Chapter Five

CHAPTER FIVE

The two uniformed cops who came to pick us up at seven didn’t seem too concerned that we might be murderers. They also seemed pleasantly surprised that we were still here, as if they’d thought we’d make a break for it and run away. I wasn’t sure how we’d do that, since we had no car and didn’t even know exactly where we were. There had supposedly been a police car staked out outside all night. And there was no way in hell I was going to go hitchhiking on Atticus Line.

Rose let the cops in. She was wearing a nightgown that covered her from its high ruffled collar to her feet, a bathrobe, and a pinched look that said she hated all of us. Her hair stuck up on one side, and her eyes were hostile behind her glasses. She’d plunked down some coffee, two pieces of toast, and a couple of hard-boiled eggs on her kitchen table when we came out of our room, and she’d silently dared us to complain.

The kitchen was decorated just as badly as the bedroom: shelves lined with figurines, little china bowls, jars, dusty fabric flowers, wooden carvings, dangling beads. A crocheted piece of fabric in a frame on the wall told us that Home and hearth are where the heart is. A clock with a face decorated with roses ticked loudly next to it, and on the shelf below that, a china clown grasped a clutch of balloons in his hand, a sad smile on his face. Princess Diana was in here, too: a framed photo of her smiling hung above the stove, and a painted portrait of Charles and Diana hung in the living room. It looked like Rose was a Diana fanatic. She had copied Diana’s haircut, though the rest of her didn’t look like Diana at all.

We ate everything Rose gave us, even though my stomach was in knots. I stared at Princess Diana and swallowed. You have to eat, especially when things get bad. Having a full stomach gives you a better chance to think.

“Don’t look so put out, Rose,” one of the cops said as he helped himself to a cup of her coffee. “These two are your only customers.”

“Think I’ll get paid?” Rose’s voice was unpleasant, like a violin that was badly tuned.

“Sure you will,” the other cop said. “Just send a bill to Detective Quentin.”

That shut her up. It shut the other cop up, too. I looked at Eddie as I drained my coffee. The look he gave me back said, Here we go.

As we stood to leave, Eddie reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out his worn leather wallet. He laid a twenty on the table. “Thank you for breakfast, ma’am,” he said.

She gaped at him as we followed the two cops from the room. I didn’t watch her do it, but I knew she took the twenty.

Everyone always underestimated my husband. Everyone but me.

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—They put us in a police cruiser, in the back seat like a pair of criminals. There was a net partition separating us from the two cops in the front. The doors of the back seat had no handles or window rollers. It smelled vaguely sour back here, and Eddie had to crouch with his knees up in the small space.

“You have a good night at Rose’s?” This was the cop who had teased Rose and taken some of her coffee. He was in the front passenger seat, and he glanced back at us, grinning.

“Shut up, Kyle,” the cop driving the car said. Gravel crunched under our tires as he pulled out of Rose’s unpaved driveway.

“What? I’m just asking.” Kyle looked back at us again. He had dark hair combed back beneath his policeman’s cap and a wide, square face that was hard despite his smirking expression. “You guys have sweet dreams, or what? Are you sure you didn’t hear anything going bump in the night?”

“Don’t listen to him,” the other cop said.

“I’m not saying the place is haunted.” Kyle put on a fake-solemn expression. “Not at all. But you might want to think twice before you sleep too deep at Rose’s. Someone should have warned her husband before he ended up dead in her backyard. He’d been a cop for twenty years. He was lying there when one of the neighbors saw him from an upstairs window and called the police. Rose was a few feet away, busy digging in the garden, like she was about to bury him.”

“Jesus, Kyle,” the other cop said, annoyed now. Then, to us: “Ignore him. Rose didn’t murder her husband. He died of a heart attack.”

“That’s what you think,” Kyle said. “There’s a reason no one ever stays there.”

So Rose was a widow. The thought barely flitted through my mind. I was busy looking out the window at the town passing by in the summer-morning light. The shadows were harsh already, as if the day was going to be scorching hot.

It was probably the biggest town in this area, a hub for all of the vacation spots farther out on the shores of the lake. There were big old houses, some of them advertising vacation rooms to rent. A main street featured a canvas banner strung above it, advertising the annual Summer Fun Fair happening in a few weeks. There were swimwear shops and diners, corner pubs and B and Bs that were probably more expensive—and nicer—than Rose’s. There was an empty parking lot with a sign that advertised the farmers market every Saturday. More signs advertised boat storage and fishing tackle repair. I wondered how far we were from the Five Pines Resort, from the little cabin Eddie and I were supposed to be staying in right now.

Another police cruiser passed us, going the other way, and the two cops up front lifted their hands to the cops driving it.

“Where are we going?” Eddie asked, ignoring the continued banter about whether Rose was a murderer and her house was haunted.

“You’re going to meet the detectives,” Kyle said. He seemed to be the talkative one. He gave us a grin that was supposed to be humorous but was hard and mean instead. “Then you’re going to take them on a little tour. Show them where you killed that girl.”

“We didn’t kill anyone.” I shouldn’t have fallen for it—I knew better. But the words still came out of me.

Kyle shrugged. “If you did it, you can be sure Quentin will get it out of you. He’s good at that.”

It was supposed to sound sinister, I was sure, as if Detective Quentin in his warm-up suit was the gestapo. All it did was remind me to be on my guard. I fished in my purse for my sunglasses and put them on, wishing I’d had time before breakfast to talk to Eddie about what our plan was. I thought about the girl Eddie thought he’d seen in the truck bed. I thought about the truck’s lights in our rear window, growing bigger and brighter as it gained on us.

I’m sorry. He’s coming.

Rhonda Jean was dead.

I swallowed hard, glad that my sunglasses covered my eyes. I was supposed to be on my honeymoon, and instead I had a dead girl to deal with. My mother would laugh if she knew.

I looked over at Eddie. He was wearing a navy blue T-shirt and his clean jeans. He looked at me, unperturbed by the sunglasses, and touched his finger to my chin, ran it gently along my jawline.

“Those cops we passed going the other way,” he said softly, not caring that the two police up front could hear. “They were going back to Rose’s to search our luggage.”

The cops went silent. Even Kyle.

I frowned. Eddie was right. Why else would a police car be heading back in the direction of Rose’s? It made me angry, even though there would be nothing for them to find. Our bloody clothes from last night. My bathing suit. Eddie’s jogging shorts and sneakers. Some sunscreen. My tampons and my birth control pills. Eddie’s swim trunks and the pills he took when he couldn’t sleep.

We were just two people on our honeymoon, and the police would see that from our luggage. And still, it made me mad.

Eddie dropped his finger from my jaw and took out his own sunglasses, a pair of aviators he’d had since the army. When he put them on, I couldn’t see my husband anymore—just the man who had spent fourteen months in Iraq, doing God knew what.

Then the car stopped, and the cops let us out to meet with Detective Quentin.