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How can she persuade the police that they should be looking elsewhere? Her protests this morning seemed to fall on deaf ears. Robert didn’t kill his wife. If they understood that the way she did, they wouldn’t be looking at him so closely, and they wouldn’t be looking at her. She wants to protect herself, to protect her secret. And she’d like to protect him.
She doesn’t want to admit it, but she’s a little bit in love with Robert Pierce.
She’s pretty sure the fingerprints in the bedroom are hers. When you fall headlong into a fantasy, and break your marriage vows and sleep with another man, you never, ever think that your fingerprints will end up in a murder investigation.
She wants to protect Robert. So she hasn’t told the detectives everything.
She hasn’t told them that Robert told her that night that he suspected Amanda was having an affair. She’s afraid if the police know, they will think he has a motive.
And she hadn’t told Robert, when she was lying in bed with him, that she knew who Amanda might be having an affair with.
She won’t tell the detectives what she saw. Not unless it becomes absolutely necessary. Because she knows who Amanda’s lover is. And there’s no way he killed her either.
Chapter Twelve
WHEN DETECTIVE WEBB looks at Robert Pierce that afternoon, he sees a man who might be perfectly capable of killing his wife. Pierce is very good-looking, clever, a little egotistical, a bit prickly. He must have been quite different with his neighbour, Becky Harris, Webb thinks. We all wear masks. We all have something to hide at one point or another. He wants to know what Robert Pierce might be hiding.
Pierce is in the chair across the interview table, in complete control of himself. He sits comfortably, leaning back in the chair. But his eyes are sharp, missing nothing.
‘So, I’m the obvious suspect, is that it?’ Pierce says.
‘You’re not a suspect at this time,’ Webb replies. ‘And you’re not in custody – you’re free to go, if you like.’ Pierce stays put. Webb studies him carefully and begins. ‘You say you arrived home right after work about five o’clock Friday, the twenty-ninth. Anybody see you?’
‘I don’t know. That’s your job, isn’t it? Isn’t that what you’ve been asking the neighbours?’
Unfortunately for the detectives, the door-to-door had been frustrating. With the exception of Becky Harris, no one seemed to know the Pierces. They kept to themselves. No one remembered seeing Robert Pierce coming or going from his house that weekend. He had a habit of keeping his car in the garage, with the doors closed, so it was hard to say if he was home. Except for Jeannette Bauroth, no one had noticed anyone else going in or out either. There was no one to vouch for him, but he may well have been home Friday and Saturday. Or he might not have been. Records show that his cell phone was at home; that doesn’t necessarily mean he was. ‘What did you do then?’ Webb asks.
‘Like I told you before, I watched some TV, went to bed early. I’m usually zonked by the end of the week.’
‘Alone?’
‘Yes, alone.’
‘What about Saturday?’
‘I slept in late. Hung around the house. Caught up on some work. Cleaned up a bit.’
‘Nobody can account for you?’
‘No, I guess not.’
‘What about in the evening?’
He shifts in his chair, folds his arms across his chest, and looks Webb right in the eye. ‘Look, I wasn’t completely honest with you before. In the evening, I had a woman friend in. She spent most of the night.’
Webb allows a long pause before he says, ‘Who was that?’
‘My next-door neighbour, Becky Harris. I believe you spoke to her yesterday. I saw you, on her doorstep.’
‘We have spoken to her.’
‘I don’t know what she’s told you. I didn’t tell you before because I was trying to protect her. She obviously doesn’t want anyone knowing about it. She’s married. It was a harmless fling. I’m not proud of it. I shouldn’t have cheated on my wife. But I was lonely, and she was there, so—’ He shrugs. ‘It didn’t happen again.’
Webb studies him through narrowed eyes. ‘But it happened before, didn’t it?’
Pierce looks at him in surprise. ‘So she told you. You already know all about it.’ He adds, ‘Yeah, we slept together one other time, in August. No biggie. Just letting off steam, for both of us.’
‘So why did you lie to us, Robert?’ Moen asks. ‘You told us you never cheated on your wife.’
‘Why do you think? It makes me look like a bad husband, and that’s what you want, isn’t it? And maybe I was. But it doesn’t mean I killed my wife.’ He leans forward and says, ‘I want you to stop dicking around with me and find out who killed Amanda. I want you to find the bastard who did this.’
Webb says, ‘Oh, we will.’
Moen says, ‘And Sunday?’
Pierce settles back into his chair again. ‘Sunday I went golfing with some friends all day. I had no idea Amanda wouldn’t be coming back that night. All their names and phone numbers must be in the file. They’ll confirm it. We had dinner at the clubhouse, and then I went home to wait for Amanda.’
‘Any idea who those fingerprints in your house belong to?’
‘I imagine some of them are Becky’s.’
‘What about the other set?’
He shrugs. ‘No idea.’
‘Have you been withholding anything else from us, Pierce?’
He looks back at Webb, his eyes insolent. ‘Like what?’
‘Your wife. Was she having an affair?’
Pierce chews his lip. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Really?’ Webb says conversationally. ‘Maybe she was having an affair and you found out about it. Maybe you knew it wasn’t her friend Caroline who she was going away with that weekend. Maybe you knew and you killed her.’ Robert doesn’t even blink. ‘Or maybe you just made that up, that she said she was going away with Caroline. Maybe you arranged to meet your wife somewhere, and she had no idea what you had planned for her.’
‘No,’ Robert says, shaking his head. ‘You’re way off base. I didn’t think Amanda was having an affair then. The idea never even crossed my mind until I spoke to Caroline that Sunday and realized that Amanda had lied to me.’
Webb doesn’t believe him. ‘Did you know your wife was pregnant?’
‘Yes. She planned to terminate it. We didn’t want children.’ Pierce looks at them as if expecting them to have a problem with that. ‘Are we done here?’ he says.
Pierce is rattled, but doing a good job of trying not to show it, Webb thinks. ‘Yes, don’t let us keep you,’ he says, and watches as Pierce pushes the chair back loudly and walks out.
‘He hasn’t got a solid alibi,’ Moen says, once Robert Pierce has left. ‘He could have gone anywhere that Friday and Saturday. Left his cell phone at home so it wouldn’t give him away.’
Webb says, ‘The more I see him, the more I don’t like him. Smug bastard.’
‘He doesn’t seem to be particularly sad about his wife,’ Moen observes.
