We all fell silent as Nick knelt, took his penlight from his pocket, and aimed it under the porch. He swept the beam slowly over the ground. The light sliced through the shadows across an empty stretch of dirt.
Slowly, he stood and clicked off the light. He pulled me close and lowered his voice. “Is there anything about this I need to know?” he asked. NotWhat aren’t you telling me?NotAre you hiding something?Like every question Nick asked, this one, too, had been carefully worded.
I shook my head. Held his gaze. “There’s nothing you need to know.”
He glanced back at the remaining members of the book club where they stood huddled by the woods. He dipped his head in farewell as he returned his penlight to his pocket. “You ladies drive safely getting home tonight.”
Then he tucked me under his arm and walked me to my van.
CHAPTER 24
It was nearly noon the next day when Penny and Mrs. Haggerty had finally finished meeting with their attorneys. Nick snuck us into a small adjacent room with an observation mirror, where we listened as the two women shared their confessions, one at a time, each of their stories perfectly aligning with the other’s recollection of the night Gilford had been murdered. Both women had been careful to leave out any mention of the book club they’d created since and, more important, its intended purpose. According to Penny and Mrs. Haggerty, their story began when they met at the library five years ago and ended the night they buried Penny’s husband. When Detective Tran asked if and how they had communicated with each other since, they admitted to a primitive system of hand-delivered letters and, later, a more modern approach using prepaid phones when the discovery of Gilford’s body made it necessary for them to come up with a plan.
Penny admitted to having made the anonymous call to Rileyand Max in an effort to frame Steven. When Detective Tran asked her if she’d ever, in fact, had an affair with my ex-husband, she’d laughed outright, which had made me laugh as well. Even Nick had cracked a smile.
Mrs. Haggerty admitted that pinning the crime on Steven had been her idea, because “he was a horse’s ass” and she’d “never really liked him anyway.” The idea to frame him had come to her in a moment of panic after Gilford’s body had been found in her yard. Since Steven had been the catalyst for their unlikely friendship five years ago, she said it seemed only fitting he become their solution to their mutual problem. When Mike Tran had scratched his head, looking befuddled, Mrs. Haggerty explained. It had been a Tuesday night in May five years ago when Penny and Mrs. Haggerty had been the only two people to show up to a book club meeting at the local library. They’d introduced themselves and made polite small talk, and that’s when Mrs. Haggerty had mentioned her new landscaping project to Penny. Penny said the garden sounded delightful, and she’d asked who Mrs. Haggerty had contracted to do the work. When Steven’s name had come up, Penny said that she was familiar with him already; she had met him once before, when he’d come to deliver a load of mulch to her home a few months prior. The two women had proceeded to gossip about Steven, including the promiscuous behavior Mrs. Haggerty had witnessed while living across the street from him. They had both felt sorry for me, and this small but fertile common ground had opened the first of many conversations between them about their own marital issues. As their friendship bloomed, so had Penny’s resentment of her husband and Mrs. Haggerty’s sympathy for Penny’s situation.
It hadn’t escaped my attention that Mrs. Haggerty made nomention of her own deceased husband, who had coincidentally passed less than a month later. Apparently, it hadn’t escaped Mike Tran’s attention either.
“Where was Owen on the night you helped Mrs. Dupree bury her husband?” he asked, his pen poised over his notebook.
“Asleep,” Mrs. Haggerty said with a dismissive wave.
“Asleep?” Detective Tran repeated, inviting her to elaborate. When she didn’t, he asked, “Your husband was home at the time?”
“Yes,” she said matter-of-factly.
“And was he in any way involved?”
“No.”
“So… your husband was asleep upstairs in your bedroom when Mrs. Dupree arrived with the deceased in her trunk, and he remained asleep for the entire…” He consulted his notebook. “… three hours and thirty minutes it took you to remove the deceased from the vehicle, pull up the sod, dig the grave, bury the deceased, and replace the sod to conceal the location of the body, and he was unaware of those activities the entire time?” The detective’s frown was understandably skeptical.
“Owen was a drunk and a heavy sleeper, Mr. Tran. A hurricane could have ripped through our bedroom and blown the roof off the house, and the man wouldn’t have noticed. I never told him what Penny and I did that night, and he never seemed to have a reason to ask. As far as he was concerned, I had my new garden, and he was happy not to have to care for it. He never bothered to take much of an interest in it.”
My heart ached a little at all the things I didn’t hear her say. That her husband had never taken much of an interest in her garden because it was important to her. And he’d never noticed the quiet tempest brewing in their bedroom because he’d been too selfish tosee it. I could have sworn Mrs. Haggerty’s eyes lifted to the mirror for a second, or maybe it only felt that way. That she had seen herself in me. And maybe that, more than anything, was the reason she had chosen to punish Steven.
“And your husband passed when?” Mike asked.
“Oh, I’d say it was about three or four weeks later,” Mrs. Haggerty said, doing the math in her head. “Heart attack. The doctor told Owen to cut back on the drinking and cigars on account of his blood pressure, but the man wouldn’t listen. I’ve got the death certificate at home, if you’d like to see it.” I was betting it was an official—if not truthful—certificate from the Virginia Office of Vital Records, probably a gift from Destiny. I was also guessing Mrs. Haggerty had a corroborating report from a physician’s office, signed by a helpful nurse practitioner named Lola de la Rosa. The ashes in the cigar box on her mantel certainly looked convincing enough.
Mrs. Haggerty’s attorney interrupted. “My client has been more than cooperative. She’s had a very long night and I’m sure she could use some rest.”
“I have one last question.” Mike Tran put down his pen and steepled his fingers over his notepad. “What prompted you and Mrs. Dupree to confess? You’d both done a thorough job of incriminating Steven. Why show up here at the crack of dawn, in the custody of a detective from another jurisdiction, offering a full confession when you were already in the clear? Don’t you think that seems a little suspicious?”
Mrs. Haggerty cocked her head. “Are you accusing me of something, Mr. Tran?”
He shrugged. “Let’s just say, I’m curious about why you surrendered to Detective Anthony.”
“Frankly, because I like him better. If someone’s going to get thecredit forcollaringme, I’d prefer it be someone I’d enjoy seeing at my parole hearing. Why? What did Penny say when you asked her?”
Mike cleared his throat, humiliation coloring his cheeks. “That she felt guilty for lying to Ms. Donovan after she and Detective Anthony visited her home, and…” Mike Tran’s flush deepened. “She said she specifically chose to surrender to Detective Anthony because he’s easy on the eyes and he smells good.”
I choked out a laugh behind the mirror. Nick put a finger to his lips, but it did little to hide his smirk.
Detective Tran signaled to the officer waiting in the hallway outside. “We’re done here, for now. I’ll have an officer take you to booking.”
Mrs. Haggerty stood stiffly, holding her lower back as she rose from the hard metal chair. “Don’t bother, I know the way. This ain’t my first rodeo,” she reminded the detective. She waved off her attorney’s sharp sideways glance as he attempted to shush her, then shook a finger at the uniformed officer in the hall. “Don’t even think about putting those handcuffs on me, young lady. I’m tougher than I look.” The officer raised an eyebrow and tucked her cuffs back in her belt.
