‘No,’ Webb agrees. ‘If Amanda was having an affair, then who was she having an affair with?’

‘If we knew that, we’d be getting somewhere,’ Moen mutters.

Chapter Thirteen

OLIVIA SEARCHED THROUGH the newspaper and the online news on Wednesday for any new information on the murder of Amanda Pierce. It’s odd how wrapped up in it she’s become, so quickly. But there was nothing new, and little in the way of hard facts. It was all simply a rehash of what had been said already. Investigations are continuing.

She’d tried to talk to Paul about it the night before in bed. ‘What do you think happened to her?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Paul mumbled, trying to read his book.

‘She must have been having an affair,’ Olivia said. ‘Why else would she lie to her husband about who she was with?’

‘It’s none of our business, Olivia,’ Paul said.

‘I know,’ she replied, a little surprised at his tone. ‘But aren’t you curious?’

‘No, I’m not,’ he said.

She didn’t believe him. And then she’d broached the subject of taking Raleigh to see someone. She didn’t expect him to like the idea, but she was unprepared for his reaction.

‘Paul,’ she said. ‘I’m worried about Raleigh.’

‘I know.’

‘I just – I think maybe we should send him to a therapist.’

Here he put down his book and glared at her. ‘A therapist.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why the hell would we do that?’

‘Because maybe – maybe it would help him to talk to someone.’

‘Olivia, he does not need a therapist. He needs a good kick in the ass.’

She glared back at him, annoyed.

Then Paul added, ‘Don’t you think you’re overreacting?’

‘No, I don’t. This is serious, Paul.’

‘Serious, yes. But he’s not mentally ill, Olivia.’

‘You don’t have to be mentally ill to see a therapist,’ she said in exasperation. Why did he have to be so backward about these things?

‘It’s just a phase. We’ll deal with it. He doesn’t need a therapist.’

‘How do you know? What makes you the expert?’

‘I’m not going to discuss it, Olivia,’ he’d said sharply, and switched off his bedside table light and turned on his side away from her to go to sleep.

She’d lain in bed beside him, fuming, long after he’d begun to snore.

Now, as she drinks an afternoon cup of coffee, she recalls that she’d seen Paul reading the article about Amanda Pierce in the paper last night. He is curious. Of course he is. He just doesn’t want to admit it. Paul always could be a little sanctimonious.

The preliminary forensics on the car and Amanda’s belongings reveal frustratingly little.

‘Sorry to disappoint you,’ Sandra Fisher, a forensic pathologist at the ME’s office, says, ‘but we didn’t get much.’

Webb nods; he hadn’t expected much, with the car having been in the water, but you always hope.

She says, ‘We didn’t find any blood, skin, or hair except for the victim’s. Nothing to get a DNA profile from. And we haven’t been able to get anything else – no prints, no fibres.’

‘Anything from the purse or luggage?’ Webb asks. They’ve already looked into her cell phone records and they haven’t revealed anything; certainly no sign of any man on the side.

She shakes her head. ‘Sorry.’

Webb nods and glances at Moen. Whoever killed Amanda and pushed the car into the lake didn’t leave any trace behind.

Fisher says, ‘As you know, there was nothing where the car was found to indicate that that was where she was killed. There would have been a lot of blood. Most likely she was murdered somewhere else and the killer drove her car to that spot to sink it.’

Webb says, ‘He probably knew the area, knew that would be a good spot to get rid of a car. Deserted, no guardrail, a decent slope, and the water gets deep quickly.’

Moen nods in agreement. ‘He took a risk that someone might see him, no matter how deserted the road,’ she says.

‘Find anything else in the car? Anything in the glove box?’ Webb asks.

‘The owner’s manual and the service record. A first-aid kit. A tissue packet. She was very tidy.’ Fisher snorts in apparent disbelief. ‘You should see the shit in my car.’

Webb swallows his disappointment. He’d been hoping for something.

‘The fingerprints in the Pierce bedroom are a match for Becky Harris,’ Fisher says. ‘But we don’t know who the other set belongs to. Not coming up anywhere. Whoever it was, was in the office and all through the desk, too.’

Robert Pierce has taken the week off work. It’s only Wednesday. They’ve told him to take whatever time he needs. He has no interest in returning to the office. He wonders if his fellow attorneys in the small, five-lawyer firm think he’s a murderer. They probably do. He wanders around his house and thinks about his interview with the detectives earlier that afternoon, replaying it over and over again in his mind.

He wonders what Becky is doing. He knows she’s home. Her car is in the driveway. He’s been avoiding her. He used her, rather shamelessly. It doesn’t bother him that much. She was awfully easy to seduce. But he’s worried about what else she might tell the detectives, now that the cat’s out of the bag. She told them that they’d slept together. Did she also tell them that he thought Amanda was having an affair? Will she? He would like to know.

He finds himself in the kitchen, looking out the sliding glass doors to the patio. It’s a mild afternoon, with a tang of fall in the air. He decides to grab a beer and go outside for a bit. Maybe she’ll come out, maybe she won’t.

Robert saunters toward the back of the yard. If she’s watching from inside the house, she will be able to see him there; she can’t see him on the patio unless she’s outside in her own backyard.

He hears the unmistakable sound behind him of the door sliding open next door, and stops. He knows that no one from the street can see them here; they have all the privacy they need. He turns around and lifts his eyes over the fence at Becky’s house. She’s standing there, in the doorway, staring at him. He walks slowly back along the fence toward her.

She looks awful. Her usually silky blond hair is lank, and she’s not wearing any make-up. He wonders how he ever could have slept with her. She looks as if she’s aged over the last couple of weeks.

She stays in the open door, watching him, her posture rigid. He can’t read her expression. Perhaps he has misread her all along. For a moment, he feels a stab of annoyance at her. He smiles. And then she gives a tentative smile back, her face dimples, and he remembers why he briefly found her attractive.

‘Becky,’ he says, in that way he knows she likes. Masculine but purring, seductive.

She steps slowly out of the door and toward him as if he is drawing her to him with an invisible string. It’s ridiculously easy with her. It always was.

He quirks his mouth up on one side, tilts his head at her. ‘Come here,’ he says, and she does. She comes right up to him at the fence, the way she used to.