Before She Knew Him(36)

When they’d gotten back from Portsmouth early that afternoon, they’d found the detectives waiting for them, one in the unmarked car and one leaning against its side. We’ve been robbed, Mira thought, as Matthew said, “Huh,” in his quiet voice.

But they hadn’t been robbed. Matthew had agreed to go into the station for questioning, even though Mira kept pressing them to say more about what it was about. “It’s okay,” he said. “I haven’t done anything wrong, so we have nothing to worry about.” He sounded like her pragmatist father, although her father’s pragmatism would have led him to say the opposite. Being innocent was no guarantee of safety.

“Should I call Sanjiv?” she’d asked, as he’d gotten into the vehicle with the two detectives.

“Don’t bother him,” he’d said, but she’d called their lawyer anyway, and she was glad she did. After he’d agreed to go to the police station, another detective had arrived at the house, this time to question Mira, asking her about her husband’s whereabouts the previous evening.

“He was with me all night,” she said. “Why are you asking?”

“Was he away from you at any point during the evening?” This detective seemed impossibly young, a light-skinned black man in a too-loose suit, as though he’d recently lost a lot of weight.

“No. We spent the whole night together at an inn in Portsmouth. Whatever it is you think he did, he didn’t do it.”

Mira went to the police station, where, after she’d waited close to two hours, Sanjiv finally emerged with Matthew, looking very calm for someone who’d been accused of murder, as it turned out. He told her all about their neighbor Hen, that she had accused him of a crime, and that there was nothing to worry about because the police didn’t believe her. She had a history of this sort of thing.

Still, why’d he get you so drunk?

Mira pushed the thought away. She knew where it would lead, and she wasn’t going to think about all that. Not right now with too many other things going on. There were things about her husband—about Matthew—that made him different. How could he not be with the childhood he’d had, the family he’d been part of? Considering what they’d been like, he was unbelievably normal, really, just a regular guy with a solid job who had always been good to her. More than good. He’d been her savior. He’d saved her from a lifetime of abuse at the hands of Jay Saravan.

How exactly did he save you, Mira?

She shut the voice out, telling herself he’d saved her only by being there when Jay died, being there to sweep up all the pieces and put her back together. That was all there was to it.

What if that wasn’t all there was?

Then he still saved me, Mira thought. He still saved me, and—

A truck rumbled by on Sycamore Street. Mira stood and went to the window. It was still early, all the yards hazy with early-morning mist.

“You’re up early.” It was Matthew, at the foot of the stairs, dressed already but in his stocking feet, otherwise she’d have heard him come down.

“I woke up and couldn’t fall back to sleep,” Mira said after turning toward him.

“Yesterday was a little crazy,” he said.

“A little?”

“Smells like you made coffee?”

“Yes, and I made a full pot. I figured we might need it.”

Mira followed Matthew into the kitchen, and before she lost her nerve, she asked him the question she’d wanted to ask the night before. “Was there something about the fencing trophy, the night that Hen and her husband came to dinner?”

“What do you mean?”

“That night, when I was giving the tour, Hen acted strange when she saw the fencing trophy. I thought it might have something to do with what happened to the student from Sussex Hall who got murdered?”

“Apparently,” Matthew said, stretching the word a little, “Dustin Miller was accused of raping another Sussex Hall student while they were on a trip to a fencing tournament. That’s how she made the connection, I guess.”

“What connection?”

“I guess that’s how she first decided that I’d had something to do with Dustin Miller’s death. Maybe she saw the trophy and that triggered her memory of the story, and then she somehow connected me to it. I don’t really know how her brain works.”

“Maybe she thought that the trophy belonged to Dustin Miller, that you took it when you killed him?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised at all.”

“But you got rid of that trophy?” Mira asked, trying to sound casual.

Matthew had finished adding cream and sugar to his coffee and took a sip. “I did.”

“Why?” Mira asked.

Matthew took a deep breath. “The thing is . . . the thing is, I never really wanted our neighbors to come over for dinner—”

“Why didn’t you—”

“It wasn’t that big a deal, I just . . . you know me. I’m happy with our lives the way they are now. And they came over, and it was totally fine, but then I knew that something strange had happened when Hen was in the office. I saw how she looked at the trophy. I mean, we all saw it, right? She looked like she was about to faint. I had no idea why she reacted that way, but I noticed it and it bugged me. I guess I never even wanted them to look inside my office. I consider it a sacred space, in a way. So, the next day, when I was getting rid of a bunch of stuff, I decided to get rid of the trophy as well. It was just a whim.”