CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

I wake up in a hospital bed. I have been cleaned and bandaged and dressed in a gown. My head still feels furry but far less so than before, and judging by the slight euphoria that accompanies it, I believe it's the painkillers and not any injury that causes me to feel this way.

I lift my head and find Detective Donnelly standing at the window, looking out across the city. He's talking to someone on his phone. "They were able to find the artifacts Lila Benson referred to in her notes. It turns out there was a hidden compartment in the fountain in the courtyard, inside the rock." He chuckles. "Yeah, the angry Moses fountain." After a pause, he says, "Hell if I know. He was probably just eccentric. A lot of these rich people aren't right in the head."

I stir, and Donnelly turns to me. "Hold on, she's waking up. I'll call you back." He hangs up and comes to me, sitting next to my bed and smiling tenderly as he takes my hand. "Hey there, Miss Wilcox. How are you feeling?"

"I've been worse."

He chuckles. "Yeah, I guess you have. That was a brave thing you did back there. I feel obligated to tell you it was also a stupid thing, but it was brave too."

"Those two things go together a lot, don't they," I remark.

He laughs again. "So they do. I have to ask, though. Why didn't you come to us first?"

"I did."

His smile fades, and his eyes move away from mine. "Yeah. You did."

He hesitates, and I can see him weighing whether or not to explain to me why they didn't have enough to act on the first time. In the end, he decides only to say, "I'm sorry for that. Still, if you find yourself in a position like this again, you need to go to the authorities. Actually, you need to remove yourself from the situation, then go to the authorities."

I sigh and push myself to a sitting position. He quickly helps me, and when I'm settled, he offers me some water. I sip it gratefully, then meet his eyes. "I don't mean to disparage you or your profession, Detective, but that doesn't always work."

"It almost always works better than vigilantism."

Almost always isn't good enough, I think, but don't say. It's not nearly good enough.

I don't want to argue that point right now, though. It's not a debate I'll win with a veteran law enforcement officer. Instead, I ask, "Will the family face justice for concealing her death? Will they be punished for their crimes?"

He sighs. "I don't think there are any crimes we can charge them with."

I stare at him in shock. "You must be joking! They covered up a murder on their estate!"

"Elizabeth did," he replies, "and probably James. Annabelle clearly knew nothing about the murder, and I doubt the son did either. As for the parents, the pudding is in the proof, and we don't have any. We can probably convince a jury that Elizabeth covered the murder, but even a public defender would be able to sell a jury on not guilty by insanity."

"So she'll be committed, at least?"

He chuckles bitterly. "Yeah, for a few months in a resort that calls itself a mental hospital where everyone will express their deepest sympathies at the trauma she's endured."

"But that's not fair!"

He shrugs. "Yeah, I know, but what can you do? They might be in debt, but they're still rich. Don't ask me how that works. Here's something interesting, though. Baumann's claiming that the grandmother killed a woman fifty years ago. Deirdre McCoy. I looked it up in records. I guess there was a rumor she was pregnant with Violet's husband's kid. Baumann says she pushed her down a well in retaliation."

"Can we pursue charges against Violet, then?"

He gives me a stern look. "First of all, you can press no charges. Your involvement in this matter is done. You may pat yourself on the back for your detective work, but you got incredibly lucky, and not just because you survived. You've crossed beyond the limits of the law more than once during this case, and had things worked out just a little differently, you would not only have put yourself at risk but also have made it impossible for us to prosecute this case. Can we the People of the State of Georgia press charges, probably not. That well's a parking lot now. No one's making noise about her except Baumann, and he's got all the reason to lie. I can't see the city risking lawsuits by tearing up a parking lot to find fifty-year-old bones. And what if we do find her? How do we prove Violet did it? No, we'll get Baumann for Lila Benson, but that's about it."

"But James and Elizabeth knew for years where Lila was buried," I protest, "and they kept it a secret! Violet knew that George killed Lila, and she didn't come forward."

He frowned. "She knew?"

"Yes. George was blackmailing her to stay silent. I overheard him threaten her yester—what day is it?"

"Still Tuesday. You were only out for a few hours."

"Then yesterday."

"She has dementia, though. The family has medical records to prove it."

"I'm sure they do. As you said, they might be in debt, but they're still rich. They're protecting her. They know she killed Deirdre McCoy, and when George learned of it, they fabricated her dementia, or allowed her to fabricate it. They hid Lila's body and made sure no one could find out what had happened to her."

"And you know all of this for sure."

"I heard her confess. She claims it was an accident. Maybe she didn't kill Deirdre in cold blood, but she's guilty of her death. It's involuntary manslaughter at the very least."

"But we can't prove it," he says gently, "and we can't prove that anyone but Baumann was involved in Lila Benson's murder or in the coverup of that murder."

"But I know they did it!"

Desperation has raised the pitch of my voice. I hate hearing myself so emotional, but damn it, it's the truth! I know it is!"

"But do you?" Donnelly asks.

I open my mouth to reply, but I don't reply. I don't reply because the fact is that I don't know. I feel very strongly that they did, but my feeling is based on hearing a possibly unstable woman talk to herself and the suspicion that if they helped conceal Violet's past they would also conceal Lila's murder. I have no evidence to prove it, and even I can't insist that my feeling—no matter how true I believe it to be—is enough to prove their guilt.

But… "It's not fair."

"Life isn't fair."

I hate that response so much. I hate that dismissive, flippant, cop-out refusal so much! If life isn't fair, make it fair! Punish the ones who make it unfair! Damn it, why are people so content to allow evil to exist?

When I don't respond right away, Donnelly stands and informs me, "The family has left for Europe. All but Annabelle, and as I said, we think she's innocent."

"I think so too. But we both know the Greenwoods aren't, right detective?"

He nods. "We do."

"And it won't matter," I say tersely. "Lila Benson will see justice served, but Deirdre McCoy never will. Will she?"

He meets my eyes for a moment, then lowers them and shakes his head again. I let that admission linger for a moment, then say, "The authorities can only do so much. And often, they choose to do even less than that. I appreciate what you're telling me, but I can't promise that I'll never put myself in danger again."

"Why?" he asks. "Why all of this effort for people you don't even know?"

Not for people I don't know. For Annie.

A colder voice in my head replies, Not for Annie. For yourself. So you can keep running from Annie.

Out loud, I say, "Because someone has to. It has to matter to someone that innocent people are murdered and never see justice because their killers are too wealthy or powerful to suffer. I don't take positions intending to be a detective. But if I learn that some poor soul has been taken from this world, and there's something I can do to right the wrong done to them, I must do it."

He looks at me for a while, considering. Eventually, he folds his arms across his chest and says, "I still don't understand. Why now? I did some research on you, Miss Wilcox. You were a schoolteacher for twenty-five years before leaving abruptly and entering into service with wealthy families as a governess and occasional housekeeper. In that time, you've worked for four families. Three of them have had murders exposed. You say that you don't take positions intending to be a detective, but three out of four families within the past year is too much to be a coincidence."

He falls silent, and I don't reply. I know I'm not suspected of a crime, but I feel the way a criminal must feel sitting across the table from a detective. He's getting uncomfortably close to my own secret, and I very much don't want to share it with him.

He probes further. "You had a sister, Annemarie Wilcox."

I feel my lower lip tremble but stay silent.

"She went missing twenty-nine years ago. According to Boston Police records, they turned up no sign of her for eight weeks before closing the case. Shortly after, you changed your major from clinical psychology to education."

"I don't see what this has to do with anything," I say, somewhat sharply.

"Well, I understand the teaching bit. It's clear you believe your sister was kidnapped or murdered. I know a little bit about the minds of killers, and it's enough to make me far too friendly with a bottle and far too broken to stay married for longer than a few years at a time. I can't imagine what it would be like to truly understand how evil those people are. So you dropped psych and went to education where you can work on molding minds instead of seeing into the dark corners of the attic.

"What I don't understand is why, after nearly thirty years, you've started playing detective. And don't tell me it's unintentional, because I don't buy that. You're trying to make up for your sister. But why now? What changed?"

I don't answer. Donnelly holds my eyes with an expression that appears slightly bored but that I recognize as shrewdly observant. I try to think of an answer, but the truth is that I don't know. I suppose my mother's death six years ago gave me the freedom to devote more time to Annie's disappearance, but why do I wait so long? And why, when I do act, do I act for other people and not for Annie?

It's been many years since I've studied psychology, but once more, the answer becomes clear despite my mind's fervent attempts to avoid it.

I don't want to know. My whole life from the moment I told Detective Huxley she could close Annie's case up until now has been an attempt to avoid confronting the mystery of her disappearance. Donnelly is right. I changed my major because I didn't want to understand evil. I took care of our ailing mother because I wanted to be tied down. I didn't love Mother. It's horrible to say, but she was a cruel woman who I believe is responsible in part for the decisions Annie made that led to her disappearance. I only took care of her because it was easy to hide behind duty and say that I had done the right thing leaving Annie's case unexamined.

Then she died, and I tried to keep my head down, but the nightmares began again, and I knew that if I didn't do something, I would go mad as I had once before.

And now? Now I'm hunting for secrets to feel good about myself so that the madness remains at bay.

But something has to give. Eventually, I need to admit that I'm hiding and solve the mystery of Annie's loss, or I'll collapse fully into madness. This time, I doubt I'll recover.

Donnelly holds my eyes for a long time. Eventually, he sighs. "I'm going to need a statement from you before you're discharged. There's a chance you'll be subpoenaed when the case goes to trial, but it's not likely. Considering what George has said and what we walked into, this is pretty open and shut."

He grabs his jacket and heads for the door. Just before he leaves, he nods at me and says, "Take care of yourself, Miss Wilcox."

He leaves the room, and I stare up at the ceiling. Images flit through my head, of Annie, of Mother, of the various families I've worked for, the perpetrators and victims among them.

I am reaching the end of this road I've chosen. I can't run for much longer. Soon, I'll have to face the ghost that's been haunting me for nearly thirty years.

Or I'll have to let the guilt consume me.