his eyes.

Swallowing hard, Melender looked from one to the other. “The recording.”

“What recording?” Smith stalked a few steps closer to her.

Melender jutted her chin toward her uncle. “The one in Jesse’s blue bunny.”

“How did you get the stuffed rabbit?” Smith said.

“I don’t know. It was sent to my house anonymously.”

Smith whipped the gun in Quentin’s direction. “You sent her the kid’s stuffed animal?” His threatening tone caused Melender to draw back against the fertilizer bags.

She took advantage of Smith’s distraction to wiggle her body down into the crevice in between the stacked bags. Her fingers grazed the closed clippers. Another shimmy, and she managed to grasp the shears by the handle. Straightening, she paused to check on Quentin and Smith.

“I don’t owe you any explanation.” Quentin’s voice lacked its usual bluster.

“Oh, I think you do.” Smith aimed the gun straight at Quentin’s head. “I repeat. What recording?”

Quentin shook his head. “I don’t know anything about a recording.” Smith took another step closer to him, and her uncle raised his hands. “Yes, I sent the bunny to Melender to scare her into giving up the search. But I swear, I don’t know what she’s talking about.”

Smith swiveled to face Melender, his gun now pointed at her head. “You’d better start talking. Fast.”

Melender gripped the shears as tight as she could to avoid dropping them. When she did so, she discovered the clippers had a release button that kept the blades locked into place. “The bunny had a recording device inside.”

“What?” Quentin raised his eyebrows, his face the picture of confusion.

“Keep going,” Smith growled.

“It was voice activated and recorded up to twenty hours before recording over itself.” She drew in a breath to steady her nerves. She needed to keep talking while she figured out how to cut the plastic tie on her wrists. Pitching her voice low and soothing, she continued. “The police discovered it when they X-rayed the bunny.”

“The police.” Smith spat out the word like a curse. “What was on the recording?”

Melender found the release button on the shears and flicked it up. The blades separated with a soft click, but both men stayed focused on each other. “The night of Jesse’s death.”

Quentin staggered backwards as if punched in the gut. He blindly reached behind him and bumped into a stack of rakes, which clattered to the floor. “That’s not possible.”

“You’re lying,” Smith snarled, his gun trained on Melender.

“I’m not.” She kept her body hunched to portray submission. “The recording is at a Fairfax County Police lab. The detective called the Commonwealth’s attorney to let her know what they’d found.”

Smith shrugged. “At this point, it really doesn’t matter.” He refocused his attention on her uncle. “You have made a mess of this whole thing—and now I have to clean it up. I never should have agreed to your plan in the first place. Too many variables.”

“But it worked.” Quentin had recovered, some of the color returning to his face. “She took the blame, and no one suspected anything.”

“Until Harman got out of prison and started poking her nose around.” Smith narrowed his eyes. “We wouldn’t be in this position had we gone with my plan all those years ago.”

Melender didn’t like the look in Smith’s eyes, which had dropped to an even darker shade of mean. She’d seen that look often enough in the eyes of fellow prisoners right before an attack on another inmate. Trying to keep her upper body as still as possible, she held her wrists as far apart as she could, ignoring the plastic bands that cut into her skin. Then she worked the shear blades into place, hoping she had calculated the proper position between the plastic bands.

“What are you saying?” Quentin’s question drew Smith’s attention back to him.

“She’s a loose end that needs snipping.” Smith kept the gun at waist level but no longer pointing directly at Melender. “I should have ignored your instructions and capped her when this whole thing went down originally, but no, you didn’t want her dead. You wanted her locked away. But see? If we’d done it my way, we wouldn’t be in this mess today.”

Melender stretched her fingers around the handles and squeezed. The blades closed, but the plastic tie didn’t snap. She’d positioned the blades in the wrong place. Smith and Quentin continued to argue while she maneuvered the shears into position again. Please God, let this work. The blades met with resistance as they closed, and she summoned all the strength she could muster in her hands and applied more pressure on the handles. The plastic snapped with a soft ping. Thank you, Jesus.

She didn’t change her body’s position even though her shoulders screamed for her to relax them. Keeping her hands behind her back to give the illusion of being restrained, she locked the shear blades closed. Her hands might be free, but her feet were still bound. Getting her ankle restraints snipped would be impossible to manage without the men noticing.

“We’re doing it my way.” In one fluid motion, Smith swung the gun toward Melender.

The deadly intent in his eyes registered a split second before she acted. Melender brought her hands around to the front and dove over the back of the fertilizer pile as a shot rang out.