The Couple Next Door(27)

What the hell should he do here? He knows what the detective is getting at. Like a coward, Marco says nothing. But he feels the pulse in the vein at his temple, wonders if the detective notices.

“Cynthia says that you came on to her, that you made sexual advances to her out on the patio.”

“What? No I didn’t.” Marco lifts his head sharply and looks at the detective.

The detective consults his notes again, flips some pages. “She says you ran your hand up her legs, that you kissed her, pulled her onto your lap. She says you were quite persistent, that you got carried away.”

“That’s not true!”

“It’s not true? You didn’t kiss her? And get carried away?”

“No! I mean—I didn’t come on to her, she came on to me.” Marco can feel himself blush deeply and is furious with himself. The detective says nothing. Marco fumbles over the words in his haste to defend himself, all the while thinking, That lying bitch.

“That’s not how it happened,” Marco insists. “She started it.” He cringes at how that sounds, how juvenile. He takes a steadying breath. “She came on to me. I remember, she came and sat on my lap. I told her she shouldn’t be on my lap and tried to nudge her off. But she took my hand and placed it inside her skirt. She was wearing this long dress with a slit up the side.” Marco is really sweating now, thinking how this must sound. He tries to relax. Tells himself no matter how much of a heel the detective must think him, there’s no reason for him to think this has anything to do with Cora. “She kissed me.” Marco stops, colors again. He can tell that Rasbach doesn’t believe a word of it. “I kept protesting, and telling her we shouldn’t, but she wouldn’t get off my lap. She got my fly down. I was afraid someone would see us.”

Rasbach says, “You had a lot to drink. How reliable is your memory of what happened?”

“I was drunk, but I wasn’t that drunk. I know what happened. I didn’t start anything with her. She practically threw herself at me.”

“Why would she lie?” Rasbach asks simply.

Why would she lie? Marco is asking himself the same question. Why would Cynthia screw him over like this? Was she pissed that he told her no? “Maybe she’s mad because I turned her down.”

The detective purses his lips as he looks at Marco.

Desperately, Marco says, “She’s lying.”

“Well, one of you is lying,” Rasbach says.

“Why would I lie about something like that?” Marco says stupidly. “You can’t arrest me for kissing another woman.”

“No,” the detective says. He waits a moment or two and says, “Tell me the truth, Marco. Are you and Cynthia having an affair?”

“No! Absolutely not. I love my wife. I wouldn’t do that, I swear.” Marco glares at the detective. “Is that what Cynthia says? Did she tell you we’re having an affair? That’s absolute bullshit.”

“No, she didn’t say that.”

? ? ?

Anne, sitting in the dark at the top of the stairs, hears it all. She goes cold all over. She now knows that last night, when their baby was being taken, her husband was kissing and fondling Cynthia next door. She doesn’t know who started it—from what she’d observed the night before, it could have been either one of them. They were both guilty. She feels sick to her stomach, betrayed.

“Are we done here?” Marco says.

“Yeah, sure,” the detective answers.

Anne scrambles quickly to her feet at the top of the stairs and, barefoot, pads quickly back to their bedroom. She’s shaking. She climbs into the bed under the duvet and pretends to sleep but fears that her ragged breathing will give her away.

Marco comes into the bedroom, his footsteps heavy. He sits down on the edge of the bed, facing away from her, looks at the wall. She opens her eyes slightly and stares at his back. She pictures him making out with Cynthia on the patio chair while she was bored out of her mind with Graham in the dining room. And while he had his hand in Cynthia’s panties and Anne was pretending to listen to Graham, someone was taking Cora.

She will never be able to trust him again. Never. She turns over and pulls the covers higher, while silent tears roll down her face and pool around her neck.

? ? ?

Cynthia and Graham are in their bedroom next door, having a heated argument. Even so, they are careful to keep their voices quiet. They don’t want to be overheard. There is a laptop open on their queen-size bed.

“No,” Graham says. “We should just go to the police.”

“And say what?” Cynthia asks. “A little late for that, don’t you think? They were already over here, questioning me, while you were out.”

“It’s not that late,” Graham counters. “We tell them we had a camera on the backyard. We don’t have to say any more than that. They don’t have to know why we put it up there.”

“Right. And how do we explain, exactly, why we haven’t mentioned it up till this point?”

“We can say we forgot about it.” Graham is leaning up against the headboard, looking worried.

Cynthia laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “Really. The police were swarming all over the place because a baby has been kidnapped, and we forgot that we have a pinhole camera trained on our backyard.” She gets up and starts taking off her earrings. “They’re never going to believe that.”