Chapter Eight

CHAPTER EIGHT

The police kept us until noon. When we finished pointing out what we remembered on Atticus Line, they brought us to the Coldlake Falls police station to take a formal statement.

They questioned us separately. My interview took an hour and a half, during which I was asked over and over to repeat my version of last night’s events. I left out the truck and the girl Eddie thought he’d seen in the truck bed. I left out the flower I’d seen by the side of the road. And, of course, I left out everything about both Eddie’s past and mine. Other than that, I was honest.

It was as good as they were going to get from me.

When they finished with us, they drove us in another squad car back to Rose’s. The sun was at its merciless zenith, pulsing high in the cloudless sky. The window air conditioners at the B and B were humming loudly and the lights were off, the living room lit by bright sunlight coming through the lacy curtains. Rose was nowhere to be seen, but there were two tuna sandwiches in plastic wrap on the kitchen table with a handwritten note: Eat it if you want it.

We ate the sandwiches in silence. Exhaustion was creeping up on me, mixing with the heat and lack of sleep and pulsing behind my eyes. Eddie was restless, deep in thought. When we adjourned to our bedroom, he changed into his shorts and sneakers.

“I’m going for a run,” he said.

I knew better than to point out how hot it was outside. Eddie was used to it, and he didn’t care. He was a dedicated runner. “Wear sunscreen,” I said, pushing my sneakers off and getting on the bed. “Drink water.”

He grinned at me, the first smile I’d seen from him all day, and I remembered it yet again: We were married. Actually married. For a second I ached for the honeymoon we could have had, lazily swimming and then making love. Despite everything, I had the urge to pull him into bed with me right now, but this room was creepy, and Rose could listen outside the door at any minute. I sighed. It was going to have to wait.

“I’m bad luck,” I told him.

“It’s me who’s bad luck,” he replied. “It’s followed me all my life.”

“That’s not true. Your parents are nice. You had a nice childhood.”

“I had a nice childhood after my parents adopted me,” he corrected me.

He’d been six when his mother gave him up, old enough to have memories of her. Old enough to be aware that she didn’t want him anymore.

But he’d been adopted almost immediately, and his adopted parents were good, kind people. His adopted family had aunts and uncles and cousins in Ann Arbor. I’d met some of them, and their kindness was alien to me, their commitment to chatting about chili recipes and watching football games almost unnerving. These were people who had led decent, stable lives, and if they were a little boring, it was a small price to pay. I had started to wonder if I could let myself have a life like that.

It had almost seemed possible until Eddie and I ended up in Coldlake Falls, covered in blood.

“Maybe both of us are bad luck,” I said. I leaned over the bed and scrutinized the shelf under the bedside table. “What are the odds that Rose has a subscription to Glamour so I have something to read?”

“Not good,” Eddie said.

I found a paperback novel and picked it up. It was Flowers in the Attic. “There is something very wrong with that woman,” I said.

“Shh. She might be listening.” Eddie walked to the door. “I’ll do my best not to get murdered while I’m on my run. I’ll be back in a little while.”

I watched him go, because he was Eddie and I was allowed to appreciate the back of him as he left a room. Then I turned on the fan in the corner to bolster the whiff of cold air coming from the air conditioner, propped myself on pillows on the fussy bed, and started reading Flowers in the Attic for the first time since I was fifteen, while Princess Diana watched silently above my head, judging. I fell asleep after the first ten pages.

When I woke up, it was still hazily bright outside. The book was under my hand. The fan creaked as it oscillated in the corner. And Rose was sitting in the chair next to the bed, staring at me.

I blinked. For a sleepy second I thought she was a ghost, she was sitting so still. Then I realized she was real.

Rose frowned at me, as if annoyed. Her hands were in her lap, her nails painted pink against her light-blue jeans. She seemed in no hurry to say anything.

I was too groggy to feel particularly alarmed. “What are you doing here, Rose?” I asked.

“What did they say?” It was the same grating voice I remembered from this morning.

“This is my room,” I said, scrubbing a hand over my face. “You need to leave.”

“They said I murdered Robbie, didn’t they?”

“What?” The nap had been a powerful one, and the fussy, lacy room was soporific. I couldn’t summon any outrage, just the weird feeling you get when you first leave a dream. “Who?”

“Kyle Petersen.” Rose’s voice was truly angry, though it wasn’t directed at me. She lifted her hostile gaze away from me and aimed it at the opposite wall. “That little turd thinks he can pass judgment on me. On anyone. He’s as useful as an itch in the pants. Robbie said he was one of the worst recruits he’d ever seen.”

I tried to follow. She was talking about the cop, Kyle. The one who had joked about Rose killing her husband, then digging his grave in the garden.

“And Chad Chipwell?” Rose said this slightly unbelievable name with spitting disdain. “When did he ever have a thought of his own in his head? He’s so gullible you could tell him Jimi Hendrix is still alive and he’d scratch his head and ask when he’s putting a new record out.”

This must be the cop who drove with Kyle. Rose’s rant was creepy and completely inappropriate. I had no idea why I was entertained by it.

“Yeah,” I said, propping my shoulders up on my pillow and running a hand through my sleep-rumpled hair. “Kyle told us you killed your husband and that he haunts this place. The other one, Chad, told us not to listen.”

Rose snorted. “They’re just jealous because Robbie was a good cop. The best one they had in this stupid town. He could have moved to the state police and been a detective, but they wouldn’t promote him because of the color of his skin. So instead of making Robbie detective, we got Quentin.” She rolled her eyes behind her huge glasses. “The almighty Quentin, praise the Lord.”

That made me smile. I sat up straighter in bed.

“And Beam,” Rose went on, not needing any cues from me. “He’s only good at pushing paperwork, if that. Robbie caught him sleeping in his car on a stakeout once. Beam threatened to have him fired. Did you eat the tuna?”

“Um, yes,” I said, wondering for the first time where Eddie was. “It was delicious, thank you.” I glanced at the clock radio on the bedside table, sitting on a lace doily beneath a frilly lavender lamp. It was three o’clock.

“Good. I got frozen hamburger patties for dinner. I fry them up. I got buns, ketchup, mustard. You can have some if you like.”

I cleared my throat. “Sure, that sounds good.” I was fully awake now, and I looked Rose in the eyes. “So, you don’t think my husband and I are murderers?”

Rose looked straight back at me without blinking. Her gaze was flat, but there was something there, flickering in the depths. Intelligence, maybe. Anger, perhaps. Or it could have been the determination of a woman who has survived bad things. Who had maybe done bad things. Like me.

“I don’t know you,” Rose said in her blunt, unpleasant way. “I could see you going either way. But your husband?” She shook her head. “That man has never killed anyone in his life.”

“He served in Iraq,” I told her.

“Sure he did. And why did he come home? He didn’t like it much, did he? If he was the killing type, he’d still be there.”

I stared at her, my lips parted in surprise.

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Rose went on. “Quentin thinks he has you pegged, and he’s not going to take his eyes off you. If you really are a murderer, you can try it on me, but you’ll have a fight on your hands. Robbie taught me plenty while we were married.” She pursed her lips and looked down at her hand, where she picked at the arm of her chair. She was quiet a moment before she said, “What really happened last night? When you picked up that girl? What did you see?”

So Rose wanted something, then. That, I understood. “I’ll tell you,” I said slowly. “But I have questions of my own.”

Rose looked up at me. “You want information? About what?”

“This town.”

She smiled. “If you want gossip, this town has plenty, and I know all of it. Just tell me what you want to know.”