Page 69 of Death in the Family
“You’re too late. I know everything. You were smart, I’ll give you that. How long have you been planning this, Miles? At what point did you realize Norton was sitting on a gold mine and decide to use him to cash in?”
It was a long game, the con so complex with so many moving parts I had to believe it was months if not years in the making. A marriage to Bebe was just the beginning. She wasn’t his mark, but a means to an end that satisfied two of the man’s deepest cravings: money and revenge.
“Hey.” Miles tossed the word over his shoulder at Norton. “Come over here and tell this poor, confused woman what’s what.”
Maybe it was habit. Philip Norton was accustomed to doingas he was told. More likely, though, the man had an all-consuming yearning to make amends. So he went to Miles. And when he got there, Miles made his move.
It was a boning knife he pulled out, lean and deadly, and Miles held it to Norton’s throat. In the light of my flashlight the skin around the blade was so white it glowed. Miles had hidden the murder weapon in the pocket of his sport coat. The coat he slipped on after strangling Abella Beaudry with the rope Norton left for him in the bathroom.
“Drop it.” My voice wasn’t my own. “For God’s sake, Miles, he’s your father.”
The plea sounded like a line from an insufferable melodrama, even to me—as soon as I blurted it, images of Oedipus Rex and Kylo Ren flashed through my mind. On top of that, what difference did shared DNA make in a place like this, where family members manhandled each other and themselves? But I had to take a shot, and I hoped it was enough to give the man with the knife pause.
The photo on Norton’s bedside table of him with a young boy meant little to me when I first saw it that morning. Combined with Jade’s offhand remark to Tim about her grandmother’s Thousand Islands roots, and Miles’s comment about growing up without a dad, and the way Norton doted on Jade, its significance grew. Crazy as it was, my conversation with Carson about Moonshine Phil and the unfamiliar teen in town clinched it. Philip Norton and Miles Byrd weren’t just partners in crime, but father and son.
The minute I said it, I knew I’d guessed right. Norton made a gurgling sound and Miles grinned at me, all pluck as he pressed down on the blade. Pitifully, Norton croaked, “Miles... please...”
“Jade,” I said, trying another tack. “She’ll lose her grandfather. Think of Jade.”
“Oh, I have been. That’s why I married Bebe in the first place. Bebe was our safety net. There was supposed to be plenty of money.” Miles glanced down at Norton with a grimace. “It was supposed to be easy.Allof this has been for Jade—Jasper most of all. My mother wassixteen years oldwhen she had me.” His grip on Norton tightened as he spoke. “You refused to help her,” he hissed in Norton’s ear. “Got her pregnant and tossed her aside. I’ll be damned if I was going to let a spoiled rich kid do the same thing to my daughter. All I wanted was to know you,” Miles said, “and you wouldn’t give me the fucking time of day.”
“I was a kid, too,” said Norton. “I had no job, no money, nothing. I tried to make it right.”
“You tried? Youtried? Soon as I got my driver’s license I was up here every couple of weeks, following you around like a loyal puppy. You sent me away every time. Did you think I’d forget all about that when you finally showed up begging to be best friends?”
“Killing him won’t save you, Miles.”
“No?” Miles lifted his gaze to find me. “Philip bought the drugs. His name’s in Camilla’s will. His fingerprints and DNA are all over the knife and the rope upstairs. You’ve got no signed confession,” he said. “No evidence to bring charges against me. No proof at all I’m involved beyond a theory shot full of holes. I’m about to kill him out of self-defense. I’ll tell your boss that when you take me in—and take me, by all means. I’ve got enough criminal attorney friends to start a softball team, all itching to vouch for my character. Meanwhile you shot a witness today, and your incompetence got another one killed. I saw you up there with Wellington, having your little heart-to-heart. Seems to me you’ve gotissues that need serious attention. Maybe some time off is just what you need.”
His arm tensed in preparation to slit his long-lost father’s throat, but the grin slid off his face. He’d heard it, too. The creak of a door.
“Go back inside, Jade,” I said quickly. “Nobody else has to get hurt tonight, not your dad, not your grandfather. Just stay—”
“Daddy?” Jade sounded utterly lost. She was shaking so hard she could hardly stay upright. “What are you... what does she...”
“My God,” I said, absorbing the horror on Miles’s face. “She doesn’t know.”
“Get inside,” Miles roared. “Now, Jade.”
“But—”
“I wanted to tell you,” said Norton. “I didn’t even know about you until I tracked Miles down last year. He said we had to wait... wait for the right...”
“You didn’t tell her who he is,” I said. “You didn’t trust Jade not to spill the secret to the Sinclairs while her grandfather robbed Camilla blind. Were you ever going to let Philip live after this weekend? Or is he just another casualty of your conspiracy to hijack a family fortune?”
Norton’s anguished cry contorted his face into a mask of misery, and for the first time I saw the resemblance between these family members. Jade wore the same expression now. Her father held a knife to her grandfather’s throat, and she’d just realized Miles and Norton killed the man she thought she loved.
Raking the wet hair out of her eyes, Jade let out a wail and lurched forward. With the three of us blocking her path to the house, there was nowhere for her to run. Nowhere except the flooded dock. Waves rolled over the submerged planks andthe water was past her knees, but she moved too fast for me to catch her as she passed.
Miles threw Norton aside and went after his daughter while I beat a path through the waves. The boards of the dock were slippery, the current strong. I was bigger than Jade and even I had to fight not to fall. A few yards away Miles was up to his waist, and then his neck. His strokes were clean but the rain on the water created a blinding, disorienting haze, and he was soon way off track.
Up ahead a wave crashed against Jade, flinging her body sideways. Her head went under, came up slick as a seal, went under again. I saw a pale arm lift and flail, grasping at air, and then she disappeared completely into the cold, dark water.
“Jade!” The men’s screams rang in my ears, but a rush of water snuffed them out as I plunged headlong into the river. The cold knocked the air from my lungs and left me breathless. I tried to keep my eyes on the place where she’d gone under, but it was all I could do to stay afloat. My aching muscles seized up almost immediately. My feet were anvils pulling me down. Inside my mouth my teeth throbbed as if I’d chewed aluminum foil. Without my flashlight everything was white froth and black water and that terrible, glacial, mind-numbing cold.
It was reckless. I wasn’t a strong swimmer, didn’t know the river at all. I just couldn’t let another girl die.But I have.I did. Jade was nowhere—no Jade, no Miles. Just the river that swallowed Jasper Sinclair, and now me.
Through the rush of water in my ears and the rain and the thunder, I heard a call. When the waves around me went silver I thought it was the lightning again, a flash so bright it turned night into day, but then I saw it. A boat. It rolled and pitched, toweringabove me where I swam. Something fat and soft landed next to me and I reached for it. Suddenly I could float. I clenched my teeth and craned to see out of the water. What I saw was Maureen McIntyre.
