Trespassing(59)

He continues. “You searched for—”

“No. If Micah logged in with my account, I can’t verify it. But I’m telling you that I have not had occasion to sit and browse the Internet since my daughter was born. I have a laptop. I need to be mobile because my daughter is mobile. You’re welcome to search it, too. I can send it or drop it off at the station here. But whatever you’ve found, however you assume it was me who navigated there, I didn’t do it.”

“You shared your log-in information with your husband?”

“I shared everything with my husband.”

“Noted.” He pauses, maybe to ensure I’m done ranting. “Under your log in, whoever used it, we found searches for homes to purchase in Italy, Switzerland, and Spain. Were you planning on making a move?”

“I’ve never even been to Italy, Switzerland, or wherever it was. I wouldn’t have the first clue how to buy a house overseas.”

“Did Micah ever talk about it?”

“Not with me. It was a stretch for me to move from Old Town to the ’burbs.”

“Yet you took off. You’re in Key West.”

“Because I don’t have a choice. I haven’t worked in over five years. I’m entirely dependent on my husband. And almost every credit card is maxed, everything is past due, and the mortgage on a home—which, news to me, we don’t even own—is about to go into foreclosure. This house in the Keys is my only asset. It’s the only thing in our entire estate that’s in my name. Do you know that I can’t even access my own phone records? Everything is in Micah’s name. Everything except this house.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Speaking of phone records, have you found anything? How many times Micah called the three-oh-five number?”

“Just once,” Guidry says. “It’s a cell phone. Untraceable in the day of go-phones.”

“Do you think he might be overseas then?” I ask. “In Italy, Switzerland—”

“Is Micah on any medication? Would he have access to any benzodiazepines? Xanax, that sort of thing?”

My fingertips tingle as if they’re going numb. “I had an old prescription for Xanax that was filled in April after my miscarriage. I didn’t like to take it. Why?”

“The autopsies of those in the plane crash indicated ingestion of benzos and death by drowning.”

My blood runs cold. Is he insinuating Micah might have had something to do with the deaths of three people?

“The Xanax was in the medicine cabinet. He had access, but I don’t know if he took it with him. You’re welcome to check. Check the whole house. I have nothing to hide.”

“I put in for a warrant. I’ll be in touch when it’s signed.”

“Detective, wait. I called to acknowledge a few things: I know you’ve talked with Claudette about Micah, and I know you think—or at least she thinks—he was seeing another woman.”

He doesn’t offer the courtesy of a response, although I’m starting to understand that about him. The less he says, the more information those he’s speaking with are inclined to offer.

“She was probably right, and maybe it was even worse than she imagined.”

“Worse.”

I take a deep breath. “Once I got to the house in the Keys, it was all apparent, right here in front of me, on the shelves in the family room.”

“What was apparent, Mrs. Cavanaugh?”

Suddenly, I don’t so much feel like Micah’s wife, and the title throws me. “You can . . . would you mind calling me Veronica?”

“Veronica. What was apparent?”

Man of few words. “There were pictures here. Still are here, I guess, but I’ve packed them away. Pictures of Micah . . . and kids that aren’t mine.”

“Whose kids are they?”

“I think Natasha Markham’s. And probably my husband’s, too—the pictures seem to suggest as much.”

“Huh.”

“I mean, I don’t know for sure, but these pictures . . . I’ll send them to you, if you want . . . It’s hard to deny Micah was involved with these children. He was in their lives.”

“And you didn’t suspect any of this beforehand?”

“I feel like a fool. But no. He had me snowed.”

A beat of silence follows before Guidry says, “You realize some might see this as giving you motive. Your husband is missing. We always rule out the spouse first. And you might have reason to shake things up. Motive.”

“Only if I’d known, and I didn’t. Ask anyone. I was blissfully blind to all of this. And I’m angry now—trust me, I’m angry—but even if I’d known back then, before, I wouldn’t have been angry enough to kill him.”

“Some theorists might disagree. Some say you might not even remember being angry enough to kill him.”

I grit my teeth. “Anyone who thinks I’d actually kill because I lived in a make-believe world, because I was blind, assumes I value Micah’s life over mine, over Bella’s. And I don’t.”





Chapter 29

November 24

After a quick peek at Elizabella, who has dozed off in front of the dollhouse, I enter the odd little studio through the door in the laundry room.