Page 60 of In the Bones
For the life of her, Mac couldn’t come up with an answer.
FIFTY-ONE
Tim
By the time Tim and Shana were ready to leave the barracks, it was nearly dark and had started to pour. Sheets of spring rain swept across the asphalt. In the car, the sound was ferocious.
“Where do we stand with Helle’s financials?” Shana asked him, no preamble. The case was starting to make her restless.
“Still waiting on the warrant.” As Tim spoke, they passed the gas station, the wordsBait Storein red letters above the door.Almost home. “I did track down Helle’s financial advisor, a guy down in Maryland. His secretary says he’s extremely busy”—Tim paused to roll his eyes—“but he’ll try to get back to me tomorrow. If we’ve got the warrant by then, that is.”
“Good. That’s good.”
“OK hon,” he said, “spill. What are you thinking?” The set of Shana’s mouth belied her tone, which had almost convinced Tim that she was satisfied.
“I watched the interview with Woody this afternoon,” she said. “Every minute of it. The part where he talked about blacking out, it seemed sincere to me. No matter how hard I try, I can’t understand why he was willing to accept that he slept with Angelica if he couldn’t remember a thing about it. Why take Stacy’s word for it, knowing it could destroy his marriage?”
That had vexed Tim, too. He had a hard time imagining himself in Woody’s situation, so drunk that he’d willingly go upstairs with a stranger nearly half his age. He knew one thing, though: if someone had told him he’d cheated on Shana and he had no memory of the event, he’d deny it until his dying breath.
“Stacy swears up and down that she saw them in bed together. Maybe that was enough for Woody,” he said.
“I talked to Mac at the hospital,” said Shana. “Accordingto her, Woody’s never been unfaithful before. First time cheating, an attractive young woman … would he really not remember, even if he was blotto?”
“If he’s embarrassed by what he did and unwilling to go into details, this might be an attempt to save face. He could be lying.”
“He could be,” said Shana. “And so could Stacy Peel.”
Tim’s gaze was on the road. The rain was savage and pounding on the glass. When he swerved to avoid a pothole, the car hydroplaned long enough to turn his knuckles bone-white.
He hadn’t made up his mind about Stacy, though not for lack of trying. She appeared to be a hardworking single mom with no history of illicit behavior. Her ex was in prison for drug trafficking, but that wasn’t necessarily a reflection of Stacy’s character. Plenty of men were seasoned con artists, skilled at manipulating emotions in order to get their way. If she’d lied to Nicole about something as serious as an affair, though, that spoke of disloyalty. A deviousness that made Tim deeply uneasy.
“Stacy was drinking that night,” he said as he clutched the wheel. “It’s possible she misread the situation.”
“Sure. But if she thought there was any chance of that, would she really have told Nicole? They’re supposed to be good friends,” said Shana, “and we’re talking about information that could annihilate a marriage. I have to think Stacy wouldn’t bring it up unless she was positive that Woody and Angelica had been intimate. What reason could she have for concocting a story about a one-night stand with a tourist?”
Tim quirked his lips and glanced her way.
“What is it?” asked Shana.
His eyes flicked back to the windshield. The rapid movement of the wipers was dizzying.
It was that word—intimate—that clicked Tim’s memory into place. “Could be nothing,” he said, “but there was a vase of fresh flowers on Stacy’s desk.”
“Like Price Chopper flowers?” asked Shana.
“Nope. Long-stemmed roses. And they were red.” Timhadn’t thought to question that before. Stacy was a beautiful woman, and he’d seen the kind of interest she generated from men at The Brig. Now, though, the flowers loomed large in his mind. “She saw me noticing them and … I don’t know. I got the sense she didn’t like that.”
Another glance at his wife revealed her eyebrows had shot up. “So Stacy might have a secret boyfriend.”
In his mind’s eye, there was Stacy at the bar, waving away one eager suitor after another. No interest in them at all.
“Yeah,” Tim said, fingers flexing. “I think she might.”
In Tim and Shana’s flat driveway, water sat an inch deep, soaking Tim’s boots when he stepped from the car. They’d practically crawled home after picking up Darcy, and the few other cars on the road had done the same, treating the poor conditions with the caution they merited.
“Is it weird that I feel an intense need to check the closets?” Tim asked as he unlocked the creaky front door. The attack on Nicole had been disconcerting, and now, in the foyer of the darkened main floor, all he could think about was that the house had been sitting empty all day.
“I’ll do a sweep when I lock up our sidearms,” Shana replied with a smirk, but the way her eyes trailed to Darcy as she spoke made Tim wonder if her bravado was all show.
