The Murder Rule(72)

“That summer in Maine. Did anyone else spend time with you or Tom close to the time of his death? Did either of you have a girlfriend, for example?”

Dandridge stared at her. He said nothing and he stared at her.

“Hannah,” he said, after a long silence.

“Sorry?”

“What did you say your last name is?”

She thought about lying, but there was no point. “It’s Rokeby,”

she said.

“Oh, my God. You’re Laura’s daughter.”

Hannah nodded. She was trying desperately to read him.

“Of course you are. Jesus. I can’t . . . How did you find out about me? Laura didn’t send you. No way she sent you.”

“She told me enough. I figured out the rest,” Hannah said.

“Oh, God. Hannah. I’ve thought about you. I’ve thought about you a lot. I’ve thought about meeting you. Not in here, but . . .”

Hannah swal owed hard. She let her eyes travel around his face, taking in his features, the shape of his eyes, his mouth. “You’re my father,” she said, flatly.

“I never thought she’d tel you, not Laura. I should have come to visit or written to you, but then I was in here and I—”

“You were my mother’s boyfriend in Maine that summer,” she said, cutting him off.

“Wel , we were together. It wasn’t serious.”

“And she didn’t have a relationship with Tom Spencer?”

Dandridge didn’t respond. Just sat there, brow furrowed, looking at her.

“Wel ?”

“What did she tel you?” he asked.

“It doesn’t matter what she told me. I’m here and I’m asking you for the truth. Okay? If you’re my father, then I think you owe me the truth, if nothing else.” Her voice was low and quiet. Was it weird that she felt so calm? Her eyes were dry. She felt emptied out.

“Laura never had a relationship with Tom. Tom was my friend. He had a girlfriend in Virginia he was very serious about. Laura and I, we had our thing. There was nothing with Tom, not ever.”

“Tel me about his death.”

Dandridge shook his head. “I don’t . . . what do you think happened? We were drinking one night, messing around, playing music. I went to bed. Honestly? Laura was pissing me off. I’m sorry.

Maybe I shouldn’t say that. But . . .” He let his voice trail off as he laughed awkwardly. “I mean, she’s your mother. You know the deal.”

“Yes,” Hannah said, quietly.

“So we had an argument and she cal ed a cab and went back to the hotel. Tom was alone when he went down to the jetty. I don’t know why he went down so late. We thought later maybe he forgot something and went to get it—the cops found the book he was reading in the gal ey of the boat the next day. It could have been something that stupid. The wood on the jetty was slippery as hel .

The cops thought he just lost his footing. He hit his head on the way into the water and he drowned. The postmortem—”

“The postmortem?” Hannah interrupted. “There was a postmortem?”

“Wel , yeah. Any sudden death like that, there’s always a postmortem. And it showed that he’d hit his head but also that he’d inhaled water. They found some of his blood on the edge of the jetty where he hit his head on the way into the water. He’d either been conscious but disoriented or unconscious but stil breathing, when he went in. Either way, the coroner said it was an accident.”

Shit. Hannah wanted to press her face into her hands, to block out the world so that she could think. But he was there and so she couldn’t do that. She clutched her pen and tried not to let her uncertainty and her need for answers show on her face.

“Why are you here?” Dandridge said, suddenly. “Does Rob know you’re my . . . does he know the history?”

Hannah just shook her head. The man sitting opposite her bore no resemblance at al to the monster in her mother’s diary but that didn’t make him a good or trustworthy person. Stil , there were questions she needed to ask him.

“For years I thought Tom Spencer was my father,” she said. “His family paid my mother money to look after me, after his death. They must have believed it too. If you real y are my father, then my mother lied to the Spencer family and you let her do it. Why?”

He flushed. He was silent for a long time, obviously floundering, searching for words. “Shit, Hannah. I was twenty-one and I was stupid. That’s the truth. My dad had just lost a lot of money on a bad investment. I was broke and I was pissed and I was looking for a way . . . I didn’t want to lose everything, you know? And Laura and I had already moved on from each other. We were over by the time she told me she was pregnant. Look, truth is, I didn’t take it very wel .

I didn’t step up the way I should have.”

Hannah took a breath. “Whose idea was it to scam the Spencer family?”

He was very stil . “I don’t know what to tel you.”

“Tel me the truth.”

His flush was deeper. An uneven, splotchy, almost purple that made him look old and sick. The reality of the fact that he’d spent the past eleven years in jail hit her hard.

“It was Laura. But I went along with it. When she realized my family didn’t have any money, or at least not the kind of money that she wanted, she thought about Tom. He was dead. His family were shaken up . . . Laura thought that she could say that she was pregnant with Tom’s baby. If I backed her up, they’d have no reason not to believe her. And she figured they’d pay to be rid of her, as long as she wasn’t too expensive.”