Page 21 of The Secrets We Hide
“No sign of a will. Birth certificates were upstairs in the suitcase on the bed. No father listed. I asked Allison about him once and she told me Mandy was her reward for enduring a stupid mistake.”
Emmy knew a lot of women who felt that way.
She turned her attention to the foyer. The mouth of the curving stairs filled the right-hand side. The narrow hallway tucked down to the left. Beige tiles in the foyer gave way to dark hardwood floors everywhere else. Light brown carpet runner on the stairs. Tan walls. Oriental carpets in more variations of brown. The only bright colors came from the yellow evidence markers and fresh blood: spatter on the tiles near the door, spray around the broken side panel, a marker by a brass shell casing.
There were very few knickknacks on the entry table—two crystal candlesticks, a diffuser with black reeds. A muted print of Andrew Wyeth’sChristina’s Worldhung over a solid oak entry table. An olive-green leather keychain with an embossedAwas in a glass bowl beside three library books. Emmy saw a Toyota key fob. What looked like a house key. A dimple key for a high-security lock. A barrel key, which was a specialized,tube-shaped key that was used to open circular locks like the kind you’d find on a safe.
She asked, “You figure out what these keys go to?”
“Haven’t processed them yet, but there’s no safe of any kind in the house.”
Emmy felt a flicker of surprise. “Not even a gun safe?”
Sherry shook her head, but she was clearly thinking the same thing: an abused woman with a kid in the house should’ve kept any weapons locked down tight. Especially a cop.
Emmy leaned down to read the spines on the stack of books. She recognized two of the titles, butFeynman’s Tips on Physicsstruck her as far outside Allison’s area of interest.
Her back twinged when she stood up. She noticed a purple velvet Crown Royal bag on the floor in the middle of the hallway. The string was loose. The bag looked empty.
She said, “We had one book club meeting here when Allison and Mandy first moved in. The whole time, Bill wouldn’t leave her alone. Kept coming down the stairs asking Allison to help him pick out a shirt or find batteries for the remote or make him some tea. She never hosted again. I can’t remember the last time she even showed up for a meeting.”
“Asshole. He got exactly what he wanted.” Sherry didn’t bother to keep the anger out of her voice. “She never called you to the house off a DV?”
“Never to the house.” Over the years, Allison had reached out to Emmy at least a dozen times with complaints of domestic violence. “It was always after the fact. She’d call me from work or find me in town the next day. I’d go to Bill’s office to talk. Then I’d go back to her, and she would tell me it was nothing, that it all just got out of hand and to forget about it.”
“Me, too. Every time.”
The guilty expression was back on Sherry’s face.
Emmy’s own guilt was amplified by a detail she was too ashamed to share. Two months ago, Allison had left a voicemail on her phone saying that she was finally going to leave Bill. Emmy had let several days pass before she’d returned the call. Allison had lost her nerve by then, and Emmy hadn’t pushed her on it because retreating fit the pattern.
She had lost count of the number of times she’d met Allison for a drink at the Clifton Biergarten or sat in the passenger seat of her car watching her cry or slinked around the back of the sheriff’s station to listen to Allison talk about leaving Bill or having Bill arrested or somebody talking some sense into Bill or putting the fear of God into Bill and none of it had ever worked because Allison always, always went back to him.
She would never go back to anyone now.
Sherry asked, “What about Reggie?”
Emmy stepped around another marker beside pin drops of blood.
“You got him pretty good in his bad knee.”
“Did Allison ever mention she was having trouble with somebody she put away?”
Sherry paused before responding. “You think this was a targeted hit? Bad guy gets out of prison and wants revenge?”
Emmy didn’t know what she was thinking. Her cop’s intuition, herdon’t feel right, was flashing like crazy. “Allison got her private investigator’s license after she retired last year.”
“I heard she was consulting for the Clayville PD, too.”
Emmy nodded. “They couldn’t fire her after she filed the lawsuit. Do you know what she was doing for them?”
“Going through old cases looking for easy solves, I think? We haven’t processed the dining room yet, but I don’t see any Clayville police files. Just PI work.” Sherry indicated the mess of paperwork. “Typical divorce case stuff. Invoices for expensive jewelry. Credit card records. Viagra scripts. Meal receipts. Photos of couples going in and out of rooms at the Dew Drop Inn.”
Emmy was familiar with the no-tell motel, which was one of the only businesses in the county that didn’t have some kind of security cameras installed. Guests appreciated their round-the-clock discretion. Prostitutes used it on nights and weekends. Cheating spouses used it during banking hours.
Emmy asked, “How did the killer enter the house?”
“The garage doors were both up, but the side door to the kitchen has a digital lock. The front door was locked with the deadbolt. All the downstairs windows are still locked from the inside. Most of the upstairs are painted shut. Jude told me the back door wasajar when she came inside, so we’re assuming that’s his point of entry.”
