she said, her words broken up with breaths.
“Sorry to interrupt your workout, ma’am,” the detective said. “Are you Stella Reese? I’m Detective Daniel Bohannon. I called earlier this morning.”
“Oh, right. Stel said you were coming by. No, I’m not Stella. I’m her sister, Emily. Come on in and have a seat, and I’ll tell her that you’re here.” She backed away from the door and pointed them into the sunken living room to the left. “Watch your step. I always stumble going in there for some reason. I’ll be right back.” She disappeared into the rear of the house.
Bohannon and Mara sat on a low boxy sofa behind a glass-and-wood coffee table, the top of which was hidden under a pile of picture books featuring cats, a bowl of colorful stones and a jumble of remote controls. Across the room were a couple armchairs that looked as if they had been sliced off the ends of the couch. Between them sat a table too large to be an end table but too small to be a desk. A floor lamp stood behind the table, but its shade arched forward hanging directly above it. An entertainment center took up most of the wall to the right of the couch.
Emily returned with a towel over her shoulder, carrying a water bottle. “Stella’s on her way. She’s fixing her hair.”
“We really didn’t mean to be an imposition,” Bohannon said.
Emily waved a hand at him. “My sister is a bit of an obsessive-compulsive type, especially since the accident. She’d fix her hair before coming out whether you were here or not. It’s just one of the things she does.” She pointed to the coffee table. “Watch, when she comes in here. She’ll straighten up the coffee table before she takes her seat.”
“What accident are you referring to?” Bohannon asked.
“She was on that flight that went into the river a couple months ago. She’s been a lot more jittery, and attached to her routines and rituals since then. It looked like she was working through it, but then she had that episode in the kitchen the other day.”
Another blonde stepped into the room, this one rail-thin but with features so similar to Emily, it was clear they were related. “It was not an episode, Em,” she said. “You make it sound like I had some kind of breakdown or something. Jamie was right there when it happened. He saw the whole thing.”
Stella Reese turned toward the couch and smiled tightly, as if she had just flipped a switch. She extended her hand to Bohannon stiffly, shook, nodded toward Mara, and then bent down and rearranged the items on the coffee table. It was almost robotic, which made Mara think of Cam. He was never that stiff, as least as far as she could tell from carrying around his head.
“Is Jamie your husband?” Bohannon asked.
Stella nodded and said, “Yes.” She placed the books in three even stacks, smoothed the stones in the bowl and lined up each of the five remotes in sequence by size. She went back to the bowl of colorful rocks and moved a couple around, then straightened. Visibly relaxing, she exhaled and took one of the armchairs across the room. “He’s at work right now, but he was home Tuesday evening when the incident occurred. That is what you wanted to talk about, isn’t it, Detective?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Stella turned to her sister and said, “Emily, it will be okay for you to go back to your treadmill while I talk to the detective.”
Emily cocked her head doubtfully. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely,” Stella said.
Shrugging, Emily smiled at Bohannon and Mara, and left the room.
As Emily exited, Stella watched her. Leaning forward, she whispered, “My sister thinks I’m crazy, and I’m starting to think she’s right, but the last thing I want to do is give her enough ammunition to have me committed to the funny farm.”
“Why would she want to do that?” Bohannon asked.
“Before my flight decided to take a dive into the Columbia River, I had pretty much gotten a grip on my OCD—at least we all thought so. After the accident I had delusions about all the people around me, like everyone had been replaced with an exact duplicate, a body-snatchers kind of fantasy. Not something I’ve ever experienced before. My therapist thought the trauma of the crash had caused me to have some kind of psychotic break, and, for a few weeks, she prescribed some powerful antidepressants, but they were just making