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“As well as it could, I guess. She’s going to do the press conference. She’ll send over some pictures.”
“That’s good.”
“Yes.”
“I talked to the officer who arrested Leanne Fraser. He said there are definitely cameras at the house in Stowe. He saw some out front. Can you call Rory Jordan and ask him to send along the footage?”
Sarah Jane took a note. “Of course. Not a problem. And if he says no?”
“We’ll get a warrant.” He paused. “Leanne Fraser says Nina wasn’t cheating. That her whole life revolved around Simon. We need to know if there was someone else in Nina’s life. Let’s find out who’s telling the truth here.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Andy
When Lee burned her hand on the pan and went outside, I let her go. I figured she needed time to herself. She’s more like Nina than she realizes, in that way. They both prefer to be alone when they’re hurting. I went upstairs to change my clothes, and when I came back down I finished the cooking and put the sausages and potatoes in the oven to keep warm. I saw her jacket was gone. I figured she’d gone for a walk, so I went to the barn to stack the firewood I’d cut on Sunday. When Grace got in from school it was after 6:00 P.M. She came to find me in the barn. She’d had soccer practice and afterward she’d gone to Molly’s house to study. Molly’s mom had given her a ride home.
“What’s for dinner?”
“Hello to you too, Gracey.” My tone of voice was stupidly jolly. She rolled her eyes at me.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Is Mom inside?”
She shook her head. “Nope. And I’m starving. Like, actually starving.”
We went inside. The kitchen was empty and dark. The fire was out in the living room. I checked upstairs, and when Leanne wasn’t there, I called her phone. There was no answer. I gave Grace her dinner. Afterward she disappeared up to her room, officially to finish her homework, unofficially to mess around on her phone. I let her go. I set the fire in the living room again, got myself a beer, and tried Leanne’s phone for a second time. There was no answer. She finally got in just after eight o’clock.
“Where were you?” I tried to keep the edge from my voice.
She sat down opposite me, still wearing her jacket. “I went to the Stowe house. I thought that Nina might have fallen or something, and that she could still be there.”
The idea hadn’t occurred to me, but as soon as Lee said it the possibility seemed so obvious. I felt stupid that I hadn’t thought of it.
“I woulda gone with you if you’d asked me.”
“I broke in, Andy. There was no one there and I couldn’t wait. I kept thinking about Nina lying inside in the dark, unconscious. So I broke a glass panel on the back door.”
I hadn’t seen that coming. “Lee...”
“I know, but what was I supposed to do? What if she’d been in there, needing a doctor or the hospital, and I’d just walked away to wait for permission?”
“I get it. I’m just... I’m catching up here, okay?” I knew my wife. For most of her life she’d had no one to rely on but herself. We’d been together for nearly seventeen years, and still she didn’t know how to ask me for help. So Lee running off to Stowe by herself, maybe that was not a complete surprise. If she’d called the Jordans and asked them to meet her there and let her in, I would have thought, Yeah, sure. Breaking in was... it was a little crazy.
She stood up and took off her jacket. She hung it over the back of her chair and then just stood there, like she wasn’t sure what to do next. I finished my beer and put the can on the coffee table.
“Nina wasn’t there, I guess.”
“Andy, Simon told the cops that Nina was cheating on him.”
“What?”
“He said she’s been secretly seeing some guy for a while, and she dumped Simon to be with him.”
I didn’t say anything. I was busy trying to make sense of what she’d just told me. Nina wouldn’t cheat. She was crazy about Simon, and she was honest as hell. And if she’d had that kind of mess going on in her life I would have seen it. We spend time together. On weekends, she comes and hangs out in the barn sometimes. She helps me clean up or stack wood. Sometimes she comes out on a job with me, does a little planting, helps me fix up a fence. She’s capable like that. She bosses me around and plays her music and laughs at me when I don’t know the bands.
“He said he left her in the house and came back to Waitsfield on Friday night,” Lee was saying. “He claims that she was going to arrange for a friend to pick her up the next day. But why wouldn’t she just have called us to pick her up right away? And I found her stuff in the house. Eye drops. Her jacket. She wouldn’t have left that stuff behind, Andy.”
