“He had a metal rod in his leg,” the detective explained. “The implant had a UDI, a unique device identifier. A serial number, basically. We’ve had it on file since the family went missing.”
But that wasn’t why they came. They traveled here specifically for me because of what they found with Patrick’s body.
The one thing that would trace right back to me.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Hanna
I stood with Stella on the front step of the big house and watched Marni get into the police car. My mind shot back to the blood in the entry hall of Victoria and Patrick’s house that day.
Red streaks on the floor. The knife in my hand. A darkness fell over me as the memories came flooding back. I could feel my vision blink in and out while my brain threatened to shut down. When I’d looked up, there she was. Marni walking out of the kitchen wiping the blood from her fingers.
It’s not... I didn’t...
She hadn’t said more to explain back then or when she left the house today. This time, she simply asked us to call Cam, which Stella was doing right now.
The law enforcement visit didn’t solve anything. Didn’t answer a single question. It only created more. Jeremy had vanished and except for a perfunctory comment from the detective about my son likely being on the way back home, the police didn’t evenreference my anguish or acknowledge my rage over their indifference.
Stella pocketed her cell and joined me on the steps. “Cam will meet her at the station. He’s calling an attorney.”
“Even if she’s in and out quickly, the damage will be done. The whole town will know she got hauled in.” As a teacher, that would matter. Her reputation would implode. Rumors would start. I’d experienced a comparable sort of thing when everyone weighed in on my private business, and I wished I could spare Marni the same torment.
“Okay, but this feels like an overreach.” Stella seemed to be working through the facts as she spoke. “The body is Patrick’s, which is horrible but not a huge surprise. Most people have assumed for years that he’s dead.”
“Or they did until Aubrey popped up.” Then the game of musical Tanners began. Who was alive? Who was dead? Who did it and what exactly did they do?
Stella shrugged. “Either way, the majority of the mourning likely happened long ago. Except for those who tagged Patrick as the killer, living on a beach somewhere. Those folks now get to wrestle with whatever guilt they might feel for getting the situation so wrong.”
Only the Tanner family, with its prestige and resources, could turn a sleepy town upside down, then do it all over again. Fifteen years of silence morphed into days of nonstop confusion since Aubrey’s reappearance. As always, no matter what else was happening in the world or locally, all the attention shifted to the Tanners and stayed there.
Being tangentially related to the family wasn’t enough forJeremy to warrant even a minute of the town’s collective worry. He’d been the top-secret Tanner. Expendable to everyone but me.
“Why take Marni in? Why not us? Why not Aubrey?” Stella asked.
That part didn’t need a lot of dissecting. The answer wasn’t a big mystery, even though Stella pretended it was. “I’m guessing they have evidence pointing directly to Marni.”
“What would that be?”
I didn’t exactly know but for a noted therapist who was supposed to be able to read people and understand human nature, it sounded like Stella had missed a really big clue. I’d spent time with the Tanners. For work, yes, but the Tanners were the kind of people who treated everyone not related to them ashelpand treated thehelpas invisible. I could be in a room, hear every syllable of a family fight, and they’d act like I didn’t exist.
I decided to drop the hints Stella needed to put the picture together. “Right up until that meeting about his assets, Xavier treated Marni like garbage. Ever wonder why?”
“Because he liked to play mind games. Because he was a jackass. Because he wanted to confuse the crap out of people.”
“All true.” I’d been a witness to Marni’s poor decision-making. Stella had been spared or what she’d seen she clearly hadn’t processed. “Marni hung around the house all the time.”
“She and Victoria were inseparable. I never understood the friendship. Victoria wasn’t exactly the type to look outside of her charitable donation crowd for a lunch date, but they shared similar upbringings. Marni was closest to her. Had been for years.”
Oh, Stella. She kept sidestepping the obvious. “Marni was atthe Tanner house—Victoria’s, not Xavier’s—on the day the family disappeared. We both saw her.”
“That’s the least surprising thing that happened that day, but yeah.”
I pivoted. “Xavier collected information about people.”
“Not sure where you’re going with this, but I’m intimately familiar with that trait of his.”
Of course she was. Xavier’s hold over Stella’s mother had always been a source of gossip. I’d watched the dynamic firsthand. Isabel didn’t like to work. Xavier saw her laziness as a weakness he could capitalize on. He gave her money to ensure she owed him and confirmed he would collect. A sick and uncomfortable back-and-forth that benefited Xavier, which was the way he dealt with every person he met.
