Love You More: A Novel

“Eight or nine minutes, so not just leaving a message. I’ll trace the number, have a chat with the recipient.”


“Make sure the person spoke to Brian,” D.D. ordered crisply, “and it wasn’t Tessa, using his phone.”

“I don’t get it.” Phil had been doing all the background checks and in many ways knew more about the details of the case than anyone. “We’re thinking Tessa shot her husband, then froze the body—then staged a whole scene for Sunday morning. Why?”

D.D. shrugged. “Interestingly enough, she wouldn’t tell us that.”

“Buying time,” Bobby said, from his place, leaning against the front wall. “No other good reason. She was buying time.”

“For what?” Phil asked.

“Most likely, to deal with her daughter.”

That brought the room up short. D.D. frowned at him. Obviously, she wasn’t happy with his conjecture. That was okay. He wasn’t happy to learn she was pregnant from a suspect in a murder investigation. Call him old-fashioned, but that stuck in his craw, and he was feeling pissy about it.

“You think she hurt the daughter?” Phil asked now, his voice wary. He had four kids at home.

“A neighbor saw Brian’s Denali leave the house Saturday afternoon,” Bobby said. “Initially, we assumed Brian was driving the SUV. Given that the lab techs believe a dead body was in the back of the vehicle, we further assumed that Brian had killed his stepdaughter, and was disposing of the evidence. Except, Brian Darby was most likely dead by Saturday afternoon. Meaning he wasn’t the one transporting a corpse.”

D.D. thinned her lips, but nodded curtly. “I think we have to consider the notion that Tessa Leoni killed her entire family. Given that Sophie was at school on Friday, my guess is either Friday night, before Tessa’s patrol shift, or Saturday morning after her patrol shift, something terrible happened in the household. Brian’s body was put on ice in the garage, while Sophie’s body was driven to an undisclosed location and dumped. Tessa reported to work once again Saturday evening. Then Sunday morning, it was showtime.”

“She staged it,” Phil muttered. “Made it look like her husband had done something to Sophie. Then she and Brian fought and she killed him in self-defense.”

D.D. nodded; Bobby, too.

“What about the facial injuries, though?” Neil spoke up from the back. “No way she made it through Saturday night patrol with a concussion and fractured face. She couldn’t stand yesterday, let alone operate a motor vehicle.”

“Good point,” D.D. concurred. She moved in front of the whiteboard, where she’d written: Timeline. Now, she added one bullet—Tessa Leoni Injuries: Sunday Morning. “Wounds gotta be fresh. Can a doctor verify that?” she asked Neil, a former EMT and their resident medical expert.

“Tough with contusions,” Neil answered. “Everyone heals at a different rate. But I’m gonna guess the severity of the injuries dictates they happened sooner versus later. She wouldn’t have been terribly functional after taking such massive blows to the head.”

“Who beat her up?” another officer asked.

“Accomplice,” Phil muttered up front.

D.D. nodded. “In addition to revamping our timeline, this new information also means we need to reconsider the scope of the case. If Brian Darby didn’t beat his wife, who did, and why?”

“Lover,” Bobby said quietly. “Most logical explanation. Why did Tessa Leoni kill her husband and daughter? Because she didn’t want to be with them anymore. Why didn’t she want to be with them anymore? Because she had met someone new.”

“Hear anything through the grapevine?” D.D. asked him. “Rumors from the barracks, that sort of thing.”

Bobby shook his head. “Not that plugged in, though. I’m a detective, not a trooper. We’ll need to interview the LT.”

“First thing this afternoon,” D.D. assured him.

“Gotta say,” Phil spoke up, “this theory fits better with what Darby’s boss, Scott Hale, reported. I talked to him at eleven, and he swore up and down that Darby didn’t have a violent bone in his body. A tanker crew is pretty tight. You see people sleep deprived, homesick, and stressed out, while maintaining a twenty-four/seven work schedule. As an engineer, Darby got to deal with all the technical crises, and apparently big things go wrong on big ships—water in the fuel, fried electrical systems, glitches in the control software. Still, Hale never saw Darby lose his composure. In fact, the bigger the problem, the more jazzed Darby was about finding a solution. Hale certainly doesn’t believe a guy like that goes home and beats up his wife.”

“Darby was a model employee,” D.D. said.

“Darby was everyone’s favorite engineer. And apparently, quite good at Guitar Hero—they have a rec room on board.”