‘Becky,’ he says, when she’s close. There’s not twelve inches separating their faces. ‘I’ve missed you.’ She closes her eyes, as if she doesn’t want to look at him. Why? Does she think he’s a killer? He sees a tear start to form at the corner of one of her eyes.
‘Are you okay?’ he asks softly.
Her eyes flutter open and she shakes her head. ‘No,’ she says, her voice sounding choked.
He waits.
‘They think you killed Amanda,’ she says, her voice a whisper.
He knows that; he wants to know what she thinks. ‘I know. But I didn’t kill her, Becky. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Of course! I know you didn’t kill her!’ She’s more animated now, almost angry, on his behalf. ‘You wouldn’t be capable of it. I told them that.’ She frowns. ‘I don’t think they believed me, though.’
‘Oh, well, you know, they’re cops,’ he says. ‘They always think the husband did it.’
‘They know about us,’ she says.
The way she says us makes him want to cringe, but he’s careful not to show it.
‘I know.’
‘I’m sorry. I had to tell them.’
‘It’s okay. I told them, too. It’s okay, Becky.’
‘I wouldn’t have said anything, but they knew already.’
‘What?’
‘Someone saw me coming out of your house in the middle of the night, the weekend Amanda disappeared.’
‘Who?’ His attention is focused more sharply on her now. Who was watching his house in the middle of the night? He’d simply assumed Becky had blurted out the fact that they’d slept together to the police.
‘I don’t know, the detectives wouldn’t tell me.’ She looks at him, her face blotchy with recent tears and lined by anxiety. ‘I’m afraid it will get out,’ she says, her voice trembling. ‘I think my fingerprints are in your bedroom. They took my prints at the police station. I don’t know what to tell my husband.’
She looks at him imploringly, as if he can solve this problem for her. He can’t help her. He’s barely paying attention to her; he’s wondering who saw her leaving his place late at night.
‘What if the police talk to him?’ She looks at him with big, wet eyes.
That’s your problem, he thinks. ‘Becky, what did you tell the detectives, exactly?’
‘Just that we had drinks sometimes, that we talked over the fence, that we slept together the one time in August when Amanda was away, and again that Saturday night the weekend she disappeared. And that there was no way you could have hurt her.’
He nods reassuringly. ‘Did you tell them that I suspected that Amanda was having an affair?’
‘No, of course not. I’m not stupid.’
‘Good. Don’t tell them that. Because it’s not true. I don’t know why I said that.’
She seems taken aback. ‘Oh.’
He wants to make sure she understands. ‘I never thought Amanda was seeing someone else. Not until the Sunday night when I talked to Caroline. You’ve got that, right? You’ll remember that?’ She might even be a little frightened of him now. Good.
‘Sure,’ she says.
He nods, doesn’t give her the quirky smile. ‘Take care of yourself, Becky.’
Chapter Fourteen
OLIVIA IS WORKING in the upstairs office that afternoon when she hears the doorbell ring. She wonders if it’s the detectives, broadening their inquiries. She hastens down the stairs to the front door. But it isn’t the two detectives standing there; it’s a woman she’s never seen before. She’s older, maybe close to sixty, with a plump figure. Her wide face is lined, her blond hair is tidy, and she’s wearing a pale lipstick. Olivia is about to politely say, ‘No, thank you,’ and shut the door, annoyed about the intrusion, when the woman says, ‘I’m not trying to sell anything,’ and smiles warmly.
Olivia hesitates.
‘My name is Carmine,’ the woman says in a friendly tone.
The name sounds familiar, but Olivia can’t place it. ‘Yes?’
‘I’m sorry to bother you, but I just moved in and my house was broken into recently. I’m going around the neighbourhood telling people to keep their eyes open.’
Olivia’s heart instantly begins to pound. ‘That’s awful,’ she says, attempting a suitably sympathetic expression. ‘Did they take much?’
‘No, he didn’t take anything.’
‘Oh, that’s good,’ Olivia says. ‘No harm done then.’ She wants to slam the door in the woman’s face, but she doesn’t dare be rude to her.
‘I wouldn’t say no harm done,’ the woman answers. ‘The kid snooped through my house. And not just mine – apparently he broke into other houses as well, and hacked into people’s computers.’
‘Oh, my,’ Olivia says, taken aback by the woman’s abruptness. ‘Have they caught who did it?’ She hopes her face and voice are what this woman would expect in the circumstances. She’s so distressed that she can’t tell.
‘No. But I got an anonymous letter about it. Apparently it was a teenage boy, and his mother wrote this letter of apology. But I don’t know who she is.’
She holds up the letter. The letter that Olivia wrote and printed and stuck through this woman’s mail slot. Has she figured it out? Does she know it was Raleigh? Is that why she’s really here? To confront her? Olivia doesn’t know how to react, what to say. This woman wouldn’t even be here if Olivia hadn’t written that letter. The woman looks at her, studying her carefully.
‘Are you all right?’ she asks.
‘Yes, I’m fine,’ Olivia says, flushing. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve been ill recently,’ she lies, ‘and I’m still not completely well.’
‘Oh, then I’m sorry to bother you with this,’ the woman says, looking at her closely.
‘I was resting when you rang the doorbell.’
‘Sorry,’ the woman says sympathetically. But she doesn’t go away. Instead she says, ‘I see you’ve got a basketball hoop in your driveway.’
Olivia is rattled and just wants this nosy woman to go away. She really does feel ill and flushed, as if she might faint. But she doesn’t want it to seem as if this conversation is upsetting her. In her confusion, she wonders why the woman is mentioning the basketball hoop. And then she realizes.
‘Yes.’ It’s all she can think of to say.
‘Teenagers?’ she asks.
Olivia looks back at her now, her eyes meeting the other woman’s. And it’s like there is an unspoken communication between them – the woman is asking her if it was her son who broke into her house and whether she is the one who wrote the letter. The bloody awful nerve of this woman, standing on her doorstep! ‘Yes. There are lots of teenagers around here.’
‘Teenagers can be so difficult,’ the woman says.
‘Do you have children?’ Olivia asks.
The woman nods. ‘Three. All grown up now and moved away. One of them was a real handful.’