Stop Me (Last Stand #2)(39)
Author: Brenda Novak

“It doesn’t require anything special. Only a club and the guts to use it.”

“Phillip had other things to do.”

“I bet he did.”

She didn’t bother to argue. They both knew her son had left to escape the situation. He didn’t like the screaming, the knowledge that he was the reason Jasmine Stratford was trapped—and what might happen because of it. Bev was angry that he’d abandon her when she needed him so badly. But at least he possessed a conscience. If only Francis had been more like Phillip, maybe she’d still have him, too.

“He’ll be back soon,” she said. At least she hoped he would. Phillip was becoming more and more unpredictable. Sometimes she feared he’d succumb to the depression that plagued him and kill himself—or turn them all in. But she wasn’t about to share her concerns with Peccavi. She knew what he’d do. No weak links.

That was his motto. Jack had become a weak link, and Peccavi had shot him, just like that. Then he hadn’t wanted to risk anyone seeing them remove the body, so he’d buried him in her cellar.

“Phillip’s a pu**y! It’s his fault we’re in this mess!”

“He’ll be back,” she said again.

“So where’s the Stratford woman now?”

After slipping the strap of the camera around her wrist, Beverly climbed the ladder she’d passed down to Jasmine. “She just drove off with my neighbor.”

“Get hold of Phillip, and tell him to stay away from the house until after the police arrive.”

“Stay away?” She closed the trapdoor. “Why?”

“I want whoever shows up to be dealing with you.”

Because no one would believe she could be dangerous. Beverly understood that. But she couldn’t understand Peccavi allowing the police to discover Jack’s body. “You don’t want to move…you know what?”

“No. Don’t touch it. It happened before Francis got himself in trouble. We’ll make sure he gets stuck with the blame. Everyone knows what a sick bastard he was.

And the police will be hoping for an easy answer. It’s Christmas Eve. No one wants to take on a cold case they’re unlikely to solve, especially on the biggest holiday of the year.”

Her youngest son was already immortalized as a monster. Beverly hated to add to that legacy. But she saw the brilliance of Peccavi’s plan. “What reason would Francis have had to…you know?” As much as it pained her to acknowledge it, Jack wasn’t Francis’s usual kind of victim.

“There could be a million reasons. Jack and Francis both worked for the same delivery company, right? They were friends. Maybe he got too close, got suspicious of Francis’s activities. Or they had a disagreement over money. Just play dumb. Cry and mention Francis’s name. ‘How could he have done this? Not another innocent person…’ That sort of thing. There won’t be much of an investigation if the culprit is obvious—and he’s already dead.”

Beverly was a little surprised by the risks Peccavi had taken in speaking so plainly, but she knew he had no choice. They had to get their story straight or they’d be sunk; the police could arrive at any moment. “Will Ms. Stratford buy that, too?”

she asked as she shoved a sack of flour over the trapdoor.

“No. She’ll keep poking around, searching for answers.”

“How do you know?” Beverly removed her shoes, washed the mud off the rubber bottoms, then put them by the back door to dry. It’d be best if the police didn’t know she’d gone down to the cellar.

“Because she’s stubborn. I’ve seen her on TV, heard the way she talks.”

Definitely not what Beverly wanted to hear. “But she knows she got lucky today. I saw it in her eyes. Maybe this scared her enough that she’ll go back to wherever she came from and mind her own business.”

“That isn’t gonna happen.”

“Why not?”

“She’s been looking for her sister for years. If she was going to give up, she would’ve done it by now.”

Beverly felt a trickle of guilt for all the innocent people who’d been hurt. But there was nothing she could do about it. She knew too much to change anything now.

And she couldn’t pay Dustin’s staggering medical expenses any other way. “So what do we do?” she asked.

“I’ll take care of Jasmine Stratford.”

After cleaning the camera and hiding it in a drawer, Beverly went to the front of the house and peeked through the blinds. Jasmine’s rental car was still sitting at the curb, where she’d parked it. But the street remained as quiet as ever. No police yet. “Be careful.”

“Mom? Where are you? The pain’s coming back! Mom?”

Dustin…Beverly’s heart sank. He was so miserable. And there was so little she could do to help him.

“I’ll be right with you, honey,” she called, but at the top of the stairs, she went into the room she used as an office, where she’d dumped the contents of Jasmine Stratford’s purse.

“Hang on,” she told Peccavi. “I might be able to help….”

Shoving one of her cats off the chair—another stray she’d picked up at the transfer house a few months ago—she sat at her desk and shuffled through the wallet, address book, gum, candy and papers she’d examined earlier. She’d found a confirmation notice from a hotel in the French Quarter just as Tattie showed up at the door….

There it was. Plucking it from the pile, she held it up to the sunlight streaming through the window so she could read what it said. She hated to pass this information along to Peccavi. She was so tired of the violence, the secrets, the fear of discovery.

But the police would soon be at her door. Again. If she didn’t take preemptive measures, the situation could escalate, could get even worse than it had with Francis.

“She’s staying at La Maison du Soleil in the French Quarter,” she said. “And I’ve got her room key.”

“You do?”

“It was in her purse.”

“They’ll rekey it,” he said.

“Not if you get there before she does.” Then she hung up and swallowed some more antacids.

It was one of the worst days of Jasmine’s life. Not only had she been locked in a cellar and discovered a corpse, she’d lost her purse and everything in it—her cell phone, her wallet, the address book she relied on so heavily, her camera. Being stripped of those things made being away from home on Christmas Eve that much worse. She felt like a turtle that’d been turned on its back and couldn’t right itself.