by Shari Lapena
Every marriage has its secrets. Glenda wonders what theirs were.
* * *
—
When Paul arrives home from work, Olivia is waiting for him. Raleigh’s gone out for basketball practice. It will give them a chance to talk.
She hears him come in the front door and moves from the kitchen to the hall to confront him. She immediately notices how worn out he looks. In fact, he looks like hell. She doesn’t have much sympathy. “We need to talk,” she says. Her voice is tight.
“Can I take off my coat first?” he snaps. He reads her face and says, “Where’s Raleigh?”
“Raleigh’s at practice. He’ll be home later.” He walks past her and into the kitchen. She follows him and watches as he reaches into the cupboard for the bottle of scotch. Olivia says, unable to keep the anger out of her voice, “I know you’ve been talking to the police.”
“So they came and talked to you, did they?” he says, with an edge to his voice. “Why am I not surprised?” He pours himself a drink and turns to look at her, leaning against the kitchen counter.
“No, they didn’t come here. Becky told me.”
“Ah, Becky,” he says bitterly, and takes a deep gulp.
“What the hell is going on, Paul?” Olivia asks desperately.
“I’ll tell you what’s going on, if you’re sure you want to know.” He takes another sip of his drink. “Larry Harris had something going on with Amanda Pierce for ages. I finally confronted him about it but he denied it. So I told Amanda to back off. Then she disappeared. I didn’t mention it to the police at the time, because I honestly didn’t think it was relevant. And nobody asked. Everybody thought she’d just left her husband. But now . . . apparently Becky saw me talking to Amanda and stuck her nose in and told the police. So I had to tell them everything.” He snorts. “I’ll bet she’s sorry she ever mentioned it.” He lifts his head and looks tiredly at Olivia. “Now they’re all over me. Asking me for an alibi.” He lifts his glass high and tosses back the rest of his scotch.
“Asking you for an alibi,” Olivia echoes.
“Oh, I imagine they’re asking Larry, too,” Paul says.
She has to ask. “Tell me the truth,” Olivia says. She can feel her voice catching. “Were you having an affair with Amanda or not?”
He looks at her and something in his demeanor changes. The bristling anger falls away. “Hell no, Olivia. I wasn’t sleeping with her, I swear. I’ve never cheated on you. I wouldn’t. You know that.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me about this? Why all the secrets? You spoke to the police yesterday and you didn’t even tell me!”
He hangs his head. “I’m sorry.”
She waits.
He says, “I didn’t tell you at the time about Larry, because I wanted to keep it just between him and me. I know you and Becky are friends. I didn’t want to put you in that position, of knowing and wondering whether you should tell her. I thought if I told Amanda to back off, she’d stop carrying on with Larry. I didn’t think their fling was important to her.”
“How do you know she was seeing Larry?”
“I’d suspected it for weeks, but then I caught her giving him a blow job in his office.”
Olivia is shocked. She wonders if Becky knows the details.
Paul continues. “I told the detectives everything. It wasn’t so much that I was worried about Larry’s marriage—it’s not really my business. But I was worried that he was getting careless—and that somebody other than me would see them at the office and he’d lose his job. I didn’t want that to happen.”
Olivia can feel the tightness in her shoulders slowly starting to relax. “But why didn’t you tell me yesterday, after you’d spoken to the police? Why did you keep that from me?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I just didn’t know what to do. I should have told you. I’m telling you now.” He sighs and adds uneasily, “They asked me if I had an alibi for the weekend Amanda went missing.”
“What did you tell them?” Olivia asks.
“I told them the truth. That I was home all weekend. I told them that we probably stayed in and watched something on Netflix. That’s what we usually do. When was the last time we went out on a Friday or Saturday night?”
She thinks back to that weekend. Then she says, “No, you went to your aunt’s that Friday, remember?”
He freezes. “Shit. You’re right. I forgot.”
“You called me from the office and said you thought you’d better go see her.”
“Yes,” Paul says. “Fuck.”
She remembers that evening. Paul had gone to his aunt’s and she’d stayed home and watched a movie by herself. “You’d better tell them,” Olivia says anxiously.
He nods. “I will. They’re probably going to want to ask you, too.”
“Ask me?”
“About where I was that weekend.”
“Why does it matter where you were?” Olivia says, frustrated with the situation. “You weren’t involved with Amanda. Larry was.”
Paul snorts. “I don’t think the police know who to believe.” After a moment, he says, “Can we call it even?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know—you didn’t tell me about those letters. . . .”
She’d forgotten all about the letters; they’ve been pushed from her mind by everything else that has been going on. She approaches him, puts her hands on his chest. “Yes.” She can smell the scotch on his breath.
“When did you say Raleigh was getting home again?” he says, wrapping his arms around her and giving her a kiss.
“Not for a while yet,” Olivia says. “Why don’t you pour me a drink?” As he pours her one, Olivia says, “You don’t think Larry could have had anything to do with—”
“No, of course not,” Paul says.
TWENTY
Becky wanders restlessly around the house Friday evening, waiting for Larry to get home from work. The way they left things the night before, he won’t be in a good mood when he gets home. He said he’d probably be late; he always has a lot to catch up on after a business trip.
Last night she slept in the guest room. She’s not sure how the two of them are going to move forward. Maybe they won’t. Maybe their marriage is over and all that remains is to find some way to tell the kids and figure out how to divide the spoils. In spite of her staunch denial to Olivia, she spends a lot of time wondering if Larry’s insistence that nothing of consequence had happened between him and Amanda could possibly be true.
* * *
—
It’s been a long day—a long week since they’d found Amanda Pierce’s body—and Webb is feeling it. His eyes are burning and his limbs are tired. He’s frustrated with the lack of progress on the case. But a picture has begun to emerge. They’d spoken to others at Fanshaw Pharmaceuticals, when they’d finished with Paul Sharpe, and had formed a clearer idea of who Amanda Pierce really was. Webb wondered how much of the talk about her was true. But Larry has admitted to the incident in his office. So some of it is true, at least.
Now, Moen is driving them back from the Deerfields Resort where Larry had attended a conference the weekend that Amanda was murdered. Webb stares out the window at the darkening scenery, reflecting on what they’ve learned.
Larry Harris was certainly at the conference from Friday night until Sunday afternoon. Lots of people on staff confirmed that. He checked in at 3:00 P.M. on Friday. But after that, there’s a gap. The bar staff and waitstaff remember him, but none of them can remember with any certainty seeing him at the reception before 9:00 P.M. They agreed that he was one of the last to leave the event and make his way up to his room at the end of the night, at around 11:00. There had been no sit-down meal, where someone might have remembered him; just drinks and mingling in the ballroom. He could have arrived late to the reception,
giving him several hours to meet—and perhaps kill—Amanda Pierce. Most damning of all, her car had been dumped in a lake not far from the resort.
The rest of the weekend seems accounted for. He was registered in various sessions and he was seen in those sessions throughout the weekend. But there is the tantalizing gap on Friday.
Webb points his finger. “Turn here.”
Moen turns off the highway and goes down a gravel road. It’s almost dark already. It’s been a miserable, wet day, but it’s warm and cozy in the car.
They’re returning to the scene where Amanda’s body was recovered. He’s been timing it since they left the resort. Moen is driving a bit too fast for the gravel road. “Slow down. We can estimate for speed later,” Webb tells Moen. She lets up on the gas.
The way is dark and winding. The car’s headlights sweep around the bends in the road; trees rise on each side. Some of the trees are almost bare already; the weather has turned, and it seems much longer than a few days since they were out here, lifting the leaking car out of the cold lake.
“Are you sure you’ll be able to recognize the spot in the dark?” Moen asks, driving more slowly now. “I’m not sure I could. I’m a city girl.”
“I hope so,” Webb says, looking intently at the dark landscape beyond the windshield. “We’re getting close, I think. Slow down.”
She slows the car around a curve and he says, “Here. I think this is it. Pull over.”
He recognizes the curve in the road, the slope down to the beach, the edge of the lake. Moen pulls the car over and stops. She turns off the engine. Webb looks at his watch, glowing in the dark. “Twenty minutes.”
Moen looks at him, nodding. “No time at all.”
For a moment they sit in the dark, then they get out of the warm car into the chill of the night. Webb stands by the car door, getting his bearings, remembering the previous Monday morning when they’d made their gruesome discovery.
“Where’s the murder weapon?” Webb asks. He walks down to the edge of the water and looks out over the lake. A sliver of moon emerges sharp and bright from behind dark clouds. He tries to imagine what went on here. Who put the windows down? Whoever it was wore gloves, because there were no prints on the window buttons, other than Amanda’s. Who stuffed her body into the trunk and guided the car down the slope and into the water?
Webb thinks the killer is quite likely someone they have already met. He turns to Moen; her eyes are glinting in the dark. “Whoever killed her was probably counting on her car—and her body—never being found at all,” Webb suggests. He looks out again across the dark lake. “Everyone thought she’d left her husband. And it’s very hard to convict without a body.” He glances again at Moen. “Somebody must be squirming. For somebody, this hasn’t gone according to plan.”
* * *
—
Becky hears the door downstairs open shortly after 9:00 P.M. She’s upstairs in bed, and cocks her head, listening. She’d grown tired of waiting for Larry and had eaten and gone up with a book. Now she listens to him wandering around downstairs. After a few minutes, she puts the book aside, pulls on her robe, and leaves the bedroom.
She stops at the top of the stairs when she sees her husband standing at the bottom, looking up at her. Their eyes meet, but neither of them speaks for a moment.
Then she says, “Where have you been?” She doesn’t think he’s been at the office this late.
He doesn’t answer her. Finally Larry says, “We need to talk.”
She makes her way slowly down the stairs.
He says abruptly, “I need a drink.” He slouches over to the bar cart in the living room and pours himself a stiff shot of bourbon.
“You might as well pour me one, too,” Becky says.
She walks over to him and he hands her a glass. They each take a sip. All the things he might say are swirling around in her head.
She wonders how Larry must have felt when Amanda disappeared—and then when her body was discovered. Was he worried that the police would find out about him and Amanda? The way she’d worried that they would find out about her and Robert?
He gives her a conciliatory look. “I had nothing to do with what happened to Amanda. And you know it.”
“Do I?” she says.
He stares at her, clearly shocked. “You can’t honestly think—” He continues to stare at her, as if unable to find words.
“I don’t know what to think,” she says coldly. “And if I don’t quite believe you, how do you think the police are going to see it?” As she stands there looking at him, this man she’s been married to for twenty-three years, she allows herself for the first time to actually consider whether Larry might have killed Amanda Pierce. It gives her a chill.
“You can’t be serious!” Then he laughs—a short, tight laugh. “Oh, I get it. You’re already in divorce negotiations, is that it? You feel you have some leverage over me and you want to use it to your advantage.”
She hadn’t really thought of it that way, but now that he’s mentioned it, she sees the possibilities. She doesn’t really believe that he harmed Amanda, but it wouldn’t hurt for him to think she does. She gave up her career. She spent her best years keeping house and raising children for this man, while he was out making a good living. She should get what’s coming to her. She doesn’t want to get shafted.
“You absolute bitch,” he says.
She jumps a bit at his tone. It’s so unlike him. Then she says, in a mild voice, “I’m not going to make things difficult for you, Larry, as long as you play fair with me.”
“Is that so,” he says. He comes closer and stares down at her; she can feel his breath in her face, smell the liquor. “I had nothing to do with Amanda’s . . . disappearance.”
It’s like he can’t say it. He can’t say death. She stands her ground. “But were you seeing her?” Becky asks. “Tell me the truth. It wasn’t just that one time in your office, was it?” She knows him. She knows he would want more. He can be greedy.
He slumps down onto the sofa and looks weary all of a sudden. His shoulders sag. “Yes,” he admits. “We were seeing each other, for a few weeks. It started in July.” He downs the rest of his drink in one long gulp.
She feels her entire body go cold. “Where?”
“We went to a hotel on the highway outside of Aylesford.”
She stares at him in disbelief, swelling with incoherent rage. “You idiot,” she whispers. “They’ll find out.”
“No, they won’t,” he says stubbornly, glancing up at her, and then shifting his eyes away again at the incredulous fury he sees there.
“Of course they will! They’ll go around to all the hotels and motels with photos of the two of you and ask the staff!” How can he think they won’t find out? She feels sick with fear now, and it makes her realize that she does care. People get arrested for things they didn’t do all the time. She cares enough not to want to see her husband dragged through a murder investigation. She can’t let that happen to her and the kids. She watched The Staircase on Netflix; she saw what that did to that family. It’s not going to happen to hers. She thinks rapidly. “Maybe you should have told the police when they were here. It’s going to be worse when they find out and you didn’t tell them.”
“I was afraid to tell them! I couldn’t think. This has all been such a shock.” He takes a deep breath. “Maybe they won’t find out,” he says. He looks up at her, infected by her alarm. “I had nothing to do with what happened to her. I didn’t think our casual meetings meant anything. I thought she’d left him.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Becky says, forcing herself to calm down. She can see that Larry is starting to go to pieces; she must remain calm. She has to think. “You couldn’t have done it—you have a solid alibi.” She sits down on the sofa beside him. “You were at that conference.” She’d had a bad moment when the detectives w
ere here, and she’d realized that the conference Larry had attended wasn’t that far from where Amanda’s body had been discovered. But he’d told the detectives that he’d been at the resort from Friday afternoon on, and it had reassured her. There would be people there who could confirm that, surely. But now she sees a terrible pallor come over him and feels the bottom drop out of her stomach. “What is it, Larry? What aren’t you telling me?”
“I didn’t kill her, I swear.” But there’s panic in his eyes.
She recoils a little. “Larry, you’re scaring me.”
“Her car was found near the resort,” he says nervously.
How he avoids it, she thinks. Her car, not her body. Like he can’t face it. She brushes the troubling thought aside. “But it doesn’t matter,” she insists. “Not if you were at the resort the whole time.” But now it crosses her mind—what if he snuck out for an hour or two? What if he’d arranged to meet her? Would he have been able to kill her then? Could he have? She feels frightened at the realization that she doesn’t know.
“But what if people don’t remember seeing me?” he says, shifting his gaze around the room. He doesn’t seem to want to look her in the eye.