The Trapped Girl (Tracy Crosswhite #4)(96)

“How did she react when you told her?”

“She said if she’d had the money, and I was her husband, she’d give it to me.”

“She said that?”

He nodded.

“Did you go home with her that night?”

Strickland nodded. “Yes.”

“And did you sleep with her?”

“Yes. I was just so angry with Andrea,” he said in a rush, as if it justified sleeping with his wife’s best friend.

“Did you continue to see her after that night?”

Strickland lowered his head. “Yes.”

“Was Devin part of your plan to kill Andrea?”

“Like I said, I wasn’t even considering it then. I just wanted to hurt Andrea, you know?”

“And you thought sleeping with her friend would be a way to hurt her.”

He nodded, looked at the recorder, and said, “Right.”

“Why did you continue to see her then?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you ever tell Andrea about you and Devin?”

“No.”

“Did Devin tell Andrea?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t think so. I don’t know why she would.”

“So did you formulate a plan to kill Andrea on Mount Rainier?”

Montgomery looked as if he was about to say something, then stopped.

“Well, like I said, when I got back to the loft Sunday night I apologized to Andrea,” Strickland said. “I brought her a couple of gifts, a book and some flowers, and I said I was sorry.”

“Were you? Or were you just saying you were sorry?”

“Probably both. I didn’t have anywhere to go. And we talked about the stress of the business and how we’d grown apart and that’s when Andrea brought up climbing Mount Rainier.”

“Out of the blue?”

“Yes.”

Tracy wasn’t sure she was buying it.

Strickland continued. “I was surprised because I didn’t think she enjoyed climbing it the first time. She said it would be something for us to do together, that it would help our marriage.”

“But you didn’t want to?”

“Initially, I said I’d think about it, but only because I didn’t want to start another fight.”

“When did you start to think about the possibility of pushing Andrea off the mountain?”

Again, Montgomery remained silent.

“The route Andrea wanted to take wasn’t popular. More people died on that route than any other. I began to think that could work.”

“What could work?” She wanted Strickland to say it.

“It was just a thought, you know? Like, what if she fell?”

“When did you start to think about it seriously?”

“When Devin brought it up.”

Tracy tried not to pause and give Montgomery time to stop the interview. “Devin brought up the subject of killing Andrea?”

“One night, in bed, she said, ‘You do know all your problems would be solved if you could just get access to the trust funds.’”

“When was this?”

“It was some time after, maybe a month?”

“Where were you?”

“In a hotel in Seattle; we’d taken a trip to avoid being seen.”

“Tell me what she said, exactly.”

“Just what I told you. She said that the bank wouldn’t prosecute me if I paid back the loan, that what they really wanted was their money, but I already knew that so I said, ‘That’s great, but Andrea won’t let me use it.’”

“And she said, ‘What happens to the money if anything happens to Andrea?’”

“Did you know?” Tracy asked.

“No. I’d never seen the trust documents. But I knew Andrea had no relatives, and Oregon is a community property state.”

“So what happened then?”

“I found a copy of the trust documents in the house, and from my reading, if anything happened to Andrea, the money would go to me under community property laws—unless she had a will, which I didn’t know but doubted.”

“Did you tell Devin what you’d found out?”

“Yes.”

“What was her response?”

“She said, ‘What if Andrea didn’t come off the mountain?’”

“And is that when you formulated a plan to push her?”

Strickland nodded. “I did some research.” He paused. “Can I get a glass of water?”

Montgomery obliged him from a pitcher. Strickland took a long drink. Then he said, “I decided I could do it the morning we set out for the summit from Thumb Rock. That’s the least likely place they would find her body, and if they did, it would be easy to say she fell.”

“What exactly did you intend to do, Mr. Strickland?”

He swallowed hard. “I was going to shove her off the edge as we got close to an area called Willis Wall. It’s a thousand-foot drop.”

“So what actually happened?”

“Just what I told that other detective. We went to bed that night and I remember being exhausted. I could hardly raise my head. I felt drugged.”