Chapter Thirty-Two

At noon the next day Nancy and Frank sat in the living room of Alison Lipinski's new apartment. Nancy was glad to see Alison regaining some measure of independence. Living alone was a big step forward.

"Today's my day off," Alison explained. She sat in a chair across from the sofa on which Nancy and Frank sat. A coffee table, piled with magazines offering decorating ideas, filled the space between the sofa and chair. "I'm very grateful I got my job back."

"You worked at a hotel here in Oren, right?" Nancy asked.

"Yes," Alison said. "I quit that job rather abruptly when I decided to move back to Juliette. My boss wasn't happy about the short notice, but at the time, she understood my need to get away from here and start fresh. She was well aware of my relationship with James Nettles. She never said much, but I sensed she thought James was trouble. In the end, she was right and I count myself incredibly lucky that she was willing to hire me again. When she heard what happened to me, she happily gave me my old job back."

"That was very kind of her and very lucky for you," Nancy agreed. "Ahem, well, Frank and I don't want to take up too much of your time especially, on your day off. And I know you're anxious to hear what we've discovered about your mother's disappearance."

Alison tensed slightly and appeared to be questioning herself. Asking, Was she ready – really ready – to hear the story of her mother's disappearance? "So, you know?" she said, eyes widening. "I mean, you really know what happened to her?"

Nancy exchanged a glance with Frank before saying, "Yes, we know what happened. Yesterday, at Chief Brennan's urging, I interrogated James Nettles' mother."

"What?" Alison was clearly shocked. "I'm surprised the Chief would approve of that."

Frank responded, "It was the Chief's idea. He had a hunch Ms. Nettles might crack if she were confronted by Nancy, the woman she had conspired to kill."

Alison stared at Nancy. "She wanted you dead? I thought it was James who wanted to kill you."

"I believe it was a mutual desire on both of their parts," Nancy said tightly.

Frank added, "Gena Nettles made her feelings quite clear at one point during the interrogation." He told Alison about the hat pin and how Gena had screamed at Nancy, You should be dead.

Alison put a shaky hand over her gaping mouth. "That's .. that's awful. I'm so sorry, Nancy. Are you okay? Did she hurt you?"

Nancy tilted her head and gave Frank a small grin. "Thanks to Frank, Gena wasn't able to get near me. Frank rushed into the interrogation room and shoved her away in the nick of time. It took both Frank and Officer Turner to wrestle that hat pin out of Gena's hand."

Some of the tension left Alison's shoulders. "Well, I'm glad she wasn't able to hurt you, Nancy. I always felt Gena Nettles was a spiteful woman so, nothing she does surprises me."

Nancy nodded sagely. "You're absolutely correct in your assessment of Gena and that, um, brings us to your mother." Nancy paused a beat to collect her thoughts. Finally, she lifted her head and gazed at Alison. "As you know, three weeks ago I asked you to take a DNA test for the FBI."

"Yes," Alison said, "and a week ago you told me the bones found behind the cabin were my mother's. I .. I have a feeling I know where this conversation is headed if that makes it any easier."

"A little," Nancy said but did not look as if that was entirely true. "Everything I'm about to tell you is based on information we have received from Gena, Donnie, and James Nettles."

Alison jerked upright. "James? What are you saying? Is he talking?"

"He is," Nancy confirmed. "He's corroborated everything Donnie has told Chief Brennan and the FBI. James has even added information that Donnie did not know."

"Now you've shocked," Alison said. "I never thought James would talk. Never in a million years. Has he said anything against his mother?"

"He has," Nancy said.

Alison slumped back in her chair. "I'm numb. I never thought James would go against his mother. When we were dating, he and his mother seemed to have such a strong bond. I didn't think it was a healthy bond, but it was certainly strong."

Frank leaned forward. "I talked to Chief Brennan this morning. He says Gena refuses to believe that her son is talking to the FBI. She can't believe he would turn on her. Brennan has a theory he shared with me about why he thinks James is talking. The way Brennan sees it, and I agree with him, is that James is the one sitting in a prison cell. He's sitting there all alone with a bad leg. He's got all the time in the world to think about what happened to him and how he ended up where he is. All that thinking has led him to realize that his mother is sitting in a nice comfortable house, living her life, coming and going as she pleases. James, on the other hand, is confined to a six by eight foot cell and stripped of all his freedoms. James has become a bitter man – prison will do that to a person – and he wants his mother to share his fate."

Nancy summed it up nicely, "Why should his mother be free when he isn't? She had a hand in everything that happened."

Frank looked over at Nancy. "I'm sure that's exactly what James has been thinking."

Nancy nodded and turned her attention back to Alison. "I feel there is another reason James might be sharing information. It concerns his mother and her involvement in the disappearance of your mother." Nancy paused a beat then continued, "When Chief Brennan told James that it was your mother who was his father's mistress, James was shocked. He had no idea that you and his father's mistress were mother and daughter. Once he heard this he realized his mother must have known the truth the minute she heard your last name. That might explain why she never liked you."

"Yes, it would," Alison said softly. "To think, she knew what happened to my mother and never told James .. or me."

Nancy had come to the hardest part of the story. Nancy told the story as calmly as possible. She told Alison how William Nettles and her mother had met in a restaurant. How there had been an instant attraction between them.

"Much like James and me," Alison said with a wane smile. "Fate repeating itself?"

Nancy said William and Crystal only met a handful of times before Gena discovered the affair. Being the vindictive person she was, Gena had then demanded William put an end to the woman who had come between them.

Alison asked, and Nancy didn't know, if William and Crystal had slept together. Alison said it was probably for the best that she didn't know.

"Frank and I have pieced together the story as best we can," Nancy said. "We believe William lured your mother to the rest stop that last morning of her life."

Frank said, "William most likely called your mother the night before saying he had something urgent to talk to her about and could she please meet him."

"And she did," Alison said. "That was my mom. If someone needed help, she would be the first to give it."

"We're not sure how he talked your mother into leaving the rest stop with him," Nancy said. "He may have forced her into his car and appeased her as he drove to Oren. He probably told your mother everything would be okay, she just had to trust him. He drove her to the cabin in the woods."

Alison put her head in her hands. "God, do I even want to know what happened at the cabin?"

Nancy laid a comforting hand on Alison's thigh. "I can stop now if you'd like. You don't need to hear the rest."

Alison dropped her hands and blinked back tears. "No, I've come this far. I need to hear all of it. Please, go on."

"Okay." Nancy continued, "Based on what Gena said during the interrogation and what James and Donnie say they saw at the cabin that day, it's our belief that Gena was waiting inside the cabin. William brought your mother inside and .. and shot her. In the back of the head. She never knew it was coming. She died instantly."

Alison's bottom lip quivered and she brushed a tear from the corner of an eye. "Are you sure it was William who shot her?"

"Yes," Nancy said. "It was his way of proving his fidelity to Gena. Once the deed was done, Gena left the cabin. James, Donnie, and Lewis saw her leaving in her car. James told Chief Brennan that he and his cousins crept up to the cabin. They were three frightened teens, wondering what had happened at the cabin. They saw William's truck and figured he was inside. James said he feared his mother had shot his father. His parents had recently been having marital problems. He'd heard them arguing at night. He didn't know what the problems were, but he knew it was something bad. He said his parents rarely fought. Of course, we now know it was the affair Gena and William were arguing about.

"James got to the door of the cabin. It was open and he saw a woman lying on the floor. He knew by the amount of blood pooling around her head that she was dead. His father was standing over her, grief stricken, and when he saw the teenagers he broke down in sobs. James and his cousins helped William bury your mother behind the cabin and then they all went home. The boys never asked William what had happened. They never asked who the dead woman was or why she had been killed. James said he thought it was his mother who had shot the woman and from that time on he was a little afraid of his mother."

Alison nodded slowly. "That might be part of that unhealthy bond I sensed between James and his mother. If she said jump, he was likely to ask, How high? But I noticed a change in James after he got out of prison. He didn't seem as attached to his mother. Something had changed."

"Prison changes people," Nancy said.

Frank added, "A lot of times, it makes them harder and meaner."

Alison nodded then got up and got a tissue. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose. Then she returned to her chair. "Thank you, thank you both for solving the mystery of my mother's disappearance. It's weird, but in a strange way I feel closer to her now. Maybe it's because I finally know what she went through the day she disappeared. Knowing her, she would have been worrying about her job while William was driving them to Oren. My mother never missed a day of work unless she was sick. She was probably worrying about me, too. Wondering if she'd be home that night. She hated to leave me alone home.

"And then .. then she was taken to the cabin. And seeing Gena there …" Alison shook her head, clearing away the horrible images starting to emerge. She didn't want those images in her mind.

"I've known," she said, "or assumed, for a long time that my mother was dead. I knew she would never leave without telling me where she was going. We were close. Really close. I loved her so much." Alison stared into the distance, a tear running down her cheek. She dabbed the tear with her tissue as she remembered their last day together. Last morning. Not even a day. Just the start of one. A hurried good-bye to her mother because Alison was rushing to catch the school bus. She didn't know her mother was rushing to meet William Nettles .. and death.

"I've always known in my heart that whatever happened to my mother wasn't good. I .. I never imagined it was this. It seems both my mother and I went through our own horror shows. The only difference is that I survived mine."

Nancy and Alison hugged each other. Tears flowed from both women. Each had lost a mother. Each woman knew that pain intimately.

Nancy released Alison and wiped a tear from her eye. "My advice," Nancy said, "is to not dwell on what you've lost. Instead, think about all that you've found. You have your job back, one that you like, yes?"

"Yes. I love it and the people I work with."

"And you have a wonderful man in your life. Officer Turner." Nancy smiled encouragingly at Alison.

Alison returned the smile. "Ken is wonderful. I tell him I'm broken and he tells me we're all broken. We all have scars. We all have a past. He says we have to look to the future."

"He's right," Nancy said. "Listen to him, he's a wise man. He's also a man of integrity. I know he watched the tape of my interrogation with Gena Nettles and yet, he never said anything to you about it?"

"Not a word," Alison confirmed. "The only thing Ken has told me in regards to James is the reason why James wanted to kill Ken."

"Really?" Frank said, eyes shining like cat who had cornered a mouse. "I'd like to hear this reason."

"It's very dumb," Alison warned. "I don't know if you guys knew this, but Ken worked at the prison as a guard before he got the job here in Oren as an officer."

"Yes," Frank said, "Ken mentioned that to Joe and me when we met."

"Well," Alison said, "one day Ken was assigned to James' floor. As fate would have it, on that particular day, Ken was late collecting and escorting the prisoners to the yard for their outside time. James held a grudge against Ken for that."

"Never let a good grudge go unpunished," Frank joked.

Alison shrugged. "Something like that, I guess. It's a very petty reason to want to kill a man."

"That it is," Frank agreed.

After some small talk and long, tight hugs, Nancy and Frank said their good-byes. Then they were out the door, into Frank's SUV, and headed home to River Heights.

Nancy felt good. She had given Alison the closure she needed.

"It's three hours to home," Frank said. "It'll be dinner time when we get there. You feel like having a nice dinner?"

Nancy looked at her husband and ran a hand over his right thigh. "I'd love a nice dinner. We deserve one. We solved the mystery of Crystal Lipinski and closed the book on the Nettles family."

"Hopefully, for forever," Frank said with wink and a grin.

"Promise me," Nancy said, "if Chief Brennan calls in the future and says he needs help with the Nettles family, you'll tell him we're busy."

Frank laughed. "No problem. We've had our fill of them."

More than our fill, Nancy thought with a sigh and settled in for the long drive home.

A/N: One more chapter to go after this. It will include Joe and Vanessa. We'll end this story on a happy note. Thank you all for reading and for leaving a review. You truly are the best.

To the Guest reviewer: I'm glad you appreciate the deep dive into the 'after' stories. I, too, feel those are important to fully understanding the characters.