Page 165 of Summers at the Saint
“Oh yeah.”
“And during the course of that relationship, you revealed the illegal activities you and Charlie Burroughs were engaged in?”
“Not revealed. She figured it out. I never did know how, but once she did, she was all in.”
“How did that sit with you and Charlie?”
“What could we do? We knew she’d go to the cops if we didn’t cut her in.”
“Right,” Coyle said. He’d been scratching notes on a yellow legal pad. “Tell me about the night of the Beach Bash, when Parrish Eddings was killed.”
“Jesus, what a clusterfuck,” Garrett said. “It wasn’t supposed to be Parrish. It was supposed to be Livvy. That fucker Cedric was so stoned, he could barely walk.”
“Livvy? Do you mean Olivia Grayson?”
“Yeah. Madelyn said Ric had gotten his old man’s will changed, so he would inherit most of the family company, but in the meantime she found out Livvy’s father was Ric’s father. How messed up is that?”
“How exactly did Madelyn Eddings discover this information?” Coyle asked.
“Last year, when the old man got too crippled up to live alone, Madelyn moved him into a smaller house. She was going through his files and found an NDA that Fred made Livvy’s mom sign.”
“By NDA you mean a nondisclosure agreement?”
“Right. Livvy’s mom couldn’t tell anyone who the baby’s daddy was, and in return, she got some money.”
“Did Madelyn tell Ric Eddings about that document?”
Garrett’s laugh was mirthless. “Hell no. She hated his guts. He always had a side piece.”
“Why didn’t she divorce him?”
“Two words. Pre. Nup. If she left, she’d get nothing.”
Coyle kept scribbling on the legal pad. “Take me through the night of the murder. Where did the fentanyl come from?”
“I can’t remember. Maybe Cedric?”
The sheriff looked up. “Try again.”
“A guy I know in town. Strictly small-time. And I’m not telling you his name.”
“We’ll get back to that. What happened next?”
“I knew Cedric from the other years his band played at the Beach Bash. I gave him the stuff, and told him to give it to Livvy.”
“What was KJ Parkhurst’s role in this project?”
“All he had to do was get Livvy to the party. But at the last minute Parrish decided to come too. And that’s how the fuckup happened. We pointed Livvy out to Cedric. But he was blasted on weed and coke. All he saw was a white girl in a flowered dress.”
“Parrish Eddings.”
“Like I said, it was a clusterfuck. Me and KJ got kinda wasted too. We didn’t figure out ’til the next morning, when Mrs. E came to the dorm looking for Parrish, what happened.”
“After that, you went out to the Shack, under the pretense of looking for Parrish, but really, you wanted to clean up the crime scene,” Coyle said.
“Madelyn was having a shit fit. I’m telling you, everything that happened was her idea.”
Coyle looked down at a phone, which he’d placed on the table between them, and rubbed his eyes.
