‘He’s not your son. He’s ours. You terminated all your parental rights when we adopted him.’

‘I don’t care about legal rights,’ Erica says. ‘You’re welcome to him. But I think he should know where he came from, don’t you? I could meet him, tell him he’s adopted – I bet you haven’t even told him he’s adopted, am I right? – and I could tell him about his father, why I had to give him up, even though I didn’t want to.’ She waits a beat and says, ‘Did you see that Patrick was arrested this morning?’ There’s an audible gasp from the other end of the phone. ‘For murder.’

‘I’m hanging up,’ Cheryl says.

‘No, you’re not,’ Erica replies. ‘You’re going to listen to me. You’re going to tell Gary that I want another hundred thousand dollars, or Devin will soon find out things that I don’t think you want him to know. You can’t watch him every minute of every day. I’ll call you back in a few days. In the meantime, get the money together.’ She adds, ‘When Patrick goes to trial, I really don’t want to tell them I actually know where my son is, and put you through the whole paternity testing thing. It would be so hard on Devin to learn the truth that way.’

Stephanie picks up the newspaper from the front step and carries it inside to the kitchen. The day is cold and wet. She sits down at the kitchen table and leafs through the paper, looking for any mention of the arrest. She finally finds it, buried in the back of the front section. At least it didn’t make the front page here. She wonders how much longer she’s got before the local press is all over this.

She presses her palms against her burning eyes. She’d spent longer than she’d planned to at Hanna’s last night and had more wine than she should have. It felt good to lean on Hanna, to dwell in her comfort and normalcy. She’d wanted to confide in her. Now she’s afraid she’d let slip a bit too much – about her doubts. But she hadn’t said anything about the polygraph.

She goes back to the front page of the newspaper. She has a few minutes, the babies happy in the living room before she gets them ready to go out. They will walk to the grocery store this morning, pick up a few things. She hopes she doesn’t run into anybody she knows, although she probably will. She always does.

An article on the second page catches her attention. It’s a lurid story about a man in Albany who has killed his two children, his wife and then himself. She tells herself not to read it, but of course she does. She can’t help herself. There are always stories like this, and she always reads them. The man smothered the two young children before his estranged wife returned home from work. When the mother arrived home, he stabbed her several times in the chest. And then he calmly got into his car and drove off a bridge.

She sits back, her head swimming at the horror of it.

These sorts of things happen all the time. And no one ever seems to see it coming.

The phone rings in the kitchen, making her jump. She glances at it, reluctant to pick it up. Whoever it is, it can only be bad news. She can’t imagine anything else these days.

She picks it up. ‘Yes?’

‘Hello, Stephanie, it’s Robert Lange.’

Her heart sinks. What now? ‘What is it?’ she asks.

‘I wanted to let you know that Patrick will be going before a judge this morning for the arraignment.’

She can’t think of anything to say.

‘If they do go ahead with this – and I still don’t see how they can, realistically – we’d be probably looking at a trial date sometime next spring or early summer.’

She closes her eyes, and leans against the counter. ‘Okay.’

‘I’ll need a retainer.’

Somehow, the days crawl by. Even when everything is falling apart, the sun still rises and sets, Stephanie still needs to eat and sleep. The babies need to be taken care of – fed and dressed and changed. She has to answer the phone when Patrick calls from jail.

Their conversations are false, stilted, unnatural. How could they be otherwise? The time apart is quickly making them grow more distant, as they share less and less of the day to day. It’s always that way when couples are apart, Stephanie thinks; it’s much worse when one of them is in jail on a murder charge, and the other one isn’t entirely convinced he didn’t do it.

‘Stephanie,’ Patrick always says, ‘you must believe me. I didn’t do it.’

‘I know,’ she says automatically. She knows she doesn’t sound especially convinced. She sounds detached, dismissive.

‘They’ll have to drop the charges. I’m going to get out of here and come home,’ he says.

‘I know,’ she repeats tonelessly, staring blankly out the window. She doesn’t feel anything when she talks to him.

‘Lange says that if they can’t find any other evidence, it won’t be enough to go to trial – it will be her word against mine about the affair, and an affair isn’t sufficient proof that I killed my wife. Neither is the insurance. They have no direct evidence that I meant to kill Lindsey.’

She isn’t really listening.

Suddenly Stephanie remembers something Erica said to her, that day on the porch. That her neighbours might have seen him coming and going from her apartment, might have heard them in bed, through the wall. If they find just one neighbour who saw him there, she thinks, on more than two occasions – that would prove he was lying. Patrick said he’d only gone to her apartment twice.

‘Stephanie, you have to be strong for me, okay? For me and for the twins.’

She can hear a note of desperation in his voice now; his mask has slipped a bit. He’s scared. Of course he is. ‘Lange wanted a retainer,’ she says.

‘Yeah, he told me he called you.’

‘It’s a lot of money.’

‘I know. And I’m sorry.’ He sounds contrite. ‘When this is all over and I’m back on my feet, it won’t matter, Stephanie. It’s just money. I’ll start my own firm, earn it all back. People have short memories. A few years from now this will all just seem like a bad dream.’

As Sheriff Bastedo drives his truck down Creemore’s main street, he reflects that they haven’t got a damn thing out of Kilgour – his smart lawyer has seen to that. And if Kilgour doesn’t talk, they aren’t going to have enough to proceed to trial.

Even so, Sheriff Bastedo parks his truck in front of the K & R Drugstore. This is the place where Erica Voss worked back then. It’s a family-run business. He makes his way to the back of the store, where he finds an older man behind the counter. The man looks up and he flashes his badge. ‘Are you the owner?’

The man nods and says, ‘What can I do for you, sheriff?’

‘I’d like to ask you a few questions about a former employee of yours, Erica Voss. Remember her?’

The man gives him a knowing look. ‘I was wondering when you were going to show up.’

Bastedo nods. The story is all over the news; he’d be interested to know what this man thinks of it all. There’s no one else within earshot. ‘What can you tell me about her?’

‘She was an excellent employee,’ the pharmacist says. Then adds, ‘As far as I know.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She was very smart, reliable, good with customers. Picked things up fast. Ambitious.’

‘I’m sensing a “but”,’ Bastedo says.

The pharmacist gives him an appreciative look. ‘We had a couple of break-ins back then. Drugs taken. Oxycodone mostly. Stuff you can sell on the street. You guys never caught who did it.’

‘And?’

‘And I can’t prove anything. But I always thought it was her, or that she was involved somehow. I mentioned it to the sheriff at the time as a possibility, but they didn’t find anything. Like I said, she was smart.’

‘Did you let her go?’

‘No. How could I? I couldn’t fire her without some proof, and I didn’t have any. But I did ask her, point-blank. She denied it. She was either telling the truth or she’s a very good liar.’

‘So what happened?’

‘She left town – not long after that terrible thing with the Kilgour family.’ He adds, ‘My wife and I were glad she was moving on. We didn’t have any more thefts after that.’ He raises his eyebrows at the sheriff. ‘You know what I think?’

‘What?’

‘I wouldn’t believe a word she said.’

‘Thanks for your time.’

‘You’re welcome.’

Sheriff Bastedo drives back to the station, his mind turning over what he’s just heard. He’d better check it out.

That evening, Erica calls. Gary feels sweat collecting in his armpits and down the centre of his back. Cheryl is watching him anxiously from across the room. They knew she would call again; they’ve been waiting. They’ve gone downstairs to the basement so that Devin can’t overhear them, just in case he isn’t asleep.

‘Hi, Gary,’ Erica says. ‘I assume you know I spoke to your wife the other day.’

‘I’m having trouble coming up with that much money,’ Gary blurts out.

‘Right,’ she says, as if she doesn’t believe him.

‘It’s true.’ It is true, which is why he’s sweating so profusely. They’ve taken a hit on a couple of commercial properties over the last two quarters. ‘I’m overextended at the moment.’

Tags: Shari Lapena Mystery
Source: readsnovelonline.net