Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren #10)(42)

My hand shook when I first cracked open the door. My heart was pounding. I felt like Bluebeard’s wife, stepping into the very room she’d been warned about. The next thing I would see would be the hanging corpses of past wives.

I discovered file cabinets. Stacks of window catalogues. A printer/scanner. And a cleared spot on the desk where Conrad’s laptop usually lived. I went through the files. Once you’ve committed B and E you can’t just walk away. I found project files, various blueprints for homes up and down the East Coast. I found vendor files, handwritten notes on upcoming product changes, and new and improved color options.

In the end, I got on my hands and knees. I searched for documents taped under the desk, files slipped behind the cabinets, maybe even a computer code stamped to the bottom of the executive leather chair. I felt crazed. A woman having an out-of-body experience. It struck me that this was exactly what my mother would do. My poor husband was simply in the habit of locking up, and here I was, turning it into sordid drama.

Why couldn’t I simply trust him? Or was it me I didn’t trust? Did I figure that anyone who loved me the way he loved me had to have something wrong with him?

I crawled around the office on my hands and knees. I went through every single scrap of paper. If Conrad hadn’t been out of town, if he’d returned home early, there’s no way I would’ve been able to justify my behavior, the total gutting of his neat and almost hyperorganized professional space.

Except I’m a mathematician, raised by one of the world’s best intellects. And part of brilliance isn’t just solving a problem; it’s seeing a problem no one else realizes is a problem yet.

A locked room, in the privacy of a man’s own home, containing only files and not even a computer … Why? Why lock it at all?

A puzzle. I needed the solution.

Then I saw the lone piece of semivaluable equipment. The printer/scanner. With a memory cache.

I fell in love with Conrad for his loud laugh, his smile, his personality. And, no, I didn’t find any bodies of murdered wives that day. But in the end, I did find a bread crumb. An image of a scanned document, a record of a bank account that I never knew existed.

Not a crime. Not even anything I could mention without having to reveal how I discovered it. But a piece of a puzzle.

Which of course I churned and worried and worked. Until I waited for him to go on trips, just so I could once more rip apart his space. Except then he started regarding me through narrowed eyes upon his return, probably because I didn’t put everything back perfectly, so he knew something was off even if he didn’t quite know what.

I started taking pictures. Of exactly how the office looked upon entry, so I could carefully replace each item. Then, when he still seemed unsettled, I started checking the doorway for tricks I read about online—a piece of hair positioned across the doorway, which would be broken upon entry. Easy enough to replace with one of my own upon exiting. Or lint positioned just so on top of a slightly skewed open drawer. Which I photographed and returned to its exact location.

A duel of sorts. Months, years. A period of strain followed by a period of shame when I swore to myself I’d stop this madness. Conrad was a good guy. Conrad loved me. If he had financials that were his own, frankly, so did I. That made us independent adults, not government spies or nefarious criminals.

But eventually I would break again. And back into the office I would go, tearing apart my marriage in search of answers to a question I couldn’t even ask.

What is the perfect marriage? Acceptance, I had thought. But I’d assumed it would be my husband’s acceptance of me. I’d never stopped to consider that maybe I’d prove incapable of accepting him. That maybe my mother, via the lie that had become my adult life, had warped me even more than I’d understood.

You can’t sneak around in a marriage forever. Sooner or later, no matter how careful you are, you’re going to get caught. Yet I couldn’t stop. It’s almost as if I wanted Conrad to figure out what I was doing. I needed our marriage to fall apart.

Except, suddenly, two made three.

Then my mistakes truly came back to haunt me.

—

I DON’T KNOW what to do. I can’t go outside. Even this late at night, the media vans remain a solid wall of high-powered lights parked just across the street. I’m too keyed up for sleep, my brain jumping between images of Conrad’s blood-spattered body and our home’s burnt-out shell. I should rest for the baby’s sake. I should flee my mother’s house for my sake. I should do … something.

But I don’t know what. Sixteen years ago, confronted by a similar tragedy, I’d simply done what I was told and taken the blame. Now?

I hate the lingering sense of déjà vu. And worse, the feeling of once more being helpless.

I hadn’t lied to the detective. I still don’t know what happened to my father. One moment, I had a dad, my hero, my rock, the man I could always count on. Then he was dead. Just like that.

My mom’s response upon entering the kitchen … it wasn’t horror; it was outrage mixed with hysteria. That he’d gone and died? Or that he’d gone and killed himself, which is what I’ve always wondered. At sixteen, shell-shocked and traumatized, I’d never thought to question my mom. If she said we needed to keep what happened between us, then we needed to keep it between us. Denial was what my mother did best.