Page 39 of She Didn’t See It Coming

Alice waits for her husband to come back from work. She got a text from him saying that he was at the office. But she has also seen his picture in the news. She’s dismayed that he’s been named a person of interest, that the suggestion of his affair with Bryden is public.

Alice is furious. She even threw an expensive glass against the kitchen wall and watched it shatter. After a while, she cleaned it up. Then she started making a beef bourguignon—chopping up the vegetables with energy. Cooking relaxes her.

It’s his fault this is happening. If he’d stayed away from that woman, if he’d managed to keep it in his pants , if he’d managed to keep his promise , they wouldn’t be looking into her mother’s accident.

She still thinks of it that way; she always refers to it as her mother’s hit-and-run accident, if anyone should bring it up. She never calls it her mother’s murder.

Even though that’s exactly what it was.

Alice had been rather clever about it. Her mother was a slave to routine; it was one of the many things about her that drove Alice crazy.

Alice prefers to be spontaneous. But not always.

When it came to murdering her mother, she thought about it for a long time and planned it carefully.

It was going to be a surprise—to her mother, obviously, but also to Derek.

She did it for him. But if she’s honest, she did it for herself too.

She wanted Derek to have the money to start his business with a splash, and she wanted a glamorous home, and nice things, and she didn’t want to wait.

And—if she’s completely honest—she wanted Derek to be grateful, and proud of her, and to know what she was capable of.

It helped that she really didn’t like her mother, and visiting her on holidays was getting to be tiresome.

She wouldn’t have visited at all if it weren’t for the inheritance, but she’d had enough of playing the dutiful daughter.

They were always so painful, those duty visits, her mother with her nervous eyes flicking back and forth between her and Derek, as if expecting one of them to demand money, or to suddenly rise up and choke her.

The funny thing is, her mother always seemed to think that Derek was the dangerous one, when really, it was Alice she should have been afraid of.

She knew her mother always walked along that lonely side road at 6:30, after supper, to get her daily exercise.

There was never anybody on that road, not that Alice ever saw.

Earlier that day, she drove from Albany, through Vermont to New Hampshire, in her husband’s car.

It was leased by the company, and it was new, and no one around her mother’s place had seen it before so there was no chance of it being recognized.

She arrived unannounced. Her mother hadn’t seemed particularly happy to see her, Alice thought.

She’d wanted to know why she was there without Derek.

She’d asked if they’d split up, seeming almost hopeful.

It irritated Alice. She didn’t know why her mother was so down on Derek.

He was the best thing that had ever happened to her.

But her mother had once told her in private, quite earnestly, that she thought there might be something wrong with him, that he might be a sociopath. Alice had laughed. Well, it was funny.

Alice hadn’t stayed long on that last visit.

She left sometime before her mother’s daily walk, taking the spare house key, and drove Derek’s newly leased car into a nearby hiding spot she’d scouted out beforehand.

An opening into a field shielded by trees.

Then she walked the short distance back to her mother’s place and hid behind a shed, waiting for her to leave the house.

After she’d gone, Alice put on some gloves, let herself back into the house, and took her mother’s car keys off the kitchen counter.

She climbed into her mother’s pickup truck, started the engine, and carefully checking first to see that there was no one around, turned down the road.

When she saw her mother walking in the distance, she smiled.

When she got close enough, she hit the gas.

The truck made a lot of noise when it accelerated so suddenly.

Her mother whirled around, recognized her own truck, her own daughter, bearing down on her in the short seconds before she was hit.

The look on her face! Then there was a tremendous thud, and she went flying in an arc and landed in the ditch.

Alice carried on at a normal speed to the next intersection and turned around.

She drove the truck back to her mother’s house, slowing to observe the spot where her mother’s body must be.

She parked the truck where she’d found it, checking for damage.

It was a large, sturdy truck, a Dodge Ram, and there was only a small dent on the right front.

No blood, because her mother was wearing her long, thick coat, as Alice expected. She’d made sure there was no dashcam.

She returned the keys and washed up the coffee mugs they’d used earlier and put them away, still wearing her gloves.

She locked the door from the inside and walked back down the lonely road ready to take cover if anyone should come along, but no one did.

When she reached the site of the accident, Alice stood on the edge of the ditch and watched her mother.

It was dark, and she had to use a flashlight, but even from there she could tell that her mother was clearly dead, her eyes wide open.

Alice returned to the leased car and drove home, arriving at about eleven o’clock.

When she got in, Derek kissed her and asked, “It’s really late. Where have you been? I texted but you didn’t answer.”

She didn’t answer because she’d deliberately left her cell phone at home, in the drawer of her nightstand. “I’ve been to visit my mother,” she answered.

“And how’s your mother?”

And she’d said, “Dead.”

She’d told him all about it, feeling rather gleeful. He’d looked back at her as if he didn’t quite know what to make of her. “No one knows I went to visit her,” Alice told him. “You must say that I was here with you from about five o’clock. That we were here together all evening.”

“Okay,” he agreed.

“And we need to delete those texts, right now.”

“Okay.”

She went to retrieve her cell phone, and they deleted the incriminating messages together.

Alice said, “They’ll never find the vehicle that hit her because it was her own truck, and they’ll never even look at it. I mean, is that genius, or what?”

He had to agree, it was genius.

“And now all that lovely money will come to us,” she said, her hands clasped behind his neck.

“We won’t have to wait much longer.” They had talked about her mother’s money on numerous occasions, about not wanting to wait for it.

And now she’d taken care of it for them.

He seemed pretty happy about that. He’d swept her off to bed.

And it was perfect, really. Someone came to deliver the bad news the next morning, and they behaved suitably shocked and upset.

They got the money a year and a half later, no questions asked.

As far as she knew, they’d never examined her mother’s truck.

Why would they? And things had been almost perfect ever since.

Until Derek met Bryden Frost.

Now Alice’s thoughts turn to what happens next. What should she do? She’s so angry at Derek that she could almost kill him . But then she wouldn’t have him anymore, and she can’t face that. How would she ever replace him?

Alice has to remind herself that Derek might be a murderer now too. How does she feel about that? She gives it a moment’s thought. She’s okay with it, she decides. As long as he doesn’t try anything on her.

The only upside to all this is that maybe this focus on the murder of Bryden Frost will scare him into behaving from now on. Maybe he won’t stray anymore. Alice thinks she should be enough for him. He’s lucky to have her. She’ll figure some way out of this mess he’s made.

Her thoughts turn to that bitch of a detective, Jayne Salter.