CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 39

NEENA

The police came in silently, their sirens off, three cars in total. From my perch at the window, I watched them pull up to our house, the knot of unease growing in my stomach. This was bad. I didn’t even know what had gone wrong, but this was bad. I followed Matt as he opened the front door, meeting them as they came up the wide brick steps.

“Mr. Ryder?” A female detective flashed her shield, then introduced the other uniforms, all in the standard black garb of the town police department. “I’m Detective Cullen. You said on the phone that the intruder has left?” She had a thick New York accent and the aggressive posture to match it.

“Yes.” Matt straightened to his full and unimpressive height of five feet nine inches. “I heard him leave through the front, and I searched the house. He’s not here.”

She looked down at the stoop. “He left through here?”

My husband nodded, not realizing the issue of three officers trampling through the exit. “Yeah.”

“Dammit,” she swore. “Donnie, get back. All of you, get back and watch where you’re stepping. We just screwed ourselves in terms of footprints.”

I hung back in the warmth of the house, the night chill trickling through the open doorway, and watched as the cops attempted to maneuver inside without damaging evidence. “I’ll open the side door. You can come in through there.”

“Thank you.” The woman lifted her flashlight, shining it in my face. “You Mrs. Ryder?”

“Dr. Ryder,” I clipped back, holding up my hand to block the flashlight’s glare. “Do you mind?”

“No problem.” She clicked off the lamp and gave me a hard smile. “We’ll meet you around the side.”

I leaned against the left side of the house, my hands tucked into the pockets of my robe, and felt like a criminal. The scene was eerily familiar. Suspicious looks. Probing questions. Before, they’d only done a brief glance through the house, then ushered me into the back of a police car. Before, I’d been given a series of gentle questions paired with sympathetic looks. Now, I was being drilled. An army of uniforms was moving into my house. Matt and I were being kept outside and questioned as if we were suspects.

The detective pointed down the dark stretch of our driveway. “Your front gate out there—does that fence go all the way around the property?”

I shook my head. “Just the front. The neighbors have fences that make up the sides. Well, most of the sides. And we leave the front gate open. The motor is broken on it.”

“And the back of the property?”

“The back doesn’t have a fence due to the steep hill. Past the tree line, there are other homes.”

“So, someone could have gotten in that way?”

“Sure, but those homes are in the neighborhood, also. They’d still have had to get past the main entrance gate.”

She turned to the garage’s interior door, examining the lock, then nodded to the security keypad mounted on the wall. “Your security system go off?”

“It doesn’t work. It’s from the last owners.”

“You have any security system at all? Cameras? Motion sensors? A Ring video doorbell?” Her voice rose with each item, and I bristled at her incredulous tone. She probably lived in a townhome. Something low rent, in a neighborhood that might require a security system. This was Atherton. We were paying the highest property taxes and homeowners’ dues in the state for a reason.

“No.” Seeing her raised eyebrows, I pushed back. “You know, most people in the neighborhood don’t even lock their doors. The Winthorpes leave theirs wide open most of the time. We had planned to get some sort of system in place, but we’re renovating. Did you see the new landscaping?”

Maybe we should have pushed an alarm further up the to-do list. The security company had given a thorough presentation of the different safeguards available. Window sensors, motion-activated cameras, a schedule of interior lights that would give the appearance of constant activity. I’d seen the estimate and taken a few giant steps back at the cost, deciding to invest in an outdoor seating set instead. And the weather-friendly sectional had been a valuable and impressive investment—until Cat had splattered limoncello all over it.

She pointed at our side door. “Was this locked when you just came out of it?”

“Yeah. It’s a dead bolt. I flipped it to come out.”

“Let’s step in there for a moment.” She opened the door with a gloved hand and moved into the secondary foyer. She let out a low whistle, and I stiffened at the critical way her eyes moved over the space.

Excessive grandeur, that’s what Matt’s mother had called it, her afternoon pop-in perfectly timed when I was exhausted from unpacking and too emotionally fried for verbal assault. Way too fancy for the likes of you two, she’d said, running her hand over the velvet chair with an unimpressed sniff. That chandelier come with the place, or did you guys buy it? She liked to remind him that I grew up in a shack and had been perfectly happy in my Kmart sundresses before I started wearing designer lines. She was wrong, of course. I may have smiled the night I met her in my cheap sundress, but I had never been happy. Not while my father was home, and not until I was out of that horrible town and had my first taste of financial stability. She thought I changed Matt, but his lifestyle had been what changed me. He’d given me a taste of the good life, and I’d binged on each middle-class bite until I’d developed more expensive tastes.

From behind us, an officer wiped his boots on my mat. “No one’s on the property. I’ve got lights moving through the back woods, but that’s a wild-goose chase. There are at least six different directions he could have gone in. Right now uniforms are tightening up security and doing vehicle checks at each neighborhood exit.”

She nodded. “Go next door to the Winthorpes’. See if they’ve seen anything, and make sure they’re all locked up.”

Oh, poor Cat. She was probably still feeble from her “poisoning.” I hoped the gunman didn’t go in their often-unlocked door. I hoped he didn’t find his way to their bedroom. I hoped dear little Cat hadn’t been a casualty of his panic. Gag.

She glanced at me. “You know anything about the property on your other side?”

I shook my head. “The Rusynzks are gone for the summer.”

The officer nodded. “I’ll check windows and doors on both places,” he offered.

“Look for cameras. If they got ’em, get footage.”

“Will do.” He turned and pulled the door closed behind him, his hand casually resting on the butt of his weapon.

The detective stepped farther into the house, rounding the corner and entering the great space. Looking down at her pad, she flipped over a page. “Mrs. Ryder, we’re going to bring your husband inside and go through a few questions together.”

My shoulder rubbed against Matt’s, and I don’t know why he didn’t change his shirt before they got here. He was in a thin ribbed tank top, his slight man boobs sagging, the fat of his underarms squishing against his sides. His skin felt clammy and slid against my deltoid in a disgusting way. I shifted a little to the side, wanting to break the contact, and felt the detective’s eyes follow the action.

“I woke up with the gun in my mouth.” Matt swallowed hard. “It was pressing against my teeth, shoving my head back.”

“And then he pulled the trigger?”

“Yes. There was a click, but nothing came out. A misfire. He looked at the gun and then ran.”

“You’re lucky,” the detective remarked. “Both of you are.” She glanced at me, and I tried to assume a look of gratefulness.

Oh yes. So lucky. One shot and Matt could have died. I would have been a widow. Instead, we were here, dealing with all this, a crowd of strangers trampling through our house, my husband fully intact beside me, not a single hair harmed on his head. So lucky.

Detective Cullen moved down a list of questions, and I stayed quiet, listening to Matt’s responses.

An accent? No.

Did he sound familiar? No.

Was he tall? Short? I couldn’t really tell. I was in bed, looking up at him. Maybe six feet tall? Maybe?

How was his hair? Short? Long? Bald? He had on a hat. Wait, a ski mask.

Did he move smoothly? Limp? Have any distinguishable characteristics whatsoever?

No.

No.

No.

As she moved through the questions, she grew more and more frustrated at how inept Matt’s observation skills were. I know, I wanted to chime in. You have no idea how many affairs I’ve carried on right underneath his nose! I’m not surprised he had a gun stuck in his mouth and still didn’t manage to pay attention.

“Is something funny, Mrs. Ryder?”

I sat straighter in my seat. “No.”

“You’re smiling,” she pointed out. “Surely you don’t find this amusing.”

Matt was looking at me now, his features pinching in annoyance. A burst of anger popped in my chest. It was three in the morning! How was anyone supposed to keep their wits about them at this ungodly hour? “I’m exhausted.” I rose to my feet. “Can we finish these questions in the morning? I didn’t even see the guy. Or hear him.”

“Yes . . . ,” she said slowly. “Because you ‘slept right through it all.’” She put air quotes around the last part of the sentence, and I gawked at her nerve.

“I told you what happened. I woke up with Matt screaming at me to call 9-1-1 as he ran downstairs.” I glared at her and dared her to call me a liar.

“Mrs. Ryder—”

“Dr. Ryder,” I corrected, unable to let another flub pass.

“This is going to take some time. Perhaps you could get some coffee while I finish up with your husband?”

“Fine.” I moved away before she had a chance to change her mind. Spotting a handsome uniform dusting the back doorknob for prints, I ran my fingers through my hair and decided to detour by the bathroom and take a moment to freshen up.

Inside the bathroom, I tried William’s cell, but for the third time that night, he didn’t answer.

Detective Cullen found me in the dining room, one of our mugs in her spindly hand. I eyed the coffee and wondered if Matt had offered it to her or if she’d helped herself. Brushing off the thought, I gestured her closer and lowered my voice, making sure Matt wasn’t nearby. “I’ve been thinking, and it’s possible Matt imagined this entire thing. A stranger, in our house in the middle of the night? No forced entry? He put his gun in Matt’s mouth and then the thing misfired?” I clutched my own coffee cup, the contents now lukewarm, and glanced at the evidence teams scattered across every area of our home. “Have you found any evidence there was anyone here? Any bullet holes? Fingerprints?”

The woman nodded slowly, considering the idea. “So, you think your husband made the entire thing up?”

“He takes sleeping pills at night.” I shrugged, encouraged by her open reaction. “Maybe he thought it happened and it didn’t.”

“On the 9-1-1 call, you said there was an intruder.” Her voice was hardening, incredulity beginning to coat the syllables.

“It was dark in the bedroom. I woke up to him yelling at me to call 9-1-1. I was half-asleep during that call. But we have no security footage, no footprints, and Matt’s given you a hazy description that could fit anyone from Pee-wee Herman to Arnold Schwarzenegger.” I stood from the seat, my voice rising in vigor. “You could be looking for someone that isn’t out there. Wouldn’t you rather go home? And besides—are you even allowed to be looking through all of our things? Don’t you need a warrant for that?”

“Neena.”

I stiffened at the flat sound of Matt’s voice and turned to see him standing just inside the back door, his features eerily still, his eyes dead. “May I speak to you for a moment?”