“Excuse me?” She batted a set of perfectly false lashes at me, as if she must have misheard.
I leaned forward, perched on the edge of my seat, fully intending to press my advantage. “If you and my ex-husband were as intimate as you’re suggesting, tell me something you could only know if you’d been with him.”
A nervous smile broke over Penny’s face. It cracked in tiny lines at the corners of her mouth, revealing the truth of her age. It wasn’t the fact that she was significantly older than Steven that made me think she was lying—I’d be a hypocrite to assume that after my fling with a twenty-two-year-old law student last fall. Julian Baker and I had only briefly dated, but those few short weeks had been fiery enough. It wasn’t Penny’s age. It was something else. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
She looked back and forth between Nick and me. “I don’t think you really want me to do that.”
“Oh, but I do.”
“Finn,” Nick whispered. I held up a hand, holding Penny Dupree’s stare. Steven was as average as they come, in every possible way. If you were to strip him naked and stick him in a lineup, you’d be hard-pressed to find anything uniquely memorable about him.
“Well,” she said with a hesitant look between us, “there was that one thing…”
“Go on,” I prodded. She was bluffing. I had her on the ropes.
“There was that noise he would make… right before he… you know…”
The air left my lungs as Penny looked away.
I did know. On the rare occasions when Steven and I did have sex, I used to have to close our bedroom windows to keep the neighbors from hearing him. The only way Penny could know that about him was if she had heard those sounds, too.
I stood up and pointed a finger at her. “Just because Steven screwed you once doesn’t mean he murdered your husband.” At the very least, she could acknowledgethataccusation against him was bullshit.
Her face flushed with shame. “If it had only been once, I might agree with you.”
Nick put a steadying hand on my back. “We should probably go,” he said quietly. He stood, but I couldn’t make myself walk out with him. While none of this was sitting right with me, there was one thing about her confession that felt entirely wrong.
“If you suspected back then that Steven had something to do with your husband’s disappearance, why wait until now to tell the police?”
Penny shook her head, confusion knitting her brow. “I never told them about my tryst with Steven.”
I frowned. “If you never told them, how did Detective Tran find out?”
“I asked him the same thing. He told me he heard it on a podcast, some true crime show run by a couple of local college kids. They said they got an anonymous tip from someone who claimed I’d been cheating on my husband. Detective Tran came to my house a few days ago and asked to see my financial records. That’s where he found the check I had written to Steven for the mulch. He noticed the address on Steven’s invoice—that it was on the same street where Gilford’s body was found. He confronted me about it once he made the connection. I never told him about my fling with Steven until he asked.”
The podcasters had to be Riley and Max. But who had been their anonymous source?
“Thank you for your time, Mrs. Dupree.” Nick nudged me again.
I didn’t look at her as I stood. Penny Dupree had been courteous enough, but she’d slept with my husband while I’d been eight months pregnant, and I didn’t owe her any pleasantries. I stormed past her and out the front door.
“I’m sorry,” she called after me. “I know what we did was wrong. But maybe you’re better off without him.”
I didn’t give her the satisfaction of admitting she was right.
Nick jogged after me as I tromped over her lawn to get to my van. “Finn, wait. I’ll follow you home.”
“Don’t.” I stepped out of his reach, unable to stand the sympathy in his wince. This was nothing I hadn’t been through before. “I don’t need a police escort. I’ll be just fine on my own.”
I got in my minivan and slammed the door.
Nick’s Impala had followed me most of the way home, though he’d been careful to maintain his distance. I hadn’t tried to shake him, but I hadn’t slowed down for him either. His headlights disappeared from view once I made the turn into South Riding, flashing twice in farewell before he continued on.
My street was dark, my driveway vacant except for Steven’s abandoned pickup. The barrage of cars that had flanked both sides of the driveway when I’d left the house earlier—my sister’s sedan, my mother’s Buick, Joey’s Explorer—were all gone when I finally pulled in.
Vero had texted me an hour ago to let me know the house was (mostly) empty, my parents had taken the children to their place, and there was a hot meal and a stiff drink waiting for me when I was ready to come home.
Mrs. Haggerty’s ancient Lincoln loomed like a ghost in her driveway, which meant Cam was probably still in my living room.
