“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.
Papa Hemingway is at my heels, curling around my legs as I step inside.
“What happened here, Papa? Whose space is this?”
The cat stares up at me, blinks, and continues his figure-eight path around my ankles. If he knows anything, he’s not telling.
“What do you suppose people do with these?” I pull from a hook on the wall something that looks like a thick thread—fishing line, maybe, or a thin wire—with knobby buttons fastened to either end. I crouch to the cat’s level and pet his head while he bats at the strange tool, as if it’s merely a toy there for his amusement. “Yeah, I don’t know, either.”
After hanging it back where I found it—Why? Shouldn’t I simply throw it away?—I make my way past the shelves along the right end of the room. I feather my fingertips over plastic-wrapped cubes of clay, over mason jars of glazes—among them, cobalt—and some plastic jars of silica, alumina, kaolin, all labeled by hand.
The handwriting is an artsy block, with serifs and ending strokes. Definitely not the no-nonsense style of my ex-roommate, Natasha Markham.
I pull a package off the shelf and blow dust off it. It’s a plastic-wrapped cube of clay. The label tells me it’s earthenware. Other cubes along the shelf are labeled terra-cotta and porcelain. However long this stash has been sitting upon this shelf, the seals on the plastic wrapping must be airtight because the clay is still malleable. I press my fingers into the mass; even through the plastic, I can make an imprint.
I look to the dusty potter’s wheel.
While I’ve seen people working these things at art fairs back in the city, I wouldn’t know how to begin to use it, even if it worked, which I’m not sure it does.
Still, there’s an electric outlet just behind the mechanism, and its plug practically dares me to try it out. Balancing the clay in one arm, I bend over to plug in the wheel. Flip the switch to “On.” It hums but doesn’t move.
Broken, perhaps?
Then I see the pedal. I press it with the tip of my toes, and the wheel starts to turn at a lazy pace.
Old clay residue seems to spiral out at me, like beads in a kaleidoscope, mesmerizing me, playing tricks on my vision.
So the thing works. Good to know, in case I decide to sell it.
Then again . . .
What if I could learn to use it?
I have clay and a kiln . . .
I call up a video on YouTube and watch a few minutes of a tutorial. Seems easy enough. I plunk the cube of earthenware atop the sturdy pine table and twist the plastic wrapping until it starts to unravel.
First, I dig into the stuff with my hands and pack it like a snowball, but the stuff accumulates under my fingernails, and I can only imagine recreating the airtight seal might be difficult without a smooth edge. I retrieve a butter knife from the kitchen and lop off a hunk as evenly as I can manage it.
Now that I have a decent chunk of clay, I fashion it into a ball and plop it down at the center of the wheel. Now what? As soft as the clay is, my hands aren’t going to slip around it very easily.
How did the artist in Old Town do this? The guy on YouTube had sponges, a bucket of water.
I retrieve more supplies and sit on a tiny stool behind the potter’s wheel. I step on the pedal to start the wheel spinning and cup wet fingers around the clay.
The clay is lopsided, not centered, and I can’t manage to control it, let alone shape it into anything with some semblance of style. It hobbles and topples and rips, and I can’t seem to get a good pace going. I put either too much pressure on the pedal or not enough. I kick off my shoes. Maybe direct contact between my foot and the pedal will help.
I mash down the clay and try again.
And again.