Page 54 of She Didn't See It Coming
“I have been to see Detective fucking Salter,” she says.
“What? Why?” Derek is instantly uneasy. He didn’t know about this. What the hell was she doing, going off to talk to the detectives without telling him?
“She called my cell this morning, when I was in the car on my way to work, and asked me to come to the station. So I went.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, for Christ’s sake?” He’s angry.
“Oh, I don’t know. You don’t tellmeeverything, do you?” It’s a jab, and it pisses him off even more.
“Let’s not play games, Alice. This is serious. Don’t fuck around.”
“It wouldn’tbeserious ifyoudidn’t fuck around,” she points out acidly. She’s pissed off too.
He needs to dial it down a notch. He has to think about damage control. They are standing across from each other in the living room, both too tense to sit down. Derek eases his voice off the throttle. “Just tell me what happened.” He hopes she hasn’t done him any harm. Heknows she’s smart. He knows that she is an accomplished liar and dissembler, and that she can usually keep her cool. But not always.
“She wanted to know about you and that Bryden woman.”
“What did you say?”
“I told them you had nothing to do with her, other than that accident.”
“Good,” he says, beginning to relax a little.
“Is it true?” she asks.
“Yes, it’s true. I didn’t sleep with her, and I didn’t kill her. For fuck’s sake, Alice!”
She looks back at him coldly. “She said that you were seen at a hotel with her. Taking a room.”
“That’s bullshit! She’s lying to you.”
“That’s not all they said.” But then, like the diva she is, she doesn’t tell him what else they said. Instead, she walks to the window at the front of the room and looks out onto the street, her back to him.
He runs one hand through his hair in frustration. “Are you going to tell me or not?”
She turns around to face him. “They also know about the other woman. The one whose name you refuse to tell me.”
Shit.No wonder she’s so angry, he thinks. They’ve waved this in her face and hurt her ego. He never thought he’d get caught. But Alice was too smart for him. “You know why I can’t tell you her name,” he says. They’ve been over this. He can’t tell her because Alice might do something to harm her. Alice has a nasty streak. He takes a deep breath. “Tell me what they know.”
“They know that you took her to the White Stag Hotel.”
He narrows his eyes at her. He doesn’t want to protest too much, so he keeps his mouth shut. But it’s not good that they know he has cheated on his wife. And he fears they will use it to drive a wedge between them.
“But,” his wife says, “we might have a bigger problem than Bryden Frost.”
“And what’s that?” Derek asks sharply. Sometimes he finds his wife a bit trying.
“They were asking me about Mom.”
His adrenaline spikes. “What about her?” But he knows. There’s only one reason the detective would bring that up.
“Salter’s been looking into you, and she found out that I—we—inherited her estate when she died. And she found out about the hit-and-run that hasn’t been solved.”
“Fuck,” he mutters.
“Yes, a bit worrying, isn’t it?” Alice says. “She wanted to know how much of the inheritance went into your business.”
“The nosy bitch.”
