“Must be with the hooker. Don’t see Charlotte as the type,” I say, and I don’t even know how I’m still talking about this. I should be banging my head against the wall and pulling my hair out at this point because this is just so outrageous. He doesn’t say anything, but the look on his face does.
“Oh. I see.” And I do, I get it, and I hate that it stings so bad. “A different woman altogether. You literally just have a completely other life. A double fucking life I never saw all these years,” I say, fully defeated, and I sit back down on the couch and stare at the plush white area rug under my feet.
“You have to believe me. Yes, I got the stuff from Caleb, but so did a lot of people. Just ask around. It was harmless. Yes, we had a minor tiff after I paid him and he didn’t deliver when I needed him.”
“Oh, you had your date waiting, and you couldn’t get your coke for her. You had to wait on your predinner coke-snorting. How could he? Do you realize that I had to just say a sentence like that because of you? You disgust me.”
“Cora, you have to believe me.”
“No. Actually, I don’t.”
“Fine, I’ll get out, and yes, I deserve you hating me, but come on. You know I didn’t have anything to do with Caleb. What you’re saying is crazy.”
“Do you thinkcrazyis the word you want to use? Remember all the other times you said that? And I was right each time. I don’t even know who you are, so no, I don’t know if you’re lying about this like you have lied about everything else in your life,” I say and start to walk away. I don’t know where to go. I just suddenly want this over.
“Cora! Stop. It was just silly drugs. It was a bad decision, I get it, but you’re talking about—Why would you think I would want to harm him?” he pleads.
“I already told you. Good luck with the police. I hope you can keep your lies straight,” I say, and I walk outside and get in my car and drive off because I don’t know what else to do and I can’t hear him say one more thing ever again.
I call Paige as I drive and tell her to go ahead and turn him in.
25
PAIGE
Paige didn’t know what to expect when she brought her pile of evidence to the police station. She knows they think she’s unstable at this point and knew it would prove difficult for them to take her seriously, but what she handed them was more than enough, she thought. No matter what they think of her, there is a mountain of undeniable evidence.
The guy who originally investigated the case, if you can call it that, liked to remind her of the fact she was well aware of already: he was never looking for a killer with motive, he was looking for some intoxicated person or someone texting and driving who hit Caleb by accident. The crime to him was fleeing the scene, not murder, but now she had a thing or two to say to him. So when the woman at the front desk offered for her to talk to one of the available officers, she said she’d wait for Detective Denning. And she waited nearly three hours rather than making an appointment or talking to someone else.
She sat in a stiff metal chair, hugging her box to her chest. This was it. This was her time. She’d wait forever if she had to, but she would be listened to. When Denning finally arrived, she scrambled to her feet before he could walk past her. She saw the woman at the desk point and say something to him. He turned to see Paige, and she was sure he stifled an eye roll. His shoulders dropped, and he looked like he was ready to make an excuse as to why he didn’t have time to talk to her right now, but Paige approached him. The woman told him how long she’d been waiting, so he reluctantly made a gesture with his head for her to follow him back to his office.
She’s been in his office before. She’d showed up all the time for the first few months, bullied her way back to see him and bordered on verbally abusing the staff. She understands why he’s reluctant to talk to her, but she thinks he should have done more. She tried to understand the logic when everyone reiterated the things the detective said.It’s very hard to solve this sort of thing, no camera, no witnesses, no suspects. A freak accident with an irresponsible or maybe drunk and unaware driver, but you can’t order search warrants and phone records for every neighbor you don’t like.Fine. That all might be true, but now he has to listen. Her hunch was right.
“Good to see you again, Mrs. Moretti,” he says, and she knows that of course he doesn’t mean it, but she doesn’t care.
“What have we got this time?” he asks with nothing but placating skepticism in his voice.
“Proof,” she says. She takes out the photos that prove Finn’s affair and explains the prenup Finn and Cora had and how that gives him a motive since Caleb caught him cheating. She shows him the money transfer, phone records, all of it, and then sits down across from him and watches him, her eyes darting from his face to the contents he’s paging through to see if she can read him. After what seems like an eternity, he finally takes his glasses off and puts down the last of the pages from the stack and looks at her. Is the look he gives her dismissive? Impressed? She can’t tell. His features are always arranged in the same unreadable way, no matter what the situation.
“I’ll have him come down and talk to us,” he says. She wants to give him an exasperated sigh and explain it all again.How can you just have a casual chat? You should arrest him immediately.But she stands and thanks him instead because it’s a lot further than she’s ever gotten, and his willingness to look into this at all, after so many attempts on her part, is a big deal, she knows. She tells him to keep the box because she has copies of everything, and then she sees herself out. She feels the corners of her mouth creep up into something resembling a smile as she walks to her car. She’s going to get justice, finally. For Caleb. That’s all she wants.
She wants to call Grant on her way home and tell him, but she doesn’t because he doesn’t need another disappointment if, for any reason, it doesn’t turn out the way she thinks it will, the way she knows it has to. She visualizes it, though: telling him that they are finally free of some of the weight of it. Her obsession and his depression that butt up against each other in the worst possible way and keep them apart don’t have to control them forever. She thinks of holding him, crying with him, finally feeling a sense of closure, and she doesn’t swallow back the tears that prick her eyes. She lets them fall as she drives to meet Cora and Nicola to help give another bastard what’s coming to him.
26
PAIGE
At ten o’clock the women meet, and it feels riskier now that Finn is home in the main house only fifty feet away. Cora repeats herself, saying that nobody ever comes out to the mother-in-law unit—haven’t maybe for years, so they should be safe—but the more she says it, the more Paige thinks she’s trying to convince herself it’s true. She can only pray it is.
Paige wears black yoga pants and a black hoodie. She has pepper spray in a hot-pink cartridge that wraps around her wrist on a Velcro band and looks idiotic. When she pulls out an old knit ski mask, Nicola gasps.
“I thought you said a hoodie and glasses. Are you going to wear that? You look like you’re going to murder someone,” she says.
“Eh, yeah, I did say that, but then I remembered what you said about how many cameras were in there. Can’t be too careful.”
“God,” Nicola says, “I don’t know about this, it’s—”
“Fucking nuts,” Cora says.
