Good. He needed to report the bitch.
He rose to his feet unsteadily, used the edge of the couch for support. Somehow made it to the door. Threw the dead bolt, and pulled it open.
Holly Graham stood on his porch. She was on the phone, and held up a finger so as not to be interrupted.
Ethan started to laugh. All hail modern technology.
“Yes, yes, it’s fine. I’ve got him, he’s alive.” And to Ethan, “Who did that to you?”
“Ivy,” he said, and Graham nodded curtly.
“It’s just like we thought. Send an ambulance, he’s hurt. We’ll get him patched up. He’s lucky to be alive. I’ll check in shortly. Right. Thanks, Jim.”
She put the phone in her pocket and gave Ethan a long look.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” she said finally.
“I don’t need an ambulance. But I do need to sit down. Want to come in and tell me what the bloody hell is happening? My head’s about to explode.”
“Brookes isn’t here?”
“Not that I’m aware of. I’ve only just woken up, you see. I had a run-in with a board or a bat of some kind, been out for a while.”
A police cruiser pulled up in front of the house with two officers in it.
“Stay right here. Don’t move,” she said, then walked back out the kissing gate. All three got in the car. They conferred for a moment, then doors were flung open and people scattered. One started around back, the other took up position on the front porch. Graham hurried Ethan back inside.
“What the hell is going on?” And then it came back to him, the phone call. “Sutton—”
“Mr. Montclair, I have a lot of information to share and not a lot of time to do it. Come and sit down. I’ll get you some ice.”
Ethan didn’t demur. He felt like he’d pulled five Gs straight into a wall, a crash test dummy whiplashed into being. He sat heavily at the kitchen table and accepted a Ziploc bag of ice and a kitchen towel from Graham. He applied these to his face.
“Talk. Please,” he said.
“Sutton is alive.”
“I know. She called me. I heard her voice, thought I might have been dreaming. And then it all went to pot.”
“Your wife is in Paris. Currently in police custody but they’re willing to discuss extradition.”
“Paris? Custody? What did she do?”
“The Paris police thought she killed two people, and arrested her. Sort of like we thought you killed Sutton.”
Ethan tried to wrap his head around these alien words. Sutton. Paris. Murder. It was too much. His head throbbed.
“Terribly sorry, but can you get me some Advil? Cabinet by the fridge.”
She retrieved the bottle, handed him two pills. He swallowed them dry, then said, “We’ve been set up, haven’t we?”
Graham set the bottle on the table, put her hands on her hips. “I think so, Mr. Montclair. Some of it has been proven, some is conjecture. But it looks like your good friend Ivy Brookes is out to get you.”
“She certainly knocked me out. Sutton called and Ivy attacked me. Which makes no sense, as she was in the process of trying to seduce me. I think. I’m a little fuzzy.”
“Well, here’s what we know—”
He jerked upright, then grabbed his head with a muffled curse. “The front door...it was bolted. I threw the bolt to let you in. She must still be in the house somewhere.”
Graham shook her head. “No one’s here. She has keys to the house. She has access to everything of yours. She probably locked the door behind her to slow us down, or mislead us. But we’re on to her now. We’ll find her, quickly. There’s a BOLO for her car, and her description has been sent to all the law enforcement in the region, plus transit. She won’t elude us for long.”
Ethan sat back, dumbfounded. “Tell me everything.”
“We don’t know everything.” Graham sat now, opposite him, the ever-present notebook out. He thought she’d make a good writer, the way she diligently recorded everything.
“Right now, a man named Hank Tomkins is in custody in New Jersey, and he claims he’s been working with Brookes for the better part of a year trying to make your lives—you and Mrs. Montclair—a living hell.”
“Let me guess. He has something to do with Colin Wilde?”
“Colin Wilde is Hank Tomkins, on orders from Brookes. Apparently she’s the one who’s been driving the online train against Sutton. She’s very good. She fooled me entirely. She’s been working both of you, hard. Trying to turn you against one another. Even Dashiell, your child—”
Ethan shut his eyes at the familiar spike of Dashiell’s name. This time, the spike was poisoned. “Did Ivy hurt our son?”
“There were traces of diphenhydramine in his tissue samples. It takes forever for those tests to be run, they’ve only just come back. When we revisited the case, the lab pushed them to the front of the queue. I’m so sorry.”
“He was murdered.”
“Without a confession, it can still be ruled accidental, but I’ll tell you this, Brookes handed over a bottle of medicine she claims Sutton brought to her and accused you of killing your son. She laid the blame at your feet like a cat with a dead snake, eyes brimming with tears the whole time. Meanwhile, she was filling Sutton’s mind with the idea that you killed Dashiell and were planning to kill her, too. That’s why Sutton ran. Brookes helped her plan the whole thing, even procured false documents for her. She convinced Sutton you were a monster.”
“And the woman in the field? Are we to assume Ivy actually murdered this person and made it look like Sutton to help along this charade?”
“We may have a tentative ID. We’ll need dental or DNA to be sure. She looks like an innocent bystander, lured into Brookes’s web for the sole purpose of filling the temporary role of your dead wife.”
“Dear God. But surely, if Ivy is this smart, she’d have to know you’d figure out it wasn’t Sutton posthaste.”
“I think she was planning a grand escape once your lives were ruined. You say she was trying to seduce you? Perhaps she wanted you to run away with her. Either way, Sutton was lucky. If they hadn’t caught Tomkins—”
“Who is this Tomkins bloke, and how does Sutton know him?”
“I don’t know all the details,” she said, but he could tell she was lying, and a small burn began in the pit of his stomach. “She met him in Paris, and he insinuated himself into her world very quickly. He murdered two students at Sacré-Coeur and framed Sutton for it. She can give you all the details.”
“I suppose I deserve that. Tit for tat.”
“Sir?”
“‘Insinuated himself’ is code for fucked my wife. And I suppose I do deserve payback from her. For the affair I had. The alleged affair. The woman at the hotel at the conference? It was Ivy.”