The Other Mrs.(30)

“What is it?” I ask, sitting upright in bed. Something has caught Will’s eye and drawn him there, to the window. He stands, contemplatively.

The boys are both asleep, the house remarkably quiet.

“There’s a light on,” Will tells me, and I ask, “Where?”

He says, “Morgan’s house.”

This doesn’t surprise me. As far as I know, the house is still a crime scene. I’d have to imagine it takes days for forensics to process things before some bioremediation service gets called in to scrub blood and other bodily fluids from inside the home. Soon Will and I will watch on as people in yellow splash suits with some sort of breathing apparatus affixed to their heads move in and out, taking bloodstained items away.

I wonder again about the violence that happened there that night, about the bloodshed.

How many bloodstained items will they have to take away?

“There’s a car in the drive,” Will tells me. But before I have a chance to reply, he says, “Jeffrey’s car. He must be home from Tokyo.”

He stands motionless before the window for another minute or two. I rise from bed, leaving the warmth of the blankets. The house is cold tonight. I go to the window and stand beside Will, our elbows touching. I look out, see the same thing he sees. A shadowy SUV parked in the driveway beside a police cruiser, both of them illuminated by a porch light.

As we watch on, the front door of the home opens. An officer steps out first, then ushers Jeffrey through the door. Jeffrey must be a foot taller than the policeman. He pauses in the open doorway for a last look inside. In his hands, he carries luggage. He steps from the home, passing the officer by. The officer closes the door and locks it behind them. The officer has met him here, I think, and kept an eye on the crime scene while Mr. Baines packed up a few personal things.

Under his breath Will murmurs, “This is all so surreal.”

I lay a hand on his arm, the closest I come to consoling him. “It’s awful,” I say because it is. No one, but especially not a young woman, should have to die like this.

“You heard about the memorial service?” Will asks me, though his eyes don’t stray from the window.

“What memorial service?” I ask, because I didn’t hear about a memorial service.

“There’s a memorial service,” Will tells me. “Tomorrow. For Morgan. At the Methodist church.” There are two churches on the island. The other one is Catholic. “I overheard people talking about it at school pickup. I checked and found the obituary online, the notice of the memorial service. I assume there will be a funeral eventually but...” he says, leaving that there, and I easily deduce that the body is still being held by the morgue and will be until the investigation is through. Formalities like a funeral and a wake will have to wait until the murderer is caught. In the interim, a memorial service will have to do.

Tomorrow I work. But depending on what time the memorial service is, I can go with Will after. I know he’ll want to go. Will and Morgan were friends, after all, and, though our relationship has been rocky of late, it would be lonely for him, I think, walking into that memorial service all alone. I can do this for him. And besides, selfishly I’d like to get a good look at Jeffrey Baines up close.

“I work until six tomorrow,” I say. “We’ll go together. As soon as I finish up. Maybe Otto can keep an eye on Tate,” I say. It would be a quick trip. I can’t imagine us staying long. We’d pay our respects and then leave.

“We’re not going to the memorial service,” Will says. His words are conclusive.

I’m taken aback, because this isn’t what I expect him to say. “Why not?” I ask.

“It feels presumptuous to go. You didn’t know her at all, and I didn’t know her that well.” I start to explain that a memorial service isn’t exactly the type of thing that one needs an invitation to attend, but I stop because I can see Will has already made up his mind.

I ask instead, “Do you think he did it?” I keep my eyes trained to Jeffrey Baines on the other side of the window. I have to crane my neck a bit to see, as the Baineses’ house isn’t directly across the street. I watch as Jeffrey and the officer exchange words in the driveway, before parting ways and heading for their own cars.

When Will doesn’t answer my question, I hear myself mutter, “It’s always the husband.”

This time, his reply is quick. “He was out of the country, Sadie. Why would you think he had anything to do with this?”

I tell him, “Just because he was out of the country doesn’t mean he couldn’t have paid someone else to kill his wife.” Because, on the contrary, being out of the country at the time of his wife’s murder provided him with the perfect alibi.

Will must see the logic in this. There’s a small, almost imperceptible nod of the head before he asks, backtracking, “What’s that supposed to mean anyway, about it always being the husband?”

I shrug and tell him I don’t know. “It’s just, if you watch the news long enough, that’s the way it seems to be. Unhappy husbands kill their wives.”

My gaze stays on the window, watching as, on the other side of the street, Jeffrey Baines pops the trunk of his SUV and tosses the luggage in. His posture is vertical. There’s something supercilious about the way he stands.