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“Cheers,” Beckett said. “I got that.”
“Wait,” Quinn said. “Calls and texts to or from Abby’s phone. They must have checked that, too, even if her phone wasn’t recovered.”
“They did,” Beckett said. “Three unanswered calls from me. Three voicemails, telling her to stay over at Samantha’s, or to ring me so the kids and I could come get her. I knew it was saying that I was a better driver in the conditions, but by then, I didn’t care. No other calls in or out, and no texts. She didn’t even text me to say that she was on her way, and she always did that. That’s what I don’t understand.”
Quinn said quietly, “It must kill you that she didn’t pick up.”
“Yeah,” he said. “It does.” And couldn’t go on.
Megan said, “Quinn is right. That of course they want to talk to you, because youarethe husband, but also that they don’t have a case, against you or, as it stands now, anybody else. Without somebody seeing you, specifically you, in the area, or your neighbor seeing you arrive home at twelve-thirty A.M., soaked with rain, carrying your wetsuit and swim fins …”
“Or a taxi remembering picking him up nearby,” Quinn put in, “because he’d have to have got home somehow. After two years, though?” She asked Beckett, “Did the cops look in your closets?”
“I don’t …” He was still cold. Nearly shaking with it. “I don’t know. I don’t remember. They were there for a while. They could’ve done.”
“Would any of your outer clothes have been wet?” Quinn asked. “Your shoes? Did you take out the garbage, or anything?”
“No. It was a tropical downpour. You don’t know what rain like that is like. You don’t go out in that if you don’t have to.”
“OK,” Quinn said. “And obviously, a taxi driver couldn’t have seen you if you weren’t there, even if they somehow remembered a fare from that long ago. It wouldn’t be an Uber, because of the phone thing. Credit cards. Records. But thishasto make sense.” She was beating the heel of her hand on the stone breakfast bar and not seeming aware she was doing it. “Things always make sense. We just aren’t seeing the sense it makes, because we don’t know enough.”
Megan said, “Honestly, I’d ignore it. Answer D.I. Burnside’s questions over the phone, if you feel you have to—I’ll conference in with you—but I’d advise you not to. You have no obligation, and they have no evidence.”
Quinn said, “But …”
Beckett said, “Exactly. But.”
“But what?” Megan asked.
“But,” Beckett said, “if that uni student did see somebody, and it wasn’t me—”
“Then who was it?” Quinn asked. “There’s no way Beckett can ignore that. There’s no way.”
“And you’re going to discover that?” Megan asked. “If the police can’t? How?”
“I don’t know,” Beckett said. “But I have to try. I have to go.”
“I’ll go with you,” Quinn said.
Beckett said, “You don’t—”
“Don’t say I don’t have to,” she said. “I know I don’t have to. You finished my attic because you love me and that’s what you’re good at. I finally got that. Well, I loveyou,and this is whatI’mgood at. Listening, and separating the facts from the justifications and wishful thinking and downright lies. Asking the right questions, and putting everything together and figuring out what it means. So I’ll clear my calendar and go with you. We should leave tonight.”
47
CHRISTMAS STAR
It had always been hard to leave his kids for a work trip. It was so much harder to do this, even knowing the kids would be with Quinn’s parents. He told Quinn, “Maybe better not to tell them we’re going at all.”
She said, “How are you going to explain not seeing them for four days, though, when we’re supposed to be across town? It’s Christmas.”
“Work trip?” he suggested.
“At Christmas? I don’t know, I just think it’s better not to have secrets. We’re doing this as fast as we can, but we’re still going to get home about two o’clock on Christmas morning, after three flights and about twenty-four hours of travel. We’ve both done that kind of travel before. After doing it twice in a few days, you know we’re going to be slammed. And that’s not counting what we’re going there for. That’s a lot to hide.”
“I don’t get tired that easily,” he said. “And you don’t get tired at all. And sorry, but I don’t think, ‘I’m suspected by the police of causing Mummy’s death’ is going to do my kids any good.”
“Fair point,” she said, “but there must besomethingwe can say that’s truth-adjacent. Let’s pack, and we’ll think about it.” By which she’d meantshe’dthink about it, but whatever worked, he guessed, because he had to concede that she was right. He had to tell them something.
