“Glen? Mr. Harrington?”
Tilly nodded.
“Was Sandra there?”
“No, she’d gone for a walk.”
“What was in it that made you confront Mr. Harrington?”
“Don’t you get it? That was the reason Grace and Mia split up. She never really cared about me. She was just using me because she was still in love with Mia.”
“Slow down, Tilly. Start again.”
“I never read the diary until today, I promise,” said Tilly, repeating herself. “I took it when Grace went missing. She always left it in sight. She liked to test me, to see if I could be trusted.”
“And what did it say when you read it today, Tilly?”
“It was Glen all along. That was why they split up.”
“Mr. Harrington told Grace to split up with Mia?”
Tilly shook her head and Laurie had a sickening feeling about what she was going to say next. “No—well, probably, but that wasn’t the reason. Grace saw them, you know?”
“No,” said Laurie, but there was an inevitability as to what was to come. “Tell me.”
“Glen and Mia. Together. You know, making out. She wrote about it in her diary. That was why I hit Mia. I couldn’t believe she would do that to Grace.”
Laurie ran her hand through her hair. “You told Mr. Harrington you read this?” she said, already making her way out of the car.
Tilly nodded.
“Stay here,” said Laurie, calling in backup as she returned to her own car.
Chapter Twenty-Four
If Tilly was telling the truth, this potentially changed everything; making out with your daughter’s girlfriend wasn’t the behavior of a man in control of himself. She made a number of quick calls on the short journey to the Harringtons’ house in Offatts Bayou before calling Gemma Clayton to double-check that Glen Harrington was still at home.
“He went out an hour ago,” said Gemma, a hint of nervousness in her voice.
“Out? Where exactly?” said Laurie, already fearing the worst as she watched a trash can lid caught in an updraft sail past her car roof.
“Said he needed to clear his head. I didn’t know I was supposed to keep them inside,” said Gemma defensively.
“Wait there.” Laurie hung up, her impatience outweighing any compassion for her colleague’s mistake.
Parking outside the Harringtons’， she called Rodriquez and told him to concentrate his efforts on finding Glen. She decided not to tell him why for the time being but insisted that it be the team’s number one priority.
Gemma answered the door. “Sorry, ma’am,” she said. “I would never have let him leave if I had known.”
Sandra Harrington was in the sitting room, curled up on a four-seater leather sofa, a cup in her hand, staring through the ceiling-high windows at the pattern the wind was making on the surface of the ornamental pool outside. She greeted Laurie with a vacant look before glancing over at the television, where a rerun of Modern Family was playing on mute.
Laurie sat down next to her. “Do you know where Glen is, Sandra?”
“Out. I hope he never comes back,” she said, not looking away from the television.
Remi had questioned Sandra about Glen’s extramarital affairs. He’d even gone so far as to ask her if she thought her husband capable of killing Grace. Remi had told Laurie that she’d been surprised by the question, but perhaps not as surprised as she could have been.
“We really do need to speak to him, Sandra. Is there anywhere you think he may have gone?”
“He took the car, so he’s probably heading to Houston to fuck one of his college girls.”
“You knew about that already though, Sandra, didn’t you? About Glen and young women?”
Sandra placed her cup down. From the smell, it seemed it had been full of white wine. She was wearing jogging sweats and an oversized hoodie with Texas A&M emblazoned on it. “What can I say, he likes them young. I didn’t mind so much in the beginning, but that was twenty years ago. It’s sad and pathetic now.”
“He’s been doing this for twenty years?”
“That’s not the worst of it. I’m one of his affairs. He was with someone when we hooked up. I didn’t know about it at the time, but it explains a lot. I wouldn’t have lasted if I hadn’t got pregnant.”
Laurie’s stomach lurched at the word “pregnant.” She wanted to ask Sandra why she’d stuck it out with the man for so long, but she wasn’t there to judge anyone. “I understand Glen and Tilly had an argument?”
“Did they? I’ve been sleeping.”
Laurie looked over to Gemma, who nodded. “I heard some shouting,” said Gemma. “Tilly left, and Glen not long after.”
“What’s happening?” said Sandra, glancing from Laurie to Gemma and back again.
Ideally, Laurie would have liked to have seen the diary before proceeding, but she suspected Sandra knew much more than she’d been letting on. “Can you think of a reason Tilly and Glen would argue?”
Sandra shook her head, but Laurie could see the realization dawning on her. Her life had been a lie and it had now reached a terrible conclusion. “Tilly found out something about Mia,” Laurie said. “About Mia and Glen.”
She knew immediately that Sandra understood what she was saying. The woman shrank back into the sofa, but there was no denial. “Grace told me,” she said, hugging herself. “But I just couldn’t, you know . . .”
“Couldn’t what?”
“I couldn’t let it be true,” said Sandra, shrugging her shoulders as if that explained everything.
After Sandra had composed herself, Laurie asked her to call Glen. “Tell him you need him back here as soon as possible.”
The call went straight to voicemail. “He usually has it switched off,” said Sandra, by way of explanation.
After trying Glen’s work and apartment building with no luck, Laurie called Filmore and requested that an APB be put out on Glen Harrington. Filmore’s tone of voice suggested he wasn’t happy with the request, and Laurie had to spell out her concerns. “He’d made out with his daughter’s girlfriend, and for all we know he may have gone much further.”
“That’s not a capital crime,” said Filmore, his sights still solely on Frank Randall. “And it’s not a natural progression that he would do something with his own daughter.”
“I agree, but I don’t like the fact that he went AWOL the second Tilly confronted him about this. With his kind of wealth and connections, he could become a difficult man to find. I’m trying to spare us some issues in the long term.”
Filmore’s sigh was audible down the phone line. “Fine, but let me know the second he returns to the house so we can take it off the system.”
Laurie hung up. In the rush to reach the house, she hadn’t asked Tilly where she’d found the diary and where it was now. As was procedure, a thorough search of the house had been undertaken when Grace’s body was discovered, but no diary had been uncovered. Laurie called the station, where Tilly had been taken on possible assault charges, and arranged to speak to the girl on the phone.