Page 50 of She Didn’t See It Coming
Alice regards Detective Salter with loathing.
She hates her. Alice knows that she didn’t kill Bryden Frost. She thinks her husband probably did though, so this information, if it’s true, is encouraging.
But she can’t have this bitch thinking she might be a murderer.
She needs her to stop looking into her at all, not looking into her with more enthusiasm.
Detective Salter is still waiting for an answer.
“Well?” Salter prods.
“I have to think,” Alice says, trying to remember where she was on Tuesday.
The day doesn’t stand out to her in any way.
She only remembers hearing the news that a woman was missing and then Derek telling her that a detective had come over to ask him about her—it was the woman who’d hit his Tesla.
She’d come home late, because—oh yes, she’d met friends for dinner.
Before that, in the afternoon, she’d been shopping. “I was shopping.”
“Shopping. Anyone with you?” Salter asks.
“No.”
“Where?”
“Oh, I don’t remember, exactly, all sorts of places.”
“Do you have receipts?”
“I don’t know. I’d have to look.” She can’t remember what she bought that day. She’ll have to ask Derek.
“Can you do that please? And bring any receipts, if you have them, here, into the station?”
The detective smiles at her and Alice wants to slap her across the face.
As she rises to go, Salter says, with another smile, “We’ve found her missing clothes. And possibly the murder weapon. They’re with forensics now.”
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“What was that about?” Kilgour asks Jayne, after Alice has gone. “I thought we didn’t put a lot of stock in the elevator witness. She certainly didn’t say it was a woman.”
“I know,” Jayne agrees. “But it’s possible she did see someone with a suitcase, and it might have been a woman.
And if she did in fact see someone with a suitcase, it was probably the killer, because we haven’t found anyone who admits to being in the building with a suitcase that day.
Anyway, I wanted to rattle Alice.” After a moment’s pause, she asks, “Did you get a feeling from her?”
“What kind of feeling?”
“There’s something about her. Something off.”
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Paige goes out for a run on Sunday morning. She pounds the pavement, avoiding the puddles on the sidewalk, trying to calm herself.
She’d done her best to reassure Sam before she left the condo last night.
But she, too, had been distressed when he returned from the police station and told her that they’d found Bryden’s clothes.
Sam seems convinced the detectives think he did it.
They’re obviously hoping these clothes of Bryden’s will help them put him away.
She slows to a walk, panting heavily. Paige is worried.
What if they do find traces of his clothing, or of him, on Bryden’s clothes?
He said he hugged her before he left for work that morning.
She believes him. But what if the police don’t?
They can’t prove he didn’t, can they? She remembers Donna in her kitchen, the horror on her face as she accused Sam, and pushes the image away.
She doesn’t want to think about that.
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Derek hears the front door open and close and knows that Alice is back. He counts to three and then rises from his office chair to talk to her. They meet in the middle, in the living room. “Well?” he says. She shoots him an evil glance, which makes him worry. “How did it go?”
“She wanted to tell me that Lizzie complained about me ‘threatening’ them.”
“You didn’t actually threaten her, did you?” Derek asks with genuine concern. It’s the sort of thing that Alice would do.
“Not really. I can’t help it if she interpreted it that way.”
“You know you can be a little intimidating.”
She ignores that. “They’ve found Bryden’s missing clothes.” She looks at him pointedly. “Do we have anything to worry about there?”
“Not a thing,” he says evenly.
She throws herself down into the deep sofa. “She might just be fucking with me, but Detective Salter told me that they have an eyewitness who saw a woman with a suitcase in the elevator at around the time of the murder.”
“A woman,” Derek repeats.
“And, no surprise—Detective Salter now thinks I killed fucking Bryden. And I’m pretty sure we both know that isn’t true.”
He stares back at her, holding her eyes with his.
“We have to stop her,” Alice says.
He can hear the venom in his wife’s voice.
That’s what she’s like, he thinks—a viper, ready to strike.
“What do you mean, stop her? Alice, we should just stay out of this,” he urges her.
“They’re not going to be able to prove anything—about Bryden, or about your mother. You have to just leave things alone.”
She looks up at him—he’s now standing over her. “I can’t.”
“What do you mean, you can’t?” He pauses. His heart sinks. “Oh Christ, Alice, what have you done?”