Present Day
I drew in a deep breath, and then another. I’d always told Bridget, my child prone to anxiety, that worrying never helped anything. Worse, outright panic led to stupid mistakes. It’s always better to clear your mind of any distracting noise to appraise a situation once you’re calm.
Here was my current situation:
I had been brought into the police station to be interviewed about Howard’s death. The police believed that Howard had been murdered.
The police also believed that Kat had a financial motive for wanting Howard dead.
Sergeant Oliver was oddly hostile toward me. There was—or at least, Sergeant Oliver claimed there was—a witness who had come forward.
I hadn’t heard from Kat.
I set my logician’s brain whirring on the problem, but I got back...nothing. There were too many loose ends, too many unknown factors.
For example:
Was Oliver telling the truth about a witness who had seen someone push Howard off the balcony? I wouldn’t have put it past her to lie just to gauge my reaction. She clearly didn’t like me and had been adversarial throughout the interview. And if there really was a witness, who was it? Someone who knew the Grants, or a stranger?
And then there was the staggering amount of money that was presumably now Kat’s, and Kat’s alone.
There were a lot of factors to process before we even got to the meat of the matter. Which was—at least, to my mind—where was Kat in all of this? It was impossible to know, since I hadn’t heard from her since that singular conversation we had when she was at the airport ready to board a plane home to bury her husband.
I wondered if I should insist on stopping the interview until I had the chance to consult with a criminal attorney, as Todd had urged me to do. And yet I still thought it was highly unlikely that the police considered me a suspect in Howard’s death. It was far more likely that Demer had been telling the truth when he told me their purpose in interviewing me was to gain background information on Kat and Howard. And I had to think that the more I found out about the focus of the police’s investigation, the better it would be for Kat.
The door to the conference room opened. Detective Demer entered and closed it behind him.
“Sorry about that,” he said. He pulled out his chair and sat down heavily in it.
I nodded. I hoped that my husband was right, that I did possess an inscrutable face. I needed one now.
“I don’t think Sergeant Oliver likes me very much,” I remarked.
Demer paused for a moment. Then, raising his eyebrows, he nodded. “I think you might be right about that.” He gave a rueful chuckle. “I wouldn’t take it personally. I’m not sure she likes anyone.”
“Why is she so convinced that I know what happened to Howard?”
Demer looked at me thoughtfully, tapping a pencil against the table. I got the feeling that he was trying to decide how much to tell me.
“What she said was correct. A witness has come forward,” he finally replied.
Goose bumps were rising up on my arms and shoulders. It was just the air-conditioning, I told myself.
“What kind of a witness?” I asked. “You can’t see into the Grants’ backyard from any of the abutting properties.”
“You seem quite sure about that,” Demer said, as though my observation might have some significant meaning.
“I’ve been to their house many times.”
I pictured the view from the Grants’ back patio, where Kat and I often sat, lingering over a glass of wine while watching the boat traffic pass by. There was a combination of high walls and manicured hedges that blocked any view into her backyard from the neighbors to both the north and south. And while you could see the houses across the Intracoastal—no one would block a multimillion-dollar water view with a privacy fence—they were far enough away that you could see only their facades. Maybe the witness had been on a boat? It seemed the only plausible possibility, although even then, it was hard to imagine anyone on the water would have a good view of the Grants’ house at night.
“The witness lives on the opposite side of the Intracoastal,” the detective said.
“On the other side of the water? But that has to be, what? Over a thousand feet away? How would they be able to see anything?” I asked.
“The man is an amateur astronomer,” Demer said. “He was looking through a telescope.”
“Pointed at the Grants’ house?” I asked, feeling my eyebrows arch.
Demer shrugged. “Maybe he had other hobbies, as well...”
“Okay. So you have a pervert who was hoping to see a free show and he instead saw...what?”
“He said he saw someone push a man over the railing.”
“Howard,” I clarified.
“Our witness couldn’t identify the victim, but as no other bodies turned up that morning, that seems the most obvious guess.”
“Did he see who pushed him?”
The detective again hesitated. “He didn’t see who it was.”
I stared at the detective, absorbing these words. The door opened and Sergeant Oliver strode in. She did not look chastened. If anything, her expression was almost smug. Demer glanced up at her and she nodded back at him.
“Mrs. Campbell, do you have a key to the Grants’ house?” Oliver asked.
I shook my head no. “Why?”
“But you know where they store a spare key. You know the code to the house alarm,” Oliver continued. These were technically questions, but she was stating them as facts.
Actually, I did know where Kat stored the spare key. It was in the garage, hidden behind the light box. Kat and I had gone shopping one day, and when I dropped her off, she hadn’t been able to find her house key. She’d shown me where she kept the spare key and how to disarm the security alarm.
“Just in case you ever need to get in,” Kat had said at the time.
“Why are you asking?” I looked to Demer.
“Just answer the question,” Oliver snapped.
“No,” I said, crossing my arms. “Not until you tell me why you want to know. Because if you are attempting to implicate me in this in any way, I’m going to terminate this interview.”
Demer raised a placatory hand. “There wasn’t any sign of a forced entry, so at this point, we’re just trying to exclude all persons who knew how to access the household.”
“How many people fall into that category?”
Demer and Oliver exchanged a look.
“Just two of you,” Demer said. “You and the Grants’ housekeeper.”
“What about Kat’s family? They must have keys or know where the spare is.”
Demer shook his head. “According to Katherine Grant, you were the only two.”
According to Katherine Grant.
They were the most chilling words I had ever heard. Unless I was misreading the situation, or unless the police were purposely misleading me, it sounded very much like Kat had deliberately cast police suspicion on me.
Except that Kat would never do that.
I took a deep breath, quelling the anxiety that was starting to ferment. I needed to keep my head clear.
“I may be one of the only people whom Kat told where the spare key was,” I said. “But what about Howard?”
“What do you mean?” Sergeant Oliver asked.
“He might have told any number of people about the key and the alarm code.”
“We’ve spoken to Mr. Grant’s assistant, Ellen Propst, who frequently ran errands for him. He never gave her a key to the house or the alarm code, and she couldn’t think of anyone else he might have told. His only living relative other than his wife and daughter, who were both out of town at the time of his death, is an elderly mother, who lives in a nursing home.”
I drew in a deep breath. “He might have told his girlfriend.”
Detective Demer set down his pencil and looked at me. “His girlfriend?” he repeated.
“I thought you said that as far as you knew, the Grants had a happy marriage,” Oliver said. “I thought you said they weren’t headed for a divorce.”
This wasn’t information I had planned to share with the police or anyone else. But they, and Kat, had left me no choice.
I ignored Oliver and instead looked directly at Detective Demer. “Howard Grant was having an affair.”