with socks and wear them. They made nice, lovely prints on the tile.”
“The dead possum? The fire? The hit man? All your doing?”
“Yes. The possum was roadkill.” She grimaced. “So disgusting. But I thought a dead animal might work, since it worked so well with your granddad. I must say, you have much more backbone than Daniel.”
“My grandfather was the finest of men. He was protecting us.”
“Oh heavens, dear, I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.” Nesta looked truly concerned that she had offended Savannah. “He was an incredibly fine man and did a wonderful job raising you girls.”
“Why me, Nesta? Everyone in town knew we had launched an investigation. Why did you want to kill me specifically?”
“Because you stirred up a hornet’s nest, Savannah. Everything has been so wonderful for the past eighteen years. Ask anyone in Midnight and they’ll tell you what good people we are.” Tears glazed her eyes as she glanced tenderly over at her husband. When she looked back at Savannah, a cold, unemotional woman had replaced the sweet, slightly quirky Nesta she’d known forever. “You deserved to be punished for messing everything up.”
“And you did this all on your own?” Savannah shook her head in disbelief. How could a tiny middle-aged woman who didn’t look as though she could send back a bad meal at a restaurant be responsible for all that had happened?
“I’m very versatile. Lamont will tell you that.”
Savannah turned to Lamont. “Did you know she was doing these things?”
Looking as miserable as any human being she’d ever seen, Lamont shook his head. “I swear I didn’t.” He looked at his wife. “Nesta, things would have been just fine if you’d left it alone. They had no proof.”
“But I didn’t know that, Lamont. I had to take care of this. I know I put you in a bad position. I needed to fix things.”
How long had Zach been gone? Twenty, twenty-five minutes? He would be back soon. She needed to decide on her plan of action. Lamont wasn’t a concern. Not only was he handcuffed to a chair, his expression of sad defeat said it all. Nesta, with the gun and her bizarre, unpredictable behavior, was the worry. So how to defuse the situation and get all of them out alive before Zach came back? The gun in her purse was her backup plan. For now, she wanted to see if she could talk some sense into Nesta.
“So what’s your endgame, Nesta?”
She blinked in confusion. “I’m sorry, Savannah. I don’t understand that terminology.”
“Where do you see this ending? Surely you don’t think killing me in Lamont’s office will solve the problem.”
She laughed in that little-girl way that Savannah had always thought was sweet. Little had she known that it was hiding a cold-blooded murderer. “Of course not, dear. That would be impossible to explain.”
“Then what are your plans?”
Instead of answering, Nesta stood and walked over to Lamont. Her face one of loving devotion, she used the hand not holding the gun to caress her husband’s face. “You know I’ve loved you from the moment I met you? That will never change.”
“Nesta,” Lamont whispered, obviously horrified at what he was seeing as not good news for him. “What are you going to do?”
She turned to Savannah. “After your parents’ deaths, Lamont and I made a vow. In honor of our dear friends Maggie and Beckett, we pledged to make a difference. We volunteered, became model citizens. When Lamont was elected mayor, our number one goal was to get a good, decent chief of police in Midnight. Then Zach came home and we knew we’d found our man. Even though he’s the product of that floozy Francine Adams and that a no-account Ralph Henson, he turned out to be a fine man. And when you came home, we did our best to bring you back together.”
“You know that Ralph Henson is Zach’s father?”
Nesta waved the gun in her hand. “Everybody knew that except poor Zach. After what Ralph and Harlan did to that poor boy before he left for the army, they both should’ve been strung up.”
“You know about that, too?”
“But of course. There aren’t too many secrets in Midnight.”
“And how are you going to keep secret that you murdered me?”
“Another murder-suicide. Poor Lamont was being questioned by Savannah Wilde. Realizing she was onto him, that she suspected he was the murderer of her parents, he killed her in a panic. Then, realizing there was no way he could explain Savannah’s death, he took his