My face is hot as I drive away from Constance’s house. Her corrosive taunts about Will’s happiness and our marriage eat at me like acid.
Constance doesn’t know the first thing about my marriage. Will never would have talked to her about us. But…God, what if he did? Would he have seriously said he was unhappy?
I’m rage-spiraling, calling her every name in the book as I monologue out loud about all the ways I should have put her in her place, all the things I would have said if I was thinking more clearly. The anger is so all-consuming that I almost miss the flicker of gray in my rearview mirror.
Mother. Fucker.
The gray sedan that I keep seeing pulls in behind me.
Am I seriously being followed?
To test the theory, I turn off the busy road onto a smaller side street that curls around a half-century-old park. Lakefront and secluded, it might not be the best place to confront a total stranger, but I’m not thinking too clearly.
The gray sedan takes the turn behind me. The posted speed limit on this road is twenty miles per hour—not exactly a high-speed chase. But when I hit my brakes, the gray sedan comes within inches of my back bumper.
I’m out of my car in an instant, rounding on the sedan andslamming my hands on the hood with a hollowthump,palms burning from the hot steel.
“Get out of the car!” My scream is guttural. Primal. The weight of the day, of Will and Constance and her shitty comments and my seemingly irreparably fucked-up life, has broken me.
And now I’m this car’s problem.
“Get out!” I repeat. “Who are you? Why are you following me?” I hit the hood of the car again.
The door opens and an older man emerges, clad in an ill-fitting short-sleeve button-down and front-pleated khakis. He must be in his sixties—his pepper-gray hair losing ground to a sea of white, and the hands he’s raised above his head are trembling a little. His timorousness might be endearing if I wasn’t blinded by rage.
“M-miss, I’m sorry if I startled you,” he stammers.
“Like hell! You keep driving past my house, at the police station, and now here you are. Who are you?”
He lowers his hands with an air of caution. “Well, my name is Perry Conroy.” His words come slow and a little winding, like a Sunday drive down a country road. “The thing is, my friend Dean was in a car accident—”
“Dean?” I say, shock nearly bowling me over. “You know Dean Morrison?” I take a step toward Perry, feeling like I’ve spotted water in a desert.
He knows things.
“Yes. He told me he was helping Will with a problem he was having. Then there was that terrible accident. Dean’s wife, her name is Ann, and her health isn’t the best. So I told her I’d come on up here and find out what happened. I did stop in over at Mrs. Parker’s house, where Dean crashed, just to see if she had any information, but she wasn’t particularly helpful. Mostly carried on about her broken fence, and the police seem to be operating under the assumption that he was either drunk or had a medical event. But, you see, even though Dean was my age, he was in far better shape. He walked two miles a day with his dog. Kept up with his doctors. He’s been on the wagon for a while.” He pauses as if he’s trying to do math on all of this. “Something feels off.
“They should have a toxicology screen and all the things that come with accidents like that. At least, that’s what happens onLaw & Order: SVU.” I recall what Ardell said about the autopsy still being in progress.
Is Ardell giving Dean’s family the same patronizing runaround he gave me?
“I see your point.” I pause, biting my lip. Not wanting to be rude, but eager to pull the conversation back to Will, I say, “Perry, I’m still not following how Dean is connected to Will.”
“Dean was a private investigator for Will,” Perry explains. “Will called, saying he needed Dean’s help. Dean was confused. Why not use the folks that live up this way to do the digging? Will was pretty cagey about it. Dean figured it must have been something Will didn’t want folks around here knowing much about. Dean said there was something about Will’s voice that made him agree to come up here and do whatever Will needed.”
“A…private investigator?”
“Yes. By way of retired police officer.”
Knowing that Will had someone up here looking for something that he couldn’t trust any of his usual PIs with made my stomach turn over.
My inner freak-out must be loud enough that Perry can hear the thoughts as they fly by. He reaches out to gently squeeze my arm. “Are you okay?”
“Sorry. I’m Nora Somerset,” I say, realizing I haven’t even introduced myself.
“I know.”
“Is that why you’ve been stalking me?”