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Chapter 52
52
Rose is standing outside her mom’s front door. Her mother has been calling her, but Rose hasn’t answered. She really doesn’t want to talk to her, but she knows she must. She rings the bell.
Her mother opens the door, visibly upset. “I’m glad you’re here. I’ve been trying to reach you.”
“I know, I was tied up,” Rose lies.
“The police were here,” her mother tells her.
“What?”
“About Fred and Sheila’s murders.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Rose asks, thrown off balance, following her into the living room, where she sees her mother has a glass of wine poured. As her mother explains, Rose feels her anxiety escalate.
“Just because I knew that Fred was going to change his will, giving half to Audrey, they had the gall to suggest I did it—to protect your interest. I didn’t even know you were in the will! They asked me if I had an alibi.”
“They can’t be serious,” Rose protests as she sits down beside her.
“Fortunately, Barbara was here all night.” Her mother turns to her and says, “They were asking about you too. But I told them you didn’t even know Fred was your father till after he was dead. You didn’t know about the will either.”
Rose remembers with a sickening feeling how the detectives questioned her about the murder. “I went home to bed after Easter dinner with you,” Rose says. “I don’t have an alibi.” She feels light-headed.
Her mother tries to reassure her. “Well, I wouldn’t worry. There’s no way they can suspect you. You didn’t know anything.” Her mother asks, “Have you spoken to Catherine yet?”
But Rose isn’t listening. Her insides are clenched in a knot.
“Rose?” her mother says sharply.
She looks up at her mother and says, “There’s something I have to tell you.”
• • •back at the police station, Reyes and Barr are approached by an officer who has something to show them. He seems excited. He and Barr follow the officer to a computer monitor and they all look at the screen.
“I’ll be damned,” Reyes says. He claps the officer on the back. “Good work.”
• • •once her daughter has left, Ellen paces the living room, horrified about Rose and the terrible thing she’s done. When Rose told her about the mess she’d gotten herself into with Dan’s money, she simply couldn’t believe it. She’d been struck dumb, literally unable to speak for a long moment.
Ellen hadn’t been as supportive as she might have been. But—how could Rose be so selfish? So reckless? So stupid? It was completely unlike her. This wasn’t the Rose she knew. She finally understood why her daughter had been so stressed, why she had lost weight. She’s so angry at her. And she told her how disappointed she was.
Ellen has always taken a great deal of pride in Rose, in being her mother. But people are going to find out about this. Rose will probably go to jail—not for too long—but the thought of visiting her daughter in jail makes Ellen feel utterly humiliated. Everyone will know what she did. She won’t be able to practice law anymore, after she worked so hard. And Ellen will forever be ashamed of her. She won’t be able to say that her daughter is an attorney. Her daughter is a criminal, and she won’t be able to say anything at all.
Now, as Ellen cries, tears running down her face, a small part of her wishes she hadn’t been so harsh with Rose, wishes that she’d hugged her daughter before she left, the way she always does. But she hadn’t. This is going to be hard to forgive. She needs time.
She continues to pace, with a detour into the kitchen to refill her wineglass. At least Rose will get her inheritance. She’ll be able to start over, once she gets out of jail. They will probably have to move away—how could either of them hold their heads up after this? It would have been so lovely if Rose hadn’t broken the law, and she inherited all that money. She could have had everything she wanted. Ellen could have been so proud of her.
She knows, too, now, that they have already questioned Rose about the murders—Rose admitted it. She is going to be charged with fraud. But those detectives can’t seriously think Rose had anything to do with the murders; it won’t matter that she doesn’t have an alibi. Rose didn’t know she was in the will.
She never thought Rose could be remotely capable of stealing someone else’s money. She remembers that awful detective’s last words to her: Maybe you don’t know your daughter as well as you think you do.
Ellen can’t stop thinking about what she read online about psychopathy, and how it can run in families. She thinks about the Mertons. Her Rose is now part of that family. What if one of them is the murderer? She knows Audrey has always thought so.
Audrey may never speak to her again, and this pains her. She had hoped their long friendship could weather the revelation of Rose’s parentage.
Then it crosses her mind that if one of the other Merton children is convicted of the murders, they will forfeit their share, and there will be more for Rose.
• • •it was inevitable, Rose thinks, sitting once again in the hard chair in the same interview room, her attorney beside her, concerned. As evening approaches, the two detectives question her aggressively. She’d hoped Janet wouldn’t say anything, that no one would find the connection. But here she is, and the detectives have already spoken to Janet.
“You knew you were in the will, Janet Shewcuk told you,” Reyes repeats. “You lied to us.”
“Yes, I knew,” Rose admits finally, exhausted. “But I didn’t kill them.”
“You don’t have an alibi,” Reyes points out. “You needed money to pay Dan back so that you wouldn’t go to jail for fraud. Is that what you were thinking? That if Fred and Sheila were dead, and everybody got their inheritance, you could pay him back, and no one would be the wiser? Or, more likely, if the money didn’t come through from the estate in time, and they found out what you’d done with Dan’s money, they would just keep it quiet and let you pay him back and forgive you, because you’re family?”
“I didn’t kill them,” Rose repeats stubbornly. But fear has crept down her throat and settled in her gut.
