Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren #10)(60)

“You didn’t trust him.”

“I worried about it,” I say carefully. “The inconsistencies between what he said and what he actually did. Add to that the whole locked office in the privacy of his own home. Yet, when I tried to bring it up … he’d make me feel petty. Like I was being paranoid. I really couldn’t argue with that. They say liars are always the first to think others are lying. And let’s face it, for sixteen years now, I’ve been one helluva liar.”

“But you got pregnant.”

I smile roughly. “Ever hear of desperately-trying-to-save-your-marriage sex? We got pretty good at it.”

“All marriages are hard,” Mr. Delaney tells me. I know what he means, but I’m not sure all marriages are the constant exercise in suspicion that mine was.

“By the end,” I say softly, “I didn’t believe Conrad anymore. He was lying. Maybe not about his love for me, which he promised was true. Maybe not about the baby, which he wanted so badly. He swore he’d be the best dad in the whole world. But he was also almost frantic on the subject. Something was up. I could feel it. Something was going to happen. The past few weeks, the tension in our home, all the things we suspected but couldn’t say. I still don’t understand it all. My husband was a liar I couldn’t catch in a lie. And our marriage was on a collision course with something terrible I just couldn’t see.”

“The fake IDs?”

“I don’t know anything about them.”

“But you shot up the computer.”

“One day, I found a document in the memory cache of the printer. Financial records regarding a great deal of money. More than even the cash Conrad had in that lockbox.”

Mr. Delaney waits patiently.

“There were also monthly withdrawals. For what? What was this account? What was he funding on all those business trips?”

“Prostitutes? Drugs?”

“Maybe worse. I saw …” I can’t bring myself to say it. I can’t bring myself to see it again. I shake my head.

“You understand, Evie, the police are going to figure this out. When they do, they’re going to say that Conrad’s misdeeds are your motive for murder. Shooting the computer proves it—you were trying to cover your tracks.”

“But I wasn’t. At the time …” I shrug, feeling again the crushing weight of my dysfunctional childhood, followed by an equally dysfunctional marriage. “He’s the father of my child,” I say at last.

Mr. Delany doesn’t need me to explain any more. “Still protecting the legacy,” he murmurs.

“Some habits are hard to break.”

“Do you have any idea who might have burned down your house?”

I shake my head. Which, now that I’m truly considering, sends a trickle of unease down my spine. In the shock of everything that’s happened over the past forty-eight hours, the loss of my house has felt mostly like that—a loss. But after visiting the scene and talking to Sergeant Warren I’m starting to realize it’s also a threat. Someone out there murdered my husband. Some unknown person torched my home to cover his or her tracks.

And for all my searching, all my questioning about the man I married, I have no idea who that person might be. Or if they’re finished yet.

“Have you felt watched, threatened, in the past few weeks?” Mr. Delaney asks, as if reading my mind. “What about Conrad? You said it felt like something was up.”

“He was tense. I wondered …” I can’t put into words yet what I thought. The increasingly silent meals. The way I’d wake up some nights and find Conrad staring at me. The reason I had come home late from work that night, because if I arrived at the house any earlier …

I haven’t been worried about some mysterious stranger out there. But increasingly, I had started to wonder about the man sharing my bed.

I shrug. Everyone wants answers. My lawyer. The police. I only wish I had some.

“Evie, whatever your husband did, it’s not your fault.”

“I’m a liar. I married another liar. And now, my baby …” My throat closes up. I can’t speak anymore. Whether it makes any sense at all, at one time I did love Conrad. Then I lost him. And like my father, Conrad remains a mystery; there are so many things now I’ll never know about him. I feel tired of it all. The pattern of my life is wrong, and yet I can’t seem to break it.

“I want to know the truth,” I whisper. “I want to know one thing to be true.”

“About your husband or your father?”

“I’ll settle for either.”

Mr. Delaney regards me for a long time. “Then I think you’re going to have to start asking more questions.”

“How? Who? I don’t know anyone to talk to Conrad about. And my father, that was sixteen years ago. You were his closest friend. If you don’t know who might’ve shot him, how am I supposed to figure it out?”

“There is another person.”

I have a sudden sinking feeling. “No!”

“Yes. If you really want to understand what happened sixteen years ago, you should talk to your mom.”





CHAPTER 20


    D.D.


FROM THE BEGINNING, PHIL HAD warned D.D. that she’d regret making Flora Dane a CI. The woman was a known vigilante, an avowed loner, and just plain reckless. D.D. always hated it when her mentor was right.