“You should be,” he said instead, and hung up the phone.
* * *
He arrived exactly fifteen minutes later. Christopher Best was Black, nearly six foot four, and broad in the shoulders, the hair at his temples graying and a pair of glasses giving him a professorial air. He had a predilection for fine suits and good brandy, and was the sort of man who read Ulysses for fun. What he called his “intellectual blossoming” had occurred after high school, which explained how he, Randolph Palmer, and Rick Hadley had ended up friends. Back then he’d been primarily concerned with football, beer, and girls—shared interests among the three. He’d left Arden Hills while the other two stayed, changed when they’d stagnated, but he’d maintained a friendly relationship with his high school buddies as an adult. Up until he became Emma’s lawyer.
Chris wasn’t a hugger. Or at least, not with her. She gave him a close-lipped smile as she opened the door, then stepped aside to let him pass. It might have come across as cold, given all that they had been through together, but Emma had come to appreciate the emotional distance. She had been so desperate for anyone to show her love back then that if he had offered her tenderness, she would have dissolved into it. She would have clung to him and never let go. But he was not her parent. Whatever warmth existed between them, there was also a careful remove.
They sat together in the kitchen, Lorelei and Gabriel having vacated to give them some privacy. Emma picked nervously at a loose thread on her jeans as Chris settled into his chair.
“What have you gotten yourself into?” he asked her.
“You tell me,” Emma replied. “You’ve talked to the police?”
“I’ve talked to a number of people,” Chris said. “First order of business, the Arden Hills Police are not investigating this case. The State Police will be stepping in.”
“How did you manage that?” Emma asked.
“I pointed out to them the personal history between you and the two senior officers, not to mention the ongoing harassment the department’s second-in-command has engaged in for years. The misconduct investigation a few years ago helped my case.”
“An investigation? Of Hadley?” Emma guessed.
“Ellis,” he corrected. “Abuse of civil asset forfeiture to fund the department. Mismanagement of city funds. Things missing from lockup that he claimed were a result of bad recordkeeping. The last decade hasn’t been kind to Ellis. Word is he’s holding on to his job here by a thread. Smart money would be on him retiring soon.”
“And then Hadley’s in charge? Not exactly an improvement,” Emma said.
Chris’s expression was regretful. She forgot sometimes that they’d been friends once. All the way up until Best became her lawyer. With that, he’d made himself Rick Hadley’s enemy.
“He was your friend, too,” she remembered Hadley shouting at him.
“That’s why I’m here. Looking after his family,” Best had answered.
“She’s a bad seed. He knew it. She’s the reason he’s dead.”
Of all the people who had asked her questions about that night, Best was the only one she had ever thought believed that she was innocent. And the strange thing was, he was the only one it didn’t matter to. He would have done everything the same either way. He would have done his job.
“The detectives are eager to get a statement from you,” Chris said in a tone that suggested this was entirely the detectives’ problem, not his.
“I was pretty out of it when I talked to Hadley before,” Emma acknowledged with a convulsive nod.
Chris raised an eyebrow. “You shouldn’t have talked to them at all. You know better.”
“I wasn’t thinking clearly.” She dropped her eyes to the floor.
“Good thing I’m here to do your thinking for you now,” Chris said, only a little bit joking. He reached into the briefcase on the floor beside him and took out a pen and a legal pad. “Now. You are going to tell me every goddamn thing that led up to your husband’s death. Not just the relevant things or the things you want me to hear, all of them. Understand?”
She nodded mutely. “Where do I start?”
“I think you have a better handle on that than I do,” he said. He clicked the end of the pen. She wetted her lips.
She began with the house, the lost job, the move. She told him about the flaming shit bag and the fireworks, the kids throwing rocks, the arguments and the almost-arguments. She found herself skipping forward and back, filling things in, but he never interrupted, just took quick little notes as she went along. Every once in a while he asked a clarifying question, and it always set her stammering. When she got to the carriage house—the body—she faltered.