Page 104 of The Homewreckers
“It started in August. Frank wanted her to help me get my English grades up. I was being recruited by some D-1 schools, but my SATscores were in the toilet. At first, we’d meet in the library at school, but she said it was too distracting. Anyway, I got the idea of coming out here, to the beach house.”
“Did your folks know you were using the house?”
“Yeah. They were fine with it. Anything to help me get into a good football program. It was all they talked about.”
“Keep going,” Makarowicz said. “When did it turn sexual?”
Creedmore winced. “I’m telling you, it wasn’t like that. It was gradual. This one time, I’d gotten a B on a term paper she helped me write, and I was psyched to tell her about it. She came into the house, and just sort of, hugged me, and then we started kissing.…”
“And pretty soon there wasn’t a lot of tutoring going on?” Mak said.
“I guess. After that first time, she got pretty upset, said we could never do it again. We’d both get in trouble, she’d get fired. All that.”
“But she kept on seeing you, and you kept sleeping together?” the detective asked. “At the beach house?”
“At first. But then my folks found out about the parties me and my buddies were having out there, and they changed the locks. After that, me and Lanier met in the dock house.”
Creedmore twisted the ring on his finger. “It was crazy. But she was all I could think about. I’d text her, or leave notes in her car.” Creedmore looked up at Makarowicz. “I would never have hurt her. Never. I’m telling you, Frank did this.”
“Did she talk to you about him?”
“Hell yeah. She knew he was screwing around on her.”
“Was he ever violent with her?”
Creedmore considered the question. “Not violent, but when he had a few beers, he was pretty shitty to her. A mean drunk, you know?”
“Did Lanier know Frank was suspicious about her?”
“Yeah. Toward the end, she got totally paranoid. A couple times, she thought he was following her.”
“Was he?”
“Maybe.”
“Talk to me about the night she disappeared,” Mak prompted.
Creedmore pressed his fingertips to his eyes. The championship ring gleamed from the ring finger on his left hand.
He looked up at Makarowicz. “She broke up with me, you know? Said it had gone too far, and she was ashamed of what we’d done. She said I should be with a girl my own age.”
“When was this?”
“After we won the state championship. She’d left me a note in my car, but that night, after the game, I went over to her house, and waited outside. And we kind of got back together.”
“Had sex, you mean,” Makarowicz said. “Out here? At the beach?”
“No. In my car at a park around the corner from her house. And then she said it was the last time, and she really meant it.”
“Classy,” Mak muttered. “Talk to me about Super Bowl night.”
He was staring down at the ring again, twisting it around and around. “For a while, after that, she ghosted me. I texted, left notes in her car at school, went to her house, but she wouldn’t come out. Then, the day of the Super Bowl she texted me. She was pregnant.”
It was Makarowicz’s turn to stare. “And it was yours?”
“Yeah. Frank had a vasectomy. After Emma. I mean, what the hell? I was supposed to be going to Fordham, to play ball. I was fucking nineteen years old. What the hell am I supposed to do with that information?”
“So that’s why you killed her. To keep anybody from finding out.”
