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She had changed the passwords on her phone and personal computer, but she couldn’t revoke whatever access the stalker—Janus Staal—may or may not have already had.
The uncertainty of it terrified her. What did they know?
How deeply down the rabbit hole had they plunged?”
Across the table, Officers Corcoran and Lambert were regarding her intently. They dove into the questioning immediately, like they were reading from a script. Lambert had a coffee but Corcoran had affected a steely façade she’d probably perfected from watching old cop movies. There was a gold crucifix around her neck. A gift—or a prop?
As if subconsciously aware of her scrutiny, Corcoran straightened the collar of her uniform, causing the necklace to disappear from sight. “Why were you meeting Christophe Walters last night, Adonica?”
Donni resisted the urge to groan. They’d been over this several times. Were they trying to catch her in a lie? Did they think she was lying? She didn’t remember the questioning being this brutal when the police had arrived at her house after her husband’s death.
“I told you,” she said wearily. “He needed to tell me something important.”
“And you had no idea what that might be?” Corcoran sounded skeptical.
“I thought maybe it had something to do with my husband,” Donni lied. “Evidence that would prove his innocence. Insight into whoever is following me and leaving all these creepy notes, I don’t know.Something. Doesn’t everyone hope for an easy answer to their problems?”
“Not in an active murder case,” Corcoran sniped. “Then most people tend to be suspicious.”
“You mentioned that he said you could be in danger.” Officer Lambert folded his large hands around his cup. “When did you realize that something was wrong?”
“Well, he didn’t show, for one. And then he told me to meet him outside. I refused and he got angry. I showed you the text messages I received on my phone.” She had described them, too, as well as her growing anxiety when her unanswered messages kept flipping toread.“I think Christophe may have already been dead that night,” Donni said. “I think someone took his phone and was planning on killing me, too—and that they would have, if I was alone.”
She intended the dig. She wanted to remind the officers that they had spent far too much time going after her instead of doing their damn jobs. She’d been stalked, threatened, and nearly killed, and these police were treating her more than a perp than a victim.
(Even though you deserve it?)
She still remembered an incident from her early acting days. She and herSleepover Fiendsco-stars had gone to a drugstore to pick up their lunches. She had gotten a root beer. On their way back to the studio, they’d passed a cop. He’d glanced at them and did a double take, before taking Donni aside and demanding to know if that was a beer she held, before yanking it out of her hand and sticking his hairy nose in it. “Oh,” he’d said, sounding disappointed. “It’s root beer.”
Trina and Daisy had kept talking about what happened, and from the shocked tones in their voices, it was clear that this was the first time they had ever seen a cop as a potentially threatening figure, as the enemy. “I just can’t believe he would justdothat,” Daisy kept saying. “Like, we were just walking. Inbroad daylight.”
Walking in broad daylight can be a crime for some people, Donni had wanted to snap at her.The cops aren’t your friends.
She knew these cops weren’t her friends.
Donni flicked the strap of her purse. “Look,” she said. “I’ve told you all I know. I don’t know how else I can help you.”
“How close are you to your stepson, Rafe?” Corcoran asked.
“Why?”
“He came here to help you out, didn’t he?” Yes, Corcoran was clearly gunning for the bad cop role. She was good at it. Maybe it wasn’t even a role. “But I have accounts saying that things weren’t exactly amicable between you two before. That your husband kicked him out of the house when he was eighteen.” She lifted her eyes. “So why did he come back?”
“Tragedy brings people together,” Donni said. “Whether you want it to or not.”
“That may be true,” Officer Corcoran said. “But it’s also a little odd. Especially since I also have testimony placing Rafe at Brouchard’s with Christophe just a few nights ago.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” Donni said hotly. “He’s a grown man. I don’t monitor his comings and goings anymore.”Well, not his goings, anyway, her brain whispered.
She thought of that desperate fuck in the rain and her fingers tightened on her bag.
“Ms. Blake,” Officer Lambert said placatingly, even as his sharp-eyed partner watched her fingers like a dog with a bone, “we are trying to help you.”
“Into the grave?” Donni said, before she could stop herself. “Through joint incompetence?”
A tic jumped beneath Officer Lambert’s left eye. “But if we’re going to do that, we need you to be a little more forthcoming. The police are not your enemy, Mrs. Blake.”
“Ms.,” Donni said. When he blinked at her, he said, “It’s not Mrs. Just Ms. Why haven’t you talked to the bar flies at Brouchard’s then? Some of those men are hard up and Christophe wasn’t shy about flashing his money around if he thought it could get him laid. Or you could talk to any of his old friends—what’s left of them, anyway. They’ll tell you he resented his mother. He was always hanging around her book club, pestering her, pestering her friends.”
