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By the time she had finished speaking, she was breathing heavily. Both officers were looking at her with interest, as if she were a carnival creature who had performed an unexpected trick.
“We’ve already spoken to the people who were at Brouchard’s last night,” Lambert said. “Believe me, when I say that we’re covering all the bases. All of them.”
All of them.
“Can I have some water?” she asked shortly.
Sighing, Officer Lambert dutifully got up to get it.
“Donni,” Officer Corcoran said. “We both know you’re hiding something here. Threatening notes, a wild dog, desecrated corpses—this isn’t just about your husband, is it? It’s personal.”
“How do you know that?” Donni said. “Are you and the killer girlfriends?”
“There’s no need to be defensive,” Officer Corcoran said. “You’re not in any trouble.”Yet. “But the more you can tell us, the better we can do our jobs. If you know something that could make our jobs easier, it’s your responsibility to tell us. Don’t you understand that? Otherwise, this could keep happening—again and again and again.”
“I liked you better as the bad cop,” Donni said flatly. “At least it’s honest.”
“All right,” Officer Corcoran said, leaning forward. “You want hardball? Let’s play hardball, then. Are you screwing your twenty-eight-year-old stepson, Adonica? And does anyone else know? Because that would look an awful lot like motive to me. Especially if Christophe knew. Especially if that was what he and Rafe argued about that night they fought at the bar.”
The silence crackled.
Officer Lambert came back with the water. Donni grabbed for it and her fingers jerked, causing the cup to hit the table, splashing water all over it, and the spluttering Officer Corcoran.
“I think I’m done with questions,” she said, in a choked-up voice. “I need to go home.”
Chapter Eighteen
Kiss Me Better
She felt a little like a freed prisoner as Rafe led her out of the station. They’d been questioning him too, she guessed, in another room. You wouldn’t know it by looking at him, though. Only the slight tightness of his jaw gave him away; then she knew he was clenching his teeth.
“We’ll follow up if we have any further questions,” Officer Lambert called after them. Officer Corcoran, dabbing at her uniform with paper towels, said nothing.
“Great,” Rafe said, and she could hear the strain in it.
It had been so dark in those rooms that the brightness of the sun made her blink disorientedly.It won’t be sunny for long, though, she thought, catching sight of the menacing swirl of clouds over the hills.That looks like a mean mother of a storm.
“You’re lucky you didn’t get an assault charge,” Rafe muttered. “Throwing water at a cop. What the fuck, Donni.”
But she had been counting on the water-spilling incident to look like an accident. Officer Corcoran already thought she was a brainless bimbo. Apparently she wanted her to be a criminal mastermind, too, but it was hard to peg someone with both.
And it was harder for women. Being young and pretty bought you a lot of free passes. It was like having a net beneath you when you walked the tightrope of life. And then, as you got older, it began to fray. Cord by rotting cord.
Until one day you were falling, and you realized it would never stop.
“I didn’t throw it,” was what she said. “I dropped it.”
Rafe dragged his fingers through his hair as the car stereo played hard rock on low, which kind of defeated the point, she thought. “All right. Why’d you drop it on her?’
“She asked me if I was fucking you.”
He laughed—it exploded out of him, like a burst dam.
“It isn’t funny!”
“Yes, it is,” he said. “Because it’s so you. God, they really are a bunch of tools, aren’t they? They’ve got nothing, so they’re turning on you. I remember why I hated this fucking place.”
“Well, I hate it, too,” she said flatly. “I might just let them take the damn house, anyway, and try my luck on the streets. That’ll give those asshole wine snobs something to talk about.”
