Dead Men Tell No Tales
“Are you sure?” Melissa demands.
“We don’t want anyone else buried alive,” Alison agrees. “Not even him.”
“What are you talking about - buried?” Hanna protests. “We’re not burying him! This is exactly the kind of thing that gets us on trial for murder!”
“So we call the police and tell them what?” Spencer asks. “That we were working with our former stalker, who happens to not be dead, to try and scare a confession out of Alison’s not-husband when he keeled over of totally natural causes? Am I the only one who remembers being arrested for digging up a pair of boots?”
“How do you suggest we make sure he’s dead?” Aria asks. “Shoot him in the head? Throw him in the river? Because that never ends well on Days of our Lives!”
“You watch Days?” Emily asks, curiously.
“You’re so right,” Charlotte tells Melissa. “They can’t even get away with a murder they didn’t commit.”
“What about those dead eye paralytic drugs?” Mona asks. “The kind you used on me before. Did someone dose him?”
“This isn’t that,” Wren insists. “His heart hasn’t slowed. It’s stopped.”
“Get the whiskey bottle,” Alison orders. “He must have been drugged.”
Mona nods and moves quickly toward the house, grabbing Hanna’s hand and pulling her along on the mission as well.
“By his partner, presumably,” Wren muses. “She must have wanted him out of the way.”
“Dead men tell no tales,” Spencer agrees.
“We can’t just stand around his corpse all night,” Alison urges. She turns to Emily. “We have to take care of this. Make it look like he left town or something. Then, once we tell the police that Charlotte is alive - it’s over. We can all get on with our lives.”
“Tanner would try to give us life in prison for littering!” Emily replies. “It’s never going to be over until we have proof that someone else was behind this.”
“Until we find Mary Drake,” Spencer says, grimly.
“Or until she finds us,” Aria offers. “Blood vengeance doesn’t exactly sound like she’s about to take up knitting and forget about ruining our lives.”
“She may well have planned for this,” Wren suggests. “If it’s a set up, we don’t have the luxury of time for debate. We could call for help. Make it seem like we found him here.”
“In an open grave that we just dug up?” Alison asks in disbelief. “That’s not a good look.”
“Bethany stayed buried,” Spencer says quietly. “Until Maya’s family bought the house.”
“That’s exactly what got us into this whole mess in the first place,” Emily pleads. “I don’t know what the right answer is. But I’m sorry, Ali - this isn’t it. It’s like the Jenna thing, or Sara Harvey’s unscheduled electroshock - it’s one more thing that would be hanging over us for the rest of our lives. Bethany stayed buried, but it’s eight years later and Melissa is still paying off blackmailers!”
Spencer turns to look at her sister, only then realizing that Charlotte and Melissa appear to have vanished in all the excitement. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees blue flashing lights.
“It’s already too late,” she says, urgently. “We need an alibi. Head back to the barn. Hurry!” She and Wren start running across the Hastings yard, Aria close on their heels.
“Emily - what are you waiting for?” Alison asks, trying to physically drag her away from the body.
“I’m not leaving Hanna!” Emily insists, hoping against hope that Hanna and Mona will be rushing out the back door at any moment.”
“All for one,” Lorenzo Calderon’s voice says from behind them. “One for all. Basically the definition of conspiracy.” He cocks his weapon, which is leveled at the two of them as he glances at the prone body of Elliott Rollins. “Hands above your heads, ladies.”
----
Aria is looking over her shoulder. “Where are they?” she says, panting after Spencer and Wren. “We can’t leave them back there!”
Spencer skids to a halt as they approach the entrance to the barn.
“The thing about looking back,” Toby says, his voice soft and his weapon raised. “You miss what’s right in front of you.” His face is in shadow and the buttons on his uniform gleam in the moonlight.
“You wouldn’t,” Spencer says, her eyes wide.
“Don’t fight it,” Toby says, his voice harder now and full of command. He pulls out a pair of handcuffs, moving towards Spencer as Wren and Aria try to block his path. “You’re all in enough trouble without resisting,” he chides them.
Spencer stares at him defiantly, then steps forward holding out her hands. He snaps the cuffs securely around her wrists, the trace of an almost fond smile at the corner of his mouth. He keeps a hand on her shoulder, motions with his gun for Aria and Wren to turn around. “You too,” he says. “You’re all under arrest.”