Chapter 5 - Unraveling the Alibi
Z
"In here! Fast!" I hissed, grabbing Claire by her coat jacket and hauling her into the narrow crawlspace behind the sewing room closet. I dragged the heavy oak wardrobe over the small door just as footsteps reached the top of the stairs.
Through the crack in the wooden slats of the closet door, I watched as two men stepped into the room. One was Julian Vance; the other was a tall, lean man holding a suppressed pistol, its barrel smoking faintly in the dim light.
"They're not here," the gunman said, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. "Ledger's on the floor, boss."
Julian bent down, picking up the black leather book I had dropped. He flipped through the pages with a cold, methodical focus before sliding it into his coat pocket. "She found the entry about Arthur. Good. That saves us the trouble of explaining why her father's bone fragments are buried under the gazebo in the backyard."
My breath hitched. I slapped my hand over my mouth to smother the gasp that nearly escaped my throat. Beside me, Claire was trembling so hard I thought the floorboards beneath us would give us away.
"What about the girl?" the gunman asked. "The old woman downstairs is dead. We can't leave witnesses if this turns into an arson investigation."
"Burn the house," Julian replied nonchalantly, turning toward the door. "Make it look like an electrical fault caused by the storm. If Sarah and Claire are inside, the fire will take care of them. If they escaped, they’ll come looking for answers at Lake Maren. Either way, they have nowhere left to run."
Julian stepped out of the room, and within seconds, I smelled the sharp, chemical stench of gasoline being poured liberally along the hallway carpet outside.
"We have to move now," I whispered into Claire’s ear, pulling her toward the small maintenance hatch at the back of the crawlspace that led out onto the kitchen roof.
"Ruth is dead..." Claire sobbed softly, her voice cracking with pure panic. "Sarah, they just killed Ruth!"
"If we don't move right now, we’re going to burn to death right next to her!" I hissed, kicking open the small wooden hatch.
Cold rain slammed into our faces as we scrambled out onto the slick asphalt shingles of the roof. Down below, black smoke was already billowing from the broken windows of the living room, illuminated by the orange glow of rising flames. We slid down the drainage pipe into the muddy flowerbeds below, running blindly into the darkness of the surrounding woods just as a deafening explosion shattered the quiet night behind us.
We ran until our lungs burned and our legs gave out, collapsing behind an old disused boathouse near the edge of the river. The distant light of our childhood home burning to the ground flickered through the trees like a dying star.
"What do we do now?" Claire asked, her teeth chattering from the freezing rain and shock. "Our house is gone. The police will think we died in the fire, or worse, that we started it!"
I wiped the mud and rain from my face, my mind clearing with a terrifying, absolute clarity. The grief that had consumed me for days was completely gone, replaced by a cold, burning desire for vengeance.
"We go to Lake Maren," I said, my voice dangerously steady.
"Why?" Claire stammered. "Julian owns Lake Maren! It’s his domain!"
"Because Julian said Mom had millions hidden in shell accounts," I replied, pulling the rusted metal box’s remaining contents out from inside my rain-soaked jacket. I had managed to grab the velvet pouch and one of the tape cassettes before we fled the room. "And because June is still alive in that facility near the lake. June knows why Mom kept those tapes. She knows what really happened twenty years ago."
I opened the small velvet pouch. Inside was a heavy iron key with a brass tag stamped with a room number: Room 104 - Lake Maren Sanatorium.
"Look at the key, Claire," I whispered, holding it up in the dim light of the distant fire. "This isn't a key to a safe deposit box. It’s a key to a room in a private psychiatric wing."
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Claire stared at the tag, her eyes wide. "Mom didn't keep June locked away because Marcus forced her to... Mom kept June locked away to keep her quiet about the money!"
"Every lie Mom ever told us was to protect a multi-million dollar embezzlement scheme," I said, standing up in the mud and looking back at the burning remains of our past. "She wasn't a victim, Claire. She was the mastermind. And it's time we go meet the sister she tried to destroy."
