Page 62 of Willowbrooke
“What? But Margot said—”
“Quinn Hawthorne is just as much of a harpy as her benefactor, Margot West. I don’t care what she said. I talked with Leo at length after their breakup, and I can assure you he would never even entertain the idea of reconciling with Quinn. He’s made it quite clear to me that he has intentions to pursue you. I don’t know what you saw, but something isn’t right. And I can’t get a hold of Leo either.” William’s usually professional demeanor had been replaced with true concern.
I felt a familiar pit of dread in my stomach. He was right. Whatever I had seen—it hadn’t been like Leo. And if Leo wasn’t answering his phone—maybe there was something wrong.
Then, as if hit by a truck, I had two astonishing revelations at once.
The first was that I knew why I’d recognized Quinn at the bar, with her long hair—she was the woman in the nightgown I’d seen walking across the lawn late that night. Her hair had been up the day she’d come to the house, and I hadn’t seen her face in the darkness, but I knew it was her.
The second epiphany was related to something Williamhad said: Margot West. She’d introduced herself to me as Margot Collins—her married name. “Margot West—M W, not W M—she was the person Christine wrote about in her journal. She had killed her parents, and then Christine, when she found out. And I don’t know how, but she probably killed George too,” I told William, after explaining what I’d pieced together.
“Jesus…” he breathed, shocked at the epiphany. “Should I call the police?”
“I—I don’t know,” I stammered. “I have to go back to Willowbrooke. If Leo’s not there—I don’t—”
“I’ll see if I can track his phone—I’ll meet you there as soon as I can, but I’m a ways out of town,” William told me. “And for heaven’s sake, Penny, be careful.”
CHAPTER 12
Bait & Switch
Despite the lingering effects of the champagne, the couple hours of sleep and a quick trip to the bathroom prior to leaving my room all helped me feel more aware and in control with each passing moment.
It took longer than I’d hoped to secure a taxi to Willowbrooke, but the same front desk clerk that had helped me get a room was kind enough to call a few services before finally getting one to show up.
The driver was suspicious when I asked him to turn off his headlights as we approached thehouse, but did as I requested. And I couldn’t have been more grateful, as the only lights in the house were coming from small gaps in the solarium’s curtains.
Something was definitely wrong.
I didn’t have a key to the house because I had never needed one before, but sometimes Carl forgot to lock the garage, and I was lucky enough that when he’d worked on the yard the day before, it had been one of those times.
I removed my heels before entering the house, not wanting to make too much noise. I didn’t know what I was walking into, so I preferred to be cautious. If Margot really was responsible for killing multiple members of her family, there was no telling what else she was capable of.
Silently and carefully, I made my way through the dark house. I could hear Margot talking when I made it past the kitchen. Rather than going directly for the main door to the solarium, I slipped into Leo’s bedroom, deciding to approach through the jack-and-jill bathroom instead. I briefly entertained the thought of changing into something other than an evening gown, but the closer I got, the more my heart started to race.
I knew Leo was in danger, and there was simply no time to waste.
Painfully slowly, I opened the door between the solarium and the bathroom, just a sliver, so I could see a bit of the room and hear Margot more clearly. What I saw sent a wave of panic coursing through every inch of my body.
Leo was lying on his father’s hospital bed. His eyes were open, following Margot as she ranted at him about being ignored by her family during her childhood, but he wasn’t moving. Had she paralyzed him? Drugged him?
The latter could explain what had happened with Quinn. There was no way she wasn’t complicit in some way.
I felt an immediate and deep pang of guilt that I hadn’t given him the benefit of the doubt, that I hadn’t confronted him, so that I would have seen that he wasn’t himself before it escalated to the level it had. Instead I had let my insecurities over my last relationship blind me, and I had chosen to drown my sorrows and feelings of inadequacies at the bottom of multiple champagne flutes.
My guilt was disrupted by a shock of temporary relief when I could have sworn that Leo made eye contact with me, peering through the crack in the bathroom door. I could have imagined it; it was pitch-dark in the bathroom. At least he was conscious, but then I saw something in Margot’s hand catch the light, and my heart sank even further—it was a gun.
In a brief moment of clarity, I pulled out my phone. My fingers felt leaden as I struggled to text William: “Margot hurt Leo. She has a gun. Call the police. Hurry.”
Fumbling with the phone, I remembered using a voice recording app to sometimes record meetings at the firm if I needed to send out notes afterwards. I found the app and started recording, placing my phone on the ground, wedgedbetween the door and its frame, the microphone pointed toward the room.
As quietly as I could manage, I began to look through the bathroom drawers and cabinets for a weapon I could wield, while I allowed myself to tune in to Margot’s mad ravings at Leo.
“You understand why I have to do this, right? I’ll make it look like suicide—I’ll lose the life insurance payout, but that almost makes it more credible. On top of your heartbroken stray, it will make sense that you couldn’t handle the pressure of it all after so much loss.”
Margot’s strategy was, unfortunately, more sound than I could have hoped for. I’d fallen right into her trap, believing her over Leo, and giving her the opportunity to drag him back here. But her narcissism was also going to be her downfall, if I had anything to say about it.
Her need to explain the masterstrokes of her supposedly foolproof plan would be safely saved on my phone. She wasn’t going to get away with any of it. I just needed to figure out how to get Leo out of the room unharmed, and I could deal with Margot later.
