“No.”
“You’re sneaking out to see Faith Hammond.”
“Yes.”
“Perfect. I’m glad we cleared that up.”
Rory’s phone buzzes. His eyes go back and forth, between the phone and me, but he does not look at it.
“Go ahead,” I say.
“It’s okay.”
“Don’t keep Faith waiting.”
He checks the phone and sends a text while pushing that red hair out of his eyes. Faith answers right away, and he sends another. The conversation continues, and I wait until he puts the phone down on the table. Faceup.
“Sorry,” he says.
I sigh.
I am not angry at Rory. He is just a kid who has discovered girls aren’t so bad after all. He used to say girls were “heinous and foul and, most especially, ugly.” The quote is from a book he’d read, and it always made me laugh. I would turn to Millicent and say, “You’re the one who brought them to the library every week.” If we happened to be in the kitchen, she would snap the dish towel at me. Once, she snapped it so hard it cut my arm. The wound was just superficial, barely breaking the skin, but Rory was impressed with his mother. Less so with me.
And now, he is leaving late at night to see a little blonde named Faith.
“Does she sneak out, too?” I say. “Do you meet somewhere?”
“Sometimes. But I can get up to her room, too.”
I want to ban him from doing this, put a lock on his window, and call Faith’s parents and say they are too young and it’s too dangerous. Owen is dead, and a killer is on the loose.
Except it isn’t true. I just have to pretend it is. Just like I have to pretend I don’t remember my first girlfriend.
“You have to stop,” I say. “You’ve seen the news. It’s too dangerous for both of you to be out alone at night.”
“Yeah, I know, but—”
“And you shouldn’t be sneaking out at all. If I told your mother, she would lock your window and put cameras all over the house.”
Rory’s eyebrows shoot up. “She doesn’t know?”
“If she did, you’d be grounded until college. And so would your girlfriend.”
“Okay. We’ll stop.”
I take a deep breath. Just because I’m angry does not mean I am irresponsible. “And since you have a girlfriend, do you have protect—”
“Dad, I know how to buy condoms.”
“Good, good. So just text her at night, okay? See her during the day?”
He nods and gets up quick, as if he is scared I might change my mind.
“One more thing,” I say. “And answer me straight.”
“Okay.”
“Are you taking any drugs?”
“No.”
“You don’t smoke pot?”
He shakes his head. “I swear I don’t.”
I let him go. Right now, I don’t have time to figure out if he is lying.
When I’m not watching the news, all I can think about is what else we might have missed. All the ways we might get caught, all the forensic data I have learned about on TV. The DNA, trace evidence, fibers—it all runs through my mind like it makes sense to me, which it does not, but I know it will not point to me. I never said a word to Naomi, much less touched her. Any evidence they find will lead to Millicent.
* * *
• • •
The first time I see Owen’s sister is on TV. Owen was in his thirties when he was killing; now, he would have been about fifty. Jennifer looks a little younger, midforties. She has the same blue eyes, but her hair is a dirtier shade of blond. She is so thin her collarbone sticks out, as do the veins on her neck. They say the camera puts on ten pounds, and if that’s true, Jennifer must look sickly in real life.
She is on every screen in the clubhouse, where the lunch crowd has stuck around for another cocktail so they can watch the press conference. This is the first time the public has seen Owen’s sister.
The police chief is on one side of her; the medical examiner is on the other. One has hair, the other doesn’t, and their paunches are the same size.
Jennifer says is that she is Owen Oliver Riley’s sister and that we are all wrong about these murders.
“I can prove Owen has not killed anyone in the last five years. I came all the way back here to make sure everyone understands that my brother is dead.” Jennifer holds up a piece of paper and says it is Owen’s death certificate, signed by a coroner in Great Britain and stamped with an official seal. She says it again. “Dead.”
The medical examiner steps to the microphone and confirms what Jennifer has said.
Dead.
Next comes the chief of police, who goes on and on about how it was unavoidable that his police department had zeroed in on Owen, but they had been misled. He also confirms Jennifer’s claim.
Dead.
We are all clear now. We believe her. Owen is dead, and the police are going back to the evidence to see what they missed.
But first, Jennifer has one more thing to say, “I am sorry for the families. Sorry that so much time has been wasted focusing on my brother instead of looking for the real killer. An old friend contacted me about what was going on here in Woodview. When she begged me to come back, I knew I had to do the right thing.”
Jennifer motions to someone behind her, and the medical examiner steps to the side. The camera zooms in on the friend.
My head spins so fast I almost lose consciousness.
The woman who called Jennifer Riley is plump and blond, and has a smile that lights up the screen.
Denise. The woman from behind the counter at Joe’s Deli.
Fifty-three
The GPS tracker sits on the dashboard of my car. I flip it over on one side, then the other, and start all over again. It is the same thing I have been doing in my mind after the woman from Joe’s Deli, Millicent’s new favorite lunch spot, appeared on TV.
Denise. The same woman who served Jenna and me.
This is a coincidence. It must be. The fact that Owen is dead does not help Millicent and me. It hurts us.
And if Joe’s was an organic bistro serving roast beef from cows raised on organic grass, it would never occur to me that this is not a coincidence. But Joe’s is not. It is a deli where organic is a word from another language.
If I could ask Millicent about this new affection for cheap deli sandwiches, I would. But I am not supposed to know. This is information I acquired by spying on my wife.
I’d never done it before. Thought about it, but never did it. Not even back when Millicent was working with a man who liked her as more than a colleague. It was obvious from the moment I met him. Cooper. The one-time frat boy who never married and didn’t want to. What he wanted to do was sleep with Millicent.
Cooper was the one who went with Millicent to the conference in Miami. The weekend Crystal kissed me.
I was convinced Cooper had done the same thing to Millicent.
When they came back, that belief almost made me spy on both of them. I did not. At least not on her. But Cooper, I watched him long enough to figure out he wanted to sleep with every woman. It wasn’t just Millicent.
And as far as I could tell, they had not slept together.