Page 105 of Deadly Little Scandals
I expected my mom to drive straight to Lillian’s house—or to Northern Ridge Country Club itself. Instead, she took a detour by the cemetery first. Lily and I followed her down a gravel path to a small wrought-iron fence. Inside the fence, there were two tombstones—small cement crosses.
And in front of each tombstone stood a woman wearing heels and diamond earrings and, in Lillian’s case, pearls.
“You came.” Aunt Olivia sounded surprised. “We’ve been leaving messages for weeks, Ellie. We didn’t think you’d—”
“I had a change of heart,” my mom said, but Aunt Olivia wasn’t looking at her anymore.
She was looking at Lily and me.
“The last time I was here,” I said, making a mental note to kill my mom for bringing us into this unprepared, “there was only one tombstone.”
Lillian stepped to the side. “Your hair looks good like that,” she told me. “One barely notices the bangs.”
I looked past her to the writing on the tombstone she’d just stepped away from. There was no name on the cross, no year, but an inscription had been added.
May her memory be eternal.
“People will think that tombstone is yours,” my mom told Lillian. “They’ll say you have a big head, writing your own epitaph like that.”
My grandmother gave an elegant little shrug. “People will think what they want. I daresay they always do.”
My mom swallowed, her gaze locked on to that inscription. “How did you get her body?”
Lily finally caught on to what was happening here. She stared, wide-eyed, at the second tombstone. “That’s…”
“Liv,”I finished quietly.
“The Lady of the Lake was identified,” Aunt Olivia told us, sounding just as she ever had, even though her chin quivered slightly as she spoke. “Her name was Kaci. She disappeared years ago, and the body came back as a DNA match for her mama.”
Of course it did.
“So that’s that,” I said after a moment. As promised, Lillian had handled the situation, and Aunt Olivia—and J.D. and Charlotte and the rest—had gotten away scot-free.
“Not quite,” Aunt Olivia replied. “Mama and I were talking…”
“Which mama?” Lily muttered.
“We were talking,” Aunt Olivia reiterated, “and we decided that this family really should have a charitable foundation.”
“A sizable one,” Lillian continued. “When I die and go to the good Lord, God willing, everything I have—except for what’s held in trust for John David and you girls—will go to that foundation.”
“Assuming,” Aunt Olivia added, “that Ellie is okay with that plan.”
“I don’t need your money,” my mom told Lillian. “I never did.”
“I thought perhaps,” Lillian replied, “that you might enjoy helping the girls run the foundation.”
“Is this some kind of bribe?” Lily asked, finally finding her voice again. “You’re letting us give away a fortune, and all we have to do is come back to the fold?”
“I’m entrusting you with your grandfather’s legacy,” Lillian said. “And mine. No strings attached.”
I was fairly certain Lillian Taft had never made a deal with no strings attached in her life. Given everything I knew about what she’d done from her time as a girl in Two Arrows until now, I was also pretty sure that her real “legacy” was a lot more complicated than the assets she’d inherited from her husband.
“We’ll give you a moment,” Aunt Olivia told my mom. “To say goodbye.”
She and Lillian passed through the gate. Lily and I stayed behind, until my mom asked to be alone.
“John David misses you,” Lillian told us casually, proving once and for all that she was as expert at guilt-tripping as she was at issuing bribes. “Both of you.”
