Erwin made a face. “I don’t know. I just walked out and closed the door.”
“You didn’t try to help her. You didn’t even check?”
“No.” She stared at her hands clasped in her lap. “I dream about her sometimes,” she said softly, as if suddenly feeling bad about what happened. “I see her under that water.”
There was a lot Vera would like to have said to her just then, but none of it would matter or change her way of seeing things. Instead she decided there was a far more important secret to prod out of her. Yet another depraved act she couldn’t prove, but her gut said she was right. “You went into Larry Parson’s motel room, didn’t you?”
Erwin’s guard was back up again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do. Helen Carter said she noticed your car there when she was leaving after planting that baseball bat and other stuff in his motel room.” This was a total lie, but Erwin couldn’t be sure.
Vera’s phone vibrated with an incoming text. She read the news from Conover and smiled. She looked to Erwin once more. “No point lying to me, Valeri.”
“Okay. Yes, I went to his room. I knew he was the one who attacked us, or at least I thought so. But it’s not like I broke in or anything.” Another of those big huffy exhales. “The truth is, I followed Helen there. I knew she was up to something. I watched her break into his room. She had barely gotten into her car before he was driving back into the lot.” She laughed. “Old Helen almost got herself caught. Anyway, I was curious about why she’d gone in there, so I knocked on his door. He invited me in, and I demanded that he tell me the truth about what he’d done. But he just kept saying he had no idea what I was talking about. He said he was just here to find out what happened to his brother. I didn’t really believe him, though.”
“He offered you a drink.” Again Vera was following her gut here.
Erwin’s gaze narrowed. “So what. I’m over twenty-one. If a guy offers me a drink, I can take it.”
How cavalier she sounded. She clearly felt absolutely no regret for her actions. Vera had encountered her fair share of psychopaths, but Valeri Erwin was one of the coldest, and yet she gave the appearance of being harmless.
“Sure,” Vera agreed, “but you left him a little something in his glass, didn’t you? Something to go with his whiskey.”
For about two seconds a challenge sparked in Erwin’s eyes. She wanted Vera to know what she had done and gotten away with. But she caught herself just in time.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She folded her arms over her chest. “You should talk to Helen. If something bad was put in his glass, she had to have done it.”
“But you did have a drink with him?” Vera pressed.
“Sure, what of it?”
“Where’s the glass you used?”
That deer-caught-in-the-headlights look kicked aside her smug expression.
“You see, our forensics guy checked, and the other glass—there are two to a room—is missing from Larry Parson’s room. Did you take it with you? Like a souvenir?”
She shrugged again. “Maybe. I don’t remember. What’s the big deal?”
“Why did you steal the glass? If you only had a drink, what did it matter if you left your prints in the room on that glass?”
“I was just being careful,” she argued, feeling cocky again. “Besides, whoever put something in his glass, no one made him drink it.”
“He’s dead, Valeri,” Vera pointed out.
“I didn’t kill him. He killed himself. Like I said, talk to Helen. She was the one who broke into his room.”
“We’ll need your statement regarding your visit to him. Don’t leave anything out, Valeri. Word for word, all that you just told me. I’ll tell Bent if you forget anything.”
Erwin rolled her eyes. “Fine. And what do I get for that?”
Three to fifteen years, Vera suspected. She rounded up a notepad and a pen and placed both in front of Erwin. “We’ll see how thorough your statement is, then I’ll let you know if I still owe you something.”
Anticipation lit Erwin’s face as she picked up the pen and started to write. Vera doubted whatever came out in her statement would prove she’d murdered Larry Parson. But one of them—Erwin or Carter—had poisoned him. All they had to do was find where the fentanyl came from.
A needle in a haystack ... but if they kept digging, they would find it eventually.
One way or another, Valeri Erwin was going down.
