“Whispered when?”
“In the church. What I said when we were walking out. That what we did, that it worked.”
“For fuck’s sake, Bill! Jesus! Who? Who heard you?”
“The therapist. Anna White.”
“How do you know?”
“She came and saw me. She came to my fucking house. Started talking about this and that, worked her way around to the fact I talked Paul out of going to the hospital. Asked if that was what I was referring to when I told you it worked.”
Charlotte shook her head disbelievingly. “You’re an idiot.”
“All right, all right, I’m an idiot.”
“And putting my hand on your cock in the middle of—”
“Okay!” he bellowed. “I get it! I’m a fucking moron. Can we get past that and deal with what’s happening right now?” As he shook his head in frustration, his eyes landed on the typewriter. “Jesus, you brought that back into the house?”
“I needed trunk space,” she said, waving her hand at the boxes that still covered up much of the island. “Look, let’s think about this.” Her voice was calmer. “What does Dr. White really have? She heard you say two words, and she’s suspicious that you didn’t want Paul to go to the hospital. It’s nothing. It’s absolutely nothing. What did you tell her when she asked what you meant?”
“I said it was about getting the office printer to work.”
“What?”
“If she asks, I called you about that. That I was trying to print out the eulogy.”
Charlotte looked exasperated. “She’s supposed to believe that the first thing you told me after the funeral for my dead husband is that you got a printer to work.”
“I didn’t have a lot of time to come up with something. Important thing is, I think she bought it. I’m more worried about the other thing, about talking Paul out of going to the hospital.”
Charlotte was thinking. “No, that’s okay. What you said made perfect sense at the time. Why would you want your friend to be locked up in a psych ward? Those places are horrible. You had a natural reaction. You’re worrying about nothing. Let it go.”
“She said she came to see you, too.”
“Yeah. But she came by to say she was sorry, that she misread the signals. She was feeling all guilty. That’s probably why she came to see you. She wants to lay this off on you so she doesn’t feel responsible.”
He took another long pull on the bottle. “I guess. But I didn’t like the way she was asking questions. I had a bad feeling about it.”
“Well, get over it. Even if she went to the police, what does she have, really? You think Detective Arnwright is going to give a shit about something like that? The medical examiner’s report, all the statements from us and the doctor and Hailey? It all points to suicide.”
“Yeah,” he said. “It does. Okay.” He grinned. “And wonder of wonders, that’s what actually happened.”
Charlotte took a step closer. “What?”
“Well, unless you dragged Paul into the water yourself and drowned him, he really did it. What’d you think I meant when I said it worked? He actually fucking offed himself.”
Charlotte stared at him, open-mouthed.
“All this time,” she said, “I wondered why you didn’t give me any warning that you were going to do it that night. We’d talked about that. So I’d be ready.”
“Why do you think I was calling you so often before the funeral?” Bill asked. “I was as stunned as you.”
“Oh my God,” Charlotte said softly. “You didn’t kill Paul. We didn’t kill Paul.”
Bill grinned. “Sometimes things just have a way of working out.”
Fifty-Eight
Anna White walked out of the Milford Police headquarters feeling like a fool.
“Idiot,” she said under her breath as she got into her SUV.
She headed home. She’d canceled so many appointments over the last week that there were still clients she’d been unable to reschedule. It was already late afternoon — God, she had to get home so Rosie could make her eye appointment — so she wasn’t going to be able to see any of them today. But she could start sorting out the next few days.
Despite being dismissed by Detective Arnwright, Anna still believed something was very wrong. She’d spent her professional lifetime reading people, and the story she believed she’d seen developing between Charlotte and Bill was one of deception.
Paul was not, Anna believed, the only one who’d been deceived.
The number one dupe was herself. Anna now could not help but wonder if Charlotte had been putting on an act when she showed up unexpectedly at the office to tell her how worried she was about Paul.
I was played, Anna thought. I’m their corroborating evidence.
If Charlotte and Bill were having an affair, as Anna suspected, and were plotting against Paul, who better to back up their story that Paul was unstable than the dead man’s therapist?
But if what Anna suspected was true, what could she do about it? She’d gone to Arnwright with nothing more than a hunch, and it was just as well she didn’t mention what Bill was trying to conceal after he saw Charlotte to her car.
Hey, Detective, he had a hard-on. That’s proof, right?
It would have been the last thing Arnwright needed to be convinced that she was a nutcase. And sex-obsessed.
So what was there to do? If she couldn’t get the police interested in taking another look at Paul’s death, was she going to conduct an investigation herself?
I am not Nancy Drew.
She was not going to snoop about like some amateur sleuth in a hackneyed mystery novel. That wasn’t the real world. She had no idea how to go about such a thing. She was not going to try tailing someone again. She was not about to hide microphones in Charlotte’s house or Bill’s townhouse.
All she knew how to do was talk to people. And more than that, to listen. And to watch. That was how you got below the surface, to where the truth was buried.
She wanted to talk to Charlotte again. When she’d last spoken to her, Anna had not held the suspicions she did now. Anna wanted to look her in the eye when she asked her some of the same things she’d asked Bill Myers.
And for sure, she’d ask about his call to her about the printer. What a crock of shit that was.
Anna believed she would come away from a meeting like that knowing, in her heart, whether her suspicions were warranted. If she found they were, she might not have enough for the police to open an investigation, but at least she’d have a good idea what really had happened.
I have to know.
Paul’s death would always weigh on her. She would always feel responsible. But there were degrees of responsibility.
When she returned home and gave the neighbor her freedom, she checked on Frank, whom she found in the backyard knocking some more chip shots with a nine-iron. The woods behind the house, Anna imagined, were littered with hundreds of golf balls.
Then she went about rescheduling. Once she was done with that, it was nearly seven, and time to pull something together for her father and herself for dinner.
“Dad,” she said, finding him back in his bedroom on the rowing machine, “are you okay with a frozen pizza? I know it’s pretty sad, but it’s been that kind of day.”
“Okay by me, Joanie,” he said, sliding back on the machine.
Knowing he’d be okay with it, but still feeling she needed to apologize for it, she had already preset the oven. By the time she got back to the kitchen, it was time to slide the pizza into it.