Never Let You Go(80)

“You okay?” Parker says. She’s wearing a pale blue blouse today with a slim-fitting black pencil skirt and high heels, but she doesn’t look any less official.

“Yes. I think so. It’s cold in here.” I rub at my arms. When I get Sophie home and settled, I’ll have a hot bath, or drink a rum, or both, but then I realize we don’t have a home anymore. There’s no way either of us can ever spend a night under that roof again. And we probably won’t be able to go back to our house to get our things for days, maybe weeks, while the police finish their investigation. The thought hits me hard in my stomach. Where are we going to go?

“You’re in shock.” She already offered me a coffee or tea, which I declined, not sure my stomach could handle it.

“I don’t know what he was doing in there.” I shake my head, still trying to process everything that’s happened. I guess she’s right. I’m in shock too. How can he be dead? A sudden image: Andrew at twenty-seven, standing at my cash register, his smile and blond hair lighting up my world. “I can’t believe he fell down the stairs. I wonder how long he was in there.…” A horrible new thought scurries through my mind. What if he didn’t die right away?

“You were going to drive past the house,” I say. “Did you see anything?”

“I didn’t get a chance—I worked double shifts all this week.” Her gaze flicks away, over to a corner of the room, and I wonder if there is a camera or something set up. She mentioned that our interview might be recorded. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to offer to drive past. “You said the alarm was off when you entered the house. So who else has the code?”

I try to focus on the question, but her voice is tinny and distant-sounding. I’m surprised at the ache of grief in my chest, the desire to set my head down on the table and cry. Why do I care? I shouldn’t care. He hurt me. But I loved him once. God, I loved him so much.

“Lindsey? You okay?”

“Sorry. What did you say?”

“The code?”

“Right. Just me, Sophie, my brother too.”

“What about…” She looks down at his notes. “Greg?”

“I never gave him the password.”

“Did he ever see you setting the alarm?”

I hesitate, remembering all the times he stood beside me in foyer, waiting for me to shut the alarm off when we came home from a date, then I realize why she’s asking.

“You think Greg did something to Andrew? That’s absurd.” Greg might look tough, but he’s the least violent person I know. He’s the kind of guy who breaks up fights. Not starts them.

“Forensics still need to process the scene and there’ll be an autopsy, but right now we’re treating his death as suspicious. When is the last time you spoke to Greg?”

Forensics. Autopsy. Suspicious. I want to write down the words and stare at them, because they can’t be right. She’s watching my face. What is she looking for?

I think of Sophie in another room, with some police officer she’s never met asking all these excruciating questions. Is she crying? Is she asking for me? I have to get this interview over with and get her the hell out of this place before I go ballistic.

“Greg and I broke up.”

“How did your brother feel about Andrew?” The question is past tense. It throws me again, this realization that Andrew is gone. He was a presence in my life for almost twenty years. Good or bad, he was always there. In my thoughts, my memories. In my daughter.

“They don’t talk.”

“It have been hard for him to see how Andrew treated you and Sophie.”

We hold gazes and I feel a trickle of unease. “The same as any brother, I suppose. He has a girlfriend. She’s pregnant. They’re very happy.” I’m rambling, telling her things she hasn’t even asked about, but I can’t seem to stop. I hope that Chris hasn’t been telling any of his friends how he should have gotten rid of Andrew years ago. It won’t look good. He’d been so angry when I told him about Greg getting hit with a truck. The trickle of unease swells to a river.

“So what do you think happened to Andrew?”

“He broke into my house so he could figure out where I’d gone—he was probably checking my e-mails again. Then he tripped on something. Angus always had bones and toys at the top of the stairs. He piles them outside my bedroom like gifts.” I feel more confident now, sure this is right. She will see the truth in this explanation and stop asking ridiculous questions.

“My alarm code—it was the date of my divorce. He could have guessed.” I pause, thinking. “He worked in construction. Maybe he knew how to disable it.”

“Would Sophie have ever met him at the house or given him the code?”

“God, no.” I think about Jared and wonder if Sophie has given him the code or if he’d ever seen her press in the numbers. I almost mention it, then decide not to. It’s too unlikely.

“And your friend can verify you’ve been in Vancouver all week?”

“You think I had something to do with it?” I’m incredulous, though my face infuses with guilty heat when I remember the conversation I’d had with Jenny.

She looks at me evenly. “You were very angry with him.”

“Of course I was angry, but I didn’t kill him.”