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“Apparently he told them he’d taken it from a set from your house and that you hadn’t wanted him to take it, but he did. You had a huge fight about it, but he took it anyway. It was on his desk. He used it to cut up fruit in the break room.”
Another pause. She still didn’t turn around as she said, a bit unsteadily, “No, I’m not sure . . . I need to go to my mom’s and then pick up my son.”
“Okay. No more questions for now. I hope your husband recovers and we can get some answers.”
She glanced back then, her gaze touching on McCrae a moment before sliding back to meet Quin’s. With a little more grit, she said, “I hope so, too,” and then she headed out the door and down the hallway.
“That was quite a show,” said McCrae.
Quin nodded. “You would’ve been too soft on her.”
You can’t blame her for Bailey’s death, he thought, but what he said was, “You’re probably right, but from now on, I want a heads-up.”
Quin met his eyes, thought about that a moment, then nodded gravely. “She’s gonna need a lawyer.”
“A good one,” he agreed.
Chapter 16
Zora watched the midday news with her mouth dropped open. It took her a few moments to actually shut it. Amanda had called her and told her about Tanner, and she’d asked for help getting in to see him. Zora had said she’d do what she could, although Brian could be such a butt about asking his friends for favors, it was doubtful; then she’d scoured the Internet for bits and pieces of information about Tanner, still in a state of disbelief. The live newsfeed had made it all seem so real.
It is real, she reminded herself. It is.
She was perched on the white leather chair in Brian’s den. He’d wanted black or espresso, but she’d insisted upon white, and as ever, he’d given in to her. Brian was a sweet man, but he was kind of a wimp. His father’s death had knocked him down, for sure, but she realized now he’d always sort of been that way. He’d only been happy teaching, it seemed, but when he’d inherited his father’s estate, Zora had told him those days were behind him.
“Let’s have a baby together,” she’d exclaimed almost as soon as they’d started dating.
“What?” he’d responded, boggled.
“I think we could make beautiful children together.”
She’d dragged him, bemused and laughingly protesting, to the bedroom on their third date. She would have tried on their first, but that had been the night of the reunion, and he’d spent most of the time concerned about whether he should have left Anne Reade and Clarice Billings and Principal Kiefer at the event. Coach Sutton hadn’t made an appearance at the reunion, which Brian had said was because a lot of the blame for Carmen’s death and other kids’ injuries had been laid unfairly on him by the parents.
“Dean never got over it,” Brian told her that night. “He’s been teaching phys ed at Montgomery in Clackamas. I talked to him about the reunion, but he didn’t feel right about coming.”
Zora had wanted to talk about other things, more personal things, and she’d steered the conversation as best she could. She’d been only partially successful, but she had managed to catch a ride home with him that night and had thanked him profusely. She’d pretended she didn’t think she should drive, when in reality she hadn’t consumed enough to get a buzz on, but he’d complied.
He’d dropped her at her doorstep, and she’d fervently clasped his hand before climbing out of the car. “Can we do this again?” she asked. “I really could use someone to talk to. Max and I have been separated for years (a lie, but one she made good on as soon as possible); our relationship has been over a long time. Practically from the get-go. Sometimes you make a mistake, and it just takes a while before you have the courage to make it right.”
She could tell Brian fell for her story hook, line, and sinker, so she picked a fight with Max the very next day and moved out by the end of that week. From there, she and Brian began seriously dating. Amanda told her she was railroading him into marrying her, which really hurt, but then Amanda always said mean things. Maybe she had railroaded him a little. Was that a crime? By the end of that year, she and Max were divorced, and she and Brian were married and spending hours in bed having sex like lovesick bunnies.
She’d been so sure it would work. She would be pregnant before a moon’s turn, and yet . . . nada. Same old disappointments. Same old frustrations.
Her gynecologist could find nothing wrong with either her or Brian. Healthy sperm. Healthy people. Just no babies.
But . . . Brian had inherited tons of money. That was a fact. While they were dating, Brian had introduced her to important people, people with cold, hard cash, and life had been full of fun and expensive toys and . . . just everything. For a time, it was all just perfect. But then, while Zora indulged her every whim, her husband grew content to live in his office easy chair and only gather himself to go out once a weekend, generally to a good restaurant. Sometimes they stayed in all weekend . . . and all week . . . It was a nice, predictable, fingernails scraping on a blackboard existence.
Zora was going out of her mind.
She found herself fixated on Delta and her little boy, Owen. Had dreams about kidnapping him—just for an afternoon or so—so she could have a child. In desperation, knowing her fantasies were dangerous, she’d gone to a shrink, Judy, a gray-haired granny type with terrible taste in clothing but a concerned manner, who’d suggested adoption. Zora had tried to be enthusiastic about that idea, but she wasn’t, and when she approached Brian with the idea, he was even less eager than she was.
So . . . what? What was there in life?
She found herself aimlessly wandering around malls. She flirted with the thought of shoplifting. She was unhappy, uninterested, and uninvolved. It felt a little like death.
But now someone’s stabbed Tanner!
Zora dialed Amanda again. Who could have done this? Why had they done it? It was just so . . . terrible!
