about it, unless he’d hidden it somewhere. She hurries down the stairs, after looking in on the twins briefly. She probably has about another hour before they wake up. She tears the basement apart looking for anything that looks lockable, but finds nothing, not even in the crawl space under the house.
She finally comes to the uncomfortable conclusion that whatever the key fits, it isn’t here. And then it hits her. Of course. It’s a key to a safety deposit box.
And she doesn’t know anything about it. He’s hidden it from her.
Stephanie is conflicted when Patrick returns from work that evening. She’s worried about him – he’s pale and tense – but she’s angry and suspicious. Why did he hide that key from her? Why has he hidden the fact that he has a safety deposit box from her? Should she broach it with him?
She’d wrestled with it the rest of the afternoon. She thought of holding the key up under his nose and saying, ‘What’s this, Patrick?’ and dragging the truth out of him. What else is he keeping from her?
If she’d been able to, she would have gone to the bank and looked in the box herself. But she knew he’d be home soon. Finally, she’d retaped the key to the same spot on the underside of the drawer of the filing cabinet.
So much for honesty.
They put the babies in the swings in the living room so that they can talk.
Patrick looks more worried every time she sees him, and she feels a rush of concern for him. She watches him, waiting.
‘I’ve talked to a lawyer in Colorado,’ he says.
‘Okay.’
‘If she goes ahead with this, it might be expensive.’ He looks at her guardedly.
‘Of course it will be expensive,’ she says. ‘Lawyers always are.’ She reflects bitterly that she will be using her own money on a high-priced lawyer to get her husband out of this mess, rather than paying off his former lover. It doesn’t make her any happier. Her concern for her husband diminishes.
‘His name is Robert Lange; he’s with a large firm in Denver.’
‘How did you find him?’ she asks.
‘He was recommended by a friend.’
‘What friend?’
‘A friend of mine from Colorado, Greg Miller. I used to work with him, in Denver. I’ve spoken to him.’
‘And?’
‘I told him what’s going on. He knows Erica, too – he knew her back then. He’s completely on my side. He knows it was an accident.’
Stephanie feels relief. It’s good to hear that someone else who was there, when it all happened, believes her husband is telling the truth. It makes her realize just how worried, how uncertain, she really is. ‘What did the lawyer say?’ she asks. She sees the concern in Patrick’s eyes.
‘Well, you know what they’re like. He wouldn’t say anything definitive without looking into it further. But he remembers the case.’
Stephanie hasn’t told Patrick about reading those articles on her laptop. The images crowd into her mind again – the snowy car, Patrick as a grief-stricken young man. His young wife, smiling at the camera. She tries to push them away. ‘Did he say whether it was even possible to reopen a case like that?’
He looks at her, worried. ‘Yes. It’s possible, in theory.’
Stephanie looks away from him and down at the floor, frightened. It could happen. Her husband could, possibly, be investigated for murder.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
PATRICK WATCHES HIS wife’s reaction and thinks back uneasily to the phone call earlier that day. It hadn’t exactly been reassuring.
Robert Lange, the criminal attorney, had seemed surprised, initially, to hear that Patrick thought someone might try to have the case reopened. Then Patrick told him about everything – Erica’s attempts to blackmail him, the original investigation – the lawyer interjecting with the occasional question, but mostly listening in attentive silence.
‘Why don’t you go to the police?’ the attorney asked.
‘I don’t want to provoke her,’ he admitted. ‘I’m still hoping she’s bluffing and that she’s not actually going to do anything. We haven’t heard from her for a couple of days.’ He added, ‘And I don’t have any proof of the blackmail.’
‘I see.’
‘So,’ Patrick asked, ‘do I have anything to worry about? It was ruled an accident. It was an accident. But can she get them to reopen it, and try to make it look like something it wasn’t?’
The lawyer cleared his throat and spoke. ‘Well, I do have some concerns, especially from what you say about how the matter was dealt with at the time. I mean, it wasn’t much