I let out a sigh. “I’m sure this girl couldn’t be behind it all, but the truth is it was a bit frightening. Eve caught her cheating on a test, and although she ended up giving her a minimal punishment, it seems that Adeline never forgave her. Two nights ago, we caught her lurking outside our home, although she denied it when we brought our suspicions to the principal.”
“Uh-huh…”
“And there’s one other thing.” I walk over to the desk we keep in the corner of the living room and open the top drawer. I pull out a piece of notebook paper with a handwritten scribble on it. I bring it over to the detective. “She left this for Eve in her mailbox at school.”
Sprague’s eyes skim over the writing on the page. As she reads, I can hear the sharp inhale of her breath. “This is serious stuff, Mr. Bennett. How come you didn’t bring this to the police in the first place?”
“Adeline has had a difficult year,” I explain. “About a year ago, her father died. She was stalking another teacher last year, and most of the other students at the school have ostracized her. We didn’t want to make her life more difficult, and we tried to deal with it within the school.”
Sprague is writing all this down. I even notice her underlining something. When a woman is killed, the husband or boyfriend—me—is always the prime suspect. Unless another possible perpetrator is offered.
I am offering Addie.
“All right,” she finally says, “looks like I’ll be paying Miss Severson a visit. Before I do, do you mind if I take a quick look around here?”
“Of course. Please go ahead.”
I don’t know what exactly she is looking for. Perhaps my wife’s body sprawled out in the middle of the living room? I suppose there are criminals that stupid.
Sprague makes a quick pass around the living room. She checks the bathroom next, which is utterly unexciting. Then she points at the room where I strangled my wife to death less than twenty-four hours ago. “That the kitchen?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
She opens the door to the kitchen, and when she gets to the center of the room, her eyes zero in on something lying on the floor. When I realize what she’s looking at, my heart drops into my stomach.
OceanofPDF.com
Chapter Sixty-Six
NATE
IT’S another pair of Eve’s pumps. Right in the middle of our kitchen.
These shoes are a brilliant blue color. I recognize them as one of her favorite pairs. And the soles are caked with dirt.
I feel utterly nauseated. What are Eve’s shoes doing in the middle of the kitchen? The pumps in the shower were odd, but my wife does odd things all the time. But this is different. I was in the kitchen earlier, cooking a continental breakfast. If these shoes had been there, I surely would have seen them.
Wouldn’t I?
“These your wife’s shoes?” Sprague asks me.
“Yes,” I manage.
She crouches down beside the shoes while I try to temper my panic. “These are expensive shoes,” she says. “I’m surprised she would take them out and get them so dirty.”
“I… I don’t know what to say.”
I hold my breath, waiting for another question I can’t answer, but thankfully, the detective seems to lose interest in the shoes. I take her around the rest of the house, but I can’t stop thinking about those shoes in the kitchen. I can barely focus on what’s going on in front of me, and every time the detective asks me a question, I’m sure I seem flustered and terribly guilty.
But I can’t help it. What the hell are those shoes doing in my kitchen?
When I finally get the detective out the door, I lock it behind her and nearly trip over myself in my haste to get back to the kitchen. When I get there, I realize that the back door has been left slightly ajar, and a bird has flown in through the opening. The bird—small with black and white feathers—is now pecking furiously at the heels of Eve’s shoes.
I stare at the scene before me in astonishment. I’ve left the back door open in the past, and a wayward bird has never before managed to find its way into our kitchen. I fetch a broom from the closet, and I swat at the bird until it obliges and flies out the back door.
Now that the bird is gone, I crouch down beside the shoes, trying to sort out why a bird would have any interest in a pair of suede pumps. After all, birds aren’t interested in dirt. They want food.
And that’s when I see it:
A piece of smashed pumpkin on the heel of the shoe.
My legs give way under me, my tailbone landing hard on the kitchen floor. My head is spinning, and my vision has tunneled. I could have tried to convince myself that the shoes have been lying here all along and I simply never noticed them. And the detective made a point—Eve was meticulous about keeping her pumps in perfect condition, and she would never, ever let them get muddy this way. But perhaps she got stuck in the rain and it simply couldn’t be helped. I could have tried to convince myself of all that.