Of Merlot & Murder (A Tangled Vines Mystery) (24 page)

twenty-four

Elise glanced over at
her sister as Sam instructed her to pull the car into the back parking lot of the Lost Pines Fairgrounds. They would need to do some fast talking and come up with some sort of a plan—quickly. Because once they got to wherever Sam was taking them, she was pretty sure their time would be up. She had no illusions that he would simply let them go after taking them hostage at gunpoint.

He hadn’t said a word since they’d left the motel, and his silence was unnerving. Of course, there was also the fact that he had his gun trained on the back of Madison’s head.

“So, Sam, what’s this all about?” she asked tightly, in a desperate effort to get him talking.

“Come on, Elise. You’re a smart girl. Don’t tell me you haven’t figured this whole thing out by now. I could see the wheels turning in your head back at the motel.”

Sam chuckled, and the sound of it sent a healthy dollop of fear trickling down Elise’s spine. She took a deep breath and threw a glance over her shoulder at him. “You were the one who left the threatening note on my windshield, right?”

“Bingo,” he acknowledged with a grin.

“Threatening note?” Madison’s head snapped in Elise’s direction as she slipped the car into a spot and put it in park. “What note? What are you talking about?”

“Sorry. You went to dinner with friends in town last night, so I forgot to tell you. I went to the H-E-B to pick up a few things for Gram before we ate.” Elise jerked a thumb toward the back seat. “When I came out, Sam here had left a menacing note on my windshield.”

Madison’s mouth dropped open. “And you didn’t think that was important enough to tell me before you dragged me into your idiotic snooping trip? You didn’t think
that
little tidbit would be good for me to know?”

Elise rolled her eyes at her sister’s complaint. “Don’t be so dramatic, Maddy. I said I was sorry, didn’t I? Besides, how was I supposed to know?”

Madison made a growling noise in the back of her throat. “A lot of good sorry does now.”

“Go ahead and shut down the engine, Madison. Then hand me the keys, please. We don’t want anyone gettin’ any crazy ideas,” Sam said, tapping her on the shoulder with the barrel of the gun.

“I knew you were digging,” he continued, directing his comments to Elise. “Y’all were real subtle about it, but I knew. Toby told me you’d stopped by after I’d left yesterday, told me all about the conversation, though he didn’t see it as the fishing expedition that it was.” He shrugged. “Not the brightest kid, but he’s still my son.”

Elise turned in her seat to face him and then put up her hands in surrender when he pushed the gun against the back of Madison’s head in response.

“Look, I get it, Sam. He’s your son,” Elise said. “I was starting to look in his direction, so you had to do something. You were just trying to protect him.”

“Yeah, but it didn’t seem to discourage you, did it?”

She gave him a sad look. “Actually, it only made me more curious.
The note said I was
poking around where I shouldn’t
. Since the only thing I’d done was stop by the motel and chat with Toby, I figured it had to have something to do with that
…
or perhaps something I’d seen while I was there.”

Sam slowly shook his head. “Too smart for your own good, little girl.”

“But I was looking at the wrong Raymond, wasn’t I?” she asked, tilting her head and giving him a narrow-eyed glance. “Though I didn’t know you were here at the time.”

“El!” Madison blurted. “For God’s sake, don’t get us into any more trouble than we already are.”

“What did you find in the room, Elise?” Sam asked, ignoring Madison’s outburst.

She shrugged. “Nothing much. Just a button.”

“A button?” Sam frowned, clearly stumped by her answer.

“That’s all.”

“Okay, I’ll bite. What the hell does that have to do with anything?” His eyebrows descended, and he scowled at her in his confusion. “What kind of button? And why would that be something you’d want to tell the police about?”

“It was a button that told a very specific story, Sam,” she told him. “You see, when Toby showed up to dinner on Friday night, he was missing a button on his jacket—a button the CSI folks missed but I found in the room this afternoon.”

She pressed her lips together and nodded when she saw understanding dawn in his eyes. “Since he wasn’t wearing the jacket earlier at the festival, you can see where my thought process took me.”

“Finding the button there meant he’d been in his momma’s room,” Sam replied. “And it had to have been sometime between leaving the festival for the day and arriving at the restaurant.”

“Yes. Toby showed up right before Jackson got the call about Divia’s death.”

“Clever. And I can see how you would come to the conclusion that Toby had killed her.”

Though there was a note of respect in Sam’s voice, something in his eyes gave Elise the impression she’d missed something.

“Unfortunately, Divia raised our boy to be a spineless wimp. I’m afraid he ain’t got killin’ in him.”

At his words, the breath backed up in Elise’s lungs and her pulse picked up speed. She realized then that she’d gotten the whole thing wrong. Toby hadn’t killed his mother.

Sam Raymond had.

Her realization must have been plain to see on her face, because he smiled and nodded. “Yep. I can see you understand now.”

“Understand what?” Madison asked and tried to turn around, but Sam shoved the gun against the back of her head again.

“That Toby didn’t kill Divia, Maddy,” Elise answered, her eyes never leaving his. “Sam did. But why? Was it because she’d run away from you?”

“
Why?
” When he repeated the question, his eyebrows rose and his tone was full of surprise. After a moment, he launched into an explanation. “Toby’s momma was a beautiful young woman when we hooked up. But you know what they say about beauty only being skin deep? Well, with Divia that was an understatement. Nothin’ I ever did was good enough for Divia Sweeney. And I mean
nothin’
.”

He shook his head and his eyes took on a faraway look, a half-
smile touching his face. “I was over the moon when we had Toby
…
a
son
. But that soon turned to shit, too. Whenever she didn’t get her way or I refused to buy her the latest thing she had her eye on, she’d use my boy as a bargaining chip.”

He turned to Elise with pure hatred flaring in his eyes, in his voice. “A week or so after Toby’s fourth birthday she packed him up and disappeared in the middle of the night—taking everything we had with her. At least, everything that meant something to me.”

“Ah, Sam. I’m so sorry, but you know you weren’t the only one, right?” Elise asked. Evidently, he was the first man Divia had run out on, but he hadn’t been the last. And her M.O. hadn’t changed over the years.

“Oh, I know. But I’ve spent twenty years trying to track down my son. Every time I’d get close, she’d grab him up and disappear like smoke on a burn pile. Until last week, that is. I finally caught up to her and saw my son for the first time in two decades.”

“So you decided to make sure she’d never run again?” Madison asked, obviously unable to help herself. Elise watched her glance into the rearview mirror. “Or was it revenge?”

“It was
justice
,” Sam said with conviction. “That woman left a trail of broken lives wherever she landed. I just evened the score for everyone she’d hurt.”

“So, you went to her room after Toby left?” Elise asked, wanting to keep him talking. The longer they could distract him, the longer they would live
…
and perhaps give help time to arrive.

She’d recognized C.C.’s car pulling into the motel parking lot as they were pulling out. Elise could only hope that her friend had contacted Jackson, and the troops were on their way.

“I saw Toby come out of Divia’s room with her yellin’ at him from the doorway like a fishwife. I waited for him to get into his car and drive away, and then I made my move.” He started to chuckle, and then to laugh out loud. “Boy howdy, you ought to have seen her face when she opened that door and saw me standing there. I’m surprised she didn’t pass right out from the shock of it.”

“What did she do?” Madison asked, thoroughly sucked into his story. “Did she invite you in?”

“Hell no! At least, not at first, but I can be very persuasive.”

“You brought the bottle of wine, right?” Elise asked. “And the cyanide, of course.”

“I told her not to worry. That I was only there to bury the hatchet and not to cause her any trouble. Told her that I just wanted to meet my son. I finally talked her into having a glass of wine with me, for old time’s sake.” The look he sent Elise then was a sly one. “She sat down on the edge of the bed and gave me the same worn, come-hither look that used to work on me so long ago. Well, I just let her think it was still working as I doctored her glass with the poison. Then I sat right there next to her and watched her drink it down.”

“Oh my
God
,” Madison whispered, and Elise watched her sister’s terrified eyes fill with tears.

Reaching out, Elise took her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. Showing their fear would do them no good. They had to hold on, keep him talking. Whatever happened, Elise wasn’t about to let him see how scared she really was.

“You cleaned up after?” she made herself ask, turning her attention back to Sam. “After
…
”

“After the poison took her? You bet. I washed out my glass and
made sure I hadn’t left anything behind. I gotta say you had me worried earlier about what I might’ve missed.” His tone was so matter
-of-fact, like he was talking about doing a bit of housekeeping. It turned Elise’s stomach.

“Look, I know how this is gonna sound,” he continued. “But after over twenty years of searching, of dreaming about finding my son and always just missing out, after every terrible thing that woman did, I
enjoyed
watching her die. I saw the light of understanding come into her eyes at the end, and it made me happy. When she realized what was happening, she grabbed a hold of me so hard she broke off some of her fake fingernails. Do you believe that?”

He shook his head, and Elise tried to look away from the horrible smile on his face and the look of pure evil that had settled in his eyes as he spoke of her death. But she found she couldn’t. It was like watching some horrifying yet oddly compelling event.

Looks like Divia has the last laugh, Sammy-boy. She was spot on in portraying you as the Devil incarnate
…
and right to be afraid.

“Anyway,” he said, waving the gun around and making her cringe. “We struggled some, and I shoved her away from me. She went down hard and hit her head on the edge of the dresser, and she didn’t get up after that.” He shrugged. “Then I cleaned up and left. Game over.”

Elise hated to ask but couldn’t help herself. She had to know. “Sam, did you kill Grace Vanderhouse, too?”

There was a long pause, but after a moment he blew out a breath. “Okay, I’m not proud of that, I’ll tell you right now. Where
I’d planned out Divia’s demise for years—knew exactly how I’d play it if I ever got the chance—I swear as God is my witness, I never
meant to harm that girl.”

“But
…
then why did you?” Madison asked staring at him in the rearview mirror. “What did she ever do to you? She and her father were as much Divia’s victims as you and Toby.”

“Yes. Now, that’s a true statement.” He cleared his throat. “But she gave me no choice. She just wouldn’t
listen.”

“What do you mean, Sam?” Elise asked. “Wouldn’t listen about what?”

Sam’s gaze locked on her and a pained look crossed his face. “She’d come to the same conclusion that you had.”

“That Toby had killed his mother?”

“Yep.” He gave a brief nod. “She’d seen him goin’ into his momma’s room that night, and when she’d heard Divia had been killed and when it’d happened, she assumed he’d done it. She tried to get him to turn himself in, even after he swore to her that he hadn’t done it.”

Sam pointed a finger at Elise. “And she should have known better, mind you. They’d been family for a time. She should have known he wasn’t capable of doin’ something like that.”

He shook his head as if to clear his thoughts. “Anyway, Toby
came
to me about it, told me he hadn’t killed Divia, which of course, I knew
, having delivered her to her maker myself. So I went and
tried to talk to Grace that afternoon, tried to get her to just walk away, but she wouldn’t let it go. Said she was gonna have to tell the police if Toby didn’t turn himself in, that it was the right thing to do.”

“And so you protected Toby by removing the threat.” Elise raised
a palm, pleading with the man. “But Sam, adding two more murders by killing us? Where will it end? If you let us go, I promise we won’t say anything. You can leave town and no one will ever know what really happened. Toby will be safe.”

Sam’s heavy sigh filled the air. “I really wish we could do that Elise
, truly I do. But I don’t know that I can trust you. I need to clean up the field. You understand that, right?”

“But Sam—”

“No, the time for talkin’ is over, sweetheart. We’re all gonna get out of the car now and head into the fairgrounds.” He gave her a hard look, and she knew they’d run out of time. “Just so we’re clear, any funny business and I won’t hesitate to drop your sister where she stands. You get me?”

This was so not the way she wanted to die, nor was it in her to watch her sister die. She conjured the faces of her family in her mind, and a cold dread filled her heart.