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“I was so scared. She’s a very frightening woman, you have no idea,” Stanley says.
“Who, Tracy?” I ask.
“No, Pippa. I was so afraid for her to know. But I had to tell her. I had to do it before Tracy got to her. I couldn’t take the risk. I decided to just tell her everything.”
“When was this?” Wyatt says.
“It was on Friday evening.”
“So, the day before Tracy was murdered?”
“Well, I didn’t know Tracy was going to be murdered. All I knew was that if I didn’t speak to Pippa before Monday, Tracy would get to her.”
“So you confessed everything?” Amity says.
“Yes, and I promised to end my affair with Tracy.”
“Damn straight, he did.”
None of us have noticed Pippa in the doorway. She’s in a perfectly pressed white pants suit and high heels. “Told me what he’d done, the fool. With a hairdresser, of all people! So tacky. He promised to make it up to me. And I made him start straightaway. Booked us the royal suite at Clitheridge Spa for two nights, where I kept him on a tight leash. Couples massage, yoga, steam room, the works. He was at my beck and call twenty-four hours a day. He still is, aren’t you, darling?”
Stanley doesn’t look handsome now, more like a punished puppy. “Yes, dear.”
“We returned the day after Tracy Penny’s body was discovered.” She waves some papers in the air. “Here are our receipts, and a schedule of our meals and spa activities so you can see precisely what we were doing when Tracy Penny met her maker. My husband may be an egotistical, cheating bastard, but he is not your murderer.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
We’re too disappointed to talk much during the taxi ride back to the village.
“I thought we had it,” Amity says.
“I did too. But maybe that was too simple a solution,” Wyatt says.
I don’t tell them that I’m relieved that Dev was not Tracy’s dark-haired mystery lover. It shouldn’t matter, as it’s all fiction, but it does.
Back in the village, we buy some sausage rolls and walk down to the river, where we sit on a bench to eat. Two pairs of ducks swim in circles near the bridge, steering clear of two haughty swans closer to shore. At the next bench over, a hunchbacked woman scatters seeds on the ground for the pigeons. She clucks at the birds like she knows them, mumbling what sound like pet names. “Here you go, Ollie. Come now, Violet.” I hope they’re not her only companions.
The food seems to revive Amity.
“Pippa was impressive, all that anger, don’t you think?” she says. “She was wronged, but did she crawl in a hole with shame? She did not.”
“Go on,” I say, unsure where Amity is going with this.
“That’s all.” Amity sighs. “I thought she was formidable.”
“If it’s formidable to force your sorry-ass cheating husband tostay with you,” Wyatt says. “Who wants someone who doesn’t want them?”
“Stanley did not seem happy about how things turned out,” I say.
“Exactly!” Amity says. “And serves him right too. Why should he be happy?”
Has Amity forgotten the whole thing was an act? She stands up and wipes the crumbs from her lap. “That was a perfect lunch. Are we ready to proceed? What’s next?”
Wyatt thinks we might get “more bang for our buck” if we use some of our limited time left in Willowthrop to focus on my mother. But how? Should we return to Bert Lott and ask to see his messages with her? Maybe they reveal something about her knowledge of this place. I’m thinking of calling my mother’s friend Aurora to see what she might know when Wyatt slaps himself on the thigh and says, “Of course! Edwina!”
“The nosy neighbor?” Amity says.
“She might be an actor,” I say.