A Good Marriage(41)

“I’m sure it’s nothing. She just had a card from some flowers,” I said, hoping now to breeze past the question of who sent them. “What are the names of some of Amanda’s friends? I should go talk to them.”

“Maude was the woman who had the party that night. I know they were friends,” he said. “And her other close friend in the neighborhood is a woman named Sarah. She worked with Amanda at the foundation.”

“Foundation?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah, we just started a scholarship foundation,” he said. “Or I started a scholarship foundation. Amanda ran it, because that’s what the wives of successful entrepreneurs do,” he said flatly. He was mocking himself, at least I hoped. “Amanda didn’t complain because she never complained. But I don’t think she enjoyed running the foundation. With her upbringing, she was glad to help needy kids. But she was overwhelmed by the responsibility. She was always worried she was going to mess something up and somebody was going to come after her.”

“Come after her?”

“Not literally,” he said. “If there was something like that, I would tell you, believe me.”

“I found her journals at your—”

“Journals?”

“She kept a bunch under your bed. They go back years.”

“Oh yeah, right,” he said. “I knew that.”

But did he? I wasn’t so sure. If he was learning about the journals for the first time, though, he wasn’t nervous about them. At all. And wasn’t that a little weird? Who wanted a running account of their petty marital discords, especially through the eyes of their partner? I wouldn’t want Sam keeping journals, and I hadn’t been accused of murdering him.

“I took a quick look at a couple of them,” I said. “I think maybe Amanda’s childhood was worse than just being poor.”

“I’m not surprised,” Zach said. He also did not sound particularly intrigued. “When I met Amanda, she was a seventeen-year-old high-school dropout working and living at a motel, so—” He was silent then, abruptly. As though he’d wished he hadn’t admitted quite that much. “Anyway, she didn’t talk about her past except to say that ‘money was tight.’ She didn’t seem to want to get into it, and I never pushed. We all have family crap, right? I know her mom died when she was young. Whatever else happened, she came through it all right, because she was a great mom and a good wife. A really positive person. We liked to be forward-looking, you know? Our life started when we met.”

“Were you guys trying to have another baby?”

“Another baby?” Zach scoffed. “Are you asking if we were having sex?”

“No, no, I—”

“Because the answer is not very often. I worked long hours,” Zach said. “Not that sex with Amanda was bad. It was great, actually, when we had it.”

My cheeks flushed, but I was annoyed, too. Why was Zach talking to me about his sex life? It was weird and awkward, verging on inappropriate. But then, I reminded myself, who was “appropriate” in Rikers? “I found an ovulation test strip in your home office. That’s why I asked.”

“An ovulation test strip in my office? What were you doing in my office?”

“Um, the job you asked me to do?”

“Right, right, sorry,” he said. “Well, after Case, Amanda couldn’t have any more children. That’s what she told me. So I don’t know anything about an ovulation test.”

“Are you sure?”

“Why would she lie?” he asked.

We were both quiet for a moment, the implication not lost on either of us. Had Amanda lied about her infertility? Had she been trying to get pregnant without Zach knowing? Or secretly trying to avoid it?

“I think maybe there was someone in your house when I was there,” I went on, hoping to change the subject from sex.

“What do you mean?”

“Someone ran out the back door. I didn’t see who.”

“Do you think—what if they had something to do with what happened to Amanda?”

“I called the police for that reason. But it’s unclear how exhaustive their investigation will be, so I also called in an independent investigator. She wants to run the house for prints and get a blood spatter expert. It won’t be cheap, but it seems like there are definitely some prints in Amanda’s blood on the stairs. If they’re not yours—”

“They’re not,” Zach said. “I didn’t kill her, Lizzie.”

“But you did try to help her, right? So your prints should be there somewhere.”

“This is it, isn’t it?” Zach asked, sounding defeated.

“This is what?”

“This is how innocent people get railroaded. What if we get an expert to test the prints and they don’t find anyone else’s? Couldn’t that be used against me?”

He wasn’t entirely wrong. “I think it’s worth that risk,” I said, and now there was no putting it off anymore, though the last thing I wanted was to talk about sex again. “Also, was there a partner exchange going on at the party you were at the night Amanda died?”

“Partner exchange?” Zach asked like he had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.