Page 100 of Death on Riddle Road

But he did bother.“I knew where Mom kept those pills.It was easy to get them and bring them here.”

“But you were here the nightbeforehe died—” Mamie broke off her inadvertent confession that Robbie had told her about that visit.

“Ah,” I said softly.“You were here and you heard an argument, didn’t you?”

“It wasn’t—”

“Robbie.”This time his head came up and stayed up.“Lying just complicates things.And it doesn’t help.Your father didn’t die from pills.”

“He...He didn’t?”

“He didn’t.”Before he regained his balance completely, I added, “So tell the truth.Did you talk to him?”

“N-no.”

“Either night?”

“No.”

He didn’t seem to realize he’d confirmed he’d been here the night his father died.And I didn’t want to give him time to take that in.

“But you heard arguing.”

“Not really.”

Mamie’s face said otherwise, but she didn’t speak up.Still, what Robbie told her could be another entry point if we needed it.

For now, I specified, “Between your mom and Beverly—”

“Oh, that.”

Boom.Another admission he’d backed into.For that argument to be anoh-that, there had to have been another argument.

“Then the next night—” I took a leap.“—you heard your mom and Derrick—”

“Not arguing.Couldn’t really hear him anyway.”

“So you did talk to him.”

“Not much.”

Mamie blurted out to him, “But you said your mom said not to see him so he wouldn’t take his bitterness at dying out on you.”

He scowled at her, but didn’t deny it.

“What did he say?”I asked Robbie.

“Nothing.”He paused.“My name.Then he drifted off and I thought I heard—I left.”

I dearly wanted to pin down what he thought he heard.But if I scared him off now...

He took us another direction.“What Mamie said...Mom was trying to protect me.It’s natural.With him in prison, they’d been apart all that time.He wasn’t the man she’d married.”

That sounded like a quote.

My phone buzzed with an incoming message from Teague.

Ready.