“Who told them, then?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Montclair, but I have no idea. They do monitor our dispatch calls. Perhaps someone recognized your address and put it all together.”
“Have you found something? Is that why you’re here?”
“Nothing yet. I had some more questions.”
“All right. Can I offer you a cup of tea?”
“Sure. Milk and sugar.”
For some reason he didn’t want to tell her they didn’t use real milk and sugar; it seemed silly, trivial. He’d put the stevia and almond milk in the cup and let her deal with it.
He prepped the tea while she stood at the counter, eyeing the stain.
“What happened there?”
“Blueberries.”
“Looks like blood to me.”
The spoon clattered in the cup. “That’s what happens to real marble when something acidic is left out on it overnight. We made smoothies for dessert one night. I didn’t realize a few blueberries had escaped until I found Sutton down here the next day, crying. I’d been telling her from the start the counter was going to be ruined quickly, we shouldn’t get the real marble for exactly this reason, but she refused to listen. I was right, of course.”
“Was this before or after the baby?”
“Before,” he said, knowing it came out curt. “Here’s your tea.”
She blew on it, took a sip. To her credit, though he could tell the taste wasn’t to her liking, she sipped some more, then nodded politely and set the cup down. “Thank you. Now, the reason I’m here. The protective order you submitted against the reporter who was trying to interview Sutton wasn’t granted.”
“I know that.”
“The judge found there was no cause.”
“I know that, too. Idiot. Sutton was terrified of the man, and the judge blew us off.”
“I talked to the judge. He said you had no cause. That it was only a few phone calls.”
“A few phone calls that made my wife sleep with the lights on. Yes, totally benign.”
“What did the reporter—” She looked at her notebook. “His name is Colin Wilde, correct?”
“That’s the bastard.”
“According to the report, Mr. Wilde claims all he did was call and ask for comment after he’d talked with the reviewer, who goes by the anonymous moniker UMB. This UMB claimed Sutton came to her house. Wilde called you for comment. Sutton hung up on him, and you filed the order of protection. Correct?”
“It’s a bit more complicated than that, but you’ve hit the gist.”
“Were you aware that the reviewer, UMB, filed an order of protection against Sutton?”
He was silent.
“Her name is Rosemary George. She lives in a tiny house in rural Kentucky, gets by on social security for the most part. In the report, she claims Sutton came to her house, beat on her door, and when she refused to answer, lit a small fire on the front step, and ran. They have video of the incident. UMB decided not to prosecute. Your wife dodged a very serious bullet.”
“I can’t imagine...”
Graham put her phone on the counter. “It’s queued up for you. I thought you might want to see it.”
She hit Play, and he watched in lurid black and white as his wife lost her ever-loving mind on a stranger’s doorstep.
When it was finished, he had no words.
Graham pocketed her phone.
“Thank you for sending this. It does help ascertain her state of mind.”
“What the bloody hell are you on about? I didn’t send it. I’ve never seen it before.”
“That’s odd. It came from your IP address.”
“Trust me, Officer Graham. I didn’t send that to you. There’s been a mistake.”
She gave him a completely inscrutable look, and Ethan had a moment’s qualm. He shouldn’t be talking to her without Robinson. He knew this. But she stepped away from it.
“I’ll have my people look into that, maybe it was a mistake. Let’s talk about the video. As you can see, Sutton was acting quite threatening that day. Has she ever been threatening or violent in your presence, sir?”
Ethan shook his head. He couldn’t believe this. She couldn’t be that stupid.
“Of course not. She’s a mild woman, if anything, too mild. She’s been trampled upon by a slew of people, and she just sits back and takes it. She cries and breaks down, sure, but she’s never been violent.” Not to a stranger, that is.
“The hospitalization. Can you give me some details?”
Ethan didn’t want to remember that night, the fear lodged in his heart as his beautiful, brilliant wife threatened to jump off the third-story portico. Her hair caught in the breeze, a storm coming in from the west, the clouds roiling black, screaming, trying to get the windows open, fingers clawing at the painted-over frame. Swearing, over and over, she wasn’t to blame, that she’d done nothing wrong. And why wouldn’t he believe her?
“She couldn’t take the pressure. She said she wanted to die, that having her career collapse so soon after the baby’s death was too much for her to take. Too much for anyone to endure. I called Ivy, she came over, and together we talked Sutton off the ledge. I have a friend in town who’s a psychiatrist. I called him, he agreed to have her involuntarily admitted. What’s it called, Title 33 or something?”
“Yes.”
He was quiet for a moment. “It absolutely tore me apart, watching them take her. She was so upset, so confused.”
“Who wrote the commitment papers?”
“Dr. McBean. Gregory McBean.”
“I know him. He’s a good doc.”
“He is. We were able to get her stabilized and out of there after a week. She seemed fine after that, quiet, subdued, embarrassed. She had to take medication. She pushed me away for a while, understandably. But that was all behind us. We’ve been good for weeks.”
“What did you fight about?”
Ethan shifted uncomfortably. “It was stupid. Nothing.”
“Clearly it was something, Mr. Montclair.”
“I don’t want you to think badly of Sutton. Or of me, for that matter.”
“I’m just trying to gather facts. Judgment is for other people.”
It was meant to be such an innocuous, comforting statement, but Ethan felt the chill spread through his body. All he could imagine was a long counter of dark brown wood and thirteen faces staring down at him.
“She asked how my book was coming. I haven’t been writing, and we were sniping at each other about the bills. I told her to mind her own business, and stomped off.”
Tears started to gather, damn it, there was nothing he could do. “I told her to leave me alone. It looks like she took me seriously.”
The cop rubbed her neck while he pulled himself back together. Finally, she said, “Mr. Montclair, none of this is adding up for me.”
“I suppose not. It isn’t for me, either.”
A TRAIL EMERGES
Holly forwarded the video and her write-up of her conversation with Montclair to Moreno, then headed toward Ellen Jones’s home. She was trying to keep an open mind. Trying to stay focused, to be willing to see all sides of the story.
Ethan killed our baby.
The password floated into her head, and Holly reminded herself that despite all of Montclair’s bravado, he was their only suspect. She knew he was lying, had to be, Jim wasn’t wrong about things to do with computers. Though God, Montclair sounded so adamant. And seemed so surprised by the video. Was he simply a brilliant actor?
She didn’t know anymore.
She felt like his denial was the first major inconsistency in his statements, and had made a note of it for the record. She hadn’t wanted to run the risk of screwing things up with hi
m, not while he was still being so forthcoming, so she’d pressed on in the interview. She hoped that was the right thing to do.
Holly almost felt like Sutton Montclair was speaking to her. Directing her. Giving her clue after clue, a trail of bread crumbs to follow. It seemed like she’d given each of her friends a bit of the story. She had her husband set up to take the fall.
Was this on purpose? Or was there something else going on?
Holly’s baser instincts wanted to grill Ethan Montclair for hours, but that wasn’t the way things worked. She needed him to cooperate for as long as he would.
No, getting combative wasn’t the right approach. She would finish her interviews, then maybe she’d go talk to him again, see what she could shake loose.
* * *
Ellen Jones’s home on the outskirts of downtown was as frank and straightforward as she was. A ranch with classic lines bordering on severe, the interior was fully updated, gray with white molding, populated by modern furniture and appliances that looked brand-new. The entire living room wall was built-in bookshelves, the books within shelved alphabetically, broken into fiction and nonfiction. No-nonsense, this librarian. Holly thought she might like Ellen if they’d met under different circumstances.
Jones sat primly, her legs crossed at the ankles, but there was fire in her eyes and her voice as Holly questioned her. She laid out what she knew, and let Ellen run with it. The librarian was clear, and she was emphatic.
“No, no, no. Sutton wasn’t strong and self-reliant, but she wasn’t a pushover, either. She was just a normal woman, an artist—a good one, too—who was put in two untenable situations in a row. I have a tendency toward believing she’s simply decided to take a break, and will come back in a few days. I can’t wrap my mind around Ethan actually hurting her. I’ve never known him to be abusive, or mean. He loves her, and she loves him. They’re competitive with each other, without admitting it, absolutely. But they’re partners in this marriage. Losing the baby brought them closer, even if they have been having issues. After her showdown with the reviewer, he stood by her.”
“Is it possible she instigated the situation with the reviewer? Mrs. Woodson indicated it might have been a setup, a ploy to get out of a contract that went awry.”
Ellen looked amused for a moment. “Knowing Sutton? She’s a firecracker, Officer. She didn’t like taking no for an answer, and her agent and publisher were pushing her hard to write a book she absolutely loathed.”
“So she blew up her career instead of writing the book?”
“No, she wouldn’t do that. Sutton wasn’t an idiot. No one wants the kind of publicity she got. No one deserves it, either. I believe her when she says her accounts were hacked. She made one comment on the whole thing. The rest took on a life of its own.”
“And the book she was writing? How does that work?”
“Normally she wrote her own books, but this was a one-time thing, a contract-for-hire job, finishing the final book in a popular series by an author who passed away. They paid her a wad of money to do it, too. When she started it was all fine, but before it was published, the estate dictated some changes to the story that she didn’t agree with. She’s a professional, though, and made the adjustments they wanted. She knew it was all part of the game.”
“What was the book about?”
“The official title was The Bedouin’s Dream Bride. She called it Sharif and His Naughty Nightstick. Cracked me up when she talked about it. It was terrible material, a worse story, and yes, she was appalled that she was forced to write it, but she was a professional, and she was absolutely fulfilling the contract when things blew up. The comment kerfuffle tore her apart, and it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t even her own story. Now, her most recent, it’s a Victorian high-fantasy novel, with a Jack the Ripper–style murderer, and it is fantastic. Impeccably researched, vicious, scary, romantic. It’s such a shame the contract was canceled, but I bet down the road she’ll publish it herself, or someone will get excited by this situation and want it.”
“But the book she was attacked about—”
“Someone took exception to the work-for-hire book—someone always does take exception—and Sutton rightly defended herself. It spun out of control, but that wasn’t her fault.”
“Sutton made one comment, then ducked back into her hole, and said nothing more about it?”
“Yes. Absolutely. The second she saw where things were headed, she disengaged. Everything that happened after was on the reviewer and that jerk blogger.”
“I have to show you something, Mrs. Jones.” Holly grabbed her cell and opened the video.
“This is Sutton Montclair, in a stalking incident at the reviewer’s house.”
Ellen watched the video impassively. When it was over, she shook her head. “I hate to break it to you, but that’s not Sutton.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll grant you, the hair and clothes look right, but whoever that is, it’s not Sutton. A—Sutton’s no dummy. She’d never stalk a reviewer. B—Sutton is much taller than this person. Thinner, too.”
“The plates on the car match a rental car reservation from south Nashville in Sutton’s name.”
Ellen didn’t blink. “Then someone’s playing a very cruel joke on you, Officer. Because trust me, that is not Sutton Montclair.”
I HEAR YOU’RE MISSING A WIFE
At 6:00 p.m. Ethan’s mobile rang, jarring him from his writing trance. He glanced at the caller ID, and his stomach flipped. Bloody hell. Colin Wilde, the so-called reporter who’d driven Sutton quite literally mad after Dashiell’s death. How the hell had he gotten Ethan’s new number? They’d changed everything, for Sutton’s protection as well as to shake that stupid reviewer who made their lives such hell. Idiotic Sutton, letting her emotions get the better of her. It had landed her in the loony bin, and she’d never really forgiven him. She had no idea the trouble and cash it had cost him to get her an involuntary commitment instead of going to jail.
Ethan hadn’t given Officer Graham the whole story. She didn’t need to know every detail, especially when none of it would help bring Sutton back.
When Dashiell died, Wilde had pursued Sutton relentlessly, wanting to do stories, wanting to interview them, sending emails, leaving messages on their voice mail, asking if they planned to have a replacement child. The asshole had used that term exactly, replacement child.
When they hadn’t responded, Wilde had finally disappeared. But then the online campaign against Sutton began, and Wilde resurfaced, doggedly calling nightly until Sutton finally cracked.
Ethan had to take the man seriously. He knew this as surely as he knew the sun rose in the east and set in the west. With luck, Wilde was just trying to get inside the story, to gain his precious scoop. Then again, he’d screwed them before. What would stop him from doing it again?
The stories he’d written about their family when the baby died had been, in a word, alluring. Surprising, really, because Wilde wasn’t even a real reporter, not a journalist in the sense Ethan had grown up with. No, Wilde was worse than the worst hacks at the Fleet Street rags, a news blogger, as he called himself, as if he could lend importance to his own opinion by adding the word news in front of the ubiquitously common term blogger. He curried favor with his subjects by playing into the base hatred of the online mob, and set his flying monkeys on people who disagreed with him. That’s how the fracas started with Sutton in the first place. Ethan had a sneaking suspicion the whole reviewer incident had been instigated by Wilde, though he couldn’t prove a damn thing.
Ethan doubted Wilde made money in the endeavor. His site was littered with sponsor rolls and crowded with logos from strange companies Ethan had never heard of. Wilde was a fraud.
But.
But.
There were things about Colin Wilde he couldn’t, wouldn
’t, ever admit. Because the things Wilde knew about them, about him, were...worrisome. He didn’t want to talk to the reporter, but he was afraid not to. At least he should try to rein him in. Wilde had done so much damage already; with this chewy steak of a story, he could reignite all the fallow flames.
The ringing stopped. Ethan was filled with dread and relief.
So he hadn’t told Officer Graham everything. So what? What was he supposed to say, that he wanted to blame Wilde for Sutton’s disappearance? That all the things that went wrong in their lives he wanted to park at Wilde’s door and light on fire?
His Scotch was gone. He went to the kitchen for a drink of water. Maybe a cup of tea. They had one old-fashioned rotary-dial wall phone in the kitchen. It was a relic of Sutton’s first home, something she’d clung to. Ethan found it reminded him of his childhood, as well. He stared at it, holding his tiny mobile, thinking about how truly fucked-up his life had gotten in the intervening years. The mobile began to trill again. Wilde.
Ethan swallowed, pressed the Talk button, launched the tirade.
“I told you never to call me again. Fuck you, fuck off, leave us alone, and don’t you dare write anything about my wife, or I’ll sue you for defamation.”
There was no slamming down a phone anymore, but he’d dropped it to his waist where he could see without his reading glasses and was hitting the End button when he heard Wilde shout, “Wait. Don’t hang up. I know where your wife is.”
Ethan hesitated. And damn it, he knew better. Hang up. Hang up and be done with him.
But Colin Wilde had created this rift in Ethan’s world by becoming so overly involved in his life, in his wife, and as much as it infuriated him to admit, if anyone knew what had happened to Sutton, it could be Wilde. He had that uncanny ability to know what they were doing, at all times. He was as much a stalker of Sutton as Sutton had been to the reviewer.
He put the phone to his ear.
“Where is she?”
A laugh, brash and mean. “Now, now, that tone won’t do. Come on, Ethan. You need to ask me nicely. You know you want to.”
Lie to Me Page 12
