Chapter 7 - The Accomplice
"Give me the phone," Mark growled, his face twisting into a mask of pure desperation. He lunged forward, his heavy frame crashing into me.
I ducked beneath his arm, driving the flat heel of my boot down onto his bare foot. He roared in pain, stumbling sideways into the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf. Hardcover books rained down around him as I bolted through the office door and into the foyer.
I locked myself inside the first-floor powder room, shoving the brass deadbolt into place just as Mark threw his entire body against the wood.
*BAM!*
"Open the door, Diane!" he screamed, rattling the brass handle violently. "Give me the damn phone! You don't know what you're doing!"
My hands trembling violently, I hit the call button on the incoming text message and put the burner phone to my ear.
One ring. Two rings.
*Click.*
"Mark?" a breathless, female voice answered. "Thank God. What happened? Why haven't you answered my texts? Is she dead? Did the paramedics suspect anything?"
I closed my eyes, the air freezing in my throat. I knew that voice.
I had known that voice for twelve years.
"She’s not dead, Clara," I whispered into the receiver.
Dead silence fell over the line. The kind of silence that feels like stepping off the edge of a cliff into an endless void.
Clara.
Greg’s wife. My sister-in-law. The mousy, soft-spoken woman who always brought homemade apple pies to Thanksgiving. The woman who had made the chicken soup tonight from scratch.
"D-Diane?" Clara’s voice was barely a squeak, completely drained of life.
"You made the broth," I whispered, the pieces clicking together with devastating, crystal clarity. "Mark didn't bring the poison in a packet to sneak it into the soup. He brought the packet to *finish* it. But you... you were the one who prepped the base. You’ve been helping him for months, haven't you?"
*BAM!*
Mark slammed against the powder room door again. The wood around the frame began to splinter. "Diane! Stop talking to her! Hang up the phone!"
"Diane, please," Clara sobbed over the line, totally breaking down. "You don't understand... Greg doesn't have anything. Judith controls every single penny. Mark promised me... he said after you passed, the insurance would cover his debts, and Judith would be so devastated she’d hand the entire family estate over to him. We were going to leave. We were going to take everything and leave!"
"You tried to kill me for an inheritance, Clara?"
"Mark said you were already sick!" she screamed through tears. "He said you were practically gone anyway! He said you wouldn't feel any pain!"
"Well, Clara," I said, watching the deadbolt groan under another violent slam from Mark outside. "There was a change in the seating arrangement tonight. Your mother-in-law ate the soup. And the hospital has already flagged the organophosphates. The detectives are on their way to your house right now."
I hung up the phone.
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The wood of the powder room door gave way with an ear-splitting crack. The door swung open, and Mark stood there, panting, wild-eyed, holding the heavy brass fireplace poker he had grabbed from the living room hearth.
***
