The House on the Water

by Margot Hunt

  “I made her happy,” John said.

  I flinched.

  I had once been able to see my future so clearly. Aiden would find a fulfilling career, marry a nice girl that I would adore, and they’d have at least two roly-poly babies that I could spoil to my heart’s content. John and I would babysit whenever they needed a night off, amassing a collection of Disney movies and buckets of Lego. Sundays would be spent having everyone over for a barbecue and swim in the pool.

  That future had been suddenly been erased, replaced with a much grimmer version. John and I would divorce. I’d move into a condominium complex complete with lousy parking and neighbors whom I’d hear clumping around through the too-thin walls. Aiden would probably spend the next decade in and out of rehab until he either cleaned up his act or succumbed to his addiction. I would be all alone.

  At some point, without even noticing, I had become completely disposable.

  There was a loud banging on the door downstairs.

  “Who the hell is that?” Nick said.

  But I think we all already knew.

  We all looked at one another, silently trying to decide who would go downstairs. No one was in a hurry to volunteer. John sat down on the couch and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “I’m not answering it,” he said. “I’m done cooperating with the police.”

  There was another knock, this time louder and longer in duration.

  “I’ll go,” Ford said.

  “No,” Nick said urgently. “Don’t. What if they arrest you?”

  “They’re not going to decide who to arrest based on who answers the door,” Ford said, reasonably enough.

  He disappeared down the stairs. We heard the door open and close, the low murmur of voices, and a moment later, Ford led Detectives Monroe and Reddick up into the living room.

  “Back so soon, gentlemen?” John quipped.

  “I’m glad you’re all here,” Detective Monroe said, ignoring John’s jibe. “We wanted to let you know that the medical examiner’s report came in. The results were conclusive. Esme Lamont was murdered.”

  We all stared at him. A panicked silence swelled in the room. No one had any idea how to respond.

  “What do you mean?” Nick finally asked.

  “Mrs. Lamont died of an insulin overdose,” Detective Reddick said.

  “But that’s what we all assumed happened,” John said quickly. “Esme drank too much and misjudged how much insulin she needed. How do you get from there to murder?”

  “She could have injected herself with too much insulin,” Detective Monroe agreed. “But probably not four times the normal dose.”

  “She didn’t take that much,” Nick insisted. “I was there when she injected herself.”“Is it possible she could have fallen asleep, and then woken up a few hours later and forgot that she’d already had her insulin, and taken more?” Ford asked.

  “Yeah, that might have been a possible explanation except for one thing. The tox screen the ME ran also revealed that Mrs. Lamont had Rohypnol in her system,” Detective Reddick said.

  “Rohypnol,” Nick repeated. “That’s the date rape drug.”

  “That’s one of its street names, yes. It’s a strong sedative that can cause unconsciousness, particularly when combined with alcohol. We also found traces of the drug in the wineglass next to Mrs. Lamont’s bed.”

  “Which means someone sedated Mrs. Lamont and then, when she was unconscious, injected her with a lethal amount of insulin,” Detective Monroe added.

  There was another loaded silence as we all absorbed this news. Then, suddenly, Nick lunged toward John.

  “You did this! You killed my sister!” Nick yelled.

  “Nick, stop!” Ford warned.

  But Nick wasn’t listening. John leapt to his feet as Nick fisted his hand and swung wildly at him. The blow didn’t land. Instead, John darted out of the way, moving to stand behind one of the living room chairs. The two policemen rushed forward, each grabbing one of Nick’s arms.

  “You’re a coward!” Nick yelled at John.

  “Knock it off,” Detective Reddick said. “Calm down, or I’ll put you in handcuffs.”

  “Me?” Nick yelped. “You need to arrest him! He killed my sister!”

  “I already told you, I didn’t do it!” John looked angrier than I had ever seen him. He pointed at the detectives. “And they can’t prove that I did.”

  “We’re not here to arrest Mr. Reed,” Detective Monroe said.

  Nick was so stunned by this, he stopped struggling. “You’re not?”

  “We hadn’t planned to,” Detective Monroe confirmed. “But if the two of you start going at each other, we won’t have a choice.”

  Nick looked confused. “But you said Esme was murdered. If he didn’t do it, who did? Ford and I were together all night that night—it wasn’t us.”

  “Which leaves one person.” Detective Reddick let go of Nick’s arm and turned toward me. “Caroline Ford, you’re under arrest for the murder of Esme Lamont.”

  “What?” John exclaimed. “You have got to be kidding. Caroline didn’t do anything.”

  The room tilted again, and everything went hazy around the edges. It felt as if I was at the end of a tunnel, watching from a distance as the detective handcuffed me and began reading me my rights. I had the right to remain silent, I had the right to an attorney, and the rest was a blur. And, all the while, John and Nick kept shouting over each other. Nick demanding to know what was going on, John insisting that the police had made a terrible mistake.

  But they hadn’t: I killed Esme. And I didn’t regret it. Not one bit.

  “Don’t say anything until I hire an attorney,” John yelled as the police escorted me out of the vacation house. “Do you hear me, Caroline? Don’t say a word to them!”

  I found it rather sweet that in the end, John finally took my side. It was too bad that it was far too late.

  I ignored John’s advice. The detectives drove me to the police station in near silence, but once we were there, they brought me to a small room that contained a table, chairs, and a camera on a stand, ready to record my interview. Detective Reddick fiddled with the camera, and once it was running to his satisfaction, he took a seat next to his partner. I sat across the table from them.

  “It’s September 7, 2020. This is the interview of Caroline Reed regarding the murder of Esme Lamont. Mrs. Reed, this paper has your rights listed on it. We read them to you earlier, but I’d like you to please read over them now.”

  I scanned the paper and nodded.

  “Do you have any questions about your rights? No? Then please sign there on the line.”

  Detective Monroe handed me a pen. I scrawled my name at the bottom of the page and then set the pen back on the table.

  “Let’s go back to the night of Saturday, September 5,” Detective Reddick said. “The night Esme Lamont died.”

  “We’ve been over this a dozen times already.” I remembered what Ford had said earlier that day, after the police interviewed him. If you made a mistake in the timeline you were recounting, it was automatically suspicious. But if you told the same story over and over again without deviating, you were too rehearsed, and thus equally suspicious. I wondered if Ford had been warning me at the time. If he had somehow known what I’d done.

  “Let’s go over it one more time,” Detective Monroe said.

  “We had dinner at the house. After that, we sat out on the deck and listened to music. Esme got extremely drunk, so Nick and Ford helped her to bed. I’m not sure exactly what time it was, but it was late. John and I started to clear up the dishes, and when Nick and Ford came back down, they helped us. When we finished cleaning, we all went upstairs. Nick and Ford went to their room, and my husband and I went to ours. John went right to bed, but I took a shower first. And then I went to bed and fell asleep.”

  “When did you put the Rohypnol in Esme Lamont’s wineglass?” Detective Reddick asked.

  “I did no such thing.�
��

  Detective Reddick placed a photo of a plastic syringe on the table in front of me. “This is a disposable syringe that was found on Mrs. Lamont’s bedside table. It was wiped clean of fingerprints. If this was the syringe Mrs. Lamont had used to inject herself, her fingerprints would have been on it.”

  I shrugged. “Okay. What does that have to do with me?”

  “You wiped the syringe off after you injected Esme Lamont with the lethal dose of insulin.”

  “No, I didn’t.” I folded my hands on the table in front of me. If this was the extent of the evidence they had against me, I would be fine. It certainly wasn’t enough to connect me to Esme’s death.

  “You weren’t as careful with the vial of insulin,” Detective Reddick continued. “We got a partial print off it. Half of your right index finger.”

  I thought I had wiped down everything I’d touched. I wondered if they were making it up, lying in order to trick me into confessing.

  “I doubt that,” I said. “I never touched Esme’s insulin. At least not deliberately. If my print was on it, I probably just brushed past it when I borrowed Esme’s lip gloss before dinner.”

  I could feel Detective Reddick’s irritation growing.

  “When did you find out that your husband and your best friend were having an affair?” he asked.

  “Today, when you told me,” I lied.

  I’d actually found out three months earlier, when I went to visit Esme in Miami. We were up late talking, and Esme fell asleep on her couch. Her phone was on the coffee table, so I could see the alerts when John started texting her. So careless: she hadn’t even bothered to turn them off while I was there.

  I’d been shocked and horrified at first. Then I became very, very angry. I thought about confronting Esme right then, that weekend, but I decided to wait and bide my time. Gather more information before I acted. That’s where John had been so very wrong about me. I didn’t hide from things I didn’t want to face. I just didn’t act rashly.

  When I got home from Esme’s house, I’d started monitoring their texts on John’s phone. It hadn’t been difficult. He’d go days before he’d remember to delete them, and I knew his passcode—0521. The date of our wedding anniversary. I kept tabs on all of their dirty little messages. I found out that the affair had been going for over a year. And I learned that John was making plans to leave me. But I wasn’t about to let them waltz off to a glamorous new life together in Miami, bankrolled by Esme’s fortune. Because then they would win. And I wasn’t about to let that happen.

  After thinking carefully through all of my options, I decided that Esme needed to die. And if John were to be implicated in her murder, so much the better.

  And now came the moment of truth. Would I get away with it? They detectives suspected me, that was clear. That’s why I’d agreed to talk to them. I wanted to find out what evidence they had. And they clearly didn’t have enough to build a case against me. They were hoping that I’d crack under pressure and confess.

  “I’m done answering questions,” I said, folding my hands on the table in front of me. “I’m invoking my right to remain silent. And I would like to speak to an attorney.”

  Detective Reddick’s eyes narrowed. He was a formidable opponent, but he wasn’t good at hiding his anger. His partner was more sanguine. “That’s your right, of course,” Detective Monroe said. “You don’t have to say anything. But I will tell you this. The partial print on the insulin bottle isn’t the only evidence we have that you killed Esme Lamont. We found traces of Rohypnol in the wineglass on Mrs. Lamont’s bedside table. Then it was just a matter of finding out who had access to that drug.”

  Were they allowed to continue talking to me? I wondered. I thought once I invoked my rights, the police were required to stop the interview immediately. Or was it just that they couldn’t ask me questions? I couldn’t remember. I sat quietly and waited.

  “We found out that your son had been arrested for buying heroin and that he was currently in a drug rehabilitation program,” Detective Monroe said. “We gave the Orange County Sheriff’s Office a call, and they went to pay Aiden a visit.”

  I frowned. I hated the idea of the police bothering Aiden. He was supposed to be focusing on getting well.

  “He told them that you asked him to get Rohypnol for you. He arranged for you to meet with a dealer he knows in Jacksonville. And he said that he only did that because you threatened to stop paying for his criminal defense attorney if he didn’t help you. I hate to break it to you, Mrs. Reed, but drug addicts don’t make great accomplices,” Detective Monroe said. “He had a choice between facing charges for aiding and abetting a homicide or agreeing to testify against you. He didn’t even hesitate.”

  I dug my fingernails into the soft flesh of my palms to remind myself not to say a word. Not to give them anything. Still, it was a major blow to learn that Aiden had betrayed me. I thought he’d be more loyal than that.

  It was true that Aiden had arranged for me to buy the Rohypnol from a dealer in Jacksonville. It wasn’t true that I’d threatened to stop paying his attorney—I wonder what had prompted him to add that dramatic flourish to the story. Maybe he thought it made him look less disloyal.

  The Rohypnol had been a mistake. I could see that now. I’d researched it online with the computers at our local library and learned that it wasn’t routinely tested for in post-mortem exams. But of course, once the police found traces of the drug in Esme’s wineglass, the medical examiner would know to include it in the toxicology screen.

  I thought back to that night. I’d waited for just the right moment to put the Rohypnol in Esme’s wine after dinner. I didn’t want her to pass out too early, and I was also hoping that everyone else would be drunk enough not to notice my spiking her drink. But Ford was sober and alert, so I had to wait for my chance. The teenagers out on the beach making noise finally gave me the opportunity. Everyone turned to look at them.

  After that, the drug started to take effect quickly. Everyone assumed that Esme was just drunk, so Nick and Ford helped her to bed. The four of us cleaned up and went to our rooms, just as I’d told the police. John had quite a bit to drink, too, so he fell asleep quickly. I had considering giving him the Rohypnol, too, to make sure he wouldn’t wake up. But John had always been a heavy sleeper, especially after he’d been drinking. I waited until I was sure he had passed out; then I got up and went to Esme’s room, using my phone as a flashlight. We had been on dozens of trips together, so I knew exactly where she stored her insulin in her overnight kit. I’d also done some research to determine how much insulin it would take to kill a diabetic. I measured out the amount and injected it into her thigh. Esme stirred, but she was so out of it, she didn’t even wake up when I plunged the needle into her skin. I wiped down the syringe and vials, put everything back in its place, and returned to my bed.

  And left Esme there to die.

  I’d considered taking the wineglass away with me when I left her room that night, but I knew Ford and Nick were still awake. I could hear them watching a movie. I was afraid that if I took the glass downstairs and put it in the dishwasher, they’d see me. They’d know I was up and wandering the house at the precise time Esme had died. So I took a risk and left the glass there.

  In hindsight, that might have been a mistake, too.

  “I said, this interview is over,” I said crisply.

  I stood and stared imperiously at the two detectives. I wasn’t about to confess, but I also wanted them to see me for who I was. Not just another middle-aged woman with wrinkles and fifteen extra pounds padding her stomach and thighs. No, I was so much more than that. I was strong. I was formidable. I was not the sort of person who could be pushed aside or discarded like a used Kleenex.

  They could prosecute me. But what evidence did they have? A smudged fingerprint and the testimony of a drug-addicted kid? Not to mention three other suspects who were present at the crime scene with motives of their own. The police couldn’t even prove th
at I knew about the affair before today.

  My plan had been to commit the perfect murder: a murder that didn’t appear to be a murder at all. A murder that everyone believed was a tragic, yet accidental death. Unfortunately, I hadn’t pulled it off. But even so . . . I wasn’t about to go down without a fight.

  Besides, whatever the future held for me, in the end, I had won. I’d prevented John from turning me into the stereotype of the discarded wife. And I’d stripped Esme of her tiresome entitlement, from getting everything she wanted yet again.

  And really, what was more important than that?

  “It will be easier on you in the long run if you cooperate with us now,” Detective Reddick said. He wasn’t ready to give up. “Are you sure you don’t want to make a statement?”

  I smiled coldly at him. I murdered my best friend and left those closest to her looking guilty, including my cheating husband. That was the only statement I wanted to make.

  But instead, I said: “I’m sure. Now I’d like to speak to an attorney.”

  Margot Hunt is a USA Today best-selling author. Her full-length novels include BEST FRIENDS FOREVER, FOR BETTER AND WORSE and THE LAST AFFAIR. She has also written two novellas—BURIED DEEP and THE HOUSE ON THE WATER.

  Margot wrote eight previous books as Whitney Gaskell and the Young Adult series GEEK HIGH under the pen name Piper Banks.

  She lives in Stuart, Florida.