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Restlessly, she picks up the daily newspaper, the Aylesford Record, and carries it over to the easy chair in front of the sliding glass doors that look out onto the backyard. She’s already read it, and followed the story online. But she puts her coffee down on the little side table and opens the paper again. On page 3, there’s a picture and a headline. MISSING WOMAN FOUND DEAD. The photograph shows a picture of Amanda Pierce; she’s smiling and pretty in the photo, with no hint of the tragedy that will befall her. She looks as lovely as she did at the neighbourhood party, everyone eating out of her hand.
Olivia studies the photograph closely, recalling the discussion at the book club the night before. She rereads the article. There are few facts. They pulled her and her car out of a lake early yesterday morning. It says only that her body was found in the boot. Olivia wonders how she died. The other information is scant. The police are being tight-lipped, saying only that ‘the investigation is ongoing’.
She puts the paper down, decides to go for a walk, and laces up her shoes. Maybe a walk will clear her head and then she can get some work done.
It’s awful, Olivia thinks, leaving the house. A woman who lived on their street was murdered. She can’t stop thinking about it.
Chapter Nine
ROBERT PIERCE GLANCES out at the street from behind one of the blinds in the master bedroom. There’s a cluster of people standing outside staring at the house, staring up at him, having caught the movement at the window. He can imagine what they’re saying about him.
He turns away from the window and watches the forensics team continue its meticulous search of his bedroom. He watches and thinks. They have nothing on him. The only thing was her unregistered, pay-as-you-go cell phone, and now it’s safely buried in the garden.
He thinks about the phone. It had become an issue between Amanda and him. Not one they talked about. That was the thing about them, so much of their marriage went on beneath the surface. They didn’t talk about things. They didn’t fight. Instead they played games.
He knew she must have had a burner phone. He knew she kept it with her – probably in her purse – and hid it somewhere when she was in the house. Because he’d been through her purses, and her car, and he’d never found it. And then one night not long ago, he surprised her by making her dinner when she got home. Something simple – steak and salad and red wine. And a little something in her wineglass to knock her out.
And while she was sprawled across their bed, oblivious, he’d torn the house apart methodically, much the way this crew is doing right now. And he found her secret hiding place. The box of tampons in the bottom of the bathroom cupboard. The bathroom was the one place in the house she could always count on being alone. Not too creative of her, really. If they look inside her box of tampons now, of course, they won’t find anything but tampons.
How much does he really have to worry about?
When she woke up the next morning with a walloping headache, he chided her for drinking too much. He pointed at the empty wine bottle left on the kitchen counter – he’d poured half of it down the sink – and she nodded and smiled uncertainly. Later on, when she was dressed for work, she seemed nervous, out of sorts. She approached him, some unreadable expression on her face. He wondered if she was going to ask him. He wondered if she had the guts. He gazed back at her blandly. ‘Are you all right, honey? You look upset.’
He’d never been violent with her before, but she looked at him as if she were a silky little brown mouse facing a snake.
They stared at one another. He’d taken her secret phone from its secret hiding place. He knew it and she knew it. Would she say anything? He didn’t think she’d dare. He waited.
Finally she said, ‘No, I’m fine,’ and turned away.
He kept an eye on her to see if she would try to discreetly search the house for her missing phone before she left for work, but she didn’t. It was in his bottom desk drawer, beneath some envelopes. Easier to find than where she’d hidden it. But he knew she wouldn’t dare go into his desk. Not while he was home. So he stayed home until she left for work.
That was the day she disappeared.
Detective Webb is very much aware of Robert Pierce lurking around the house during their search. Did he kill his wife? And stuff her body in the boot and sink her car in the lake? He’s not coming across particularly well as a bereaved husband. He seems twitchy.
If he killed her here, in the house, they will find something. They know she was beaten to death with a hammer or something similar. There would have been a lot of blood. Even if a surface looks completely clean, if there are traces of blood, they will find them. But Webb doesn’t think he killed her here. He’s too smart for that.
The team moves slowly over the house. They dust everywhere for fingerprints, look in drawers and under furniture, searching for anything that might shed light on Amanda Pierce’s death.
They take her laptop. Her cell phone had been found in her purse; two weeks in the water had rendered it useless, but her cell phone records will be scrutinized. Webb wonders what, if anything, Amanda Pierce might have been hiding. She told her husband that she was going away with a friend. They only have his word for it. But if what he says is true, then Amanda was lying to him about Caroline Lu. If so, who was she meeting? Had her husband found out the truth? Had he killed her in a jealous rage? Or maybe there was some other reason he killed her. Perhaps he was psychologically abusive. Was she trying to escape the marriage and he found out?
Their interview of Caroline Lu had yielded nothing useful. The two women had been friends since college but had seen less of each other in recent months; Caroline hadn’t known if Amanda had a lover, and she was unaware of any possible marital problems. She’d been shocked when Robert called saying that Amanda had told him they were together that weekend.
Now, in the master bedroom, Robert looks on silently, coldly observant. A technician approaches Webb and says in a low voice, ‘Four distinct sets of prints in the house. Downstairs in the living room, the kitchen. Up here, in the office – especially the desk and desk drawers, and in the bedroom on the light switch, the headboard – also in the en suite bath.’
That’s interesting, Webb thinks, and glances at Moen, who raises an eyebrow at him. He turns to Robert and says, ‘Have you had friends in lately?’
He shakes his head.
‘Did your wife?’
‘No, not that I know of.’
‘A cleaning lady?’
Robert shakes his head. ‘No.’
‘Any idea why there would be four different sets of prints in your house rather than two – yours and your wife’s?’
‘No.’
One of these two had a lover, Webb thinks, or maybe they both did. Maybe Amanda had her lover over to the house when her husband wasn’t there. That was taking a risk. Maybe it got her killed. They will canvass the neighbourhood, ask questions. See if anyone had ever noticed someone else going in or out of the house.
The search yields nothing else. Maybe it wasn’t a spontaneous thing, Webb thinks; maybe he planned it, right down to the lie about her telling him she was going away for the weekend. Webb looks over at Robert, standing in a corner, watching everything. They need to lean hard on Robert Pierce. Webb knows that in cases where the wife is murdered, it’s usually the husband. But he’s not one to leap to conclusions. Things are rarely simple.
