Page 78 of Not a Word

That sounded like a plan.

Twenty-Seven

Reece

“Mom!” I shouted, standing at the top of the stairs that led to the basement. “Detective McCabe is here.”

No response. She’d either found a way to crawl out a basement window or was pretending not to hear me.

“Mom,” I called out again.

She appeared at the bottom of the stairs, glaring up at me, probably wondering how it slipped my mind that thirty seconds earlier she’d told me to tell the detective she was not there.

I was tired of playing games with her.

“She’s coming,” I said to McCabe, who was standing just inside the front door.

Mom shifted past me as she reached the top step, slapped a fake smile on her face, and said, “Detective.”

“Mrs. Chartwell. I had a few more questions.”

She sighed audibly. “What more could you possibly need to know?”

Quite a bit, I thought.

“Perhaps we could sit,” McCabe said, inviting herself into the living room. She hadn’t asked me to leave, so I chose to stay. She led off with: “I wondered, since we last spoke, whether you might have remembered anything about Leah Kennard.”

I exchanged a quick glance with my mother.

“No,” she said, looking first at McCabe, then fixing her eyes on me, as though daring me to contradict her.

I was definitely thinking about it. But in that moment, I wasn’t sure what would be gained by ratting Mom out. In the end, what difference did it make whether Mom knew Leah? Dad had shot her, then himself. Did the other details matter?

“Let me run another name past you.”

Mom raised her chin somewhat defiantly, like she could handle whatever was coming. “Go ahead,” she said.

“Evelyn Corby.”

That chin quivered. Did McCabe see what I saw at that moment? It lasted no more than a second, but Mom had just experienced some kind of earthquake. And just as quickly, she restored her look of resolve.

“Could you repeat that, please?”

“Evelyn Corby.”

“Evelyn Corby, Evelyn Corby,” Mom said. She shook her head slowly. “I don’t . . . it does sound somewhat familiar, but it’s not a name I’ve heard in a long time.”

“When do you think you might have heard it?”

“I’d have to think.”

McCabe waited, gave her ten seconds, then said, “Anything?”

“Maybe you could give me a hint.”

“Wiffel-Smith.”

“That’s the company my husband once worked for,” Mom said. “But he left them around nineteen ninety-nine. Did this Corby woman have something to do with Wiffel-Smith?”