Betrayal (32 page)

“Hi, Mrs. Baker,” Taylor said.

“You're one of those twins. You're friends with my daughter.”

Her lips looked dry, but Taylor wasn't about to offer her an ice chip from the container on the tray next to her bed. She wanted to keep her talking.

“I'm sorry about Brianna. I really am.”

Brandy looked up at Taylor. “You found her, didn't you?”

She shook her head. “Yes, I did.”

Brandy nodded. “Is your sister here, too? You two were always together, as I recall.”

Taylor tilted her head and indicated Hayley on the other side of the ER. “Hayley's over there. She's talking to Drew. Or trying to. I think he's still unconscious.”

“He's alive?” she asked.

Brandy's heart monitor started to accelerate.

“I think so,” Taylor said. “At least, for the time being. The cops were talking about how it didn't look like he was going to live. He lost a lot of blood. You both did.”

“He tried to kill me, Taylor. He stabbed me! He said that he hated me more than he hated Bree. He killed poor Olivia too. He killed her by accident. He thought he was killing my little girl.”

“I know. I know,” Taylor said.

The heart monitor had just kicked into overdrive, the worst beat remix ever. An alarm sounded, and faster than the fatal slash that had killed Olivia, three nurses were on top of Taylor.

ANNIE GARNETT CORNERED Taylor and Hayley just outside of the ICU. She dropped her full coffee cup in the trash, and it landed with a thud. She had always been a gentle giant of a woman, but this time she seemed scary.

“Taylor, I'm not going to blame you for this,” the police chief said in a tone harsher than any of them had ever heard. “No one is. But Drew is hanging by a thread and you and your sister's stunt almost killed him. I get that you wanted to find out what happened to your friend. I know that you care about people and you know the difference between right and wrong. But this was a mistake. A big one. I don't know if hypothermia pickled your brain, but I'm going to cut you some slack because . . . well, I've known you since you two were babies.”

“I'm sorry.”

“We're sorry.”

“I know you are. I also get that Brianna's mom doesn't exactly qualify for mother of the year by anyone's standards. But going into the ICU to question her, well, that's stupid and wrong.”

Both girls felt their faces grow red.

“Again, sorry,” Taylor said.

“I know who's responsible for killing Olivia and Brianna,” Hayley said. “If that's any help to you. I mean that with great respect.”

“We know Drew is the killer. We matched black fibers from his Darth Vader costume found at the scene.”

Hayley nodded. “Right. Drew did the stabbing, but he had an accomplice.”

Annie liked these girls, but really, they should leave the investigation to the professionals.

“Brianna wasn't his accomplice, dear,” she said. “She was his victim.”

“I didn't say
Brianna
.” Hayley looked over in the direction of the group of nurses around Brandy's room. “
She
was Drew's accomplice.”

“Brandy?”

“Look in her purse. Drew told me that Brianna's mom had waved a big cashier's check in his face. She had laughed at him. He had loved her. Trusted her. She had convinced him to kill her daughter for the insurance money.”

“But Drew messed up and killed Olivia by mistake when she and Bree switched costumes at the party,” Taylor chimed in, remembering the moment the doctor had mistaken her for Hayley and she had put two and two together. “Olivia was never supposed to die.”

“Mrs. Baker told Drew he was never getting a dime because he'd messed up and killed Olivia by mistake,” Hayley said.

Annie turned on her heel and headed to the nurses' station. She didn't need a warrant. Her team had taken Brandy's black-and-silver Kate Spade purse from the Silverdale Beach Hotel for medical reasons. The hospital staff had placed her purse and paperwork into a plastic bin.

Annie poked through its contents, a hodgepodge that included a one-way airline ticket to Mexico, four kinds of face lotion, and six lipsticks.

And a cashier's check for one million dollars.

The price, it seemed, of her daughter's life.

SEEING TAYLOR AND HAYLEY SIDE BY SIDE in a hospital room was déjà vu for their parents. Hoses and IV lines crisscrossed helter-skelter from each girl to their respective life-support equipment. A large wall clock ticked away the time above the pair of rocking chairs borrowed from a couple of vacant maternity rooms down the hallway that the staff had brought in for Kevin and Valerie.

The scene was not nearly as dire as it had been when the girls were five and had been treated at Children's Hospital in Seattle for thirty-one days after the bus accident on the Hood Canal Bridge. For that, everyone was grateful.

With Valerie behind him, Kevin stood between both beds and blinked back tears.

“I don't know what you were thinking,” he said. “Please don't ever do anything as stupid as that again. I can't live without you. Your mom can't live without you.”

Hayley met his gaze and glanced over at her mother. She had been crying. Her eyes were puffy and shiny streaks of tears ran down her cheeks.

“We're sorry. We just had to know.”

“Know what?” Kevin said, looking completely confused.

“Girls, I'm sorry. I hope you will forgive me.” Valerie wedged herself between Kevin and Hayley.

“It's all right, Mom,” Taylor said.

Tears rolled down Valerie's cheeks. “This is my fault. I should have told you what you wanted to know. I should have told you everything.”

“It's okay. Don't worry, Mom,” Hayley said, closing her eyes and sending a question to the person she had seen in the corridor under the prison.

You saved Tony, didn't you?

Hayley looked up at her mother, who remained silent while her tears fell.

When Hayley closed her eyes again, she heard an answer.

Yes, I did.

Postmortem

IT WAS OBVIOUS in the weeks and months after Drew and Brandy were arrested for murder and conspiracy to commit murder, that Port Gamble was never going to be the same again. Even before the trial it was clear that Brandy Connors Baker held the advantage.

She hadn't actually killed anyone.

She had a decent lawyer.

She concocted a defense.

“Drew was stalking me,” she told a Seattle TV station in a jail house interview. “He was in love with me. I was in total fear all day, every day. I feel like a battered woman,” she added.

Drew gave an interview to
Inside Edition
, but most of it was bleeped out.

“That—
BLEEP
—is a—
BLEEPING
—liar! I hate her—
BLEEPING
—guts. Plus she's old!”

Even though the botched crime scene made things difficult for the prosecution, the Kitsap County prosecutor stood firm and offered no deals. Trial was set for June, though most observers expected a series of delays. Justice was never fast, especially when the case was as messy as the one involving two dead teenagers from formerly sleepy Port Gamble, Washington.

Annie Garnett wasn't proud of how things went down with the Grant and Connors cases, but she was able to use the tragedies to increase funding for her department. Her part-time deputy was able to leave his Humane Society gig for full-time employment in Port Gamble. Annie also discovered one thing that brought some relief. While she liked silky fabrics, she didn't care for thongs, after all. Some things literally creeped.

Beth Lee—who was back to wearing her friendship bracelet—entered a student art show in Seattle that winter and won first prize for her drawing, “Girl from London.” Kim Lee talked with the property management company about terminating their lease, but she couldn't bring herself to leave. Something would always keep them there.

Colton James let Hayley know that his increasingly absent father wanted him to fish with him that summer in Alaska, and he said yes. Hayley hated the idea. The only thing worse than summer in rainy Washington was summer without a boyfriend.

In London, the news for the Grants was quite good—at least as far as Winnie was concerned. The murder of their daughter had put Edward back in the media spotlight—big-time. Two months after the arrests of Drew and Brandy, the BBC aired the first episode of his new show,
Just Us
, focusing on victims' rights.

NOT LONG AFTER the Drew and Brandy news faded a bit, Hayley and Taylor sat at the kitchen table in front of the Scrabble board. The house was mostly silent, save for the ticking of the mantel clock and the strange dog-purring of Hedda tucked under the table at their feet. Their mom had gone off to Costco to get some things for Christmas, which was the following week.

Their father had just left on a final interview trip to Des Moines, Iowa, to talk to the parents of the murderer for
Killer Smile
.

When Valerie returned, the girls helped carry in the groceries. It had started to snow, and the world seemed especially bleak.

It was as good a time as any to ask about the things that they needed to know.

Hayley put down a bag of Spanish onions. “Mom, what really happened with Tony Ortega?”

Valerie set down her purse and took off her coat. The look on her face was no longer fear but resignation.

“I'll tell you what I know. It has been a long time,” she said.

She told them how she had seen Tony playing basketball by himself during his one-hour daily exercise period. One time he looked up at her.

“I can't explain it,” she said. “But in that moment when his eyes met mine, I just knew that Tony wasn't a killer. I grew up there on that island. I could sense who was really bad and who wasn't.”

She stopped and went to turn on the teakettle, and then returned to her seat.

“What happened when you were lost?” Hayley said.

“Yeah,” Taylor said. “And why didn't they just execute him afterward?”

Valerie nodded. “I talked to my father about it. I told him that I didn't think that Tony was a killer, but he told me that the prison didn't make mistakes and—get this—even if they did, it was too bad. I really hated him right then. It just seemed so . . . wrong. I'd overheard my dad saying that a lawyer claimed to be tracking down new evidence to get Tony a stay of his execution, but he wasn't going to get it done in time. I wanted to buy him more time.”

“So what did you do?” Hayley asked.

“I know it sounds dumb, but I thought if I could stop the electricity that went to the electric chair I could save him. So that's what I did. I took the schematics from my father's office. We had a passageway from our house to the prison. I used it and did what I had to do.”

The girls were silent, processing what it was their mother just said. The teakettle whistled, and Valerie went to fix her tea.

Taylor watched her mother spoon some sugar into the hot liquid. “But Tony didn't die. Why not?” she asked.

“His lawyer came through in the end. Tony hadn't set the fire that killed his parents. His little sister Maria had. Tony never pinned the blame on her. He felt sorry for her. She'd been terribly abused by their father all through her childhood, and the whole family knew it.”

Taylor felt like crying. The air in the room seemed so heavy. The image of a red plastic gasoline can came to her just then.

“What happened to Tony?” Hayley asked.

“He was released.”

“What about Maria?” asked Taylor.

“She's at the hospital,” Valerie said, choosing her words carefully, not wanting to say too much. Just enough.

“Your hospital?”

Valerie nodded.

“Are you taking care of her?”

Valerie dipped her tea bag in and out of the hot water. “No, she's not my patient.”

Taylor was relentless. She wanted to know more. “How is she doing?”

Valerie looked away and then shook her head slowly. “Not good. Sometimes the past is so evil, so horrible, you can never get over it. It leaves you kind of stuck. That's Maria Ortega.”

“Killing her parents is a ginormous burden,” Hayley said, picking at the Scrabble tiles that were scattered in front of her.

Valerie dribbled some milk into her tea. “No,” she said. “Not that. I meant what was done to her.”

When she returned to the big kitchen table with her mug of English Breakfast tea, Valerie looked down and noticed fourteen Scrabble tiles arranged in three specific groupings:

It was the phrase that her daughters had said over and over when they were babies, and no matter how hard they tried, they couldn't unscramble what they were absolutely sure was a message.

Hayley drummed her fingers on the table.

Without saying a word, Valerie started rearranging the tiles: