“I do,” Owen said. “She wasn’t cleaning. I don’t know what she was doing.”
Owen was sure that Maya’s behavior meant something, although he had no working theory. He wanted Luna to join in the brainstorming, to help him figure it out, but she seemed uninterested. He also wanted to tell Luna about Amy and how strange she had been, how he thought she might have been trying to trap him in a confession. He didn’t say any of that because Luna’s thermostat had shifted from icebox to sauna in no time at all.
“You want to tell me who you’re mad at?” Owen asked.
“All of you,” she said.
Luna wanted to leave. She wasn’t hungry and the coffee was crap. She felt like no one was who she thought they were or who they were supposed to be. Learning about Sam and Irene was bad enough. Being angry at the person whose death you’re currently grieving didn’t cancel out either emotion. It somehow managed to heighten them both.
“I think Maya was searching my house,” Owen said. “Isn’t that weird?”
Luna, lost in thought, didn’t answer. Owen waved his hand in front of her to wake her up.
“Did you hear me?”
“Why are you going on about Maya?”
“She’s making me nervous. I’d kind of like to know what she was looking for.”
“Remember when we installed an app on our phones so we could find each other?” Luna said.
Owen nodded, though he’d actually forgotten about the app.
“I couldn’t reach you yesterday, so I checked the app to make sure you were okay,” Luna said.
“Your husband was fucking my dead wife and you’re angry that I went to see Amy?”
“Owen, they think you did it. It’s almost always the husband. I guarantee, they’re locked on you. Everything you’re doing now, they’re watching. They’re going to keep watching you until they’ve got something to use against you. And they’re probably going to keep watching me, because I found the body and I’m your friend. When you visit your mistress, you look guilty. There’s only so much I can do to defend you, to be a witness to your character. I don’t think you killed Irene. But from an outsider’s perspective, I’m not the best judge. I lied for a murderer once; some people think I did it twice. I can’t vouch for you this time. I can’t help you. I’m not your alibi.”
* * *
—
“What are you working on?” Burns asked her partner.
“I’m tracking Irene’s cash withdrawals in the last three years.” Noah spun around his laptop, showing Margot his Excel spreadsheet of cash withdrawals.
“That spreadsheet is a little bit like porn for you, isn’t it?” Margot asked.
The answer was yes, but Goldman ignored the question.
“In 2016 through ’17, she makes an average of five ATM withdrawals each year. Then, at the end of last year, she started withdrawing larger sums. One thousand, five thousand. It adds up to close to thirty thousand in the last year. All in cash. I contacted her financial adviser, Cliff Easter. He’d asked Irene about it, because he didn’t like how it looked, and she told him she was buying art,” Noah said.
“Can we verify that?” Margot asked.
“I reached out to the attorney. I’m going to get a look at her storage facility in a few hours. Get this: According to her attorney, there were no amendments to her will.”
“So if she was buying art…” Burns said.
“Right,” Goldman said, nodding. “Anything not designated in her will goes to the husband.”
Margot threw on her coat and searched her desk for car keys. “Let me know as soon as you find anything. We’ll need an appraiser.”
“Where are you going?” Goldman asked.
“Albany,” Margot said. “I want to talk to Detective Oslo. He investigated the Scarlet Hayes death.”
“You think there’s anything there?”
“I have no idea,” Margot said.
* * *
—
Miles Oslo had retired from the New York State Police three years earlier. Now he worked very part-time as a private detective, running his casual business out of a sparsely furnished office in a decaying strip mall in Troy, New York. Oslo agreed to meet Detective Margot Burns to discuss the Scarlet Hayes case.
Margot found it both disappointing and suspicious that he didn’t even have signage on his door. She rang the buzzer for unit four. A tall, extremely lean man with fading strawberry-blond hair answered the door.
After introductions were made and coffee offered, Margot sat down in an old leather chair in the shabby ten-by-ten-foot room.
“I know. This place is a shithole,” said Oslo.
“I appreciate your time,” Burns said.
Oslo moved a small file to the center of his desk. “I reviewed my notes this morning,” Oslo said. “I’m afraid I don’t have much more to tell you. Nothing stuck out. Back when I interviewed Owen Mann, he had an on-again off-again relationship with Scarlet Hayes. By all accounts, he was not the pursuer. While the death was unfortunate, all the crime-scene evidence suggested that it was an accident.”
“Was there anything about the case that didn’t sit right with you?” Burns asked.
“Sure,” Oslo said. “A few things. When we were still getting heat from Scarlet’s mother, I asked Owen if he’d take a lie-detector test. He declined right away, didn’t even think about it.”
“Any good lawyer would tell him to refuse,” Burns said.
In the same situation, she wouldn’t let her own son take a lie detector.
“I agree,” Oslo said, nodding. “But I always got the feeling there was something he wasn’t saying, like maybe he was protecting someone.”
“Like who?”
“I don’t know. It was just a feeling.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes,” Oslo said. “We got an anonymous call the morning after Scarlet disappeared, telling us where we could find the body.”
“Where was the call made?” Burns asked.
“A pay phone in town. It could have been a hiker who came upon the deceased and didn’t want to get involved. We’ll never know.”
“The trail was on public grounds?”
“Technically part of Markham, but anyone could hike there,” Oslo said.
“Did you investigate the call?” Burns asked.
“There were no cameras near the pay phone.”