“Are you serious?” said Tyler. He briefly took his eyes off his grandfather, and Everett started to reach for his ankle gun. “Watch it, old man. Is this true?” he asked him.
Everett straightened up. “Rubbish. Fantasy.”
“Not according to your sister, Maybelle,” said Diane.
Everett looked sharply at Diane, his eyes wide with surprise. He paused for many long moments, staring at Diane.
“Mags has to be a hundred and ten by now,” he whispered.
“Not quite a hundred. Ninety-seven, I believe,” said Diane.
“Senile,” said Everett. Some of his smugness came back into his face.
“Actually, quite lucid,” said Diane. “Creepy as hell, but her story is consistent with what we found in the well.”
The smug look was short-lived. His mouth turned down into a frown.
“You know,” said Diane, “I’ll bet when you had your fingerprints taken at the time you were bonded for your business, you worried. You worried if they were on the items you dropped in the well when your father was coming to take your sister away. It was a long shot that they would ever be found, but it had to give you pause. And then came Dr. Marcella Payden, archaeologist and curious homeowner. She was looking for the artist who had created the broken pottery that she discovered in the fire pit in her yard and painted the portraits she found hidden in the walls. What if Marcella found your sister, Maybelle, and she told about the well? There goes your reputation. And here your son is about to run for U.S. congressman. You couldn’t do anything when your father sold the property-you couldn’t tell him it should stay in the family because of what was in the well, but you could do something now to keep the current owner quiet. Had you planned to try and buy it back? Maybe clean out the well?”
Everett said nothing. He stared at Diane so hard, she thought he was trying to will her to shut up.
“What well? What’s this about?” said Tyler.
“It’s about why you are innocent,” said Diane.
That kept his attention on her story. Tyler was looking for a way out. When he first came into the room, he didn’t think there was a way out without more murder, and his having to leave behind everything he knew. He had hope now, and Diane was counting on his hope to get them out of this alive.
“At first I wondered about Mary Lassiter,” said Diane. “How did she figure in this? Of course, when we found out that she worked at the historical society where Marcella Payden was asking questions about who lived in the house in Pigeon Ridge, I realized that Mary Lassiter was your age. You both were contemporaries in Rosewood. Marcella sparked a memory in Mary Lassiter. She knew something about an artist who disappeared when she was a girl. The artist had a brother, Everett. She remembered you. She probably looked you up on the Internet. People do that a lot these days, trying to get in touch with people they used to know. For her it was probably a lark, maybe a chance for a little romance late in life. She didn’t know you would consider her to be a loose end to be tied up, along with Marcella Payden. That’s why Mary Lassiter’s purse was stolen when she was killed. You wanted her cell phone, but didn’t want the police to focus on the phone. You didn’t want them looking at her call records. But Sheriff Braden is very thorough, and he’ll check the call records as well as the Internet history records where she worked at the historical society.” Diane paused a moment, letting it sink in.
“You see, Everett Gauthier,” Diane continued, “we’ve been really busy at the crime lab.”
“Gauthier?” said Wendy and Tyler together.
“That was Everett’s family name before they moved from Rosewood, before it was changed to Walters-the Anglicized version of Gauthier. Everett’s father’s attempt to hide the family skeletons, as it were, by changing his family’s last name. Everett’s sister, Maybelle, did to him what he did to your son. She hated her father and his new wife, and she decided to ruin her half brother, Everett. She turned him into a killer.”
“No,” whispered Everett. “No. My sister loved me. She wouldn’t have said those things.”
“Well, when she discovered that you lived in luxury while she lived as an indigent in insane asylums and nursing homes for almost sixty years, what did you expect?”
Diane looked at the others, then at Tyler.
“Everett’s sister, Maybelle Agnes Gauthier, your great-aunt, had a unique way of making her pottery. She used human bone from people she enticed Everett to kill. The sixteen-year-old Everett chopped them up and boiled the parts so she could render the bones into dust to temper the clay for her pottery. Nice little family, huh?” said Diane. “We found some of the bodies in the well, along with Everett’s bloody fingerprints on the tools and in the clay.”
Everett Walters was shaking now. Diane couldn’t tell if it was from anger or from the fear that came with revelation.
“That’s what you brought into your house, Wendy,” said Diane, “a monster who had access to your son. And he brought him to this. This is why I have sympathy with Tyler, Marsha. He didn’t have a chance, under the influence of someone like Everett.”
“Shut up. Shut your damn hole, you bitch. Shut your damn mouth.” Everett was shaking his fist at Diane.
“You,” said Wendy, “have the nerve to tell her to shut up, you monster. Look what you’ve done.”
Everett ignored Wendy, but continued to stare at Diane. “I’ll kill you, if it’s the last thing I do. I’ll kill you and you’ll know it’s coming. I’ll chop you up while you are still alive. You’ll feel everything. You bitch. You bitch. You’ll feel every cut.”
“See, Tyler, this isn’t you,” said Diane.
But Tyler had passed out.
Chapter 62
When Diane looked back at Everett Walters, he was pointing a gun at her.
Well, hell.
“Now it’s time to pay the piper,” he said.
“Oh God, Tyler,” yelled Wendy.
She stood up and started toward her unconscious son. As she crossed in front of Everett, she didn’t see the blow from the pistol butt coming to the back of her head. Wendy reeled forward and fell, crashing into the table, rolling off it onto the floor at Marsha’s feet. For a moment, Diane thought Marsha was going to kick her. Wendy struggled to get to her feet. She looked seriously hurt.
“Just lie there,” said Diane. “Until you get your breath.”
Ross Kingsley stood and faced Everett. “This may seem like a good idea to you now, but you’re very angry. I understand that. Take a moment and think about this. It will do you no good to cut off your nose to spite your face,” he said.
“It won’t be my nose I’ll be cutting off,” he said. “You and the woman are do-gooders. I know your type. You take care of people too yellow to take care of themselves. So this is why I’m going to tell you, I’ll be shooting these other folks first. I’ll shoot my worthless daughter-in-law right now unless you sit down. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
Kingsley hesitated a moment, then sat down. Diane guessed he was trying to think of something else to say. Right now, Everett wasn’t in the mood to listen.
All the guns were across the room with Tyler, except the one in Everett’s hand and the one under the sofa. Diane tried to think of a plan to get her hands on one of them. She didn’t see how she could do it fast enough.
But maybe Wendy could. She was still on the floor and Diane could see her looking under the couch. She saw the gun; Diane was sure. But the coffee table was between her and the sofa. Everett would cut her down if she tried. Maybe if there was a diversion.
“Apparently, it’s me you want to, how did you put it, chop up in little pieces? Why don’t you leave these people alone?” Diane said, standing up and facing him.