Page 92 of I Will Ruin You

“You see a guy walking his dog?”

“No,” I said. “Is that who saw the car?”

Marta nodded. “Thought it seemed odd, the car sitting there. Made a note of the plate. And some lady next door saw a man watching the house earlier in the day.”

I felt my chest tighten.

“But she didn’t note the plate, wasn’t good at identifying cars, and has cataracts. So she wasn’t much help.”

I relaxed only slightly. There was still the matter of Finster’s call to me. If Marta knew about that, all these other lies would be for nothing.

I glanced at the wall clock.

“Have to be somewhere?” Marta asked.

“An event at the school later. It’s okay, go on.”

“When you stopped, did you see anything?” Marta asked.

“Like?”

“Any other cars speeding off? Did you hear a shot? People running? Anything at all out of the ordinary?”

I shook my head. “No.”

Another pause, and then a quick nod. “Okay, then,” Marta said. “I guess that explains it. When the report came back on that license plate, I have to tell you, it threw me for a loop. It’s a hell of a coincidence.”

“Coincidences happen,” I said.

“I guess they do. Sorry for barging in here and causing you all this trouble. You mind saying goodbye to Rachel for me?”

“No problem,” Bonnie said. “Let me see you out.”

“Take care,” I said, and watched as the two of them walked out of the kitchen.

I dropped into a chair. I’d broken out in a cold sweat. Had Marta bought it? And if she had, for how long?

A minute later, Bonnie came back into the kitchen, crossed her arms, leaned into the doorway, and looked at me.

“Why did you do that?” she asked.

I had a question for her.

“What were you doing at Billy Finster’s place?”

Forty-Two

Bullshit, Marta thought.

She’d been at this long enough to know when people were lying to her. What made this worse, and far more complicated, was that this was her sister and brother-in-law trying to put something over on her. Okay, maybe there was some kernel of truth somewhere in what they’d told her, but something was off with those two. The way they were trying to send subtle signals to one another, trying to get their story straight without a word between them, Richard going onto his phone and deleting something, thinking she wouldn’t notice.

She wanted to believe them. She didn’t want to think her sister and her brother-in-law could, in any way, be involved in the death of Billy Finster. What possible connection could there be between them and the dead man, beyond the fact that he was once a student at the school where Richard taught? And yes, coincidences did happen. He and Bonnie could have had an argument, he could have gone off in her car, he could have been cut off by a dickhead in a Corvette and pulled over to the side of the road to cool off not far from where a homicide had been committed.

But it still sounded like bullshit to her.

The right thing to do, the professional thing to do, would be to withdraw from this investigation. Talk to her superiors, tell them that her sister and her husband might have some tangential connection to this case—that maybe they were witnesses who were, for whatever reason, reluctant to come forward—and, to ensure everything was aboveboard, another detective could take over.

That was certainly what she should do.