Spin a Wicked Web (31 page)

The note of finality in her voice sealed the deal. I slid onto the
seat, and she slammed the door. The sensation of being in a cage
combined with the lack of interior door handles made my mild
claustrophobia flare. Within moments, I found it hard to breathe.

Luckily, Barr joined us then. It was a short trip to the Nelson
home, so I did my best to distract myself from the sure knowledge
my throat was closing by worrying about the gamble I was about
to take. At least, I told myself, I wasn't the reason they were arresting Zak. If anything, I was there to help him as best as I could.

I only hoped my best was good enough.

"You okay?" Barr asked as he opened the door, and I barreled
out of the back seat. "You look a little pale. Are you nervous?"

"I'm fine," I said, keeping my tone bright. "Don't worry about
me.

Robin gave me a look. "I'm still not sure why you're here, but if
you have any ideas about interfering, you'd better think again."

"Yes, ma'am." I saluted.

She rolled her eyes and turned toward the house. Either Irene
and Zak hadn't noticed that we'd arrived, or they were inside, waiting to see why we were there. Then I saw a curtain in the front
window twitch. That answered that.

Together, we trooped to the front step.

Irene answered immediately, confirming my suspicion that
she'd been watching us.

"Officers? What can I do for you?" Her voice shook a little.

"Detectives" Robin barked out the correction.

Irene's pale face lost another shade of color. "I'm sorry. Detectives."

"May we come in?" Barr asked.

Irene's tongue flicked out and ran over her lower lip. "Can you
tell me what this is about?" My presence must have registered then.
"Sophie Mae? What's going on?"

Barr stepped to the screen door. "Please. We should do this inside."

Wordlessly, she stepped back. The poor woman looked terrified. Single file, the three of us entered her home.

Robin brushed past Irene and strode into the nondescript living room. "Where's your son?"

The fear on Irene's face intensified. "Zak? What do you want
with Zak?"

"Ms. Nelson, is he here?" Robin sounded like a drill sergeant.

"Please," Barr said. The one word softened the tension in the
room.

Irene turned to me. "Sophie Mae? What-?"

I opened my mouth to speak. Robin sent me a look that would
have stopped a rhino. My jaw snapped shut.

"Ms. Nelson," Barr prompted gently. "Where is he?"

This time the look Irene directed at me was on par with Robin's. I seemed to be on everyone's shitlist.

"He's in the basement," she said. "He has a separate apartment
down there."

"Show us," Robin said.

Slowly, Irene led us to a door and opened it. "Zak?" she called.

Robin pushed her aside and ran down the stairs. Barr was right
behind her. For all they knew, Zak was waiting for them with an
Uzi or running out the back door. Theirs was a serious, deadly
business. Better safe than sorry.

Irene and I followed. She grabbed my arm. "What do they
want?"

"They want to arrest your son," I said, and watched the enormity of those words sink in. I pulled my arm out of her grasp and
went downstairs. After a brief hesitation, she followed me.

Zak was sitting on a battered recliner in the main room of the
basement. It looked like part living room, with a slumping sofa
and the recliner situated in front of a big television screen, and
part garage with the half-built motorcycle on a tarp in one corner.
A laugh track emanated from the TV. Two guitars and a myriad of
concert posters punctuated the pumpkin-colored walls. At least
he hadn't inherited his mother's sense of design.

"Stand up, please." Robin's use of the word didn't sound nearly
as nice as when Barr said it.

"Uh, sure," Zak said easily, though he looked a little bewildered
as he stood and clicked the Off button on the remote.

Robin walked behind him, neatly clasping handcuffs around
his wrists before anyone realized what she was doing. Beside me,
Irene's gasp caught in her throat.

"Zak Nelson, you are under arrest for the murder of Ariel Skylark," Robin intoned.

She continued on, reading him his Miranda rights. My gaze
slid to Irene. Her hands were clamped over her mouth, the whites
of her eyes visible all around the pupils above her fingers.

"Are you going to let this happen?" I asked in a low tone.

Zak blinked, confusion coming off him like a scent. Mother
and son stared at one another. Robin droned on.

"You can stop this," I whispered. "They have a lot of evidence.
He's going to jail, Irene. Zak's going to jail unless you tell them the
truth."

I could sense the intensity of Barr's gaze as he watched us from
across the room.

Robin finished her recitation and put her hand on Zak's arm.
He still looked bewildered, the fact that he was being arrested for
murder seeming to elude his comprehension.

"No!" Irene said in a loud voice. Then in a lower tone. "He
didn't do it." She was shaking all over now.

"We'll let the courts decide that," Robin said.

Irene looked at me then. Understanding passed between us. I
nodded.

She turned back to the detectives about to march her son out
to the patrol car. "But I know he didn't do it." She licked her lips.
"Because I did."

Robin glared at me. She began to push Zak toward the stairway.

"Wait!" Irene moved in front of the door to the stairs. "What
are you doing? Didn't you hear me?"

"You killed the Skylark girl?" Robin shook her head. "Right.
Just like you were at Chris Popper's house that night. And then
you were with Zak here. Lady, you need to make up your mind.
But I can tell you that providing so many different stories is going
to make it a lot easier on the prosecutor when this case gets to
court."

Red fury swept up Irene's face. The fear still shone there, too.
How had she managed to get through the days since the murder?
She must have been barely holding her life together.

"Ms. Nelson, you need to move," Robin said.

"No. I'm not going anywhere until you listen to me. I killed
that little slut."

"Mom, shut up," Zak said. "I didn't kill her, I swear, but you
can't take the fall in order to protect me."

Robin sighed. "You will either step aside, Ms. Nelson, or Detective Ambrose here will be forced to move you out of my way."

"I want to confess, and damn it, you're going to listen." Irene
was becoming less mousy and more like one of her female power
statuettes by the second.

"Come down to the station, then. You can make any statement
you want to. But I don't want to have to say it again: get out of my
way.

My heart sank. Irene wanted to confess to a murder I was sure
she had indeed committed. But who knew whether she'd change
her mind, given the chance?

"Let him go." Irene grated the words out. She was almost a foot
shorter than Barr's Amazonian partner.

Zak's jaw clenched as the seriousness of his situation sank in.
"Mom?" His eyes narrowed, and he slowly shook his head. His
voice was soft. "I'm not twelve. Why are you doing this?"

Barr moved to Robin's side, looking grim. She glanced at him.
"What?"

He shook his head. "You're the lead on this. But maybe we
should listen."

The words were neutral, but I could tell he was afraid we'd lose
Irene's confession, too. Robin pressed her lips together. It was not
attractive, and only served to make her look petulant.

"I have to tell you," Irene said, her eyes pleading.

Her son blinked in confusion. Robin let out an exasperated
breath, and her shoulders slumped a fraction in defeat.

"Okay, Irene," I said. "Tell us what happened that night."

She turned on me. "Shut up, Sophie Mae. You don't know anything."

Well, that kind of hurt my feelings. Obviously I knew something. For example I knew she killed Ariel. And she knew I knew.
Irene's constant bitchiness was really starting to get on my nerves.

Barr sat down on the sofa. Robin locked gazes with him, then
after a few moments capitulated. She guided Zak to the sofa. "Sit
down."

He did, and she slowly and deliberately perched on the cushion
on the other side of him. He glanced at Barr, who met his eyes
without smiling.

"All right," I said, and reached into my tote bag. Irene's head
jerked toward me. "Will you relax? I don't carry anything more lethal than lip balm in my bag."

I fished around, found the tube and took it out. I applied the
balm and dropped it back into my bag. Robin pursed those perfect lips of hers and rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. But she
didn't know I'd turned on the miniature cassette recorder Barr
had let me borrow.

"So let's sit down like civilized people, and you can tell us what
happened. Are you game?" I asked.

A moment of hesitation, and Irene nodded. "That's all I wanted
in the first place."

"Do you want to sit in the recliner?" Next I'd be passing around
appetizers.

"I'll stand."

I nodded and moved to the recliner, carefully placing my tote
by the coffee table. Irene began to pace back and forth in front of
the television.

And then she began to speak.

"I WENT OVER TO Chris Popper's that night," Irene said. "We were
meeting about how to get rid of Ariel."

Zak sat up. "What?"

"Not kill her, just get her out of the co-op. She should never
have been a member in the first place, not with our jury process.
But Scott had convinced Chris to let Ariel in. That was, of course,
before anyone knew he and Ariel were having an affair."

She looked pensively at her son, who nodded. "Yeah, Mom. I
already know that."

"But then she started in on you, and even Jake had a crush on
her. For some reason she wasn't interested in him, though."

I knew why: Jake didn't have anything she needed. If he had,
she would have made a run at him just as she had with Zak and
Scott. And now I knew Scott's appeal: he'd been able to get her into
CRAG, something Daphne Sparks felt Ariel desperately wanted in
order to validate her talent as an artist.

Irene continued. "Things had gotten out of control. She needed
to go. But we had to figure out how to go about it."

"What did you decide?" I asked.

"We decided to simply refund her membership dues and ask
her to leave. Jake was worried that she'd want to know why. Chris
and I wanted to tell her exactly why, but he didn't like that. He was
ambivalent about making her leave at all, of course. He felt we
were being too hard on her. He left the house in a huff."

"What time was that?" Barr asked.

"Between seven-thirty and eight."

That jibed with what everyone else had said. He nodded. "Go
on.

Irene stopped pacing and cupped her elbows in her palms.
"Well, with Jake acting like that, a united front wasn't going to be
possible. Ruth and Chris and I decided we would approach Ariel
in a week or so. After all, Chris owns the building and started the
co-op. She has a lot of say about things, more than the rest of us,
by default. But Scott's funeral was the next day, and she was grieving and exhausted. We needed to wait."

We all nodded, even Robin.

"So Ruth left next, and a few minutes after that I did." She
passed her hand over her face. "I felt better about things at CRAC
than I had in a long time, knowing that girl would be leaving."
The hand dropped, and she began pacing again, back and forth in
the space between the coffee table and the television. "My way
home from Chris' took me by the co-op." She paced faster now. "I
saw Zak's car in the parking lot, next to Ariel's little blue car. I
couldn't help it. I pulled to the curb across the street and waited."

Now she stopped in front of her son. "I hated that you were
seeing her."

"I know, Mom."

"She was going to hurt you terribly. I knew it. She was empty
inside, and she sucked the life out of the people around her like
some kind of psychological vampire. I couldn't stand that you were
in there with her." As she spoke, the volume of her voice increased
and her words tumbled over one another.

Her son held his hands up. "But we were breaking up that
night. That's why I was there. She didn't hurt me at all. We had
some fun, and then we moved on." His voice was steady, but his
eyes were full of dread. I could tell he didn't want to hear any
more.

"Zak," I said. Everyone turned toward me. Okay, so I was interrupting a murder confession, but I just had to know something.
"Did Ariel ever come to work with you, or visit you at the Fix-It?"

"She came by all the time. For a chick, she knew a lot about
cars.