Bird looked grave. “Mrs. Richards, do you own a black Mercedes? A big SUV?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“My husband took it.”
“Okay. And where is he?”
Adrienne began shaking her head, blinking rapidly. “I . . . I don’t remember. Or maybe he didn’t tell me. He doesn’t always tell me. He said it was a business trip, just a day or two, and he’d call when he could.”
Bird scrutinized her face. Was she lying?
“Has he called?”
“No,” she said quietly.
“And when did he leave?”
Adrienne bit her lip. Her voice dropped to just above a whisper. “Yesterday.”
“You haven’t tried to call him?”
“Ethan is an important man,” she said, and her tone turned pleading. “He doesn’t like for me to bother him when he’s working.”
Bird suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. “Okay,” he said, softening his tone. “I’d like you to call him, please. Would you do that for me?”
Adrienne nodded and retrieved her phone, tapping at the screen. She looked at him anxiously as she lifted the phone to her ear, then frowned again.
“Straight to voice mail,” she said, tapping the speaker icon; an electronic voice filled the room, midsentence: “。 . . is not available. At the tone, please record a voice message.”
“Do you want me to leave a message?” she asked, and at the same time, Bird’s phone began to buzz. He fished it out of his pocket and glanced at the screen. Sheriff Ryan, calling from Copper Falls. Probably something about the autopsy; Bird could ring him back when he was done here.
“Hang up, please,” he said to Adrienne. She did, but looked bewildered.
“You’re scaring me,” she said, then again, more urgently: “You’re scaring me. I thought you wanted to talk to me. Why are you asking about Ethan?”
As Bird weighed how much to tell her, the phone buzzed again in his hand. He looked at the screen, frowning: Ryan had not only left a voice mail, but also followed it immediately with a text. He tapped the message, and froze.
CLEAVES VEHICLE FOUND. BODY INSIDE. CALL ASAP.
“Sorry, ma’am,” Bird said. “We’ll have to end this here for now.” He stood, fishing out a business card. “If your husband calls, have him call me.”
Adrienne took the card with a look of horror on her face. Bird wondered why, then remembered: She thought nobody knew. The stricken expression wasn’t concern for her husband. She was just worried he’d find out she’d been screwing around.
“I’ll be discreet,” he said, knowing even as the words passed his lips that he would break this promise if he had the chance, if only to see the look on Ethan Richards’s face when he found out his wife had been giving it up to a redneck dirtbag with only one and a half feet.
But Adrienne didn’t need to know that.
He left the way he’d come, past the photograph of a newlywed Adrienne and Ethan in happier times. He could feel Adrienne’s eyes on him as he descended the stairs. As he reached the door, she called after him.
“Detective Bird,” she said. “Am I in danger?”
He paused in the doorway, looking back at her.
“I hope not, ma’am,” he said.
As he turned his back on Adrienne Richards and stepped into the night, he was surprised to realize that he almost meant it.
Chapter 18
The City
She stood in the doorway to watch him go, hugging herself to stop her body from trembling. It was a beautiful night, unseasonably mild, the air soft against her skin. She shivered anyway. She couldn’t stop thinking about the way Ian Bird had looked at her when he said, “I know you and Dwayne Cleaves were having an affair,” the way his mouth tweaked at the corners as he described the photograph of Adrienne in what he called “a compromising moment.” The smug loathing in his eyes. He hadn’t even tried to hide the enjoyment he got from humiliating her.
Imagine how he’d have looked at me, if he knew the truth.
She shuddered again, digging her fingers into her upper arms. Inside, the calculating survivor’s voice suggested that she should be grateful, that the detective’s prejudice against Adrienne had worked in her favor, particularly in the moments where she’d lost control, said too much, allowed her emotions to get the better of her. Be glad, said the voice, that he thinks he already knows who you are. He thinks he understands. And because he thought he understood, Ian Bird assumed that what he’d seen upstairs was embarrassment, the entitled rich girl crying because she’d gotten caught with her hand in the cookie jar. But it wasn’t tears she’d been holding back; it was a howl of rage. Thank God she’d managed to clamp it down. If she had let loose, started screaming, she would never have been able to stop.