Page 70 of The Surrogate Mother

Except Denise isn’t in the bathroom. She’s sitting at herdesk, her head in her arms. Like she’s napping or crying or something.

“Denise?” I say.

She doesn’t answer.

What the hell is going on here? There’s no way Denise is napping at her desk. I’d sooner expect a pig to go flying past the window. But why isn’t she lifting her head? Why isn’t she acknowledging that I’m standing in front of her.

“Um, Denise?” I say again.

No answer.

I approach the desk and put my hand on her shoulder, but she doesn’t even flinch. I shake her this time, but instead of sitting up, she falls to the floor.

And that’s when I see all the blood.

_____

There’syellow tape around Denise’s office, which has been cordoned off by the police that are now swarming the office. I’m sitting in somebody’s desk chair, hugging myself, unable to stop shaking.

Denise is dead. I don’t entirely know what happened to her, but when I rolled her over on the floor, trying to help her, I found her lifeless blue eyes staring into nothingness. I’m no doctor, but at that moment, I knew it was too late for an ambulance.

It probably sounds terrible, but for a moment, I considered making a run for it. After all the bad blood between me and Denise, the last place I wanted to be caught was at her murder scene. But Patrick had seen me come in—nothingwould look guiltier than running. Also, there was the small matter of having her blood smeared all over me.

But more than all that, I couldn’t leave her like that. Denise was my idol at one time. She had been trying to help me. I couldn’t let her body lie there all night, rotting on the floor of her office. She deserved better than that.

“Mrs. Adler?”

It’s the voice of a female detective, who told me her name but I promptly forgot it. She’s standing in front of me, holding up a plastic bag containing a shiny, metal object.

“Yes?” I manage.

“Does this object look familiar to you?”

“Not really,” I mumble.

“Could you take a closer look?”

I squint at the blood-soaked object inside the bag. It takes a second for me to make out what it is. It’s a letter opener.

With the name “ABBY” engraved on it.

“That’s mine!” I gasp.

Well, this is looking worse and worse. I’m starting to long for when my only problem was an alleged meth addiction.

The female officer goes back to talk to the others. I don’t like the way they keep looking at me when they talk. And now they’re pointing at me. Great.

Oh my God, what if they arrest me?

The female officer comes back over to me. My heart is pounding in my chest. This is so bad. “Mrs. Adler, we’d like you to come down to the station to answer some questions.”

“Am I under arrest?” I croak.

Long pause. “No, we’d just like to ask you some questions.”

“Should I…” I swallow hard. “Should I get a lawyer?”

“You can if you wish,” she says. “But we’re just going to ask you some questions. We’d like to find out who killed Ms. Holt as quickly as possible, so we’d appreciate your cooperation.”