House of Cards

"Have a seat folks, it's going to be a long night," Sheriff Hurley said motioning the group to the couches in the room. "I want to know from the beginning what just happened here." Hazel continued to glare at anyone who looked at her, refusing to speak. "Okay then, I'll start," the sheriff said, "Which one of you threw the brick?" Myrtle pointed at Hazel. "I bet you this one did," she said. Hazel jutted out her chubby chin and looked away from the group with her arms folded tightly across her chest like a petulant child. "Well, did you?" the sheriff asked her again. "Oh, all right," Hazel said haughtily, "I threw the damn brick."

"What is your part in all of this?" he asked the other woman. "I should think that is obvious," she said. She had everyone's attention now. "Unfortunately to us, it isn't so obvious Victoria, start explaining," Sheriff Hurley growled.

Victoria began explaining about the night of the accident. She explained how she walked into the house knowing something was wrong but not being able to put her finger on it. "The lights were off in the house but none of the neighbor's lights were out. I knew there wasn't a power outage and I knew that Brendan didn't go to sleep that early," she continued. "That's when I heard someone go out the backdoor," she said glaring at Hazel. "I didn't know whether to go find Brendan or go after the person running out of my kitchen," she said. "I could smell something strange in the house but I didn't know what it was. I thought it was just some of Brendan's chemicals from the basement. I went after the person and slammed the door behind me to keep the cold air out. The next thing I knew there was a loud noise and I was flying through the air. I thought someone had pushed me really hard from behind. I started to get up and I could see you standing in the street," Victoria said looking at her daughter. "I was so relieved and so worried at the same time. I had been warned this would happen," she said.