CHAPTER 24 - Rita

CHAPTER 24RitaMONDAY MORNING, CHASE AND I SIT AT THE LITTLE TABLE ACROSS from Mrs. Bradley and her new dog. Emotional support animal, she says. Doesn’t matter to me. I like dogs, and this one seems content enough to sit quietly while we talk. Chase jumps up and turns up the heat, offers Mrs. Bradley tea, but she says she’s okay.“I’ve never seen that necklace before, Detective,” she says. She looks frazzled, dark red hair tied back in a lumpy ponytail, purple circles under her eyes. “Is this why you wanted to talk to me?”“Yes. Take another look, in case the photo was hard to see,” I say. Chase removes the necklace from its bag with a gloved hand. He turns it so she can see both sides.She shakes her head. “I have no idea where it came from. You found it in my husband’s filing cabinet?”“Yes.” We’re almost positive the necklace belonged to Annalise Robb but want to see if Mrs. Bradley knows anything about it.Mrs. Bradley glances from me to Chase and back again. “Maybe it belonged to a patient. I don’t know. Maybe he found it in his work office and brought it home for safekeeping until he figured out who it belonged to.”“The initials are on the back. Shouldn’t have been too hard to figure out if it was a patient.”Her hand finds the dog’s back, where she runs her fingers through its fur. “I don’t know what to say. What has this got to do with who murdered my husband?”“Whoever killed Mr. Bradley also broke into the filing cabinet and went through his desk. They must’ve been looking for something.”“I have no idea what that could be, Detective.”“Well, there was some reason he came back. Maybe he didn’t get what he was looking for the first time. The necklace was stuck in the back of the drawer, hard to find. But when he returned, of course, the cabinet had been removed. Let’s talk about something else,” I say, and she reluctantly meets my gaze.“Okay.”“The mountain house in Mountclair.”“What about it?”“You said your husband was there the week before he was killed.”“Yes. He went up to see about a broken window. I told you that.”“When was the last time he was there before that?”She blinks her eyes. “Um, well. I think it was October. He and Scott Westmore spent a couple days up there fishing.”“You didn’t go?”“No. I was working that weekend, and”—she shivers—“I don’t like fishing. Blood sports.”I arch my eyebrows.“I grew up in a small town,” she explains, “a rural area, and a lot of people hunted and fished. I never liked it.”“Thought you were from Graybridge.”She pulls on the neck of her sweater, her thin fingers worrying the yarn. “We moved here when I was seven, so it feels like home. It is home.”“Okay. Anyway, before that, when was your husband up at the house?”“What does this have to do with anything?” She blinks her red-rimmed eyes, lets go a sigh.“We’ll get there. Please just answer the question.”She sniffs and meets my eyes. “We actually didn’t get up there too much last fall, so I guess the time before that would be the Fourth of July. We went up for a week and had our friends up to celebrate my birthday and the holiday.”My heartbeat kicks up. I clear my throat and tap my pencil against my open notebook. “Who else was up there besides you and your husband? What friends?”“The same ones who were at Jay’s birthday party.”“The Westmores, Ferrises, and Pearsons? Anybody else?”“Hayes Branch and his daughter.”“That’s a lot of people.”“It’s a big house.”This is getting interesting. “So you had a houseful that week?”“Yes.”I lean back, blow out a breath. Now we have a job in front of us: reconstructing a week with ten people in one house and a missing woman in the vicinity. This is going to take some time and planning. “Mrs. Bradley, anything unusual happen that week? Anything happen that seemed odd or out of place?”“No. What does this have to do with anything?”“When did everyone leave?”“The fifth. That Friday.”“Huh.” I place my pencil on my notebook and tap my fingers on the table. “The necklace in your husband’s filing cabinet we believe belonged to a woman from Mountclair.”Her mouth drops open. “That’s strange. I have no idea . . .”She doesn’t either. I can tell by the look on her face that she’s totally stumped and probably didn’t hear anything about the disappearance of Annelise Robb.“The woman is missing, Mrs. Bradley. She hasn’t been seen since the night of July Fourth.”