Twice Baked Read online

  “Or something,” I answered, inching my way toward him.

  “Well, get a move on, or we’ll miss seeing your killer.”

  “My killer?” I asked stunned, as I finally settled beside him at the bottom of the steps.

  “Yes,” he answered. “The killer you promised me would be here,” he clarified.

  “Right,” I answered, shaking it off. It wasn’t Amelia who killed me. It was a man with a deep, horrible voice and strong hands.

  You shouldn’t have done that to her.

  The words my killer spoke to me bounced around my head over and over again. Had that been Patrick? Was he the one who had shoved me into an early grave?

  “We’ll go around the back,” Darrin said, keeping low to the ground. “Just in case Amelia is watching.”

  I followed the new sheriff, leaning as he did toward the grass, and rushing toward the back door.

  Darrin slid the key into the back door and opened it. I followed him into the home silently, careful not to make any noise.

  He closed the door lightly behind him and turned to me.

  “No lights,” he said softly.

  “I’m not an idiot,” I answered. “But I need to talk to you. There’s something I didn’t tell you before we came in here, something I wasn’t sure you’d believe if you didn’t see it with your own eyes. But now that you’re here with me, I figured you should know.”

  Darrin’s face went hard. I could tell he was tired of my nonsense, and I couldn’t blame him for it. I had sort of put him through the wringer since he’d graced my twisted path, and now he could see it happening again.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked, his voice stone.

  “I was looking at them today, at the photo of the family when the kids were young. It all came to me. It all clicked into place.” I shook my head, remembering it. “Mrs. Hoover’s husband; he was mechanic, Darrin. The kids, they all wore long sleeves in the summer. Ralph’s front tooth was gone.”

  “You’re not making any sense,” Darrin answered, staring at me like I was losing my mind.

  “In the mugshot, Ralph had his permanent teeth, Darrin.”

  “So?” He questioned.

  “The mugshot was before the picture,” I answered, trying to be as quiet as possible. “Don’t you get it? It all makes sense, Darrin.”

  A loud bang sounded from somewhere upstairs. My body tensed.

  Darrin pulled his gun from his holster and readied it.

  “Darrin. We’ve been looking in the wrong place,” I said, grabbing his arm. “Amelia is-”

  “In the house,” he answered, pulling away from me.

  He darted through the kitchen and up the stairs, pistol at the ready.

  I followed behind him, right into the bedroom; the source of the noise.

  “Freeze!” he shouted, but that was before he saw her.

  A gasp left his mouth as he took her in, because just as I expected, Amelia was standing in the bedroom, wrench in hand.

  But Amelia wasn’t only Amelia. Darrin recognized her as someone else, someone much closer to all of this than he had ever expected.

  I moved closer, weary of Darrin’s gun and the way it was pointed right at her.

  “Hello Angela,” I said, looking at Patrick’s wife with narrowed and knowing eyes. “I think it’s time that you explain yourself.”

  Chapter 24

  “What are you doing here?” Angela asked, her hand tightening around the wrench. She was dressed for the festival, in a stylish peach dress and matching shoes.

  The room was a mess of scattered papers and opened drawers. The loud crash that had alerted Darrin and me that she was here turned out to be a shattered lamp that now lay in pieces on the floor.

  “Drop the weapon and put your hands up, Angela,” Darrin said, unwavering as he pointed the gun at her.

  “This?” She asked, blinking hard. “This isn’t a weapon. I found this here.” She motioned to the wrench, but she still didn’t drop it. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding. I was just coming here to get a recipe I lent Samantha. Like I told you before,” she looked at me. “I’m leaving here in a couple of days and I didn’t want to leave it. It’s a family keepsake from my mother, and I wouldn’t want to leave town without.” She shook her head. “Samantha let me in.”

  Darrin glanced over at me from the corner of his eye. Certainly he wasn’t buying this.

  “She gave me a key and everything.”

  “That’s strange,” Darrin answered. “Because she gave me a key tonight as well, and she told me to be careful with it because it was her only copy.” He moved closer to Angela. “Tell me what you’re really doing here.”

  “I told you,” she said, wrench still in hand. “I’m here for my mother’s keepsake.”

  “Mrs. Hoover?” I asked, careful not to make any sudden movements. Angela was a killer without doubt, but jumping the gun here might force Darrin to shoot her and I didn’t want that blood on either of our hands.

  Angela’s eyes went wide with recognition. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. My mother’s name was Donna Troy.”

  “Okay, that’s just Wonder Girl. What is it with these people and obscure comic book characters,” Darrin interjected.

  “It is not!” She screamed, raising the wrench over her head.

  Darrin cocked his pistol and I jumped between them.

  “That’s enough!” I yelled. “It’s over Angela. We know who you really are. I know about Patrick and Ralph. I know about your mother.” I swallowed hard. “I know about your dad too.”

  She blinked hard. “Don’t talk about him.”

  “He used to beat you, right?” I held my hands out so that she could see they were empty, that I was no threat to her. “You, Patrick, and Ralph. I bet he beat your mother too. You had to hide the bruises. That’s why you were always in long sleeves. It’s why you kept your bangs so long, to hide the bruises on your forehead. But Ralph couldn’t hide it when he knocked out his front tooth, could he? Is that what he used, Angela? A wrench like that one?”

  Her mouth began to tremble. “You couldn’t imagine what he did to us with this thing.” She looked at the wrench. “He almost killed us so many times. If it wasn’t for Patrick, I’d have never made it out of that house.” Her jaw clenched. “And my mother just sat there. She just let him do it. She’d have let go on forever if I didn’t stop it.”

  “You?” I asked, realizing that I had gotten at least one piece of this puzzle wrong. “Your mother wasn’t the one who lowered the car onto your father that day?”

  Angela scoffed loudly. “Please, that woman was a coward if I ever saw one. She’d have never saved us. Did you know he broke Patrick’s arm? He was trying to protect me and my father took that wrench and snapped his arm in half like a twig. I knew after that that something had to be done.”

  He eyes glazed over.

  “So I took matters into my own hands. I wanted until he was under that car, until his guard was down.” She shook her head. “It was just a lever. He never saw it coming.”

  “You killed your father?” Darrin asked, guns till drawn.

  “It was to save us,” she answered. “And it did. At least, for a while.” She was crying now. “But we didn’t have anything after that. Things were so hard. You have no idea. And my mother still wouldn’t lift a finger.” Angela shook her head. “There was a life insurance policy on Dad. Half a million dollars. But she wouldn’t touch it. She said it was blood money and that, if I used it, it would make me a killer. She said it would have been like I’d killed Dad for the money. But that’s not why I did it. I did it to keep all of us safe, and because he deserved it.”

  “Angela, you-”

  “You don’t understand!” She cut me off. “It wasn’t just the money. She couldn’t keep them after that. She wanted to send Patrick and Ralph back into the system. I couldn’t let that happen.”

  “Because, by then, you were already in love with him,”
I said. It wasn’t a question.

  “He was always there for me. He saved me so many times. How could I not love him? I’d have done anything to be with him. So we ran away together.” She pursed her lips. “Except his brother didn’t approve either. He said I was dead weight and that I couldn’t handle it.” She smiled. “But Patrick believed in me. We lived on the streets after that and, once we’d graduated, we got married. It was everything I’d ever wanted.”

  “So why did you kill him?” Darrin asked.

  “Because things changed,” she answered. “Life wasn’t the fairytale we wanted it to be. We wanted a child, but it was impossible for us. We tried to adopt, but it was so expensive. We didn’t have any money. But then I remembered someone who did.”

  “Your mother,” I said.

  “She had changed her name by then, wanted to start a new life, I guess. But you don’t forget your kids. Family is everything.” Her arm started to shake. “I just wanted a little of it, just thirty thousand dollars to get the adoption approved. But she wouldn’t give it to me. She said I needed to move on the way she had. She didn’t even care! She hadn’t even cashed the stupid policy in. Said it was here.” She looked around. “I never meant to kill her.”

  “So why’d you bring the wrench?” I asked.

  “Because I wanted to remind her of what she allowed us to endure. I wanted her to know that her sins weren’t absolved.” She bit her lip. “But I couldn’t handle it. Listening to her defend herself, to her promising me that she was better now and that she didn’t need the money; that I need the money, I just snapped.”

  “And Patrick saw you?” Darrin asked.

  “He was right there,” she nodded. “He freaked out at first, but then he helped me look. We might have found the policy too, if some stupid girl hadn’t come to the door with pies.”

  I stifled a gasp. I had walked in right at the moment of the murder.

  “Patrick couldn’t take it anymore. As soon as the door opened, he darted out the backdoor. I followed after him.” She shook her head. “I’ve been in this house fifty times since then. Every time this stupid couple leaves for vacation or goes to church, I sneak back in. I still haven’t been able to find it. And I knew after Patrick died that I was going to have to leave. But if I didn’t get the money, then all of this was for nothing. And I couldn’t let it all be for nothing.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why you killed your husband,” Darrin said.

  “Because she was pregnant,” I answered.

  Once again, her eyes went wide.

  “I saw the medications in your room the day of Patrick’s wake. They’re common medicines used to treat the symptoms of pregnancy.”

  “You got me,” Angela answered.

  “But why-”

  “And the beds,” I spoke over Darrin. “The king bed in your room was really just two double beds pushed together. My guess is the two of you weren’t even sleeping the same room anymore, and that you rearranged things to keep up appearances and divert suspicion from you during the wake.”

  “What are you getting at?” Darrin asked, his eyes darting over at me.

  “Once you got here, once you convinced Patrick to stay here to look for the money, he didn’t want to leave, did he?” I asked Angela.

  “He was such an idiot,” she answered, her teeth ground together. “He just wanted to start over, like he had forgotten everything that happened to us, everything we wanted. That money was ours! We earned it with every bruise!”

  “And the two of you grew apart,” I said. “So far apart actually, that you did something you never thought you’d do.”

  Angela shuffled uncomfortably.

  “You got pregnant, but it wasn’t by your husband. And you knew that, when he found that out, he’d not only leave you. He’d expose all your secrets too.”

  “He had his stupid brother prattling on in his ear. He was trying to convince him to turn me in to the authorities. I knew that when he found out that I had been cheating on him, he’d do it. I couldn’t let that happen.”

  “So you took a wrench to him too?” I asked.

  “It seemed poetic enough,” she answered. “And it tied his death to a murder that was committed before anyone even knew I was in town. So I killed him, and when Ralph came to confront me about it, I showed him my pregnancy test. There was no way for him to know his brother wasn’t the father and, after everything they’d been through, all I had to do was dangle the idea of his future niece or nephew growing up in the system to get him to fold. He left, and I faked the attempt at my life in the garage. I thought that was the end of it. He’d be out of my life, I’d wait a suitable amount of time to marry the real father of my child, and get out of town, hopefully after finding what’s rightfully mine.”

  Her face got red.

  “But that wasn’t good enough for the two of you. You kept digging and digging. You didn’t stop until you forced me to kill Ralph. I had to tie up that loose end. His death is on the both of you!”

  “You’re psychotic,” Darrin said. “Now drop the weapon.”

  “You don’t get to judge me!” She yelled. “And you absolutely don’t get to arrest me!”

  Quickly, she pulled a walkie talkie out if her pocket.

  “Now!” She yelled into the mouthpiece.

  As soon as the words left her mouth, the lights in the house went off. I heard a ruckus, Darrin grunting, something falling to the floor, and then a set of scurrying feet head down the stairs.

  By the time I pulled the phone out of my pocket and flipped on the flashlight app, it was too late.

  Darrin was holding his hand, his gun on the floor.

  And Angela was out of sight.

  Chapter 25

  “Are you okay?” I asked, moving my phone’s flashlight to Darrin. He was holding his hand, his mouth a tight, hard line.

  “I’m fine,” he answered. “Grab my gun.”

  “Um…I’m not much of a ‘gun’ person,” I said apprehensively, looking at the pistol as it lay on the floor beside us.

  “Well I’m afraid you’re going to have to be, at least for now,” Darrin said. He stood up, still clutching his hand. “I think Angela broke my hand with that wrench and I’m not much of a shot when I have to go lefty, and everyone knows it.”

  “Fine,” I groaned, leaning down and hesitantly picking up the gun. I held it away from me and daintily with two fingers. I might have been a lot of things in my life (or, more aptly, in my two lives) but a huntsman was not one of them.

  When I was a kid, I wanted to be a cop. That much was true. But I never actually thought it was a possibility. I never went through any of the training. And Dad’s guns were not something he just kept laying around haphazardly.

  As it was, I had touched a gun twice before in my life. Once when dad let me shoot at a target in the backyard (I hit the ground), and secondly, during the Ammo Fair six years ago in Dalton. Dwight asked me to hand him a rifle from the table and, even though it wasn’t loaded, I still cringed a little as I handed it over.

  This was the third time, and I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be a charm.

  “Just hold it upright. You won’t have to shoot it,” Darrin assured me. “We just have to make her believe that you will if she forces our hand.”

  “Forces our hand?” I asked, my eyes going wide. This was happening, and it was going to be more real than I had ever imagined.

  “She’s getting away. We need to go after her,” Darrin said, and starting down the stairs.

  He was still holding his hand as we darted down the dark stairs, lit only by the flashlight app on my phone.

  Of course, if I couldn’t stop my hand from shaking while he was in front of me, a broken hand wouldn’t hold a candle to the hole I’d accidently shoot in Darrin’s back.

  We made it to the bottom of the stairs and out the door of the house, somehow magically misfire free.

  The fireworks were still going on and the lights were on to the rest
of the town. Whoever cut the power only did so to Mrs. Hoover’s house.

  “Angela has a partner,” I said breathlessly.

  “Or a hired gun,” Darrin answered. “It doesn’t matter. Her cover’s blown. Money or not, she’s going to have to get out of town now. If we don’t find her tonight, then she’s gone for good.”

  “But she’s nowhere in sight,” I said, looking around.

  “Then it’s a good thing I know exactly where she’s headed,” Darrin answered.

  “Do tell,” I said, my eyes darting over at the new sheriff quizzically.

  “Didn’t you see her clothes? She’s dressed for the festival.”

  “So?” I answered. “So is everybody in town. We both are,” I said, looking at his peach vest and coat and trying not to notice how well both items fit him.

  “Right, but she’s a recent widow,” Darrin replied. “No one would have thought twice about her not showing up to the festivities. So why would someone who had a plan to enact make a point of wasting her limited time dressing and showing up for the Peach Festival when what she really wanted was over here?”

  “The same reason she brought the wrench,” I answered, gleaming what Darrin was getting at.

  “Right,” he explained. “Insurance. If someone did happen in on her while she was looking for proof of the policy, she could murder them with the wrench. The murder weapon alone would have tied to a series of crimes that no one would have suspected her of.”

  “And the peach dress would allow her to blend in with the crowd if that should fall through.” I shook my head. “She’s headed to the festival. We have to stop her.”

  ^

  Darrin and I made it to the Peach Festival just as the fireworks were finishing up. Loud bangs and booms filled the night sky, but Darrin and I were being very nonchalant.

  We didn’t want to cause mass panic by rushing into the crowd, waving a pistol around, and saying there was a murderer among us. That was the last thing we needed. So I holstered the gun. Sliding it into the peach clutch that matched my floral peach dress, but leaving the unzipped for easy access.