Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren #10)(115)

“He always saw everything,” Mr. Delaney muttered roughly, which is answer enough.

“You loved him.”

“It didn’t matter! He had her. For your father it was always about her!” He jabs the gun toward my mother’s chest. “So much so, that even when her actions threatened him, his reputation, his own mistress, for the love of God, even when I, as a good friend, tried to warn him no good would come of their increasingly volatile marriage, he didn’t hear me. He laughed. He … He …”

“He rejected you.” I can see it clearly. My father, who could be arrogant, who hadn’t wanted to hear how his relationship with his wife might be wrong. Easier for him to turn on the messenger instead. Dismiss a legitimate warning as nothing more than the jealous ramblings from a friend he’d always known had more than friendly feelings for him. And Delaney, standing there, having come in good faith to talk about something he was the expert on … Delaney, who had loved my father, respectfully, from a distance, only to have his closest friend turn on him.

I can see it. I can see all of it. And it hurts so much.

“I picked up the shotgun,” Delaney says now, as if watching the movie in my mind. “At the last minute, Earl realized what I was going to do. We struggled. It went off.” Delaney’s voice falters. He and I both know no shotgun just “went off.” It had to be pumped. It had to be fired. Into the torso of his best friend.

“He fell down. And I heard a car. Your vehicle in the driveway.” He glances at my mother. “I wiped down the shotgun. Took off my shoes and tiptoed out of the kitchen. Upstairs, in Earl’s bathroom, I rinsed my hair, hands, and face. Then I balled up my bloody clothes to be retrieved later and re-dressed in items from Earl’s closet. You never even noticed.”

My mother still isn’t talking or moving. But I feel it now, a subtle pressure from her hand, tugging me closer to her. For a moment, I resist. Because I have to know the rest.

“Then I said I shot him, and you were home free,” I provide now.

“I thought you knew.” Delaney stares at my mother. “I thought you knew and asked Evie to confess to protect me. I kept waiting for you to approach me, make some kind of demand in return. But you never did. Then one day I realized, my best friend was dead.” Delaney took a shuddering breath, coughed again from the rapidly thickening smoke now. “And I got away with it.”

“And Conrad?” I whisper because there’s more to this story; I know that now. More things I don’t want to hear but have to know. I press the wet towel closer to my lips and nose. I can feel the heat growing. The fire is coming for us.

In fact, that’s what I’m hoping for.

“You’re on the dark web, aren’t you?” I hear myself now. “A man with your past experiences, current contacts. What do you do? Run a site, a forum, something?”

“Even on the internet, it takes personal connections to vouch for, say, certain professionals.” Mr. Delaney shrugs, as if this is the most obvious thing in the world. Maybe for him, it is. Maybe for my husband, all those years, all those aliases, logged online, it was as well. I know too much, I think, and yet still feel like I know nothing at all.

“Conrad figured you out,” I venture. “Surfing the dark web, he came upon something.”

“Ironically enough, he lodged a complaint against a particular gun for hire. When I went to mediate … I realized from Conrad’s e-mail who’d sent it. I knew then, it was only a matter of time before Conrad realized my role as site manager as well.”

I stare at him. I don’t care anymore about the smoke stinging my eyes, the intensity of the nearing flames, the feel of my mom tugging my hand. “Tell me,” I order, my voice so thick I barely recognize it. “I want to hear it. Straight from you. Tell me exactly how you killed my husband.”

“I didn’t have a choice—”

“Tell me!”

“I waited till you were out,” Mr. Delaney says slowly. “I went into the master bedroom and retrieved Conrad’s gun, which both of you had mentioned before. Eventually he came home, went to work in his study. I appeared in the doorway. ‘I never heard you knock,’ he said. Then I … Then I did what I had to do. Then it was done.”

“You killed my husband. You burned down my house.”

“I did what I had to do.”

“You burned your own house. Then this house? My mother’s house?” I’m practically screaming. At least I think I am. It’s hard to hear over the flames.

“She knows,” he said. “And now you do, too.” He stares hard at my mother again. “Sixteen years ago, you didn’t suspect?”

My mother doesn’t say a word.

“But when Evie told the police the truth, you started thinking about that day again, too. If Earl hadn’t shot himself, then there were only two logical solutions: The hired gun had come to the house, maybe to see you, and got in a confrontation with Earl instead. Or the only other person who knew everything that was going on had done it—namely, me. Of those two choices, who do you think you were going to turn on first?”

“You killed your best friend,” my mother finally snaps. “He loved you!”

“You hired a contract killer to take out the competition. And he loved you still!”