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I risked th on the narroall It was hard to make out exactly as directly underneath, other than that it was vegetation I figured I was going to have to drop into so to have to be their fate

As it turned out,hurt me more than it did the roses A thick central stalk jabbed h, and I was sure that it had torn my pants and the skin underneath And I couldn’t make a sound I bit my lip as I extricated myself from the bushes After a second to collect , I stepped out of the soft earth of the bed, across the neat brick border, and onto the grass The ground was damp from the previous days’ rain, and I kneas se pictureThe lights were on inside

Felicia had her back toTolliver, who had his hands up

That wasn’t good

That un in her hand

It was also bad that Felicia had blood all over her She earing off-white pants and a dark green sweater, and the pants were smeared with dark stains--it was harder to tell what shape the sweater was in

There was a sliding door in the expanse of glass, but I didn’t know if it was unlocked or not If Fred had gardened that ht have autoive us the reward , earlier

It was locked Of course, it was locked

"Why doesn’t he love me?" she screalass "Why the hell doesn’t he love me?"

She wasn’t talking about her father She meant Joel, of course This was all about Joel

"They’ll blame you," she said "They’ll blame you for this, and I’ll have another chance" And she raised the gun in her hand

Even if I’d been able to get into the room, there would have been a chair and a table betweenbetween Felicia and Tolliver I sahat I had to do I pulled one of the bricks out of the border I tucked it under my arm while I punched in 911 When a voice answered, I said, "I’m Harper Connelly, and I’ Valley Felicia Hart is about to shoot ently, and I braced ht and looked Tolliver in the eyes He stared over Felicia’s shoulder at me, his face full of horror He shook his head, a tiny shake meant to warn me off

"Felicia!" I screalass as hard as I could A web of cracks began running out fro noise startled her, and she wheeled around and fired without hesitation

I saw Tolliver begin to launch hilass shattered in front of o by ht it would all rain out on lass struck in to trickle down onto stone patio Before I covered un fro the butt of it down on her head

Only once

Then I was under the patio table, and there were pieces of glass aroundall over

Tolliver unlocked the door froht He was pulling rabbed up a washcloth and began to dab at lass in the cuts on my face, and that hurt quite a bit, as I tried to make clear to hi s to lass out, and it was hurting, but not asshot would have hurt She had pointed that out several tih with less enthusiasm on every repetition

The Ger co to Tolliver’s story He’d covered the part about Fred Hart visiting us that , and Fred’s inebriation

Then he talked about Felicia’s phone call

"She said she wanted to talk to me here, that she wanted to know all the details about her dad’s visit, and so on I thought she wanted to see ain, because we’d had a we’d hooked up a couple of tito keep tabs on Harper and ain Which she did"

"What did she need you for?" Brittany Young asked She’d been pulled away fro, and she earing a sweatsuit and Reeboks

"She needed us to find Tabitha" Tolliver tookshe confessed to taking her," Detective Lacey said

"Yes, she did She knew Tabitha would get in the car with her She borrowed her father’s Lexus, so no one would see her own car She thought that soht be suspected; but she kneould have an airtight alibi because she called hi put She thought if Diane suspected Joel, she’d divorce him; or maybe Joel would suspect Diane, and he would divorce her Felicia thought e apart, even if mutual suspicion didn’t Plus, she didn’t like Tabitha She thought the girl was getting preferential treatment over her own nephew, Victor And she couldn’t just kill Diane, to make way for herself That hadn’t worked when her own sister died"

"You’re saying she had so to do with Whitney’s death?"

"I don’t see how she could have caused Whitney’s cancer But that kind of opened the door for her, she thought She made her best play for Joel after her sister died She caood to Victor as a mother could be, she offered to move in for a while to help Joel out"

"And he wouldn’t bite," Young said

"He wouldn’t bite," reed "So Felicia worked on this plan, worked on it for a long time She took Tabitha back to this house, snized the cushions The blue cushions No wonder they had struck me so much when I’d seen the toaway

"And then Felicia buried Tabitha in this garden, wrapped in a black plastic bag Her dad was putting in a neer bed, and Felicia put the body in there, deep"