by Minka Kent
“What are you talking about?” I laugh, and I’m nervous, and I’m not sure why he’s acting so strange all of a sudden. “You’ve had a rough day. Let’s go home and relax. Maybe we can watch that show you like with that superhero guy, yeah?”
Ben nods, and I climb into the car, buckling up. He doesn’t speak much on the way home except to ask if I want to get out of Monarch Falls for a few hours tomorrow.
I tell him I do, that getting away for a while sounds nice.
And he holds my hand, but he doesn’t give it a squeeze and he doesn’t tell me he loves me. In fact, he hasn’t told me he loves me in almost two weeks, now that I think about it.
We’re both ready . . . ready to get back to the way things were before. And maybe that means different things to each of us, but one thing’s for sure, we can’t keep treading these same murky waters. We have to move on. We have to move forward. And maybe I was wrong about Ben. Maybe he’s the best I’m ever going to do. Maybe I could learn to love him fully, completely, the way he loves me.
Fifty-Three
Autumn
There’s a police car parked in front of our house when we get home Saturday afternoon. We spent all day in Harmony Springs shopping and dining and catching a matinee like it was any other day, and the last thing I expected was to come home to this.
Ben says nothing as he pulls into the driveway, and two officers climb out of a squad car. A third, in plain clothes, steps out of an unmarked Crown Victoria.
“What’s all this?” I ask Ben.
“No clue.” His brows furrow as he watches them through the rearview mirror, and then he kills the engine and steps out. When he heads toward them, he extends his hand. “Officers?”
“We’re looking for an Autumn Carpenter,” the first officer says. A voices comes over his radio, and he adjusts the volume as he looks at me.
I press my finger into my chest, feeling the weight of their collective stares. “I’m Autumn. What’s going on?”
“We need to bring you in for questioning,” he says, his hands hooked on his duty belt.
“Questioning? Can I ask what this is about?” I release an awkward chuckle.
“We’re investigating the death of Marnie Gotlieb,” he says, his eyes flicking to Ben.
“Are the toxicology results in?” Ben asks, stepping toward them.
“They just came in yesterday,” he says.
“Why didn’t anyone call me? Have my parents been called? Why am I just now being told?” Ben exhales, speaking a million miles a minute.
“The final cause of death hasn’t been determined yet, but we’re suspecting foul play so we’re doing some preliminary investigating,” he says.
“What does Autumn have to do with any of this?” Ben’s question is genuine, and I love him for that.
“She was seen at Marnie’s townhouse the night of the . . . incident.” The officer shifts his weight, his eyes moving between the two of us.
“Of course she was,” Ben says. “I asked her to check on my sister. We hadn’t heard from her in days, and we sent Autumn over to knock on her door.”
“Ben, it’s fine.” I turn toward him and place my hand on his chest. He’s getting worked up, and I don’t want this to become a big thing. “I’ll go talk to them. They probably just need a simple statement for their investigation.” I turn to the cop. “Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says.
“See?” My hand smooths over his chest and down his arm until it finds his fingers, and I give them a squeeze. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, okay? We’ll get everything figured out.”
Ben closes his eyes slowly, tucks his chin, and then nods. “Sure. Yeah. You need me to come with?”
“No, it’s okay. I’ll ride with them.” I lift on my toes and cup his face in my hands and kiss his tight lips, and then I say, “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Fifty-Four
Daphne
The kids are swimming out back when Graham comes home. The police called him in today for more questioning.
“How’d it go?” I ask.
“I told them everything,” he says. “Again. Hopefully they took better notes this time.”
“Do you think it was Autumn?”
He shrugs.
“God, to think she was watching our kids all summer and she may have been a murderer.”
“Do you honestly believe that? I just don’t see it.”
“She was the last one to see her alive. I’m just saying, you never know.” He shrugs, dipping his hands in his pockets. The kids splash and giggle before us. “You know they’re saying on the news she had drugs in her system. They’re thinking it might be an overdose. Did you know you were screwing a girl who did drugs?”
“I had no idea. She never seemed . . .”
“Anyway, I’m tired of talking about this. About her. You’ve put me through enough, don’t you think? I hope next time you’ll kindly think twice before removing your dick from your pants.” I rise. “Watch the kids, please? I’m going to go inside and start dinner.”
Graham sinks into a lounge chair, arms folded across his chest and staring toward the pool. Seeing him so miserable makes me feel incredibly vindicated. Knowing he can never see her or touch her or kiss her fills me to the brim with quiet satisfaction.
This is karma.
And this is the end and the beginning of it all.
Fifty-Five
Autumn
They’ve stuck me in a five by eight room with a two-way mirror, and despite the fact that they’ve offered me coffee and water and told me to let them know if I’m too hot or too cold . . . I feel like this can only go one way.
One of the detectives, Barnes is his name, pulls his chair out and plops down, sending a whoosh of cheap cologne in my direction. He’s averagely attractive, with thick, sandy hair and eyes that smile even when he isn’t. A plain gold wedding band rests on his left ring finger, and he seems like the kind of man who plays catch with his sons after work and kisses his wife goodnight every night and tells her he loved her lasagna even if it wasn’t her best.
“So Autumn.” He pulls out a yellow legal pad, flipping to a fresh page, and clicks the end of a cheap ballpoint pen.
“Yes?” I fold my hands on the table in front of me, eyes alert.
“What can you tell me about the night of Marnie Gotlieb’s death?” he asks.
I drag in a lungful of stale air and release it, buying time. I don’t want to seem too rehearsed or too quick-on-the-draw.
“Ben was out of town for work,” I say. “He called and asked me to check on her. I drove across town, knocked on her door, and she didn’t answer, so I left.”
He’s quiet. He doesn’t take down notes. When he pinches the bridge of his nose, I know I’ve fucked up somehow.
“Autumn, I’m going to cut to the chase here,” he says, squaring his shoulders. He doesn’t look like a nice guy anymore. He looks like a guy who’s had a long day and is stuck working on a Saturday when he’d rather be watching his boys play ball, and he looks like he doesn’t have time for any bullshit. Specifically my bullshit. “Someone saw you at Marnie’s that night.”
“Right. I checked on her. Like I said.”
“No,” he cuts me off. “They saw you go into her home.”
“Who?” I laugh, though I want to cry. “What did they claim they saw?”
“Our witness saw you enter Ms. Gotlieb’s townhome. They said you were in there for about ten, maybe fifteen minutes. And they saw you run out after that.”
I glance down, picking at my fingernails and racking my brain.
The only other person there that night who could’ve possibly seen me was Graham. Had it been one of her lovers or one of her friends, they wouldn’t have recognized me. They wouldn’t have been able to give my name to the police because they wouldn’t have had it.
“It was Graham McMullen, wasn’t it?” I ask.
I hate to throw
him under the bus and I understand the repercussions of that, but right now, it’s either him or me, and it sure as hell isn’t going to be me.
“How do you know Graham McMullen?” The detective sinks back in his chair, playing dumb.
“I worked for his family this summer,” I say. “I saw him that night, leaving Marnie’s.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“No.”
“Did you tell anyone else that you saw him?”
“No.”
“Did you take a picture? Do you have evidence?”
“Do I need evidence?” I scoff. “Clearly he told you that he saw me, so you know he was there too. I hope to God you’re questioning him better than you’re questioning me, because that’s where your focus should be.”
He doesn’t respond. His pen scribbles against the paper.
“What do you know about Marnie Gotlieb and Graham McMullen?” he asks.
“Um,” I glance up at the ceiling tiles. They’re stained and mismatched. “They’d been sneaking around for a couple of years, from what I’ve heard. They fought a lot. He was thinking of leaving his wife for her. That’s about all I know. Did Megan talk to you? She’s the one you want to talk to. She was one of Marnie’s friends. She knows more about their relationship than I do.”
“Mm hm.” Detective Barnes brushes his hand against his mouth as he takes notes. “Okay, real quick, let’s circle back to that night. I’m curious, Autumn. Why did you tell Ben Marnie wasn’t home? The way it looks now, you’re the last person who saw her alive. You understand withholding evidence is a serious crime, don’t you?”
I hunch over, resting my elbows on the table and staring him straight in the eyes.
“You don’t understand the Gotliebs,” I say. “I was only trying to protect them. I went inside to check on her after Graham left. She was drunk and belligerent, and I was trying to get her to calm down before she hurt herself. And she said that. She said she wanted to hurt herself. She wasn’t making any sense. I didn’t tell her family because I didn’t want them to know that in their daughter’s final hours, she was sleeping with a married man, drinking hard liquor, and threatening violence.”
“I understand you wanted to spare the family, but you should have come to the police,” he says. I don’t like his tone. He’s scolding me, and I’m not a child. “You understand how this looks, don’t you?”
My brows meet. “No?”
“You and Marnie had a bit of a contentious relationship, isn’t that right? The two of you didn’t ever really see eye to eye?”
That’s a nice way of putting it.
“There was some friction at times,” I say. “Early on. But we grew closer. We sort of let things happen naturally, slowly. No, we weren’t best friends. But did I wish she were dead? Absolutely not.”
My voice trembles the harder he stares at me.
“Do you have any idea who would’ve wanted to hurt her?”
“Not at all,” I fire back. “So are you ruling this a homicide now?”
He covers his mouth and exhales. “We are, Autumn.”
“I don’t understand. What changed?”
“Toxicology showed someone had injected her with a lethal dose of heroin shortly before her death. And pathology showed she’d been clean up until then.”
My hand flies to my mouth, and I’m engulfed in genuine shock.
Someone did murder Marnie.
And it wasn’t me.
And I’ll be damned if I go down for it.
“Marnie didn’t have a lot of enemies,” he says. “At least not from what we’ve been able to find. She didn’t really have a lot of friends either. The numbers in her phone mostly belonged to . . . men.”
Tell me something I don’t already know, Detective Barnes . . .
I nod. “I’m not surprised.”
There’s a knock on the door, and Barnes excuses himself for a moment. When he comes back, I ask if he’s talked to Ben yet and if Ben knows Marnie’s death has been ruled a homicide.
“Someone’s with him now,” he says. “In fact, they just got the search warrant. Because you withheld evidence, we have to-”
“Search warrant?”
“We’re searching your place, Autumn,” he says, brows lifted. “That shouldn’t be a problem since you had nothing to do with this, right?”
“Of course,” I say, hand pressed over my heart. I did not poison Marnie with drugs, of that I’m one hundred percent certain. “Whoever saw me that night must have stuck around, waiting for me to leave, and then went inside to shoot Marnie with the heroin bomb. And from what I gather, it sounds like they’re framing me for it. Or they’re trying to. But you can search my house. Search everything I own. Search my phone calls and text messages. I’ve never purchased drugs in my life. And I wouldn’t even know where to go to get them.”
Detective Barnes clicks the edge of his pen on the table.
“Tell me, was Graham your witness?” I ask. “I saw him yesterday. At Marnie’s grave. He told me not to tell anyone he was there. You should talk to him. If anyone has anything to hide, it’s him.”
“We’ve spoken to Mr. McMullen.” His words are dry and disinterested. “He’s already come clean about everything. The affair. Their ongoing relationship issues.”
“So he admitted to you that he was there,” I say, needing clarification. “And then he told you he saw me.”
Barnes doesn’t immediately answer.
“We have a photo of you leaving Marnie’s townhome at eight oh seven the night of her death,” he says, laying down the hand he’d been keeping close to his chest since the moment he walked in here. “Mr. McMullen supplied the photo.”
My jaw falls.
That dirty son of a bitch.
I hate him.
I fucking hate him.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” I say. “Just because I was there, doesn’t mean I did anything. Am I being . . . ? Do I need a . . . ?”
I can’t finish my thought. My belly is twisted into tight knots, and I want to cry, but I have to keep it together. If they’d have marched me in here and said “Marnie died of a blunt force trauma to the head and we have DNA evidence that it was you,” then they would have me and there wouldn’t be a damn thing I could do about it.
But this? This I did not do.
This I will not go down for.
Graham is throwing me under the bus. That whole sad-faced production he put on yesterday was nothing more than a ruse. He was trying to throw me off. He wants me to take the fall for what he did, and I refuse.
He doesn’t get to make his little problem disappear.
He doesn’t get to pin it on me.
And he sure as hell doesn’t get to be Grace’s father a minute longer.
I won’t allow it.
“Are we finished here or are you arresting me?” I rise. My lips feel like hot gelatin, and the room spins.
“You’re not under arrest, Autumn.” His words wash over me, allowing me to breathe again. “You’re free to go. For now. But stick around town in case we need to bring you in again, you understand?”
I snatch my purse from the table and sling it over my arm, and then I remember I need a ride home.
“Come on,” he says, waving toward the door.
Fifty-Six
Autumn
I speak zero words to Barnes on the way home, and I thank him by slamming the passenger door when he pulls into my driveway. I don’t appreciate the fact that he doesn’t believe me. I see it in his beady eyes. He’s just waiting to pin this on someone, and he thinks he’s so close. He does seem like an insecure asshole who thrives on accolades and pats on the back from the higher-ups now that I think about it.
What a good boy, Barnesy! Good job solving the crime! Here’s your Nylabone!
The squad car from earlier is still parked out front, and then I remember the search warrant. They’re going through everything, just like they said they would. I’m not sure what they they
’ll find, but I’m sure Ben is freaking out.
I run inside to be with him, to assure him everything’s going to be fine.
He needs me.
And damn it, I need him too.
“Ben,” I stop short inside the doorway when I see an officer in latex gloves holding a wooden box in one hand and its lid in the other.
“I thought you threw this out?” Ben’s jaw clenches, pulses. His eyes burn into me.
I promised him I’d throw it out weeks ago when he found it and demanded that I cut ties with the McMullens immediately. I’d meant to get rid of it, but when it came down to it, I couldn’t. Those memories in that box are all I have. I don’t have yearbooks and photo albums and fond recollections of some idyllic childhood. My past is a series of years I’d rather forget.
I couldn’t part with those things.
I tried. And I failed. And I hid them in the garage in a box labeled “Winter Clothes” because Ben keeps all of his clothes in one closet, never rotating anything out as the seasons change, and he’d never need to look in a box with that label.
“Why do you still have this?” he asks. “And did you know? Did you know my sister was having an affair with Graham McMullen?”
The hurt in his eyes sears my soul. I hesitate. And then I nod. “I didn’t know how to tell you. And I didn’t know until recently.”
“How could you keep that from me? And how could you continue to work for that family knowing what you knew?” His lips snarl. He’s disgusted with me. I knew he wouldn’t understand. And I can’t tell him. I can’t tell him about Grace because ten years ago, when I signed those papers, I agreed to stay away, and there isn’t a living, breathing soul who knows the truth . . . that I found her seven years ago, and that I haven’t stayed away since. Not once. And if I want to be there for all the rest of her sweet little life, I can’t tell Ben a thing.
The officer rifles through my box of McMullen memorabilia. And that’s fine. There’s nothing in there that would pin Marnie’s death on me. Nothing. All this does is create minor complications with Ben, but I can deal with them when all these nitwits finally leave our house.