Triple Threat

looked at Eddie Caruso, who picked up the remote control and hit
ON
.
    The TV, on which a webcam sat, came to life with a Skype streaming image.
    On the screen an elderly woman’s face gazed confidently and with some humor at the couple in the chairs and Eddie Caruso. “Hello, Carmel,” Sarah Lieberman said. “It’s been a long time.”
    # # #
    What Eddie Caruso had found in the last paint can in the Rodriguez’s garage was a letter from Sarah to Daniel with details of where she’d be spending the rest of her life—a small town near Middleburg, Virginia, with her widower nephew Frederick. Information about how to get in touch with her if need be, where she would be buried and the name of certain discreet jewelers whom he could contact to sell the bracelets Sarah had given him, along with suggestions about how to carefully invest the cash she’d provided, too.
    He’d confronted the handyman this morning and while the letter seemed plausible, Caruso had insisted they both contact Sarah Lieberman this morning. She’d told them what had happened and was now telling the same story to her housekeeper.
    The simple death he’d described to Carmel Rodriguez was anything but.
    “I’m so sorry, Carmel… I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you. You remember that day in July, just a year ago? I was going to take the phone Freddy gave me and record them?”
    “Yes, Mrs. Sarah.”
    “After you left, I started to go down there. But I met Daniel on the stairs.” Her gaze shifted slightly, taking in the handyman. “He had me come back to my apartment and he told me what they’d just said—that the Beasts wanted him to help kill me. He said they had it all planned. There was nothing anybody could do to stop them.”
    “Why not go to the police?” Carmel demanded.
    Sarah replied, “Because at worst they’d get a few years in jail for conspiracy. And then they’d be out again, after somebody else. I started thinking about what I told you. Remember the moth?”
    “The big moth you and your husband saw in Malaysia. With the wings that look like a snake.”
    “That’s right. But I decided: One way to protect yourself is to disguise yourself as a snake. The other way is to
be
the snake itself. I fight back. I couldn’t kill them but I could make it look like they killed
me
. I didn’t ask Daniel to help me but he wanted to.”
    “I was so mad at them and worried about you and about Rosa! John hinted that he’d been watching her, watching our daughter!”
    Sarah said, “The Westerfields were very accommodating. John already had the Taser and the tape and the garbage bags.” She gave a wry laugh. “Think of all the money I’ll waste at Beacon Brothers funeral home here—that damn expensive casket. There are so many cheaper ways to go.”
    Daniel said, “We pretended to forge a contract selling the building to them and then took all of the jewelry and cash Mrs. Sarah had in the apartment. She kept some and gave me a very generous amount.”
    “And in my will I left Freddy here—” Sarah glanced to the side of the sun room she sat in, apparently where her other coconspirator, her nephew, sat. “—all my personal belongings. Probate took a little while but six months later everything was delivered here. Ah, but back to the scene of the crime, eh, Daniel?”
    He winced and looked at Carmel. “When the Westerfields were out and you were shopping, we both went downstairs. I put on gloves and took one of John’s hammers and Mrs. Sarah cut herself. We got her blood on it and some hairs, too. And put some duct tape on her mouth for a minute and we added some of Miriam’s hairs. I rubbed her toothbrush on it, for the DNA. Sarah stuck herself with the sharp points on that Taser. We hid those things in their apartment, then I tried to hack into Mrs. Sarah’s banking accounts from Miriam’s computer.”
    “I used to watch
CSI
,” Sarah said. “I know how these things work.”
    “I left the city permits and maps in John’s office.” Daniel started to laugh then reined in when he saw his wife staring at him in dismay. “I was going to say it was funny because we thought the permits would be obvious. But the police missed those entirely; they thought she
had
been buried in New Jersey. But they missed it; it was Mr. Caruso who figured out about the foundations.”
    Sarah said, “And I took the train down here. I’ve had to lead a pretty quiet life—they call it staying off the grid, right Freddy?”
    A