Chapter 53

53

That evening, Catherine carefully sets the scene. Despite everything that’s going on, she wants the moment she and Ted have waited for to be perfect. She’s bought flowers for the table. She’s ordered a gourmet meal from their favorite French restaurant, which she’s keeping warm in the oven.

When Ted arrives home from work, she takes his jacket and tells him she has a surprise for him. He turns and looks at her and she smiles. “It’s not a bad surprise,” she says.

“Oh, good. Because we’ve had a lot of those, lately,” Ted says.

“Put all that out of your mind,” she tells him. “Come with me.”

He follows her into the dining room, where she has set a lovely table. “Smell that?” she asks. “I’ve ordered in, from Scaramouche.”

“What’s the occasion?” Ted asks.

“I’ll tell you, but first, sit down.”

She brings the food to the table, and they sit across from one another. She lights the candles.

She’s put a bottle of red wine on the table, which he automatically opens. He reaches over to pour for her but she places her fingers across the top of her wineglass and smiles at him. He glances up at her in surprise.

“None for me,” she says. He doesn’t seem to get it. She tells him, “It’s not good for the baby.”

“You’re pregnant?” He gets up and comes around to her side of the table. She stands and he embraces her. She can’t see his face.

It is, she thinks, a perfect moment.

---

•   •   •later that evening, Ted slips out of the house. He tells Catherine he’s going to pick up a few things. She seems happy, chattering on about how she’ll have to switch from wine to tonic and lime—without the gin—so no one will suspect she’s pregnant. At least for a while. Until they’re past the three-month point. He urges her to relax, have a bath and pamper herself while he’s out. He tells her how happy he is about the baby and that he’ll be home soon to take care of her. Then he leaves the house, closing the door behind him.

He wants a child, of course he does. He’s just not sure he wants one with her. He imagines the two of them, with a baby, living in the murder house, and has to suppress a shudder.

He drives to the arranged meeting place. He’s going to see his sister-in-law, Lisa. He has a terrible need to confide in someone, and there’s no one else he can talk to about this. He hopes he’s not making a mistake in trusting Lisa. But if he doesn’t do something, he’s going to explode. He and Catherine have been worrying out loud that Dan may be a murderer and agreeing that they must do what they can to protect him.

But maybe Dan isn’t the murderer.

After the detectives visited him at his office yesterday, Ted told Catherine what they’d said. How stupid she’d been for not telling him what the earrings looked like. She’d gone very still and said, Shit. She described them then, but the truth is, he can’t remember her ever wearing them. On the other hand, he never notices her jewelry.

He has no idea what Catherine is really thinking. Does she know he suspects her? And now this—she’s pregnant. He could do without this good news.

He stands against his car in the falling dusk in the parking lot of a Home Depot and speculates about what’s been going on over at Dan’s house. He hopes to find out.

He watches Lisa drive up in her little car and stop. She gets out and approaches him, looking worried. Unexpectedly, she throws herself against him for a hug. He remembers how she always hugs Catherine. She hugs everyone. She’s a woman who thrives on comfort—both giving and receiving.

She pulls away and says, “Sorry, I’m a mess.”

“That’s okay, I’m a mess too,” he says.

“Where’s Catherine? Why are we meeting here?” she asks.

“I wanted to talk, just you and me,” he says. Is he imagining it, or is her back going up? She’s closer to Catherine than she is to him.

“Why?”

He hastens to reassure her. “I’m just finding this hard. I thought you might be too. I thought we could give each other moral support.”

She leans against his car then, beside him. “I know Catherine is trying to protect Dan.” Her voice trembles. “But—I keep imagining what might have happened. . . .” She stops speaking and stares straight ahead of her across the parking lot, as if seeing the murders in her mind’s eye. Finally, she says, her voice bleak, “I know Catherine wants to protect him—but I’m not sure I can.”

“What do you mean?” Ted says, turning toward her. Does she know something? Something they don’t?

She swallows. “If he did it . . . could you live with him?”

Ted looks away. So there’s nothing definitive, nothing she can say to help him. He’s living with the same horror. He met with Lisa hoping she would tell him something to confirm Dan’s guilt, that he’d confessed to her or something. Then Ted could stop doubting. But she doesn’t know any more than he does. They’re both in the dark. They stand in silence for a while.

She speaks slowly. “I try to tell myself that he couldn’t have done it, not the Dan I know—but what if there’s a Dan I don’t know? They have a witness putting him in Brecken Hill that night. He lied to me about it. But I keep telling myself he didn’t do it, because part of me can’t believe it, and doesn’t want to believe it.”

Ted looks at her and feels a terrible need to unburden himself. He swallows and says, “I know what you mean.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t think you do.”

“Listen,” Ted says, his voice low and strained. “I don’t know if Dan did it or not. But if he didn’t, then it was probably Catherine.”

She looks at him, obviously shocked. “Why would you think that?”

“She was there, Lisa.”

“After they were dead.”

“That’s what she says, but she came home that night and acted like everything was fine. She made up an entire conversation she had with her mother, who was already dead. And said nothing for two days. Who does that?”

“She thought she was protecting Dan.”

He nods. He hesitates, on the brink of betrayal. Should he confide in Lisa or not? He exhales. “That’s what we all thought. But the police came to my office—they found a pair of Sheila’s earrings in Catherine’s jewelry box when they searched our place. They say they’re one of the items that went missing from the house that night.”

“What? I haven’t heard anything about that.”

“Catherine says she borrowed them a couple of weeks before, but I don’t remember seeing them.”

“Maybe she did borrow them.”

“Maybe,” Ted says. “She swore to me she did.” After a pause, Ted says, “That detective seems convinced that Fred was going to change his will to give Audrey half, and that one of them knew.”

“That’s bullshit, isn’t it?”

Ted shrugs. “They don’t seem to think so, because Fred was dying, and they seem to believe he was putting his affairs in order.” She nods thoughtfully. He continues. “I know Sheila had something she wanted to tell Catherine that night. Maybe that was it.” He hesitates, but he can’t help himself, he needs to tell someone. “Catherine was upstairs alone with her mother that night, just before dinner. Maybe Sheila told her about the will then.” Lisa stares at him, her eyes big. After another silence, Ted asks, “Is Dan saying anything to you—about Catherine?”

“Just that she knew about the disposable suits in our garage, and that he never locks the door.” She averts her eyes. “He claims she’s trying to set him up, but I never believed it. . . .” She trails off.

“I don’t know what to believe,” Ted says.

“It could have been either one of them,” Lisa says slowly, obviously shaken. “What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know. But don’t tell Dan about the earrings, okay?”