“Do you know, was Mr. Rothenberg … seeing anyone?”
“You mean, was Griff involved with another woman?”
“Yes.”
Aubrey laughed in shock. Griff, the devoted husband? “No, absolutely not,” she said.
“You sound very certain of that. How can you be so sure?”
Aubrey had no idea where the police chief was going with these questions. Was Griff having an affair, and Aubrey didn’t know? Impossible, she didn’t believe it for a second. She spent way too much time watching Griff, thinking about him, to miss something that major.
“I’m sure because I know how much Griff loved his wife,” she said. “Chief Rizzo, I have to say, I feel like you’re fishing for gossip. Is this really how the police investigate a case?”
“Look, I’ll be honest. Our dispatch secretary mentioned you and Mr. Rothenberg seemed unusually cozy when you came to pick him up from the station the other night. Please understand, I have no desire to offend you, but I’m obligated to ask. Mrs. Saxman, are you romantically involved with Mr. Rothenberg?”
In the mirror over the sofa, Aubrey saw her reflection, all bright eyes and sharp spots of color in pale cheeks, looking as rattled as she felt. The idea that the police might zero in on Aubrey, or on Griff, not because of Ethan and Kate’s affair, but because of some imagined entanglement between the two of them? That had never occurred to her in a million years. Yet, if they did, it would have the same result as if they knew the truth about Kate and Ethan. They’d still be messing around in Aubrey’s private business, with all the risks that presented. At this point, she realized she’d said enough, and anything more would be counterproductive. She wasn’t in control of this interview, and she ought to shut it down.
“You think Griff and I were having an affair, simply because I picked him up from the police station after the man found out his wife died?” Aubrey asked, allowing a note of anger to creep into her voice.
“I’m not saying I think that. I’m just asking,” Rizzo said.
“Well, the answer is no. I was trying to be a good friend, that’s all.”
“All right,” Rizzo said.
“I have to say, I’m finding your questions somewhat offensive, Chief Rizzo. I feel like you’re looking for a scandal where there’s only a tragedy. Kate was simply a woman with a history of depression who in all likelihood took her own life. She is—was—a dear friend of mine, and I have to ask you not to disrespect her memory with your wild allegations.”
Rizzo flushed, looking stung. “That’s not my intention at all. I’m trying to find out the truth about how she died,” he said.
“You won’t get the truth by asking such absurd questions.”
“They’re not absurd,” he said, in an angry tone, then took a deep breath. “Mrs. Saxman, look, we’re on the same side. I’ll explain my thinking, if you give me your word you’ll keep it in confidence.”
“All right. Fine, go ahead,” Aubrey said.
“First of all, the forensic evidence in this case is consistent with homicide. Not with an accident. Not with the victim taking her own life. I know you say Kate had a history of suicidal behavior, but it sounds like that was many years ago. And there’s something else, a very important reason that she wouldn’t kill herself. You might not have known this, but Kate was pregnant at the time of her death,” Rizzo said.
As the sick expression spread across Aubrey’s face, Rizzo nodded.
“So now you understand,” he said. “I wouldn’t normally disclose such sensitive information, but given that you were close to both parties, I feel that you could shed some light and be a very useful witness, if only you’d help. I need you to see that your friend was probably murdered, possibly by her own husband. Things were very wrong between the two of them. We know that, because she filed for divorce. So I have to ask you to think hard about their relationship. Was there anything you saw or heard, in the weeks leading up to her death, that I should be aware of, that might shed light on the situation? If so, I urge you to tell me. Don’t protect him.”
Aubrey stared at her hands, folded in her lap, unable to give Rizzo any answer. Kate pregnant with Ethan’s baby. She couldn’t believe it. Something else she hadn’t known, something huge they’d kept from her.
“You look upset,” Rizzo said. “I understand, you’re in mourning for your friend, and this news may have added to the shock. I just felt it was important for you to have the complete picture. We’ll get out of your way now, so you can have time to think things over. Here’s my card,” Rizzo said, standing up, and nodding to his partner, who rose also. “You think about it, and if you remember anything, you give me a call. All right?”
Aubrey nodded helplessly, and Rizzo left the card on her desk. When they’d gone, Aubrey locked herself in the bathroom and threw up.
The baby had to be Ethan’s; Kate and Griff weren’t sleeping together as far as Aubrey knew. Aubrey had figured out, from her clandestine monitoring of Ethan’s texts, that Kate was begging him to run off with her. This must be why—because Kate was pregnant. This made everything so much worse. The betrayal was greater, and yet so was the tragedy of Kate’s death. Aubrey had tried to live with their affair, she really had. But the humiliation had been too great, the betrayal beyond what she could tolerate. She had to take a stand. Yet—an innocent child had died. Aubrey felt feverish, light-headed, sick at the thought of the baby.
When Aubrey emerged from the bathroom, Mikayla took one look at her and decided that she was coming down with something and needed to be driven home immediately. Aubrey went to her room, got in bed, and pulled the covers over her head. The kids fended for themselves for supper—there were enough organic veggie pizzas in the freezer to keep them for a week if need be. Lilly came by with a mug of tea but Aubrey sent her away, saying she was contagious. When Ethan came home, Aubrey first pretended to be asleep, then instructed him to sleep on the couch in his study so he wouldn’t catch what she had. Instead of asking after her symptoms, he jumped at the chance to be away from her and alone with his grief for his mistress. He thought she was too stupid to understand. He still thought that. But that was fine now, it was all right. Aubrey had a plan. Ethan would get what he deserved.
The next day, Aubrey went through the motions of her day as her mind raced. She went to work, came home, fed the kids, helped with homework, washed the dishes. She told everyone that she’d had a bout of food poisoning, but it was over now. She told Ethan he could come back to their bedroom. When he resisted, she bullied him into it, and forced herself to lie beside him no matter how much she despised him, so she could know for sure when he fell asleep.
Ethan wasn’t sleeping well; imagine that. Poor thing tossed and turned and got up more than once to go to the bathroom. Around one thirty, when his breathing finally quieted, Aubrey swung her legs over the side of the bed and got to her feet gingerly. She tiptoed to the door, closing it softly behind her, and made her way down the stairs in the dark. By the glow of the appliances, she hurried through the kitchen to the laundry room. The laundry room was Aubrey’s turf, even more so than the yoga studio. Nobody came in here but her, and if she wanted to hide something, this was the place. There was a tall cabinet with louvered doors to the right of the washer-dryer. It normally squeaked to high heaven when you opened it, but she’d gotten out the oil can today, and now the hinges flowed like silk. Wrapping her hand in a dish towel to avoid leaving fingerprints, Aubrey reached into the cabinet with her long arm, all the way to the back, behind the Tide and the dryer sheets, and pulled out a small purse. It was a pretty thing, a little black shoulder bag with a long gold chain. Kate didn’t stint: it looked expensive. Her things were still inside—wallet, keys, lipstick, hairbrush, compact, a miniature atomizer of perfume. Aubrey raised the bag to within an inch of her nose and breathed in. It smelled like Kate, which made her feel a rush of love. And of hatred, and grief, and victory. Every emotion at once.
From the laundry room, Aubrey had to pa
ss through the kitchen to get to the garage. On the way, she stopped at the basket to retrieve Ethan’s car keys. A noise made her jump, but it was just the cat. He meowed. She ignored him. Aubrey stepped into the garage, where the comforting smells of rubber and gasoline soothed her fraying nerves. Aubrey opened the passenger door of Ethan’s Audi and shoved the handbag as far under the seat as it would go, then stepped back to check. Good. The handbag was invisible, but not if you knew where to look for it. She’d kept the police chief’s card. She would make the call anonymously, and Ethan would finally learn that actions had consequences.
30
Jenny woke up a minute before the alarm was set to go off, her chest tight with anxiety. She was scheduled to deliver Kate’s eulogy from the well of Mem Church in a matter of hours. Lines from her speech rattled around her brain all night and kept her awake, but delivering the eulogy was not her biggest worry this morning. Just as Jenny had feared, somebody leaked the search warrant to the press, and she was expecting an onslaught of cameras and TV trucks at the funeral. The warrant named Griff as the prime suspect in Kate’s murder and gave salacious details about the crime. The beautiful blond wife goes missing on the day she files for divorce, the same day her trust fund vests, leaving her with two hundred and fifty thousand that would now go to the husband. The wife is found washed up by the side of the river with a fractured skull. The husband—whose father is a notorious fraudster once worth hundreds of millions—hides a bloodstained Brooks Brothers shirt at the bottom of the laundry hamper. It was catnip, and Jenny had no hope of containing the story now.
Keniston Eastman’s voicemail from last night still rang in her ears. He wasn’t just irate over the leak; he was distraught over his daughter’s death, and beside himself at the implication that his son-in-law was involved. Jenny would have to face Keniston this morning, and she dreaded it.
Then there were the problems closer to home. Tim slept beside her, his face in repose exhausted and troubled. He’d been out of sorts for days now. They hadn’t made up. Jenny kept her distance, walked on eggshells. She had enough trouble, between the funeral and trying to keep a lid on the publicity surrounding the murder case, to face another argument.
She got out of bed with a sigh and went downstairs to start the coffee. The boys would be up in half an hour, but before that she had time to check the news and review her speech. She threw a coat over her nightgown, stuck her feet into her UGGs, and went out to collect the Belle River Register from the curb. Overnight, snow had fallen, and the driveway was slick. White clouds of breath trailed behind her. She shook the snow from the paper in its plastic wrapper. The sky was pink and brightening rapidly, and the air was sharp as crystal. Kate would have a pretty day for her funeral, at least. But of course, Kate hated the cold.
Back in the kitchen, she unfurled the newspaper. “Brooks Brothers Killer,” the headline shrieked, over a giant, four-color photograph of Kate and Griff on their wedding day. Poor Griff. Jenny felt awful for him, but it was the box story to the right of the main article that made her gasp. “Murder Victim Previously Present at Local Man’s Death,” it read. There was a tiny, blurry BRHS yearbook photo of Lucas under the headline.
Someone had put two and two together, and connected Kate to Lucas’s death. The byline said the author was Bill Buckwald, the same reporter who’d been interested in interviewing Kate at Jenny’s Labor Day party months ago. Buckwald reported that, twenty-two years before, the coroner ruled Lucas’s drowning a “death by misadventure,” and the Arsenault family fought unsuccessfully to overturn that verdict and open a homicide investigation. Jenny read the rest of the article with her heart in her throat, relaxing only when she got to the end and hadn’t found her own name. The article merely said that Kate had been present at the bridge the night Lucas died, and that the circumstances of Lucas’s death were the subject of dispute. The Register didn’t seem to be arguing—heaven forbid—that there was any connection between Lucas’s death and Kate’s. So why even publish such a story? Was this just for local color, or was Buckwald fishing for dirt on the Arsenault case? She’d have to keep her eye on that.
Jenny went into the den and clicked on the television, flipping back and forth between the local stations and the national morning shows to see what they were saying. Kate’s murder was everywhere. The local stations talked of nothing else, but even the national networks were covering it. Most of them seemed to be calling it the “Carlisle murder,” though a few had picked up “Brooks Brothers killer,” and one even had it as the “country club murder,” though neither Kate nor Griff belonged to a country club. One of the national networks flashed a picture of Kate taken when she was a teenager, in riding clothes in front of a mansion, looking gorgeous, rich, and extremely blond. Jenny knew that picture. It had been in the house on Faculty Row, the house Rizzo had just searched—Keniston’s house. Ditto the next picture, of Griff on the deck of a yacht looking like Thurston Howell the Fourth. How had the press gotten hold of those photos? Had Chief Rizzo taken them from the house and leaked them? He still hadn’t returned her phone calls, and she was increasingly uneasy with how he was handling the case. As she watched, the television news anchor started talking about yet another piece of evidence that should have remained confidential. A DNA test had apparently proved that scrapings of human skin taken from under Kate’s fingernails belonged to Griff. Evidence straight from the state crime lab, fed to the press. Now, maybe that was some rogue lab technician, but maybe it was Rizzo, trying to gin up public sentiment for a murder investigation so nobody would be able to slow him down. Jenny recalled her conversation with Robbie Womack about trying to build evidence to argue for Chief Rizzo’s removal. She’d been having her doubts about opposing the chief, but the press reports made her very nervous.
Jenny turned on her phone. Her voicemail box was full, and she had sixty-seven e-mails, mostly from reporters—some from as far away as Italy and Japan. There was also an urgent e-mail from the head of Carlisle Safety and Security saying that the town green and the Quad were overrun with TV trucks, that Belle River PD was completely AWOL and he couldn’t get through to the chief of police. Now that was something she could use. In a town like Belle River, the one thing people expected from the police was decent traffic control. Jenny forwarded that e-mail to every member of the town council, with the subject line “Carlisle concerns about Chief Rizzo’s performance.” Then she woke the kids and told them to grab a granola bar for breakfast.
An hour later, clad in a new black suit, her hair and makeup perfect and her speech memorized, Jenny headed down the hill into town. Traffic snarled the streets of Belle River beyond anything she’d seen in all her years here. Jenny had a meeting soon with Griff and the Eastman family to review funeral arrangements, and what normally was a ten-minute drive was already taking twenty. She decided to park at the office and walk to Mem Church so she wouldn’t have to fight the gridlock for that extra few blocks. After waiting nearly five minutes to make a left across traffic into the town garage, Jenny found an unknown car with out-of-town plates parked in her space, right under the big sign that said Reserved for Mayor Healy. That was the last straw. She whipped out her phone and dialed Owen Rizzo, who hadn’t answered her calls for the past two days. She planned to leave an angry voicemail, but to her surprise, he picked up.
“Chief Rizzo. Finally,” Jenny said.
“I see you forwarded an e-mail about parking problems to the entire town council,” Rizzo said, indignation in his voice.
“Yes, I did. I just drove through the downtown, which is overrun, and there was not one single patrol car in sight. I need to know what you’re doing about this situation.”
“So talk to me about it. Don’t go behind my back,” Rizzo said.
“How can I talk to you when you won’t return my phone calls?” Jenny said.
“I’ve been a little busy, as you may have noticed.”
“Unfortunately, I have noticed. We need to talk about how you’re handling Ka
te Eastman’s death. I thought we had a good relationship, Chief. But you don’t even call me when she’s found. You unilaterally decide that this is a murder instead of a suicide, and you go to the press without consulting me. I’m beginning to have some serious doubts about your judgment,” Jenny said, trying to keep her voice calm.
“Police matters are my department, Madam Mayor,” Rizzo said.
“You may be chief, but I’m the mayor of this town, and you need to work with me, simple as that.”
“Look, we had this discussion before when we had that ruckus over a simple staffing change. Ma’am, with all due respect, I need my independence, or I can’t do my job. I run the department my way. Now, if you don’t mind, I would like to ask you a few questions about Kate Eastman, given that you were a friend of hers.”
“You have questions? Well, I have an answer. This was a suicide. Everybody who knows Kate thinks that. It was not a murder. Her husband didn’t kill her. You’re off on a frolic and detour, with no proof.”
“I have proof. I have an expert report—”
“Right, I heard. How exactly did you pay for that, by the way?” Jenny demanded.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m asking, where did you get the money to pay for an outside expert?”
“I really can’t brook this kind of interference,” Rizzo said.
“From what I see, you’re failing to look out for the well-being of this community, and that’s my business. This case could’ve been handled privately to spare the family the pain. Instead you’re off on some crusade, investigating some nonexistent crime, while the entire town is overrun by TV crews.”
“Madam Mayor, I’ll say it again. Managing the department is my job.”
“Then manage it. Or we’ll end up with some poor old lady getting run over, and you’ll be out of a job. Now I have to go. I’m delivering Kate’s eulogy.”
It's Always the Husband Page 27