that the cutest boy in class had been talking about you to his friends. I’d gotten under Lily’s skin and I hadn’t even known it.
“How did she think she was going to get away with it? How did she think you were going to get away with it? They already suspect you. There was a fucking witness down in Boston. Someone saw you, Brad, going into my house. That’s why the sheriff was at your house tonight. You’re going to be questioned.”
“What are you talking about?” Spittle flew from his lips, some of it striking me in the face.
“Relax, it’s no big deal,” I lied. “You have an alibi, remember? But that’s why I drove up here in the first place. You’re going to be interviewed by the police. I don’t know when, but it’s going to happen. You just need to remember everything we talked about. Stick to the story and everything’s going to be fine.”
“But now this other person knows.”
“I know. Give me a moment to think.” I took two deep breaths, still trying to wrap my head around the fact that Lily knew everything, that Lily wanted to kill me. “Did Lily say how she knew Ted?”
“No. I thought you’d know. But she knew everything about what had happened.”
“How does she think she’ll get away with it, get away with killing me?”
“She said she’s going to hide your body and your car, and that it will look like you skipped town. She said that it’s the only way I won’t get caught by the police. I’m supposed to drive you to the meeting tomorrow night, and then I’m supposed to help her get your body back to your car. She’s got it all figured out.”
“And what? You told her you’d be happy to do this for her?”
“I was having a goddamn heart attack, Miranda. She knows everything. I told her I’d think about it. I’m supposed to call her phone from Cooley’s tomorrow if it gets set up. Just let it ring a couple of times so it shows up on her caller ID. Obviously, I was going to tell you all about it, but I went along with her. What else could I do?”
“No, you were right. You did the right thing. I’m proud of you. Let me think for a moment.”
Brad tugged at a sideburn. “I know what we need to do,” he said. “I know what I need to do.”
“What?”
“I’ll kill her, Miranda. It will be easy. She’s sneaking up here to see you. No one knows she’s involved in this. She told me. I’ll take you to the house. You go in the front door and I’ll go around and come in the back. Keep talking to her and I’ll sneak up and hit her with something. I can bury her in the yard.”
“You’d do that for me,” I said.
“I killed your husband for you, Miranda. I love you. Of course I’d kill this bitch.”
It made perfect sense. I knew that it was the only way out. If Lily knew everything, then she needed to die. But it worried me. “Won’t she expect that?” I said, speaking my thoughts aloud. “It’s so risky for her to come up here to meet with me—”
“She’s not coming up to meet with you. She’s coming up here to kill you. She told me that.”
“That’s what I mean. How could she be so sure that she could convince you to do this for her. She just met you. She did just meet you, right?”
“Look. She was convincing. She told me it was my only way out—that you were going to throw me under the bus, that when the police came it was going to be my word against yours and there wasn’t going to be any proof that you conspired to murder your husband. You could say that I was deranged, that I became obsessed with you. No one, besides me, could say otherwise.”
This was, of course, my plan if Brad was arrested for killing my husband. I would say that we’d gotten physical once, in a moment of weakness for me, but that there had never been any talk about killing Ted. Now that I think of it, I did mention to Brad Daggett that I was going down to Florida for a long weekend. He must have thought . . . He must have thought I was telling him because I wanted . . . Oh my God. They might suspect me, but there was