Chapter 5

By the time the cops, detectives, and crime scene unit had made their significant mess and left, twilight had given way to full darkness. Molly paced the dining room, too anxious and furious to sit still, as she glared at her cell phone as if it had been the one who’d committed some crime heinous enough to lead to an entire team of law enforcement people tearing their house apart.

“Just call him,” Charlie said for the tenth time, and Molly had to clench her teeth to keep from snapping something rude at her sister. “He’s the only one left.”

“I know.” Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to stand still. She’d tried all of their other contacts, but no one knew anything—or, if they did, they wouldn’t share with her. This was their last possible source for information, and even this was a long shot. She just really didn’t want to call this number. As soon as she did, she’d be opening a huge, family-sized can of worms.

There wasn’t anyone else left to call, though, and they needed answers. After one more exhale that came out as a sigh, she tapped the number on her screen.

“What’s wrong, Pax?” John Carmondy answered immediately, so she didn’t even get a chance to prepare herself for hearing his bass voice.

“What’d she do?” It was rude to just blurt out the question, she knew that, but when was she ever polite to John? When you need answers from him, a smugly know-it-all voice in the back of her head reminded her. She hated that voice.

There was a pause, and Molly wondered if John was just as startled by her call as she’d been by his. She almost immediately dismissed the notion, since she was pretty sure John Carmondy wasn’t taken off guard by anything. He could be neck-deep in swamp water with piranhas chewing on one leg and an alligator chomping on the other, and he’d still be as cool and calm as could be, cracking jokes and looking hot in a mud- and blood-smeared way.

Focus, she told herself sharply.

“I don’t know if she’s actually guilty,” he started, and Molly rolled her eyes. Of course Jane was guilty of whatever bad thing she was accused of doing. Molly couldn’t remember one time that her mom had been falsely accused. “But she was arrested for burglary and theft.”

“Okay,” Molly said slowly, processing the information. All four of her sisters were watching her with a silent, steady intensity, as if they were trying to hear the other side of the call, but Molly wasn’t about to put the phone on speaker. That would pretty much guarantee embarrassment on her part, since she’d never had a conversation with John that didn’t involve him teasing her about something. Even though he was unusually serious at this moment, she knew it was just a matter of time before he said something to make her squirm. She forced her brain to focus again, but it was difficult. The hellish day had taken all of her energy, plus whatever she had in reserve. Her thoughts were spinning around uselessly, replaying all the worst parts of the past twenty-four hours. Her stomach twisted with the knowledge that what Jane had done was really, really bad.

Although it was true that burglary was on the more serious end of her mom’s usual crimes, it still didn’t seem to explain the search warrant. Jane had incredibly quick and sticky fingers, and she’d been charged with theft before…many times. The attitude of the cops who’d just finished searching their house had been unusually serious and intense, though, and Molly could feel the difference between all of Jane’s earlier criminal exploits and this one. Whatever their mom had done, it was big.

“What did she steal?”

“What was she accused of stealing, do you mean?” he asked.

Molly frowned, unable to read his tone. Was he scolding her for not believing in her mom or warning her to keep up the pretense that Jane was innocent? Either way, she didn’t have time to try to parse the undercurrents of every word. “Sure. Let’s go with that. What was she accused of stealing?”

There it was again, that strange pause. John Carmondy was not normally hesitant. In fact, he was usually as not-hesitant as a person could possibly be. It was bizarre.

“Jewelry,” he finally said, which told her almost nothing but raised another thousand questions in her mind.

“Why are you being weird?” she burst out, not wanting to hear one more cautious, carefully worded answer from him. Her world was already topsy-turvy, and she didn’t need John acting strangely on top of everything else. He was always so rocklike, so confident and steady. No matter that she often found it annoying—she needed that John now.

“I’m not being weird,” he huffed, amusement threaded beneath his outrage, and she relaxed. That was more like the John Carmondy she knew and…didn’t really love. She was reassured by this small return to normal, though.

“Yes, you are.” She flipped her free hand impatiently. “Just tell me. What did Mom steal—besides my car? How big of a mess are my sisters and I in? We need to know, and your wishy-washy answers aren’t helping.”

Although he made a sound of protest when she called him wishy-washy, he didn’t waste time contradicting her, for which she was grateful.

“She was arrested for breaking into Simone Pichet’s hotel room and stealing a very valuable necklace.”

“Thank you.” Her words were sincere, since it was so nice having even that small bit of information. Moving the phone away from her mouth, she spoke to her sisters. “She stole Simone Pichet’s necklace.”

Norah immediately began tapping her laptop keys, and Molly felt a moment of gratitude that computers and electronic devices hadn’t been listed in the search warrant. One of the detectives had tried to take Norah’s laptop, but Cara had stopped him. If all of their computers and phones had been taken, everything would’ve been so much harder.

“Allegedly.” John stressed the word, and Molly put the phone back to her ear. “She allegedly stole Simone Pichet’s necklace. She pled innocent during her first advisement this afternoon.”

That new bit of information made Molly’s belly lurch with a whole new type of dread. “She had her first advisement hearing? Did the judge set bail?”

This time, when he paused before speaking, she wanted to jump through the phone to rip the words out of him. “Yes. Five hundred.”

She blinked. “Five hundred? That’s it?”

“Thousand,” he clarified, and she froze in place. “Five hundred thousand.”

Her lips were numb, but she somehow managed to ask, “Did she make bond?”

“Yes.” He didn’t sound happy.

A horrible thought occurred to her, making her stomach twist painfully. “Did you—”

“No!” There was no hesitation before his answer this time. “I wouldn’t do that. How could you think that I’d…?” He took a harsh, audible breath and then went quiet for a moment before speaking again, more calmly this time, although a hard edge remained to his voice. “It was Barney.”

She hadn’t believed things could get worse, but they suddenly had. “Barney Thompson?”

Her sisters, who’d been clustered around Norah, all trying to see her laptop screen, whipped around as one to stare at Molly. All she could do was stare back.

“This…is bad,” she finally said, and John barked out a humorless laugh.

“You could say that.” When she didn’t say anything in response, her mind churning helplessly as she tried to think her way out of this horribly messy circus that Jane had dropped them into, he asked, “What do you need from me?”

The question snapped her brain into sharp focus, even as the unexpected offer made a tiny part of her heart feel as tender as a bruise. “I’m not sure yet. Can I get back to you on that?”

“Anytime.”

“Thank you.” For the second time in a single conversation, she was thanking John Carmondy—and not sarcastically.

After she ended the call, she continued staring at her phone until Charlie demanded, “Well? What’d he say?”

Blinking, she looked at her sisters. “That was weird.”

“What was?” Cara asked.

“Carmondy was actually…nice.”

All four of her sisters exchanged amused looks.

“What?” Even as Molly asked, she knew she’d regret it.

Felicity snorted. “Please. He’s always nice to you. It’s ridiculous how nice that man is to you. You’re the only one who’s blind to it.”

Blind to what? This time, Molly knew better than to say the words out loud. Instead, she settled on a skeptical shake of her head and a subject change. “Mom’s out.”

“What? How?” Cara’s forehead crinkled with confusion. “Who gave her the bail money? Did they sell your car already?”

Wincing at the thought of her beloved car sold to some shady dealer, Molly shook her head and cringed for an entirely different reason. “Barney wrote her bond.”

“What?” her sisters chorused, and Molly couldn’t blame them for their incredulity. After all, she’d been just as shocked. All but the most desperate avoided working with Barney. He was an untrustworthy shark who’d sell anyone out in a second if he’d make a dime off of it. Her mother knew better than to jump into metaphorical bed with Barney—at least she should have. Molly rubbed her right eye, which was starting to twitch. Would the day’s bad surprises ever stop?

“Did John say what she used as collateral?” Cara asked.

Kicking herself for not thinking to ask, Molly shook her head. “Sorry. I was thrown by the whole Barney thing.”

Charlie huffed out a laugh that had no amusement in it. “Understandable. I mean…Barney? What was she thinking?”

Unable to give her sisters a satisfactory answer, Molly could only shrug and change the subject. “What’d you find out about Simone what’s-her-face’s necklace?”

Turning her laptop so that Molly could see the screen, Norah made a pained face. “Mom went big this time.”

Bracing herself, Molly scanned the photo on the screen. She’d never been very interested in jewelry—even before she’d started chasing and tackling people on a regular basis—so the picture didn’t make too much of an impression on her. The necklace looked intricate and extremely sparkly, set mostly with what appeared to be diamonds, interspersed with blue stones. A large, clear gem dangled from the lowest point of the collar. Even she knew, just based on that rock alone, that the necklace had to have an exorbitant price tag.

She scanned the description below the photo, and her lungs stopped working. “Twelve million?” she wheezed. “Mom stole a necklace worth twelve million dollars?”

From the sober faces of her sisters, it was obvious that Molly hadn’t read the price wrong. She let out a silent whistle as her stomach continued to try to eat itself. This was nothing like the lipstick Jane liked to sneak from the department store makeup counter.

“She is in so much trouble.”

“So are we.” Cara’s voice was flat as she gestured around the dining room. It hadn’t gotten more than a cursory search, but other rooms of the house—especially Jane’s bedroom—were a tossed mess. Even the storage boxes in the garage had been dug through, and the contents had been strewn everywhere. At least they hadn’t dusted for prints again. The fingerprint powder that Sergeant Blake had left everywhere was a beast to clean up, Molly had found. “I take it the necklace wasn’t found on Mom when she was arrested?”

Molly held up her hands in an I don’t know gesture. “Sorry. I didn’t ask Carmondy that. Want me to call him back?” She really didn’t want to talk to him again so soon, mainly because their last conversation had put her severely off-balance in an unexpected way, and she’d had quite enough surprises for one day.

“Not yet,” Cara said, to Molly’s relief. “First, let’s figure out what we know—and what we can find out on our own. Then you can talk to John to fill in the blanks.”

“Okay.” Molly took great pains to hide her inward grimace. It appeared that her next call to John was just delayed slightly, not canceled as she’d hoped. As soon as the thought popped into her head, she mentally scolded herself. She and her sisters had an entire world of problems that were a thousand times worse than her uncertainty around this new version of John. If she had to call him for more answers—even if she had to ask him for help—she was going to put her pride in the closet and do exactly what was necessary.

After all, their mom had just jumped into a canyon of trouble…and Molly had to do her best to make sure that she and her sisters weren’t dragged into the abyss with her.

In Her Sights

On sale March 2019