Luke didn’t even wait for me to sit back down before he attacked, “What are you doing here, Riley?”
I didn’t answer right away. I moved around the conference table and sat down opposite where Cooper and Luke sat. I realized after I sat down that it was the worse seat to take, farthest from the door. If we had been in an interrogation room, this was where the alleged criminal would have sat. All I needed now was a bright florescent light shining in my eyes. I knew what was coming. I still hadn’t decided how much I wanted to share. I just watched them across the table. Cooper had his arms folded across his chest. Luke was sitting with his forearms on the table and his hands folded, fingers laced.
“You can go ahead now and answer the question Edwin asked before. When did you last have sex with George?” Luke watched my face, glaring across at me, making intense eye contact.
I felt my temper rising again. Luke was baiting me. I knew it. He knew it.
“Look,” I said finally with an air of annoyance. “I’m not going to dignify this with an answer. The relationship I had with George was years ago and isn’t relevant now. It certainly isn’t anyone’s business.”
“You understand, Ms. Sullivan...” Luke started to say.
“Riley,” I yelled back, losing my poise. “Please stop with the Ms. Sullivan crap and just call me by my first name.”
“Fine, Riley,” he said with that sarcastic tone of his I always hated. “You understand that the only reason I’m even entertaining conversation with you is because of my relationship with Cooper? That if Cooper was not involved, you’d be out on the sidewalk on your behind. We wouldn’t share a thing with you and would keep you as far out of this investigation as possible. Do you get that?”
“I guess I do now.” I looked Luke directly in the eyes and said, “You already know about my relationship with George. Why do I need to rehash it? It has nothing to do with this case.”
Cooper looked between us and said to Luke, clearly confused, “You know all about her relationship with George?”
Luke didn’t bother to answer Cooper. He kept his eyes fixed on me. “It has everything to do with it. Don’t play with me or I’ll consider you a suspect next,” Luke said evenly and calmly, which knowing him the way I did, meant he was livid. His statement was ridiculous, but nobody was laughing.
“Okay that’s enough,” Cooper said obviously annoyed with both of us. “Look, Riley, we need to know everything about you and George. You have to know that it may change how you see things, good or bad. It makes a difference. We might be able to use it to our advantage if George still has feelings for you.”
I hated to admit it, but I knew Cooper was right. My relationship with George was a factor. It was the only reason I was here. I had taken the case thinking Maime was up to her old tricks again. But with the bracelet last night, the other women found in the river, and the number of days Maime had been gone, I knew this was more serious than I was prepared to admit.
I threw my hands up in defeat and caved, “Fine, I’ll give you an answer only in the interest of this case and as my own way of playing nice, Detective. Yes, as both you and Cooper now know, I had a relationship with George. It lasted about a year. It ended a long time ago.”
“When was the last time you were with him?” Luke demanded again.
Cooper looked at me as if pleading me to play nicely.
“Three years ago.”
I could see Luke doing the mental math, and when he looked up, he seemed less angry. He leaned back and relaxed his body. I was hoping that he would stop treating me like the enemy now that he knew.
“Riley, does that mean George cheated on Maime with you?” Cooper asked.
“Yes, it does,” I said ashamed for a sin that wasn’t even mine. “He lied. I fell for it. I didn’t know until I moved here that he was seeing her. When I found out that he was involved with Maime too, she went crazy, and we stopped seeing each other. We tried being friends, but Maime found out and made it impossible.”
“Impossible?” Cooper asked, urging me on.
“She harassed me. She would send me nasty emails and call me, leaving threatening messages. She seemed to always know if George and I had spoken. It got too much to take so I eventually cut off all contact with George. Since leaving Little Rock, I’ve had no contact with him or her.” Then I added more softly, “This isn’t my proudest moment. It’s still embarrassing to talk about so if we can move on from this subject, that would be great.”
“Riley, I know this is hard but anything else that you can think of might help. You obviously know George better than any of us,” Luke said, his voice much nicer in tone than before.
“I can’t really think of anything important, but you have to know that each time George would see me, we’d have lunch or he would stop by my office to say hello, Maime would know and throw a fit. Or she would take off for a few days and have George in a panic. It was all for attention, and it worked. If George was cheating again, then you could all be wasting your time. She will show up in a few days once she has everyone totally in a panic.”
I paused and then added, “Although, I admit, this is above and beyond what she’s normally done. Before, she would just leave for a day or two.”
“I’m only going to ask this once. I want it out of the way. Understand?” Luke asked me. I nodded and he continued, “It seems like you really dislike Maime and for good reason. Why do you want to help find her?”
The truth is I didn’t care if we found her or not. I just knew George couldn’t have had anything to do with hurting her. I felt a need to protect him. Also, I knew how much Luke hated George.
Before, when Luke I were together, he often made silly comments about getting revenge. I knew he just said it to make me laugh. But still, I was worried Luke would be blinded by that now. I was here as much to protect George as I was to protect Luke from himself.
I couldn’t say all that though so instead I said, “George asked and he seemed desperate. If there’s something I can do to help him, I will.”
CHAPTER 16
LUKE LOOKED DISGUSTED that I would even think of helping George after the lies he told me and everything he put me through. I started to get up from the table. Cooper waved me to sit back down.
He rested his arms on the table, looked between both of us and said, “I’ve got something to add that might be interesting. I don’t know too much yet.”
Luke urged him on, “Anything might help no matter how insignificant it might seem.”
“When I came home last night from dropping off Riley, my neighbor stopped me and asked if she should talk to her friend who she said was having an affair with George. She wanted her to talk with the police about the affair. She wouldn’t give me the friend’s name or any details. I encouraged her to talk to her friend. They both work at UAMS. Luke, I gave her your number.”
“Okay,” I said, letting that sink in. “So it looks like George continued his old ways.” This didn’t really surprise me. I was disappointed in him all the same.
“No calls so far, but do you think your neighbor will talk to me?” Luke asked.
“Let me give her a call today and see if she talked to her friend. I’ll get back to you. One way or the other, we should interview them both.”
“Thanks, Coop,” Luke said, but then more seriously he said to both of us, “I know you are here to help, but we have to talk about how you are going to be involved in this case. I can’t have you damaging evidence, interviewing witnesses, and getting in our way.” Then turning to me he said, “You know I’m going to have to fill in the rest of the detectives about what you just told me.”
“I know,” I said resigned and then added helpfully, “Luke, you’re going to be stretched thin now with these two other homicide cases. How about if we follow-up with the people you’ve already interviewed? Maybe they will tell us something different or at least add to what they told you. We can see if we can come up with any new leads.” Hoping to find some middle grou
nd I added, “Then we can find a way to share information as needed.”
“Would you be willing to wear a wire when talking to George? You might be able to get him to confide something to you. I know how good you are at getting people to spill their secrets.”
I could see he wasn’t going to play nice for very long. I didn’t take the bait.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “But I promise you that if he’s guilty of something, you’ll be the first person I call.”
“What do you think, Luke, these cases connected?” Cooper asked.
Luke got up and paced slowly around the conference table. We both stared at him while he thought. Luke did this when he was stressed. Like George, Luke was a pacer. It was how I always knew he had something on his mind.
“They feel connected,” he said, stopping and turning to us. “But I don’t have anything tangible so far to connect them. It just seems too coincidental to have all this happen at once. I need the medical examiner’s report back and to identify the victims before we can really go anywhere. The witnesses didn’t have much for us.”
Luke turned to me and asked, “What do you think?”
“I think you’ve got your hands full and no information. Worst kind of case. I don’t think you should assume anything at this point including that George killed Maime. You have no idea if she’s connected to these two dead women or not. The age of all the women though is similar. That’s why you should let us run with some leads on Maime and see what we can turn up. If she’s connected to the other two in time the evidence will show us that. If she’s not, maybe we can dig up some leads to see where she might be.”
“You know it’s dangerous for you to assume that George is so innocent,” Luke said, looking me directly in the eyes.
“Not any more dangerous than for you to assume he isn’t.”
CHAPTER 17
IT WAS ALREADY TEN-THIRTY by the time Riley and Cooper made their way from the police station to George’s house. Cooper hadn’t been to the house before but clearly Riley had. She navigated Cooper through the narrow streets of the Heights neighborhood with ease.
When they pulled to the curb in front of George’s house on Hawthorne Road, Cooper was shocked to see the condition of the home. He was expecting one of the grander houses in the neighborhood. He was met instead with a one-story bungalow, painted light blue with white shutters. The front yard needed some obvious tending to, and the bricks in the walkway were in need of repair, many chipped away from age and decay. It was still a nice house but not as grand as some of the others in the neighborhood. Not exactly what Cooper pictured when he thought about what George’s residence might look like.
George answered on the second knock. He guided them to the dining room table where they all took a seat. Cooper spread out his paperwork. He looked around the house, taking in the worn hardwoods, dusty table tops and tattered throw rugs. The inside didn’t look any more together than the outside.
Cooper wondered if anything in the financial documents Luke had pulled had given any indication to financial struggles of the couple. The furniture was older, the walls needed some updated paint, and in general, the place needed a good cleaning. Not that it was really dirty. It just looked neglected, as if the owners were rarely around and used the place as a stopover rather than lived here. Cooper’s place wasn’t spotless, but his place looked well-lived in. That wasn’t the feeling he had here.
“George, if you are going to retain us to investigate this case, then there is a retainer agreement I need you to review and sign,” Cooper explained, pushing documents towards George. “Then there is the matter of payment. You need to pay me directly, and I will pay Riley as a subcontractor. I know this isn’t how you wanted this to work, but we have to work within the law here. There are rules to follow. I know Riley has explained this.”
Before Cooper could really get into the paperwork, Riley blurted out, “George, would it be okay if I just looked around for a few minutes while Cooper goes over all of this? Then we can get started.”
George hesitated but agreed. “Sure, the cops already dug through everything so I’m sure if there was anything of interest, they already have it. Feel free to look anywhere you need.”
Riley left the dining room and walked into the kitchen, starting her exploration. Cooper wondered what she was looking for while he distracted George at the table.
George started to read over the contract as Cooper assumed he would. He was an attorney, after all, and even though Cooper was sure half his clients didn’t read the contract, he knew George would, word-for-word. When George finished and had no questions, he signed. He pulled his checkbook from the sideboard drawer and wrote Cooper a check for $25,000 without blinking an eye.
Just as George handed the check over to Cooper, Riley entered back into the dining room and joined them at the table, sitting next to Cooper. Her backside was barely in the seat when she asked directly, “How long has it been since you and Maime shared a bed?”
George started to protest, but then seemed to resign himself and answered, “Almost five months.”
Riley continued to control the interview. Cooper let her as she obviously knew what she was doing. He had to admit, he enjoyed watching her in action.
“Let’s start from the beginning,” she said. “Go back five months ago, six or seven if we need to and work forward. We need the whole story, George. Don’t play me. Don’t lie to me and don’t sugarcoat anything because you don’t think I’m going to like what I hear. Got it? I can’t help you if you don’t let me in on what’s going on. Every dirty detail I need to know. If you don’t think you can manage, get yourself a new investigator, and I’ll head back to my life in New York. There’s more to this story than you’ve told me and told the police. It’s now or never, George.”
Cooper realized he was smiling ear to ear as she attacked an obviously startled George. Cooper knew it was effective when George let out an audible sigh and slouched in the chair.
“We don’t have much of a marriage,” George explained. “Riley, you know how Maime and I got together. Cooper, I don’t know what Riley has filled you in on.”
“Not much. Enlighten me.”
“We met at her father’s office where we were both working. We snuck around for a while because she was technically my subordinate and the boss’ daughter. When we hit about the eight month mark she told me she was pregnant. We couldn’t hide our relationship any longer, and I did the right thing. I married her out of obligation. It turns out she wasn’t pregnant and never had been. It was the first of many lies.”
Cooper wasn’t surprised, but certainly heard motive in George’s words. He let George continue uninterrupted.
“About a year after we got married, her friend Cassie told me that Maime had made up the whole pregnancy story to get me to marry her. Cassie was pretty drunk. It just kind of slipped out. I don’t think she intended to tell me. When Maime and I got home that night, I was angry and confronted her. Maime tried to lie, but I pushed until she finally told me the truth. She cried and begged me to stay. I did so stupidly. I thought I could get over. The truth is, if she hadn’t been pregnant or rather had I not thought she was pregnant, I wouldn’t have married her. That one lie changed the course of my life.”
Cooper finally had to say it. “That’s pretty big motivation to kill her, George.”
George shook his head. “I’ve been a stable provider, a supportive husband and remained married to her. It’s been a marriage of convenience though. We lead two separate lives. Yes, I’ve had several affairs. I think a man can only take so much and needs to find happiness somewhere.”
“Why not just divorce her?” Riley asked what Cooper was thinking.
“I’ve talked about it, and each time, Maime reminds me of all I have to lose. I work for her father. She owns this house. They have me so tied into them for everything. I’m not just walking away from a marriage. I’m walking away from my entire life.”
It was a
pathetic excuse, Cooper thought. A job is a job. A house a house but then again who was he to judge. He’d never made that kind of commitment before. Hearing George talk like this reminded Cooper why he hadn’t.
“I don’t understand,” Riley chimed in. “You would rather live a lie then lose everything but find some happiness and have your freedom? She would rather live in a fake marriage than have the freedom to find someone new? That must be a really sad existence.”
“You have no idea,” George said, shaking his head.
Cooper pushed George further. “Okay, so you’ve had several affairs and your marriage is a joke. You’re tied to the old man for work and finances, and this house isn’t yours. But a dead wife certainly would grant you freedom. Sounds again a little like motive.”
George didn’t respond for a few seconds. His face slowly turned red. Cooper noted that he was clenching his fists on the table. Cooper thought he looked like a five year old about to throw a temper tantrum.
George though seemed to regain his composure. Emotionless, he gave what sounded like a recorded news soundbite. “You are absolutely right, but I didn’t kill my wife. We were leading separate enough lives. I could do what I wanted, and she could as well.”
“Back up.” Riley jumped in waving her hands across the table theatrically. “You mean to tell me that Maime was fine with you seeing other women? I have trouble believing that, George. Remember who you are talking to here.”
“No, she wasn’t okay with it. She was far from okay with it. That wasn’t what I meant. I just meant we had reached a point about six months ago that we were just doing our own thing. I was working and she was working. We had separate groups of friends. As you already pointed out, we weren’t even sleeping in the same bed. We were barely speaking, and when we were, it was short. We kept up appearances in public though. I don’t know if Maime told anyone how bad our marriage was. I can’t imagine she did. She liked to keep up appearances that everything was fine. This is why I didn’t worry when she didn’t come home right away.”
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