“Mrs. Richards, Lizzie Ouellette is dead.”
She gasped. “What? When? How?”
“We’re still figuring that out, but she was found at the lake house this morning. She was shot.” He paused for impact. “And Dwayne Cleaves is missing.”
“Missing,” she said, and pressed a hand to her chest. “Oh God. Then that’s why—but you couldn’t possibly think that I—I mean, I hardly knew Lizzie. I just rented her house.”
“And slept with her husband,” Bird said mildly, and she flinched as though he’d slapped her. “Did Dwayne ever say anything to you about wanting out of his marriage? Or maybe you said something to him? Made him think he had a chance with you if the wife was out of the picture?”
Adrienne glared at him, an expression of pure disgust on her face. “You can’t believe that.”
Bird shrugged, and said, “In my line of work, we can believe just about anything. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure you never meant for him to kill her. But maybe you said something offhand.” He batted his eyelashes, and his voice became light and breathy, a cruelly accurate imitation of Adrienne’s speaking style: “Oh, Dwayne, we could spend so much more time together if your wife weren’t always in the way.”
In the course of their short conversation, Bird had seen Adrienne Richards wounded, frightened, cornered—but always in control. Now she exploded.
“As if I would ever say that,” she snapped. “I would never. Are you kidding me? What would someone like me want with someone like that? Someone like him? You think I want Dwayne fucking Cleaves in my life? This life? My real life? Do you think I’d want him here, in this house? Scratching his balls and spilling beer on my five-thousand-dollar sofa? Pissing in my kitchen sink because he woke up drunk and couldn’t find the bathroom? We could never be a couple. We’re hardly even the same species. And if he didn’t understand that, if he thought there was any kind of future for him here, then he’s even stupider than I thought. You want to know why I fucked him? Because I was bored and he was there, that’s why.”
The last sentence was practically a shout, and Bird blinked with surprise—as did Adrienne, who looked like she’d swallowed a bee. That was the truth, he thought. That, right there. This woman would never risk her own future to help Dwayne Cleaves.
The only question remaining was whether Dwayne knew that.
“All right,” he said finally. “When was your last contact with Dwayne?”
She sighed. “We rented the house this summer. Same as last year, except we stayed a little longer this time. We came back toward the end of August. I don’t remember the exact date, but I didn’t see or talk to Dwayne after that,” she said.
“What about Lizzie? I heard she spent a lot of time at the house while you were there. Some people even seemed to think you two were pretty friendly.” He paused, then added, “Of course, they might think differently if they knew the real story.”
Adrienne looked at him coolly, not taking the bait, and Bird shrugged. Even if he couldn’t provoke her into another outburst, the dig was too good to resist.
“I don’t particularly care what people in Copper Falls think of me,” she said matter-of-factly. “Lizzie and I got along fine. We were friendly. I’m truly sorry to hear that she’s dead. But ‘friendly’ isn’t ‘friends.’ She spent extra time at the house because I paid her to. And I didn’t keep in touch with her year-round. The last time I heard from her . . .” She trailed off, thinking. “It was maybe a month ago. She sent me a message saying we could rent the house for another week before they shut it for the winter. I don’t know why. I guess maybe I said something once about wanting to see the lake in the fall, but I didn’t really mean it. I was just making conversation. I told her I’d get back to her, and I really meant to, honestly, but then things got busy . . .”
Bird sat up a little straighter as the notation on Lizzie’s calendar came into focus in his mind’s eye. AR-7. Not a gun, but a guest: Adrienne Richards, seven days.
“You would have arrived last night,” he said.
“Yes, but like I said, I never confirmed.”
“What about your husband?”
“What about him? He’s away.”
“Could he have been in Copper Falls last night?”
“No,” she said immediately, then frowned. “I mean, I don’t know. Jesus. What are you saying? What does Ethan have to do with this?”