Page 110 of Shadow of Hope
“Okay,” Micha said. “I wasn’t that interested in what’s got to be a lame story anyway.”
What? Not interested?
“Not lame at all.” Wiggins glared at Micha. “Holly didn’t provide for the kid like I would’ve hoped. Doing her music instead of getting a regular job. So he’s had to struggle in life. Turns out my other daughter can’t have babies. He’s the only grandkid I’ll ever have, and I wanted to help him along in life. So I gave Holly a hundred grand to give to him when he turned twenty-one. She didn’t do it. She just kept it.”
“You were trying to buy him off, then?” Micha shook his head. “You should’ve felt badbeforeyou kicked her out and left her as a single parent.”
“Oh, don’t go getting on your high horse with me.” Wiggins sneered. “You only know her story, but she seduced my brother-in-law. What was a guy supposed to do when she came on to him like that?”
“I doubt that’s really what happened,” Ava said. “But even if it did, he was the adult and should have walked away.”
“No matter. What’s done is done. It wasn’t the kid’s fault, so I tried to help him out. But Holly wouldn’t have anything to do with it. She said she would have to tell him about why I threw her out, and she wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t let him know he should never have been conceived. But she would be glad to take my money and keep it for herself because she said I always lived for money, and she wanted to make me pay.”
“So you talked to her?” Ava asked.
“When I found out she was dying, I went to see her at the care place.” He shifted his focus to Ava. “She told me she was giving half the money to you. Gloated even. I told myself not to get mad. Not even when she spit in my face and refused to arrange a meeting with my grandson, but the room turned red with rage. I wanted to choke her. I didn’t. I managed to get ahold of my senses and realized the police would hunt me down for murder.”
“Right. You stopped because of the police, not because you were going to murder your daughter.”
He raised his chin. “She threw my help in my face. I humbled myself to come to her, and she treated me like dirt.”
“Kind of like you treated her then?” Ava shook her head. “So that’s when you poisoned her with the ricin?”
“Not then, but yeah. She was dying, and my grandson had to come first now. The cancer was God’s way of punishing her for luring my brother-in-law into sin. So in a way I was doing the Lord’s work. I went home and learned how to make it that very day.”
“The Lord’s work. Hardly.” Ava knew one thing for sure. The best thing Holly ever did was get as far away from this man as soon as possible and never reveal Layne’s identity to him to ruin his life, too.
“Our God does not work that way, but you won’t get that so I’m not going to bother explaining.” She glared at him. “Then you went back to the center and injected her leg.”
“In the middle of the night a few days later. I got in her face to tell her it was me and why she had to go early. Too bad she was high on painkillers and didn’t know what I did.”
“And then you stole her revised will from her house so Layne would get everything,” Micha said.
“Indeed.”
“And this’s the only time you talked to Holly in all these years?” Micha asked.
“Actually no, I saw she was playing a concert before that and followed her home. She wouldn’t tell me anything about my grandson then either, so I bugged her place to see what I could learn. When she died, not only did I discover Layne’s identity when he came looking for his mother’s will, but I heard him say in a phone call that he believed Ava killed Holly, and he was trying to get you to confess. Thought I’d help that along a bit to keep the cops away from me.” He cackled like a madman, or at least what Ava thought a madman might sound like.
“What exactly does that mean?” she clarified. “I’m really unclear as to what you did.”
“Figured that would fool you.” A cocky smile found his lips. “I bought off his friend. That Jamal guy he had tracking you. At first, he was more than glad to take a shot at you with his little catapult. But then he got cold feet and was going to rat me out to save himself.”
Jamal.This creep partnered with Jamal? Ava could hardly get her mind around it. “So you killed him with my bocal that you stole from my house to keep him from talking.”
“Prove it.” His grin widened, and she wanted to rush him and wipe the smugness from his expression.
Sirens sounded nearby. He sobered up and clamped his mouth closed.
Good, that took care of his arrogant attitude. She just had to keep remembering he would be going to prison, likely for the rest of his life, and she could live with that.
“That will be Sheriff Maddox come to haul you off,” Micha said.
But Ava wasn’t done with Wiggins. “You were the one who kept calling me to play the song Layne put together, too.”
“I was.” He smirked. “Didn’t like that, did you?”
She didn’t bother to answer.
