Page 52 of She Didn't See It Coming
“What did your father do?”
“What difference does it make?”
“He left your mother rather comfortably off.”
“He was a smart man. He worked in tech and made some good investments.”
“And when your mother died, that money—about three million dollars, I believe—went to you.”
Alice experiences an immediate, intense dislike for Detective Salter. She says blithely, “As I said, I was an only child. And both of my parents were as well. There were no other relatives.”
“That’s rather fortunate.”
“Is it? I think I would have liked to have siblings, aunts and uncles, cousins. It was rather lonely growing up.”
“But it was fortunate that, when she died, you got all her money.”
“Where is this going, Detective?” Alice asks.
“What did you do with the money?” the detective asks, ignoring her question.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but some of it we invested in Derek’s company.”
“How much did you invest in his company?”
“About half of it. The rest went into the house.”
“I see,” the detective says. “And I understand you and your husband were never formally interviewed by police about the hit-and-run when it happened.”
“Someone came to tell us.”
“But you weren’t interviewed as suspects in the hit-and-run.”
“No, why would we be?”
“Because you were the ones who stood to benefit from your mother’s death.”
Alice leans forward. “Detective, my mother was killed in New Hampshire. My husband and I were two states away, at home in Albany at the time. Of course we weren’t suspects.”
“And you can prove that?”
“I’m sorry? Are you seriously accusing my husband and me…of somehow being involved in my mother’s death?”
“The case is unsolved, still open. So please answer the question. Can you prove where you both were at the time your mother was killed?”
Alice smiles. “I don’t know how. Derek and I were at home together. I remember it well, because the next morning, very early, the police came to the door and informed us of what had happened.”
The detective leans in closer and says, “I understand that you feel you need to protect him, Alice. But think about what he might have done. Was he really home with you the night of the hit-and-run, or are you just giving him an alibi? Did he tell you he was somewhere else, and you believed him? Because Alice, as hard as you might find it to believe, if you’re covering up for him, it’s possible he is the one who killed your mother. And he might have killed Bryden Frost. Do you really want to live with a man like that?”
Alice doesn’t dignify that with an answer. When the detective says she may go, Alice gets up and walks out with all the poise she can muster. She’s raging inside, but you wouldn’t know it to look at her. She knows she appears unruffled, because she catches sight of her reflection in a window on the way out. She’s worked on cultivating that unflappable exterior her whole life. She knows how important appearances are. She can’t let people know what’s going on inside, what she’s really thinking—she learned that early.
That detective—Alice hates her. She wants something terrible to happen to her. She thinks it would be nice if Detective Salter were hit by a bus on the way home tonight. She hopes that her partner, if she has one, is nasty and abusive and decides that tonight is the night to finish her off. If only Detective Salter were out of the picture.
She thinks about that as she gets in her car and drives home. She must talk to Derek.
•••
Lizzie drops Claraat day care and then drives home to her own apartment. She wants to spend all day online, but her parents are there. She wishes they would go to a hotel. That’s uncharitable of her, she knows, but she’s finding it a strain to host them, especially in the current circumstances. They’re all emotionally raw. But she can’t help wondering if they would be hurting quite as much if it were Lizzie who’d been found dead in a storage locker. She’s always been the disappointing daughter—not as pretty, not as accomplished. She hasn’t set the world on fire, she hasn’t married and provided grandchildren, which seems to be a ridiculous expectation in this day and age, but nonetheless her parents seem to expect it. And now she’s almost getting too old. She tries to push these thoughts aside, but when her parents are staying with her, these are the thoughts that crowd her. Somehow, when she’s around her parents she slips into old thought patterns and behaviors that she’d hoped she’d left behind.
