If Angie and Jeremy Nilsen had been young lovers, what happened? Donald Nilsen would have blown a gasket, but why would he have killed Ted Duffy over it? He believed the relationship had in some way ruined his son’s life. Jeremy had quit school and joined the army. Barbie Duffy had dumped the girl back into the foster system like an unwanted kitten. Nothing happened. The kids didn’t run off together. There was no shotgun wedding. Would either of those things have happened had Ted Duffy been alive?
What if Angie had gotten pregnant? What would Ted Duffy, Sex Crimes detective, have done about it? Jeremy Nilsen was a minor. A statutory rape charge didn’t apply. If Jeremy had actually raped her, why wouldn’t Angie have given him up? Why wouldn’t Evi give him up now? She worked every day with victims of sexual assault. Her personal story of overcoming her past was no secret.
If Donald Nilsen molested the girl, Duffy would have gone after him. Nilsen would have stood to lose everything, including his freedom. That was a motive. But if that had been the case, why wouldn’t Evi Burke speak of it now? Why protect Donald Nilsen, who had gone on with his life unfettered after Ted Duffy’s death?
What am I missing?
She thought about Jennifer Duffy lying in a hospital bed tonight. The burden of a secret had damaged her so badly that she had struggled with it her whole life. The weight of it had made her fragile and had nearly crushed her, now, all these years later.
Nikki slid off her stool and took her wine to her office, walking back and forth the length of the room as she looked at her time line for the day of Ted Duffy’s death.
Donald Nilsen had been working from home. Ted Duffy had been chopping wood in his backyard. Jennifer Duffy had been in her bedroom, reading. Angie Jeager and Jeremy Nilsen had been at school, attending a basketball game.
The teenagers weren’t really accounted for at the time. Their individual stories had been accepted as irrelevant facts. What motive would either of them have had for killing Ted Duffy? Was he trying to keep them apart? If that was an issue, surely Barbie Duffy would have mentioned it. Besides, star-crossed lovers ran off together; they didn’t murder people. And if Angie got pregnant, Barbie Duffy would have, no question, brought that up. She had no love lost for the foster daughters she treated with all the compassion of Cinderella’s stepmother.
If Angie Jeager caused a problem that led to the murder of Barbie’s husband, Barbie would have been the first to say so, particularly when she herself had come under such intense scrutiny as a possible coconspirator in her husband’s death.
Barbie had remarked that Jeremy—who had been so irrelevant to her that she had never even used his name in their conversation—attended Ted’s funeral with his mother, and offered his condolences. Donald Nilsen had been conspicuously absent.
The puzzle was as intricate as a Gordian knot, so many strands interwoven and twisting around and around. Nikki’s head was beginning to throb from attempting to untangle it all. She went back into the kitchen and scrounged around for a bite of something chocolate. If she was going to be frustrated, she might as well get fat doing it. Her secret hiding place in the vegetable crisper yielded half a Twix.
She sat back down at the island and ate her candy bar and had some more red wine. She wondered what her life would have been like if Speed had been murdered instead of just an asshole. She wondered if they were all having fun at the wrestling match. She wondered if the perky blonde had any clue what a heel her new boyfriend was.
Despite her ex-husband’s less-than-stellar character, Nikki knew without a doubt that if someone killed him, she would, even now, be at the head of the line to hunt down his murderer. It was one thing for her to complain about his shortcomings and want to strangle him; having someone else do it was a declaration of war on her family.
Why wouldn’t Barbie Duffy feel the same way? Ted was the father of her children, the father of the damaged daughter she now guarded like a tigress.
She thought again of the way Jennifer Duffy’s expression had changed as she looked back on that memory of sneaking into Angie Jeager’s room to read to her after bedtime . . .
Something Jennifer had said came back to her now, ominous and enigmatic: In real life, good people can turn out to be bad people, and bad people can get away with murder . . . and worse . . .
Someone had gotten away with her father’s murder, and what could be worse than that?
Nikki looked across the room to the big whiteboard calendar on the wall. In less than a week it would be twenty-five years to the day since Ted Duffy was killed. Her calendar was a crazy mess of scribbled-in appointments, color-coded for each of them. Kyle was blue, R.J. was purple, she was hot pink. Appointments for doctors, dentists, lessons, sporting events, social events. Kyle had drawn a cartoon turkey on the date for Thanksgiving.
Add three more kids and a second adult, and the Duffys’ calendar would have looked like an explosion at a crayon factory.