Page 93 of Little Shattered Dreams

At first, all Grace was guilty of was a minor amount of stalking, and then she decided a little scare was in order. She broke into Quinn’s home and left the lipstick message on her mirror. Grace thought that would be the end of it, until the rage she’d been carrying for so long gained a foothold in her heart. A new plan was formed, one that enticed Quinn to spend a week at the retreat.

As she prepared for Quinn’s stay, the pain over the loss Grace had been suffering for so many years mounted. Quinn had been taken from her, and it was time to take back, to make her pay for what she’d done. The night of Quinn’s murder, she left the retreat, which we’d verified through surveillance video. She’d driven down the road about a half mile or so, returning on foot unnoticed when she came in through the back side of the property.

When asked why she moved Quinn’s body after killing her, Grace’s answer was a simple one. After she couldn’t find the bullet or the shell casing, she thought Quinn had fallen on top of them, so she moved her.

Grace had taken Calvin’s gun Sunday morning while he was at breakfast. A month earlier, the pair had a one-time dalliance, and when he’d gotten up to shower, Grace snooped around his place and found the gun in his nightstand drawer.

The plan was to kill Quinn and dispose of the gun, and she had the perfect hiding place for it—inside a hole in a hollowed-out tree on the property. At the time she was unaware Clara had seen her stash something inside the tree. Two days later, a curious Clara found the gun and confronted Grace. Caught off guard, Grace attempted to smooth things over, telling Clara she had no idea how the firearm came to be inside the tree. Clara’s suspicions grew when Grace asked her to keep the gun’s whereabouts quiet until she could speak to the police herself. Grace tried coming up with a way to spare Clara’s life, but unless she sacrificed herself, there was none.

As for why she attacked my mother, she swore she meant her no real harm. She thought if she injured her,just a little, it might be enough to scare me off the case. It wasn’t until she got to know me better that she realized fear tactics wouldn’t work on me.

When asked about Quinn’s journal, she admitted to taking it. She’d read through it and then burned it. And the cell phone? Tossed into a lake.

Another case closed.

As I sat on the back deck, watching the sun set over the ocean alongside Luka and Giovanni, I was struck with immense gratitude—for them and for the whole of my life, as crazy as it could be sometimes.

Giovanni gave my hand a squeeze and asked, “How does it feel to be home?”

“There’s no place I’d rather be.”

“You’ve earned yourself a well-deserved break after such a strenuous case. Why don’t we take a vacation?”

I brushed my lips across his and said, “Sounds good to me.”

As soon as the words were spoken, a curious feeling ran through me—a sense that while one case had closed, another was about to open.

THE END

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