A Good Marriage(74)
“I’d also like to talk to Amanda’s friend Carolyn. Seems like she’d probably have some insight. Do you have her number?”
“I don’t know who that is, I’m sorry.”
“Amanda’s best friend from growing up?” I pressed, sounding almost as judgmental as Sarah had with me. “She lives in the city. Apparently Amanda spent a fair amount of time with her.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever even heard that name,” Zach said. Again his response seemed authentic.
“Amanda wrote about Carolyn in her journal. Sarah and Maude knew about her, too.” I was hoping something would click for him. “But they hadn’t met her.”
“Maybe she’s the one who killed Amanda, then,” Zach said, his face brightening. “I mean, if there’s somebody here from her life back then, I guarantee it wasn’t for a good reason.” He took a sharp breath, shook his head. “I was Amanda’s knight in shining armor, you know. And I did rescue her in some ways, which felt good. I worked my ass off so she—well, we—could have all the comforts money could buy. Maybe that’s not all that mattered, though.” Zach looked down. “I should have taken better care of her. Isn’t that what a good spouse does? Look at you.”
“Me?” I asked.
Zach’s eyes flicked up, then back down. “Taking care of your husband, by changing jobs and all that.”
“I guess,” I said, feeling the fog of shame descend. Was my story with Sam that obvious?
“You guess?” he asked. “You’ve made huge sacrifices. I mean, your job of all things. But you did that because your husband needed you. You accepted his problems as your problems. You’re a much better person than me.”
Except I hate him for it.
“I also spoke to Maude,” I said, anything to move the conversation off Sam.
“The one who had the party?” he asked. “What about her?”
“She told me that you and she were together at the time of Amanda’s death.” I hesitated, but only for a second. “Together together.” I paused again. “Upstairs.”
“Upstairs?” Zach asked, curious but not remotely defensive. “I feel like you’re trying to telegraph something, but I don’t know what you mean. I’m sorry.”
“Upstairs at the party where the partner-swapping was going on.”
“What?” Zach laughed hard. “Maude said we had sex that night?”
“Yes,” I said. “She said you were with her until two a.m., providing you with an alibi, assuming the time line ends up corresponding with Amanda’s official time of death and your call to the police. It’s complicated under the circumstances, but it could be potentially useful.”
“Um, maybe. If it was true. First of all, I called the police, well, I don’t remember exactly what time, but it was well before midnight.” Zach looked exasperated. “And not only did Maude and I not have sex that night, we never even met. I saw her at the party because somebody pointed her out, but we didn’t talk.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I have no idea why she’d say that. Maybe she’s had sex with so many people, she’s lost track.”
I approached one of the three guards near the exit after Zach and I were done. He was young and wiry, with a cynical but not unkind look in his eyes.
“Could you have Zach Grayson sign this?” I handed him the power-of-attorney letter. “I need to take it with me.”
He regarded it skeptically for a moment. “Sure thing.”
I leaned back against the chilled cinder block to wait. Before I left Zach, I’d had him go over the rest of the time line from the night Amanda died.
They arrived at Maude’s party shortly before 9:00 p.m., at which point he and Amanda had gone their separate ways. He’d chatted with a few people at the party, but mostly he just “observed” from the edge of the living room. The most substantial conversation Zach had was with Sarah, who’d wanted to know all about how he’d become such a wildly successful self-made man, which sounded to me like she’d been mocking him. After that, Zach left. To take that walk on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. It was around 9:30 p.m. by then, and he’d texted Amanda after he’d gone. It wasn’t clear if he’d looked for her before leaving, but I got the sense that he did not. Zach was only at the party for thirty minutes. When he returned home, approximately two hours later, Amanda was dead.
Zach did provide me with a few physical descriptions of people from the party who might be able to attest to his departure time: Guy with the jester’s hat? Old woman in pigtails? Bald guy, Wellfleet T-shirt? I asked him several times about this walk on the promenade, which was perhaps the weakest alibi in the history of all alibis. It sounded like a lie on its face. Who left a party to go out walking alone at that time of night in a place that was a cab ride away? Yet Zach insisted that was exactly what had happened. Could someone have seen him? I’d asked. “Sure, maybe,” he’d said, but not in a way that made me feel like I should send Millie searching for witnesses. There was the driver of the cab Zach claimed to have taken to Brooklyn Heights, for instance. He’d hailed it from the street, though—there was no record of it. But why would Zach be lying about his alibi and yet be unwilling to take the one Maude had offered him?