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On Sunday morning, Webb and Moen are at the station when one of the officers approaches Webb and says, ‘Sir, there’s a Becky Harris here to see you. She says it’s important.’
They escort Becky Harris into an interview room. Webb notes the change in her; the first time she came to the station she was nervous and tearful, afraid that her marital indiscretions would become known. Now she looks more composed, more wary. Like she has far more to lose. Or like she has something to bargain with.
‘Can I get you anything?’ Moen asks.
Becky shakes her head. ‘No, thank you.’
‘What brings you in?’ Webb says, as they all sit down.
She looks briefly uncomfortable, but she meets his eyes and says, ‘There’s something I didn’t tell you, before.’
‘What’s that?’ he asks, remembering all the other things she didn’t tell them, before. That she and Robert Pierce were lovers. That she’d seen Amanda arguing with Paul Sharpe. What will it be today?
‘It’s about Robert Pierce.’ She flicks her eyes nervously between him and Moen.
‘Go on.’
‘That night we were together, on the Saturday the weekend that Amanda disappeared – he told me that he thought his wife was having an affair.’
‘Why should we believe you?’ Webb asks. She’s obviously startled by his tone. What had she been expecting, with her track record?
‘Because I’m telling the truth!’ she says.
‘You said you were telling the truth before, too,’ Webb points out, ‘when you told us he never said anything to you about suspecting his wife. What’s changed?’ Perhaps, Webb thinks, her husband has confessed to the hotel visits with his lovely neighbour.
She gives him an annoyed look and takes a deep breath. ‘He told me not to tell you. He was rather intimidating about it.’
‘I see.’
‘He made me promise not to tell. It was – more like a threat.’ She leans forward. ‘So you see, he did think she was cheating. He had a motive.’
‘I thought you said he wouldn’t be capable of killing his wife, that he wasn’t the type?’ Moen says.
‘That was before he threatened me,’ Becky says, sitting back and glancing at Moen. ‘I saw another side of him. He was – different. He scared me.’
‘Anything else?’ Webb says.
She looks back and forth between him and Moen and says, ‘Are you even interested in him as a suspect?’
‘We’re interested in lots of people,’ Webb says, ‘including your husband.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Becky says, bristling.
‘Not really,’ Webb says. ‘You see, we have security footage of your husband taking a room at a hotel with Amanda Pierce, on multiple occasions.’
Becky stumbles out of the police station. For a minute, she can’t remember where she parked her car. Finally, she finds it with the help of her keychain fob. She gets inside the car, out of the wind, and locks her door. She stares out the windshield, seeing nothing, breathing rapidly.
The police have video of her husband with Amanda Pierce at the hotel. She knew this would happen, as soon as he told her. The police aren’t idiots. But that stupid bastard she married is.
She has to find out the truth. She has to know, one way or another, what happened to Amanda. And then she will figure out what to do.
She stifles a sob in the front seat of her car. How did she get here? She’s just an average woman, married, with two almost-grown kids, living in the suburbs. It’s unbelievable that she’s caught up in this – nightmare. A woman she barely knew has been murdered by either her own husband or Becky’s husband. If it was Robert, she no longer cares. No – she hopes he’s caught and convicted, the bastard. If it was her husband, Larry – she can’t even think about that right now.
Chapter Twenty-four
EARLY SUNDAY AFTERNOON Carmine finds herself going for another walk around the neighbourhood. She’s spent the last week talking to everyone she can about the break-in. In the grocery store. At her yoga class. She’s frustrated that nobody else admits to having been broken into. It bothers her that she appears to be the only one. Maybe it was a lie, that there were others. Maybe it was just her. Maybe she has been targeted, the object of some kind of prank. If so, it makes it more personal. Is it, she wonders, because she’s new here? An outsider? She’s more determined than ever to turn the tables on this teenage creep.
She’s pretty sure that Olivia Sharpe is the woman who wrote the letter. But she’s not going to approach her again – at least, not for now. She’s going to talk to her son, Raleigh. She’s been asking around about him. By all accounts, he’s a nice kid. A whiz with computers. He even had a little business last summer offering to fix people’s computers. She wonders if he did any snooping then.
She knocks on the door of 50 Finch and a sullen-looking teenage boy answers. She recognizes him immediately as the drunken boy at the end of her driveway the other night. She can tell by his wary expression that he recognizes her, too. But she’s not going to mention it. He’s got dark hair and eyes and he definitely reminds her of Luke at that age. She asks him if their house has been broken into recently, but he just looks at her as if she’s grown two heads. So instead she asks him if he knows of any local boys around his age who might be good with computers; she’s having problems with hers. Sure enough, he suggests Raleigh Sharpe.
At that moment a woman arrives at the door wiping her hands on a dish towel. She has short auburn hair and freckles and a pleasant expression. ‘Hello, can I help you?’ she asks, as the boy slinks back inside.
‘Hi, my name is Carmine.’ She holds her hand out. ‘I’m new to the neighbourhood. I’m at Number Thirty-two.’
The woman gives her a smile, shakes her hand and says, ‘I’m Glenda.’
‘My kids are all grown,’ Carmine says, trying to make conversation. ‘Nice-looking boy you have.’ She’s not going to say where she’s met her son before. ‘Do you have other kids?’ she asks.
‘No, just Adam,’ the woman says. She doesn’t seem to want to talk. She probably wants to get back to her dishes.
‘I was broken into recently and I’ve been going around talking to people, telling them to be on their guard. There was no one home here last time I knocked.’
‘Well, we haven’t been broken into,’ the woman says rather abruptly, her pleasant expression disappearing.
Lucky you, Carmine thinks. ‘That’s good,’ she says, hiding her disappointment. ‘Awful about that murder,’ Carmine says, thinking this will get the woman talking. She leans in conspiratorially. ‘People seem to think that her husband did it.’ She adds, ‘Do you know him?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘I actually knocked on his door, just to find out if he’s been broken into. I didn’t have the nerve to say anything about his wife. But he hasn’t.’
‘Well, it’s nice meeting you,’ the woman named Glenda says and shuts the door firmly.
The phone rings, shattering the quiet. Olivia jumps. She grabs the phone in the kitchen, hoping it’s Glenda. ‘Hello,’ she says.
