Cole realized he might’ve revealed too much and he said, “My mom told me about him.”
“Ah,” Gina said. “He died almost a decade ago. Horrible man. I never wanted to believe that the rumors about Maureen swaying the investigation were true. Especially since I couldn’t understand what would motivate her to do something like that. She knew Amber was my daughter, of course. Amber worked here on Saturdays, but their interactions, although sometimes tense, weren’t anything that I felt mattered a great deal to Maureen. And yet, something about that rumor has always bothered me.
“Maureen never did explain why she deeded me this property, or sent her men and supplies to help fix it up. I suppose that, in those moments when I really thought about her uncharacteristic generosity, I recognized the taint of something else with it. It wasn’t anything Maureen said or did, but there was a look in her eye when she found me unable to get out of bed. It was more than sympathy. It was…I don’t know. The fleeting look of a guilty conscience, perhaps?
“But, one thing’s for sure, once I got back to being busy with the salon and my growing client list, I had less time to pressure Paparella about reopening my daughter’s case. I’m wondering now if all this”—Gina paused to gesture toward the walls—“was simply a distraction.”
Cole and I looked around the room, then at each other, then back to Gina. It was a lot to think about and it left a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“Anyway,” Gina said next, “the point is that, as long as Maureen Bennett still has breath in her body, the investigation into Ben and Amber’s death will remain closed. No member of the Fredericksburg PD will touch it, and I know that for certain now. Maureen loved that lake house. She never would’ve given it up if it hadn’t been to her advantage.”
“But what could that be?” I asked. “I mean, why would she want the murder investigation shut down?”
“I have no idea,” Gina said sadly. “Like I said, Amber had met Maureen on a number of occasions here at the salon, and I knew that neither liked the other. My daughter was always polite to your grandmother, but the undertone of defiance was there. Amber was very protective of me, and, back then, Maureen liked to bully me and make snide comments about my appearance, parenting skills, and the way I ran my business. Amber chafed at all of that. I knew that Maureen picked up on Amber’s defiance, and that sometimes caused her to treat Amber like a lowly servant. She’d send Amber on ridiculous errands just to throw her weight around. I put up with all of it because Maureen supplied me with referrals and because Amber never complained.” Gina sighed and put a hand to the side of her face. “I failed my daughter in that way. I certainly did.”
“Did Amber ever mention this Mr. Bishop?” Cole asked.
Gina shook her head. “No. But in the final weeks before she died, she was very worried that Spence was caught up in something that had gotten out of hand. She told me one afternoon that Spence had gotten into a fistfight with a friend of his, which wasn’t like him at all.”
I leaned forward. We hadn’t heard about that. “Who?”
Gina shrugged. “Amber never told me. When it came to Spence she was very guarded. He and his family always seemed to be caught up in some sort of crisis, and Amber’s father and I worried about her getting sucked into things no teenage girl should have to handle. Amber knew we would react protectively and that we worried, so she was always light on the details. I did know that the boy in question was one of his friends from the football team, but which one I don’t know. Still, I do remember that Amber was very upset by the fact that the two friends were no longer speaking to each other. I could tell she was especially worried about Spence at the time. He’d been behaving oddly, and she confessed to me that she was afraid he’d gotten himself into some kind of personal trouble and was in over his head.”
“Do you think this teammate would know what trouble Spence was into?” I asked.
“The young man from the fight?”
I nodded.