“Yeah, drunk and alone. She passed out behind the wheel and drowned when her car rolled into the lake. That’s an unattended death, not an accident.”
I start to argue, but slump in my chair. This isn’t fiction, and we’re not in a writers’ room.
“The end of that episode was a good one,” Freya says. “The kids got kidnapped, and we found the husband hiding with them in a cabin in the woods. He hadn’t died during the snowstorm at all. Gina exchanged herself for the children, and there was a terrific showdown. Tons of shooting.”
I’ve watched segments of this episode before, but I’ve mostly focused on the beginning, the section about me. “There was a final twist,” I say.
“Always,” Freya says. “And guess who came up with it? Me! The writers were totally pissed off because as soon as they heard my idea, they knew the storyhadto end that way. The husband had been having his own affair. He tried to cut it off, and the woman framed him formurder. And do you know who he was having an affair with? The wife of the man who was killed by the lake.”
My mother’s words come to me again:Good marriages don’t end. And bad marriages don’t have a good guy and a bad guy.
“You’re talking about Andrea Haviland,” I say. Maybe Mrs. Haviland has something to hide, after all. With the podcast, I set out to learn more about who my father was, but Freya now has me questioning the very foundation of what happened on the lake. “Could she have been having an affair with Mark Kilgore?”
“I mean, I suppose,” Freya says. “But this was a TV show. Not real life. If I were investigating this case, I’d start with the wife. Jane Reid. The wife should always be a prime suspect.”
My mother did not stab herself so she could crawl through the woods and almost bleed out. “I don’t think so,” I say.
“If you say so, Harold. But give me a whiteboard, two pepperoni pizzas, and a team of sweaty writers, and I’ll make it work. You can make any story work when you have a deadline.”
I glance to where my phone lies on the table, recording our every word. It’s time to be honest with Freya. “I should tell you something,” I say.
“Don’t bother baring your soul, Harold,” Freya says. “We’re almost done with breakfast. Who knows if we’ll ever see each other again.”
Her phone rings. She glances at the screen and clicks into the call. “What?” she says.
I hear a muffled voice on the other end. Freya nods and looks at me as she moves to the other side of the deck. Below us, a car pulls into the lot. Detective Gilcrest gets out wearing a black anorak and leather sneakers, a phone to his ear. He looks up to where I sit, as Freya clicks off her call. “I need to buzz him in,” she says, her voice tight.
I’m pretty certain my game is up.
She slides open the glass door, and when she returns, she stands at the railing, looking out over the lake. I start to speak, but she cuts me off. “I don’t appreciate being played.”
Behind us, the detective steps onto the deck. I expect Ginger to growl. Instead, she twitches, as though desperate to greet him.
“Release,” Freya says.
The dog dashes to the detective, tail wagging. Gilcrest crouches to pet her, then takes Freya’s hand and kisses her cheek. “Charlie Kilgore,” he says to me. “I heard a rumor I might find you here.”
Chapter Seventeen
Freya extracts herself from the detective’s clutches and stands with her back to the lake. “Don’t get territorial, Duncan,” she says. “Ginger doesn’t like it.”
On the contrary, the German shepherd seems perfectly content with the detective—certainly happier than she’s been with me—especially when he takes a bag of treats from his pocket and doesn’t make her sit before giving her one.
“You’ll spoil her,” Freya says.
“That’s my job,” Gilcrest says. “Save me any breakfast?”
“I could make you pancakes,” I say quickly, too quickly, but the last thing I want is to be on the detective’s bad side.
“Don’t bother,” Freya says. “The detective is leaving. And so are you.”
“I can explain,” I say.
“I doubt you can, Harold.”
Gilcrest places himself between Freya and me, and I don’t know if it’s instinctual or deliberate, but it’s definitely territorial. “You left your boat on the town dock,” he says to me. “Blancy wants it moved.”
“You’re running errands for Blancy now, Duncan?” Freya asks.
