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“Don’t mind that,” she says. “It’s not contagious. I work at the coroner’s office, and I’m allergic to some of the chemicals we use. I slather my hands in protective cream all day long, but still—“
“You’re Rhonda’s sister!” I cry, startling her.
“Well, yeah,” she says, her smile slowly returning. “But how’d you know?”
“She mentioned you once.” My mind works madly. “I go in there all the time—to the hardware store, I mean.”
“Poor Rhonda,” Annie chuckles. “Lou made her open that place, and she’s never forgiven him. She wanted to run a flower shop. Wouldn’t have mattered to me ‘cause I’m allergic to flowers, too. Men are always giving them to me anyway; it’s like a compulsion. Sometimes I—“
She goes on in that vein for a minute, chatting in a friendly way. From the empty wineglasses in front of her, I’d guess Annie’s been unwinding from work for a couple of hours already.
I’m barely breathing because I just realized this is the sister who showed Lila Covett’s coroner report to Rhonda and put the idea in her head that Dane falsified the ruling.
I badly want to ask her about it, but I don’t want to scare her off—I’m pretty sure she’d lose her job if anybody at HIPPA knew what she shared with her sister.
So how can I get her to spill the dirt all over again?
“Let me buy you a drink,” I say, motioning to the bartender for another round.
“I don’t know if I should,” Annie giggles. “I’ve had a few already. Ah, well, twist my arm…”
Three more chardonnays later, she’s singing like a bird, so bleary-eyed that she can barely stay up on her barstool.
“Well,” she whispers, her breath tickling my ear, “the first thing I noticed in the report was that it only had two pages, which was weird ‘cause usually a case like that would be a lot thicker. There were things missing, forms and tests and a full formal write-up. The coroner told me not to worry about it. But I could see, too, the file had the wrong color sticker on the spine—we use color codes for type of death, and this one had a blue sticker when it should have been pink.”
“So, what really happened?” I ask, leaning in close, my heart throbbing in a sick, uneven sort of way. “How did his wife actually die?”
“Oh, it wasn’t the wife, honey.” Annie takes a large gulp of her wine and blinks slowly like that will help everything blurry come back into view. “The report they changed was the one for his baby son.”
“Oh.” It feels like the floor beneath my stool has dropped several feet. “What happened to him?”
“Well, I don’t know for sure…” Annie hiccups softly. “But here’s what I’ll tell you—if that baby really had meningitis, there would have been a viral sample in the file and a pink sticker on the spine. But since they used blue…I’m guessing he drowned.”
“Drowned?”
“That’s right.” She nods firmly. “Just like the wife.”
* * *
My head’sspinning when I leave the bar, and not just because I joined Annie for one too many drinks.
I’m trying to decide what to make of what she just told me and if I should believe her.
And if Idobelieve her, what the fuck does it mean?
If Dane’s baby drowned, why did he tell me he died of meningitis?
Maybe because both of them drowning sounds a fuck of a lot more suspicious…
Is it really possible that Dane is just some cold-blooded killer who held his wife and son under the water with his bare hands? Those same gorgeous hands I was so grateful to have all over my body?
The idea makes me sweaty and nauseous, so much so that I stop walking and lean against an iron lamppost. Grimstone looks more old-fashioned than ever with hay bales stacked up against the buildings, fake cobwebs strung everywhere, scarecrows menacing the pigeons, and witches’ brooms propped in doorways.
It’s all the trappings of a pretend horror in a place that Dane says is an epicenter for the real thing.
I’m not a good person, Remi…
That’s what everyone here says—that Dane Covett is a killer.
