Page 61 of Take Your Breath Away

“The car didn’t look all that dirty, but you know what was? The license plate. Had some muck or something on it. Doesn’t that seem odd to you?”

I shrugged. “Sometimes plates get dirty.”

“Yeah, but if the rest of the car was more or less clean, why would the plate be the only thing that was dirty? Like this lady, whoever she was, or whoever owned that car if it wasn’t her, didn’t want anyone to make out that plate.”

“Sometimes people do that. To avoid tolls or tickets.”

“True,” she said. “Something deliberate.”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“Anyway, the make of the car, the model, its color, and that ding in the hood, that’ll help. We put the word out, folks out on patrol, they see a car like that they can do a check on it.”

“I would imagine there are a lot of black Volvo wagons in this part of Connecticut,” I said.

“Yup, no question. But you never know. We find that car, maybe we find that woman who was driving it.” She gave me a wry smile. “Whoever it happens to be.”

“You don’t think it’s Brie,” I said.

“I like to keep an open mind,” Hardy said. “But if it is, well, that opens up a whole lot of questions.”

“And if it isn’t, I’d say just as many.”

She nodded. “No argument there.” She pondered a moment. “But I ask myself, who would benefit if your wife were to be spotted around town?”

“I would imagine everyone who cares about her,” I said. “And, of course, Brie, because we’d rally around her, help her get through whatever happened.”

“Yes, but who would benefit most?”

I didn’t want to help her with this.

“No?” she said. “I think that would be you. If it began to look as though your wife was still among us, making mysterious cameo appearances here and there—”

“Here and there? Has she been seen someplace else?”

Detective Hardy waved away the question. “Anyway, if there are sightings of her, then you couldn’t very well have killed her, could you?”

“What are you saying? I’ve somehow staged this? Hired some woman to pretend to be Brie?”

“There has to be some explanation.”

“Yeah, well, that’s not it. I mean, why the hell would I do that? And why would I do it now? When Brie’s disappearance, I’m sorry to say, has clearly no longer been a priority for you? When most people, other than me and her family, have pretty much forgotten about her. Why now?”

“Good question,” Hardy said. “Maybe to convince your new girlfriend that you’re not a killer. Maybe she already knows more about your past than she’s let on. Maybe you need to put her mind at ease.”

“It’s been nice talking to you,” I said, and turned to head back to the house.

“One of these days,” she said, turning to walk back to her car.

“What did you say?”

Hardy stopped and turned. “One of these days, I’m going to get you. Maybe you’ve been thinking I’ve given up, but I haven’t. I’m just waiting for the right piece of evidence to come along, the one thing that will nail you to the wall. Maybe this is it. Maybe you’ve overplayed your hand, gotten a little too cocky. I guess we’ll see how this plays out.”

She walked off, got into her car, and drove away.

I didn’t go back into the house. I went into the garage, thinking about Greg’s theory, that the police were running a game on me, that Brie’s reappearance was designed to unnerve me, second-guess myself, go back to where I’d supposedly left Brie’s body.

With the cops following me all the way.