“Why do you care?” Patricia twisted around to wrestle with the door again.
“Because my children’s father is being held for murder right now,and I don’t believe he killed the man they found buried in Margaret Haggerty’s yard, but I think you know who did.”
Patricia went still. “I can’t help you!” she snapped. “I don’t know anything about that man. Or who killed him.”
“But you do know something.” Her body language alone told me that much. She was hiding something, and I was determined to find out what it was.
“I don’t owe you anything! Aaron and I arefinallyhappy. And we don’t need anyone rehashing what happened to Harris last fall.”
“That’s exactly what’s going to happen if you don’t tell us what you know,” I warned her. “The police are pursuing a case against my ex-husband for the murder of Gilford Dupree. Their investigation has them looking very closely at Steven’s business, and there’s a very suspicious Loudoun County cop who’s a little too curious about the bodies they found on his farm, including your husband’s.”
Patricia’s jaw tensed.
“You can either help me figure out who really killed that man, or you can let the LCPD reopen the investigation into your husband’s murder.” We both knew that wasn’t really a choice.
“If I tell you what I know, are you going to let me go?”
“That depends on the quality of your information,” Vero said, as I said, “Of course.” I glared at Vero sideways. “What’s Birdie Chen’s connection to Margaret Haggerty?” I asked.
Patricia pressed her mouth shut.
“A man doesn’t turn up dead in an old woman’s backyard for no good reason,” Vero pointed out.
Patricia held up a finger, making her position clear to both of us. “I am not saying Birdie Chen had anything to do with this. But she knew people.”
“What people?” I asked.
“You know,” Patricia said, fumbling for words, “people who do what you do.”
“People who write books?”
“People who handle problem husbands.”
Vero’s mouth formed a shocked O. No matter how many times or how many ways I had tried to explain to Patricia that her initial impression of me was based on a simple misunderstanding, she had stubbornly refused to believe I wasn’t a killer for hire. Maybe because it made her feel less foolish for propositioning me to murder her husband in the first place.
Patricia lowered her voice. “One day, after a particularly bad argument with Harris, I came in for my shift at the shelter. Aaron noticed I was in a lot of pain. My wrist was swollen, and I couldn’t hold any of the animals. I should have gone to the emergency room, but I had already been to the ER earlier that month, and I was worried someone at the hospital would report it. When I refused to let Aaron take me, he suggested I let one of the techs at the shelter look at my arm. Birdie was on duty that day. She took me back into the vet clinic, gave me some pain meds, and wrapped my wrist in a splint.
“When she asked me how I’d injured my arm, I made up some story about how I’d tripped over a curb. She told me she’d figured as much. That she’d ‘tripped over the bad-boyfriend curb a few too many times, too,’” Patricia said, hooking her fingers into air quotes. “Birdie knew exactly how the injury had happened. For weeks after that, I avoided her at work, afraid she might report it to someone.
“I was relieved when she finally took a position somewhere else. That was the last I time I saw her. But a few days after Birdie left, a woman I’d never met before showed up at the shelter and asked to speak with me.” Patricia bit her lip, as if she wasn’t sure she shouldcontinue. “When I asked the woman who she was, she gave me a fake name, but it was definitely Margaret Haggerty. She was old and very sweet. She seemed harmless, so when she offered to take me to lunch, I went.”
“Are you sure we’re talking about the same Mrs. Haggerty?” Vero muttered. I jabbed her with an elbow as Patricia went on.
“Margaret wouldn’t sayhowshe knew, only that she knew Harris wasn’t a good husband and she wanted to help me. I just assumed she was friends with Birdie—some kind of therapist or social worker or something. I figured Birdie had told her about my wrist. At first, I was upset, but then Margaret and I started talking. She asked me all kinds of questions about Harris—who he worked for, what he did for a living. It was such a relief to get it all off my chest—about the kind of person he really was. I told her more than I should have, about the horrible things he was involved in… you know, the stuff with the mob. She listened to it all, and I never felt like she was judging me. After I told her everything, she apologized. She said she was sorry she and her friends couldn’t help me with my problem. That she wished they could. She seemed genuinely upset she couldn’t do something more.
“As Margaret was leaving, she said she had heard rumors about a website.” Patricia threw a pointed look at me. “She said she didn’t know for sure, but she’d heard people talking about a place online where women could post anonymously about their problems. I told her I didn’t see how gossiping with a bunch of strangers on the internet would help me get out of my marriage, but she kept insisting that I should try to find it. That I shouldn’t feel guilty for asking for help. That I’d be better off without him. I asked her if she knew what the website was called or where to find it, but she said she had no idea. She said she had only heard whispers about it and she wasn’t good with computers. Then she left, and I never heard from her again.
“It took me weeks of searching, but I finally found the women’s forum she was talking about. I didn’t have any luck there. I tried to look Margaret up to thank her anyway. That’s when I realized the name she had given me was fake. I didn’t know her real name until I saw her on the news a few weeks ago, when they found that man buried in her yard.”
Vero’s jaw fell open. “Definitely didn’t see that one coming.”
“Mrs. Haggerty was the one who told you about the women’s forum?” I asked in an attempt to distill all this information into some digestible breadcrumb I could follow. The women’s forum Patricia was referring to had only been a chat group on the surface. It had also been a thriving whisper network of disgruntled women searching for contract killers who were willing to dispose of problem husbands for a price. Before I’d met her, Patricia had been a frequent visitor to the site, desperate to find someone willing to murder Harris. But no one there had been willing to kill someone who had worked for the Russian mob. That’s when Patricia had stumbled onto me, misconstrued the nature of my work, and offered me fifty grand to murder her horrible spouse.
“Look, I’ve told you everything I know. Can I have my phone back now?” Patricia held out a hand, but I was hardly listening. My thoughts had snagged on something Mrs. Haggerty had said to her. That Patricia wouldbe better off without him.
Margaret Haggerty and Penelope Dupree had both given me that exact same advice.
And what had Mrs. Haggerty meant when she saidshe was sorry she and her friends couldn’t help? Why had she sought Patricia out? What kind of help had her friends hoped to offer a woman who was desperate to get out of her relationship?
