The Sister-in-Law: An absolutely gripping summer thriller for 2021 Read online

  As the line went dead, I knew what would happen next. Knew what Lane would tell me to do. And I’d do it all, down to every last detail. That was when I realized what all of this made me. The pain and suffering I had left in my wake was enough to make my husband kill himself.

  I was a monster.

  Chapter 2

  Lane Flynn

  ‘It’s going to be okay,’ I told Harper.

  It was anything but okay.

  It was worse than I imagined, seeing my brother-in-law like that; stiff and ashen and tinted with blood. The knife sticking out of Ben’s chest looked more like a prop, and the scene was comparable to any number of zombie shows I’d binge-watched, his face waxy and fake. But the smell … there was nothing fake about the stench of an hours-dead corpse.

  I knew the smell because I experienced it almost daily at the hospital where I worked. Most people were terrified of the dead, but gore and blood and death were my everyday life. I just never expected it to be my brother-in-law. And not like this.

  I stood over the body formerly known as Ben Paris, transfixed by the awful display while Harper broke down in my arms, her sorrow soaking into my shirtsleeve. I doubted she could survive a second round of pain so soon. It wasn’t fair how life discriminated against her. Kissing her head and rubbing circles on her back, I tried to comfort her.

  ‘It’s going to be okay.’ I had recited this same line a year ago, not knowing if it was true. It felt like just as much of a lie today.

  ‘We’ll get through this together.’ It was the best I could offer and – this time – the truth.

  ‘Lane, can’t you do something for him?’ she asked.

  ‘Harp, I’m a nurse, not Jesus. I can’t bring him back from the dead. I wish I could, but I can’t.’

  She pulled away and looked up at me, cool air rushing into the gap of space between us. Her watery eyes searched mine. It was familiar territory to me, the pleading eyes of those left behind seeking answers about their departed loved ones. Did he die peacefully? Was there anything else you could have done for her? Why, why, why? As a nurse, I watched countless sick people arrive on their feet but depart on gurneys. Questions always followed. Answers rarely offered solace. For my sister, I had only one answer. One she would hate, but one she would accept because Harper accepted everything I fed her.

  ‘What I can do, is try to protect your family,’ I said.

  ‘How, Lane? He’s gone. The kids have no father. I don’t work. I would be lucky to find a minimum wage job. Without the life insurance money we’ll lose everything. I don’t … I don’t know what to do.’

  I placed my hands on her shoulders, forcing her to see me, hear me. ‘You’re strong, Harp. You’ll get through this. I know this is horribly difficult, especially so soon after …’ I didn’t finish my thought, because she already knew. She didn’t need the reminder. ‘But I promise to take care of you. I have a plan, okay?’

  She nodded wordlessly.

  ‘First of all, get rid of that suicide letter. That can never be spoken of again. Understand?’

  Another nod.

  ‘I’m going to stage the house to make it look like it was a robbery. It’s very important that you tell the police you came home to this and have no idea what happened. Ben never killed himself, got it? He was murdered during the robbery.’

  She covered her mouth as a gasp slipped out. She was unraveling, and I could barely keep my own emotions spooled right now.

  ‘Please listen, Harp. I need to know you understand me.’

  ‘Why murdered? Isn’t suicide better?’

  Murder, suicide, both ugly words. There was no easy out, and Harper needed to accept that if she was going to get through this without losing everything … or facing jail time.

  ‘Not if you want to get your life insurance payout. They don’t pay out on suicides, Harp, which means you’ll lose everything, just like you said. Considering what you’ve been through in the past year, I don’t think you’d be able to handle that big of an adjustment right now.’

  Her gaze drifted as she considered my words. ‘What if the police think I killed him?’

  ‘You didn’t kill him, so there won’t be anything that points to you, right?’

  She glanced at the floorboards, her eyes shifty. Stepping out of my grasp, she ambled across the room and sunk into Ben’s lambskin armchair, the one she had bought him for their fifth anniversary and made me pick up and deliver as a surprise. Everything in this room screamed Ben, from the oversized leather sofa with gaudy nailhead accents, to the hideous abstract artwork on the walls.

  Folding her legs up, she cried into her knees. She was beaten, crumbling apart. I could always tell when she was defeated, but this was something else altogether.

  ‘Right, Harper? Nothing should tie you to this. You weren’t home … were you? You have an alibi.’ This was my sister. It had to be true. But then again … I knew what she had done a year ago.

  ‘Yes, Lane, it’s just … what if something goes wrong? They always suspect the spouse, don’t they? Maybe it’d be better to hide his body or something. No body, no crime.’

  I laughed mirthlessly. ‘This isn’t CSI. We can’t just hide a body. A missing husband will look more like you did it than anything else. Just follow my directions, okay? A break-in is your best bet. This house is a realistic target for a thief wanting a big payday.’

  ‘How are you going to fake that? The cops will find out, Lane.’

  ‘Not if we do it properly. It’s the only option. You came in the front door, first noticed the broken window in the dining room as you walked by, then ran into the living room looking for Ben. That’s when you saw him lying on the sofa – already dead.’

  Her eyes narrowed curiously. ‘What broken window?’

  Grabbing a hand towel from a kitchen drawer, I wrapped up my fist and went outside, with Harper on my heels. Years of Matlock and Psych reruns had taught me everything I needed to know to execute this with a semblance of believability. Break the glass inward for authenticity, then reenact the crime to ensure it all fit in place. It was still dark enough outside to cover us in shadow. I glanced up and down Hendricks Way, the quiet rows of sleepy homes … except for one glowing window across the street and a couple doors down. The neighborhood busybody. I doubted the old hen could see us from there through the darkness.

  Along the wraparound porch were two windows that faced the side yard. I paused at one of them, raising my arm to determine the easiest place to break the glass.

  ‘Whoa, are you serious?’ Harper jumped between me and the window. ‘These are the original walk-through Italianate windows! They cost a fortune to replace. You’re not going to break one, are you?’

  ‘Harper, a thief isn’t going to care about your fancy windows. If you want to sell this story, it’s got to look real.’ I nudged her aside and aimed for the lower part of the glass, near my knee.

  Thank God for single-glaze glass, which made it easy to break through, first with my hand, then kicking an opening large enough for a man to walk through. I stepped into the opening that led to the dining room as Harper winced at the crunch of glass beneath my boots.

  ‘My floors …’ she whimpered. ‘Ben and I spent an entire summer refinishing these floors. Now you’ve scratched them all up.’

  I shook my head at her, incredulous that she was worried about some wooden planks at a time like this. ‘It needs to be believable, Harp. You can replace the glass and fix the floors with your three-million-dollar life insurance payout.’

  The dining room was across the house from the living room, far enough away that if Ben had the television on and blaring, as he usually did, there was a good chance he wouldn’t have heard the glass breaking. Plus, the windows were easily accessible from the porch and hidden behind dense shrubs – a perfect entry point for your everyday thief in the night. It seemed believable enough to me. I hoped it was enough for the police.

  Harper followed me through the opening, her foots
teps light as she stepped around the splintered carnage. A robbery needed to have things robbed, so I searched the first floor for anything of value – an antique mantel clock, several expensive vases, a painting from someone famous whose name I couldn’t, and didn’t care to, remember. I pulled the painting off the wall.

  ‘Hey, put that back!’ Harper demanded, seizing the framed art from me. ‘That’s a Jackson Pollock I got at auction. Ben practically had a fistfight with the other bidder to get me this. I can’t replace that.’

  I should have remembered Jackson Pollock, considering it was the artist Ben and Harper had named their son after. I grabbed it back.

  ‘Which is exactly why the thief stole it. We need to hurry. The more time we waste, the more you risk. Go upstairs and grab your expensive jewelry and any valuables that you can easily carry.’

  ‘What are you going to do with my stuff?’ Harper whimpered, carrying a plastic bag of jewelry.

  ‘I’ll drop the small stuff off at Goodwill and hide the painting in my attic until things blow over.’

  ‘But these are family heirlooms!’

  ‘Jewelry is useless if you’re in jail or living on the streets, Harp!’ How was this so hard for her to understand?

  Ten minutes later the ‘stolen goods’ were tossed in the trunk of my car, which I had pulled into the garage to avoid any neighborly observations, and everything looked the way I expected a break-in should look. There was always the chance I had missed something, but as I recreated the events step by step, I thought – and hoped – it was convincing enough.

  The last – and hardest – part was the body. The knife sat rigid in Ben’s chest, a pool of blood around the wound and a drizzle of it snaking to the floor. One hand still clung to the hilt, the other had flopped over the edge of the sofa.

  I didn’t want to risk messing with the body more than Harper had already done, so I decided to let it be. It seemed plausible Ben was sleeping when his attacker snuck in and stabbed him. Perhaps Ben had reached for the knife to try to pull it out … but was too weak with impending death to succeed. Then it was lights out, and here we were. Anything was possible … I hoped.

  ‘Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to call 9-1-1 now. Then you’re going to call me, so that there’s a call record of you phoning me after them. It’s important they think they were the first immediate call made after you found Ben dead.’

  ‘Uh huh.’ Harper’s voice trembled, her gaze was unfocused and wild. She was barely hanging on to my instructions. The concern about the windows and floors, how she’d clung to the painting … it was how she compartmentalized. I had seen her get hung up on silly details the last time this happened. It was her coping method during extreme duress, focusing on anything but the real problem at hand.

  ‘Hey, sis, I got you. You’ll get through this.’ I hugged her, absorbing the shudder from each breath.

  ‘Thank you, Lane … for always saving me.’

  ‘I’m your brother. It’s what brothers do. I’m going to slip out the back, so give me a five-minute head start before you call the cops. Don’t call my phone for another five minutes or so. I don’t want them tracing the call to a nearby cell tower, in case they’re able to do that. I need to be home for the call. Got it?’

  A mute nod from Harper, then I was off.

  I had no idea how call tracing actually worked or if the extent of my efforts would prove relevant, but I figured better safe than in prison.

  ‘I’m heading out now,’ I called over my shoulder as I left.

  On my way out the back door, I noticed the small rectangular window right below my eyeline. It wasn’t so much the unique mid-century design of colored, patterned glass that caught my eye, but the lack of it. A hole had been punched through, and from it the glass splintered in every direction. A heap of rainbow shards had scattered beneath the door, a toy truck among the glass.

  ‘What the hell?’ I muttered. How had we missed this? ‘Harp, get over here.’

  I felt her walk up behind me. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘What happened here?’ I pointed to the window.

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I hadn’t seen that until now. It might have happened when Jackson and Elise were playing outside. You know how destructive Jackson can be.’

  I knelt down, examining the details. The truck sat on top of the glass – not beneath it – as if someone had placed it there after breaking in. This wasn’t good. How would the cops explain two break-in points? It was downright suspicious. Or maybe … maybe it only validated our work. Was it true after all? Was Ben Paris murdered? If that was the case … who did it? And why? Because a robbery gone wrong sure as hell wasn’t it. Nothing was missing, and Ben didn’t look like he even had a chance to fight back. Unless Ben forgot his key, broke in, randomly placed the truck there, then killed himself?

  It sounded ridiculous even in my head, but I couldn’t worry about it now. What’s done was done.

  ‘Did you notice if anything was missing, Harp?’ I asked. If someone had broken in, they were looking for something specific. Had they found it? I suspected not, because if there was one thing I knew about my sister and her now dead husband, they knew how to lock up their secrets tight.

  ‘No, everything was in its usual place when I got home.’

  Maybe the broken window was nothing. Maybe it was something. I didn’t have time to dissect all the possible scenarios.

  ‘Um, let me think.’ I headed into the kitchen, opening and shutting a few drawers. With duct tape in hand, I ripped a piece of plastic wrap the size of the window and sealed it shut with the tape. ‘Here’s what happened if the cops ask. The kids were outside playing and threw the truck in through the window. You haven’t had a chance to fix it. Got it?’

  I carefully swept up the glass shards and moved the truck.

  ‘What if the cops ask the kids to corroborate that? They’ll say it’s not true – even if they did do it. Why can’t we just say it was broken when I arrived … which is true?’

  ‘Because it doesn’t make sense that there were two break-in points, Harp. The fewer the questions, the better.’

  ‘No kidding,’ Harper grumbled under her breath. ‘You should have listened to me before breaking my window.’

  ‘Hey, I never claimed to be a crime-scene cover-up expert. I’m working on the fly here.’ I handed Harper her cell phone, then cupped her hand. ‘Give me a few minutes, then call 9-1-1. Sound frantic. Sound scared. Make it believable.’

  ‘That won’t be difficult, Lane. I am frantic. And scared. My husband killed himself and I have no idea why.’

  ‘No, your husband was murdered. Remember? That is your truth now.’

  I didn’t tell her my suspicions that Ben might have, in fact, been murdered. I’d been tempted to do it myself after what he’d done. But I didn’t need to heap more on her than she already carried. I had a feeling the truth would spill out soon enough. I just had to hope my sister survived the whiplash.

  Chapter 3

  Candace Moriarty-Flynn

  To my beautiful Candace, whose name means ‘clarity.’

  You’ve given my life clarity and purpose: to bring you joy.

  Six weeks later …

  There are two kinds of women in the world – those who buy throw pillows, and those who don’t. You know the ones who do. Uppity housewives who wear Ann Taylor. Etsy-loving homemakers. Prudish moms who suck in bed but bake like a fiend.

  Not me. I hung out on the other end of the spectrum. Chaotic. Go-with-the-flow. Free-thinking. Fun. My ex called me a ‘trailer park hippie’, as if that was an insult. Give me all the bohemian vibes, thank you very much. I didn’t make my bed each morning, let alone worry about decorating it with overpriced, uncomfortable pillows that I would just toss on a floor that I never swept clean. Who cared about a little dust when there were more fulfilling things to do with your time?

  So when the doorbell rang, forcing me awake from my afternoon nap, I opened the door and instan
tly knew I was looking at a throw pillow kind of woman. Her three-quarter-sleeved blouse was buttoned way too high, and her form-fitting khaki capris did nothing to complement her flat ass. One look at her told me all I needed to know. There was a void inside of her that she covered up in boring, beige, brand name pride. She offered a polite but empty smile.

  ‘Can I help you?’ I asked, expecting her to be a Jehovah’s Witness or some other religious groupie offering spiritual wares that I didn’t want or need.

  Her face, caked with foundation, drooped with a frown as she spoke warily, ‘I’m looking for Lane. Is he home?’

  ‘Who’s asking?’ I felt like I should recognize her, but I couldn’t quite place where I knew her from.

  She extended her hand across the threshold, but I ignored it.

  ‘I’m Harper – Lane’s sister.’

  So this was Harper. My new sister-in-law. ‘Oh, hi. I thought you looked familiar.’

  Her hand dropped to her side. ‘Yeah, we’ve met before. Over dinner. It’s Candace, right?’

  Oh yes, the awkward interrogation dinner of a million-and-one questions, all aimed at me. ‘Wow, that’s quite a memory you have.’

  Her gaze felt intrusive. ‘Yep, I don’t forget things easily.’

  Harper had an unmemorable face to match her unmemorable personality. Now she was the kind who made her bed every morning – sometimes even before coffee. Her red hair brushed against her chin. I hadn’t remembered her being a ginger.

  ‘You look different from when I last saw you.’

  Her hand flew up to her hair, touching it self-consciously. ‘New haircut. I needed a change, you know? It was either this or a pixie cut.’

  ‘A pixie cut is great if you want one day of feeling cute and three months of regret as you grow it out.’

  Her smile flicked on, then off, and her judgment traveled up and down my body. ‘You’re quite tall, aren’t you? I didn’t remember you being so tall … and thin.’