Emmy shrugged, because everything was speculation. There was no hard evidence pointing to anyone she could actually arrest. “The unknown older man? Reggie? Woody?”
“Lots of arrows. Lots of different directions. What are we missing?”
Yet another Gerald phrase. Emmy blinked, and in the split second of her eyes closing, she could almost see her heart trembling against her ribcage. Her hands gripped the wheel so hard that the stitching dug into her fingers. She had to change the subject before a panic attack, or whatever the hell kept happening, happened again.
“I found a flask in Dad’s desk drawer.”
Emmy could feel the heat of Jude’s gaze on the side of her face.
“It was full. Smelled like bourbon.”
Jude let out a heavy breath. “I’ve got an unopened bottle of Jack Daniel’s in my underwear drawer back in San Francisco. It reminds me that I’m in control. That my sobriety is a choice.”
Emmy wanted so desperately to believe her, but between Myrna’s illness and his own health problems, Gerald had been under a tremendous amount of stress before he’d died. Had he sneaked a mouthful of Old Rip every now and then? Was he secretly getting drunk all those late nights in his office? Even Emmy had cracked a few times, finishing a bottle of wine when she’d normally stop after one or two glasses.
“Gilchrist,” Jude said. She was reading the sign pointing toward the Evelyn Gilchrist Trauma Center. “I see they still love putting their name on everything.”
Cliftons hardly had room to talk. “Aunt Millie was annoyed they weren’t at Myrna’s funeral.”
“Aunt Millie is annoyed about everything.”
Emmy coasted down the exit and followed the glowing lights toward the trauma center built onto the north side of the main hospital building. The parking lot was almost packed. She took out her phone to text Sherry as they got out of the car. The dots bounced. Sherry texted back—
In the cafeteria. Find me when you’re finished.
Emmy tapped a thumbs up. She headed toward the trauma center.
Jude asked, “Tell me about your relationship with Allison. What did you like about her? What did you not like?”
Emmy didn’t know that the question mattered. Right now, she needed to think about Mandy. “I didn’t like that her husband was beating the hell out of her.”
She walked into the building. The antiseptic smell bit into the back of her nose. She felt her throat wanting to close when she spotted the map of the medical complex. The trauma center was only one part of the campus, which had three wings and six doctors’ buildings spoking out from the main hospital. Myrna’s neurologist was in the North Wing. Her physical therapist was in the South Wing. Cardiologist. Pulmonologist. Rheumatologist. Nephrologist. There wasn’t one specialty in this place that hadn’t gotten a piece of her.
Emmy looked away from the map, swallowed down the glass that kept sticking in her throat.
The nurse behind the counter saw the sheriff’s uniform andbuzzed them through. Emmy could hear the thick rubber soles of Jude’s boots thudding against the tiles behind her as they walked through to the back. The trauma center was always packed, but weekends were particularly rough. Patients were parked on gurneys and slouched in wheelchairs out in the hall. Emmy let her gaze travel over the beds, taking in open doorways and curtained areas with patients hooked up to machinery. She pressed the button for the elevator that would take them up to the hospital’s ICU.
Jude stood beside her, arms crossed, staring straight ahead, as they waited. The tension was back between them, a suffocating miasma of words unsaid, thoughts unexpressed. Emmy wasn’t sure why her sister hadn’t already left town. Jude kept pushing Emmy to talk about things, but she never talked about the fact that she had an entire life back in San Francisco that she’d just dropped to come back to North Falls. Gerald was dead. Myrna was finally gone and buried. Had Jude even booked a return flight home? How long was she going to sleep on the couch? What was she doing flying off to Quantico and why in the hell was she so invested in this case?
Emmy was saved pondering the answers when the elevator doors opened. They both got on. Emmy hit the button. The doors closed. The backs had a brushed silver finish that showed a scattered version of their reflections.
Emmy said, “Allison used to joke that she was Reggie’s work wife. Before it all started—the affair with him, I mean.”
Jude turned toward Emmy as the elevator traveled to the top floor.
“A few years ago, I told her that Reggie was useless and she should be the chief of police, and she told me she was happy where she was—supporting Reggie so that he could do his job.” Emmy watched her shoulders shrug. “I don’t know why that made me lose respect for her when the stuff with Bill was a hell of a lot worse.”
Jude didn’t speak, but she was clearly waiting for Emmy to connect the dots.
“Our friendship. You asked what I didn’t like about her. She always made herself small around men.” Emmy felt a familiartightness in her throat, her body’s way of reminding her that she’d disliked herself for the same reason during her marriage to Jonah. “The thing I liked about Allison was she was smart. She loved working an investigation. The puzzle part of it, figuring out how everything fit together. And she was a cop, a single mother raising a kid, and we talked about that.”
Jude nodded.
“Reggie told me that he and Allison got into a fight a couple weeks ago. That’s why she wouldn’t let him park his car in her driveway anymore so he could meet up with his affair.”
“Did he tell you what the fight was about?”
Emmy recalled he hadn’t given one explanation, but two. “Something about Allison filing for divorce, then trying to back out of going through with it. And then something else about Reggie teasing Allison because Bill got the clap off a sex worker and passed the infection on to her.”
