Identity Crisis (Sam McRae Mystery 1)

“Shut up!” Rhonda yelled.

I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me or Skip.

“Nothing,” he said. “Everything.”

“What do you mean?”

“Skip, don’t say another word.”

“You killed them?” I said. “Why?”

“No,” he said. “But I let it happen.”

“Goddamn you.” Rhonda’s face was livid. “How can you do this to me?”

“I can’t let it go on,” he said.

“What?” I said. “Let what go on?”

“The lies. They’ll come after us, you know. They’ll come after me.”

“Did you steal the money?” I asked, trying to make sense of his words.

“Yes. And that’s all it was supposed to be. No one was supposed to get hurt.”

I looked at Rhonda. Tears streamed down her face.

“Oh, you fool,” she said. “I love you, but you’re such a fool.”

“All this time, I covered for you,” he said. “I protected you. All because of an accident fifteen years ago. But I’m not going to prison, not even for you.”

“We did the right thing,” Rhonda said, her voice rising.

She looked at me. The tears made her face look like it was melting.

“I never meant to kill Greg. It wasn’t supposed to happen,” she said.

“But it did. And you set my client up.”

“No. I did it for her.”

I gaped at her. “What?”

“I did it for her and all the other women that man screwed over.” She paused, sniffling. “Bruce was out of town. I took care of the club that weekend. Greg called me.” She smiled bitterly. “I love this. He wanted to see me, ’cause he thought Bruce was ripping him off. Isn’t that good? He thought I could help him prove Bruce used the business accounts to steal the money.

“He wouldn’t leave his apartment, so I went to his place. He was acting all weird about something—said some crazy guy was after him. Anyway, I figured I’d play along, pretend I didn’t know anything about the money. I was thinking maybe I could set Bruce up with Greg, and Greg with Bruce. Play one against the other.”

She took a deep breath, exhaling a shuddering sigh. “Greg said he’d be up, so we went by after closing. He looked like hell. A regular Howard-fucking-Hughes. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a while, and he smelled. No wonder he and Bruce weren’t getting along. Anyway, before I could say anything, I noticed the papers. He’d left them on a table in the living room. Your name was on them.”

“Papers?”

“The one’s that said he’d beaten on your client.”

“The petition for the protective order?”

She shook her head. “I guess so. Whatever they were, I just snapped when I saw them. After everything he’d done, now he was beating up on women. I just snapped. I took the gun from my purse and I shot him.”

r />