Chapter 32

chapter thirty-two

‘Do you reckon the husband had an affair?’ asked Ethan.

He and Christina were walking from the car down the endless gravel driveway of a stately home to take a statement for their schoolboy arsonist case, but they were discussing, as they usually were these days, the Joy Delaney investigation.

‘With this Savannah girl? It’s a possibility,’ said Christina. ‘There’s a whole lot that family isn’t telling us.’

‘Protecting their father?’

‘I assume so,’ said Christina. ‘Or protecting themselves.’

She did a mental line-up of the four Delaney children as potential suspects.

Amy Delaney: Skittish as a small-time criminal.

Logan Delaney: Calm as an experienced one.

Troy Delaney: Smooth as a slippery salesman. (Except Christina didn’t know what he was selling and she felt like maybe he didn’t know either.)

Brooke Delaney: Circumspect as a spy.

Could one or more of them be responsible for their mother’s disappearance? Or was it more likely that one of them aided and abetted their father?

‘If my father had an affair with a young girl and then my mother went missing,’ mused Ethan as they stepped onto an arched and columned portico fit for a prince or a poor, misunderstood little arsonist, and rang the doorbell, ‘I’d throw him straight under the bus.’

‘Me too,’ said Christina. She bit on the ragged thumbnail she was meant to be leaving alone for her wedding day.

So why, then, were the Delaneys being so cagey?

She said, ‘Did their mother let them down in some way?’

‘Mothers can do that,’ said Ethan, and she was wondering if he meant that in a general or specific sense when the arsonist’s mother opened the door, her son’s guilt written all over her exquisitely renovated face.