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Driving away from the house, Fletch pokes a thumb back in its direction. “I was open to feeling off about him. If he was a creep or a douchebag or something equally annoying, I was willing to think he hurt her. But the truth is, he seemed entirely fucking normal. His first wife died. He misses her. But it happened, and he moved on. Now he has a life and a family and a golden retriever. So I don’t…” He shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t know if he had anything to do with this.”
* * *
“Henry Wade hurt my sister.”
Twenty minutes after leaving the Wades’ home and pulling up in a nearby neighborhood, Fletch and I introduce ourselves to Lacey Trainor, Holly’s sister.
Holly would be sixty years old now, had she lived. The images we have put her at an eternal twenty-three years old, making it difficult to imagine how she’d look all these years later. But looking into Lacey’s eyes, her enraged expression and her determined fierceness, it becomes easier to bridge that gap.
“Why do you say Henry Wade hurt Holly?” Fletch sits on the edge of a floral recliner in the middle of an overly floral living room. I lean against the doorframe, too sore to sit, too tired to attempt to get up again, and watch as he writes notes. “Ms. Trainor? Why do you think he hurt her?”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Sniffling into scrunched tissues, Lacey’s apparent softness is overrun by the same kind of fierceness I suspect Holly possessed. “She was happy, Detective. Sheneversuffered depression before she met him. She never had any issues whatsoever until they started living together, then out of nowhere, she’s got all these problems and meds she was force fed every single day.”
With trembling hands, Lacey sits back and shakes her head. “What he did to her was not right, Detective. He took this beautiful, outgoing, brave woman he claimed to love, and medicated her until she was no longer herself, until it sent her to an early grave. I’m not saying he put that car under a truck directly, but he drugged her so much every day, she wouldn’t have known what she was doing.”
“The woman Holly worked for,” Fletch cuts in gently, “Shirley. She had the closing shift with Holly on the night your sister died. Shirley says Holly was happy when she saw her last. She didn’t seem depressed or overly troubled about life.”
“She said that when?” Lacey challenges. “Today? Or in 1986?”
Taken aback, I frown and step further into the room. “Are you implying Shirley’s statement is likely to change?”
“I don’t know!” Pushing up to stand, her stare screams heartache. “It’s possible—not likely, Detective, butpossible—that Holly killed herself. Everyone is capable, I guess. And everyone has a bad day now and then. But I have never, not since the day they put her in the ground, believed the reports to be true. My sister was not bipolar, she was not depressed. She was not sick, and she did not need those pills he fed her.
“And that bitch who claimed to be her best friend?” She brings a tissue up to clear the mess beneath her nose. “Hillary DuPree? Besties since elementary, and all that crap?” Scoffing, she shakes her head. “She’s as culpable as Henry.”
“Hillary DuPree.” Fletch writes that name down. “Why do you say she’s to blame?”
“Because she was in full support of all those shrink appointments,” Lacey spits out. “She drove Holly there, waited in the lobby, then drove Holly to the pharmacy afterward to buy the drugs. Call it heroin, and we’d all say she was Holly’s supplier. But since they were prescription meds, suddenly it’s all okay. Call that bitch up and see where her life is now, then tell me I’m wrong.”
MINKA
“Get in the cage, you stupid shithead.”
I chase Chloe’s furry ass around Archer’s apartment and try my hand at being as smart as those dogs who corral livestock. They’re dogs! And they have animals going wherever they want. But here I am, an educated doctor who can’t catch a domesticated cat.
“Chloe!”
“Maybe trynotscreaming at her,” Aubree teases from the living room. Snickering under her breath, she packs away the cat paraphernalia on my request. Food. Bowls. Toys and blankets. Chloe’s moving house, since it’s not cool to leave her here all alone while Archer recuperates in my apartment. “Did you ask your landlord about this?”
“Yes.”
Slowly, like a tiger prowling his domain and readying to slay a tasty dinner, I tiptoe around Archer’s bed, and box the cat in between the mattress and the wall.
She’s white and fluffy, and really, she’s never liked me.
“Chloe, Chloe, Chloe.” I soften my voice, though my gritted teeth probably undo my faux niceties. “Come here, you beautiful little bitch. I hate you.” I sing my words, much the same way Aubree does. “I never liked you, because I think you want Archer more than you want me to live.”
Setting the cage on the floor between the bed and the wall, I leave her no way to go but in. Opening the steel door, I continue with the sugary sweet voice.
“I think you’d like to sleep on my face till I suffocate and die, then you’ll soothe Archer during his grief with your slutty little meows andthere theres.”
“Are you talking to the cat?” Aubree calls.
“No.” I inch the cage closer. “Come on, pussy. Get your ass in—”
With a ferocious snarl and hind legs that go-go-Gadget her fluffy ass into the air, Chloe springs to the bed, then over my bent back, and pounds her way into the hall.
“Dammit, Chloe!” Snatching up the cage, and snarling when the corner smacks my shin, I huff and turn to follow her. “Why are you so friggin’ difficult?”
