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She didn’t really want Delta seen at the office yet, where the partners and her ex and everyone were around, until she knew exactly what she planned to do for her ex-BFF.
Message sent, Amanda climbed the spiral stairway to the bedroom she’d used ever since she was a kid. For a few minutes, she hung halfway out the window, breathing in the smells of freshly mown hay and the danker scents from the river beyond. In her mind, she could see the place where Carmen had refused to come out
of the water and accept Clarice Billings’s help. She had it mentally marked, the same spot where Bailey had slipped in, running the rapids by herself without a raft of any kind.
Foolish children with death wishes. That’s what they’d all been.
Back inside, she stripped off her clothes, washed her face, and climbed naked beneath her sheets. The cell on her nightstand’s screen lit up, and she heard the ding of an incoming text. Delta.
Delta: OK.
“Okay,” Amanda whispered, staring toward her ceiling in the inky darkness, but her inner vision was on Delta Smith-Stahd.
* * *
Delta took Owen to school the next morning and returned to her own house with trepidation. There were still no reporters camped out on her door today, which was a surprise and a relief, but since Ellie had given that in-depth report on Tanner, capping it with his father screaming for her head, maybe the reporters felt her story was played out and had moved on to a new one, or at least a new angle. Either way, the lack of press was likely only a momentary reprieve.
She took a long shower and came out of it feeling marginally better. Tanner was gone. He wasn’t coming back. Life felt almost spookily normal, and she had to keep reminding herself that someone had killed him.
Wiping away the fog on the bathroom mirror, she gave herself a long look. Her dark hair lay lank and wet against her neck. Tiny lines had formed at the edges of her eyes and along her mouth, seemingly overnight. Worry had also furrowed creases in her forehead.
She checked her phone and saw there was a message from Candy: When will the clinic reopen?
It was with a dull shock that she realized she was the owner of the clinic now lock, stock, and barrel. It had been Tanner’s baby, but unless Tanner had altered his will in the last couple of weeks, it now belonged to her, and she needed to do something about it. This’ll drive Lester Stahd even further out of his mind.
She wrote back to Candy: I will check with the police.
After that, she made herself some toast and tea. The raspberries she’d purchased days earlier were starting to shrivel. She was going to have to get back to some semblance of a routine for Owen and her. Just the two of them now, no longer three.
She felt a rush of emotion.
Who did this to you, Tanner? Did you know them? Was it personal, or for drugs, maybe, thinking they could score at the clinic?
All those stab wounds . . . with their knife . . .
She glanced at the new block of knives sitting on the counter. Grabbing up the wooden holder, she trudged upstairs, pulled down the attic ladder, climbed up, and exchanged it with her original set with its missing knife. She had no explanation for why she “couldn’t remember” that she hadn’t recognized their own knife. Owen would know she’d tried to replace them, but maybe she could keep him away from the police interrogators.
God, it was all so stupid!
Maybe she should confess to McCrae? Or maybe to Amanda when she saw her later.
What if she doesn’t take your case?
She put herself together and then dressed in nice jeans and a white blouse. Peering through the living room shades, she groaned at the sight of a gathering news crew. Damn. They were back sooner than she’d thought. Not Ellie, at least.
She thought back to her interview at the police station and what she’d told Quin and McCrae. The arguments and tiffs she and Tanner had gotten into. The one with his father had been over the business, and the fender bender . . . It was amazing how fast that fight had escalated between Tanner and the guy in the other car. She couldn’t remember his name, but he, like Tanner, had taken his dented vehicle to Woody’s Auto Body. Delta wasn’t there when Tanner took it in, but he’d told her later that Woody had slapped him on the back and told him to keep clear if the other guy was there. “He’s mad as hell. Let me call you,” Woody had told him. “Grinning like the idiot he is,” Tanner had related. “Like the accident was my fault. That jackass ran into me!” He hadn’t found his old friend’s jocularity as fun as it used to be, apparently.
But could a minor traffic accident end in murder? She knew it happened sometimes, but it had been half a year ago. Could this guy really carry a grudge that long?
You should talk to Woody.
Her cell buzzed, breaking into her thoughts. She pulled the phone out of her purse and regarded it carefully. Zora. Huh.
“Hi, Zora,” Delta answered, still looking out at the van across the street.
“Oh, Delta,” she said in a rush. “I’m so, so sorry about Tanner. I saw it on the news. Do you need anything? Anything at all?”
“No, but thanks, really. I’m just . . . I don’t know . . . numb.”
