Nor was it necessarily strange that Thomas had the letter opener. Tricia could have picked it up at the animal shelter and given it to him before the affair.
Or maybe he’d gotten it from Jeffrey Palmer Sr. The man probably gave them away at his seminars. Thomas having it didn’t mean anything. And yet her heart was pounding like a war drum in her chest. She was so sick of all the secrets and lies and worse, the suspicions. Thomas was making her nervous.
“I just need a quick cigarette,” he said as he unlocked a door at the end of the long, dimly lit room. It opened onto a set of stairs that rose to another door. He motioned for her to lead the way.
The stairs were even more dimly lit. Their footfalls echoed as they climbed up to the next door. Thomas opened it.
Mo stepped out onto the dark rooftop, Thomas right behind her, and felt a chill that had nothing to do with the summer night air.
Chapter Eighteen
Mo hesitated on the rooftop. She’d never been that fond of heights.
“Come on, you have to see the city from over here.” Thomas moved past her, leading the way to a corner of the roof where there were a couple of benches and a planter. She could smell stale cigarettes and see a can filled with butts.
Thomas lit a cigarette and stepped to the edge. “Quite the view, don’t you think?” He took a drag. From where she stood, she could see that his hand was shaking as he put the cigarette to his lips again.
Mo moved closer to look out over the city. The view really was breathtaking. But she felt anxious and more nervous than she wanted to admit.
Thomas exhaled and squinted through the smoke as he looked over at her.
Mo felt a frisson of apprehension move through her. From the look in his eyes, he’d brought her up here for more than a cigarette.
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said quietly. “How long have you known Tricia was cheating on me?”
She felt as if the air had been knocked out of her. Any doubt she had about whether or not Thomas knew was answered in that heartbeat. There was also an alarming sharp edge to his question, accusation as jagged as a hunting knife’s blade.
“I didn’t know. Until a few days ago.” She met his gaze. “Tricia didn’t tell me. I never would have suspected. I didn’t believe it at first.”
He let out a hoarse laugh. “I know what you mean.” His eyes narrowed again. “You and Tricia were always so close. I thought if anyone knew what was going on with her, it would be you.” He waited a beat, then added, “So you know about JP.”
“I figured it out.”
Thomas nodded. “Have you narrowed it down to which one of them killed her? She must have confronted JP and his father and they had to stop her from going to the cops.”
It still hurt that her sister hadn’t come to her. Mo felt her aching heart break a little more. Tricia hadn’t trusted her. Not until it was too late. She pressed her hands to the top of the short parapet wall and stared out at the city, the lights blurring through her tears.
“It had to be someone Tricia trusted, otherwise she wouldn’t have let him into her house—let alone accepted a drink from him.” Still she didn’t look at Thomas.
“A drink?” he asked, sounding confused.
“Her ashes. I took some to the lab. It’s amazing how far forensics has come. There was a time when a person could have a body cremated to cover a crime. Not anymore.” At least that much was true. “She was drugged.” It amazed her sometimes how easily she could lie.
Thomas angrily snuffed out his cigarette and lit another, his hands shaking so violently that it took several tries. “Drugged?”
“How else would the killer have been able to put a noose around her neck without her fighting back?” The image turned her stomach along with the acrid scent of Thomas’s cigarette smoke.
“How did you find out about Tricia’s affair?” she asked.
He made a guttural sound. “Jeffrey called me.”
Mo closed her eyes, imagining the pain Thomas had felt to have the man he idolized be the one to tell him that his wife was having an affair with the man’s son. She turned to look at him. “I’m so sorry.”
“Tricia and Thomas, the perfect couple, isn’t that what everyone said?” His gaze hardened before he broke eye contact to look out over the city. “And after everything we went through, Tricia finally getting pregnant. We were going to be a little family. Only something was wrong with our baby. Our baby. What a laugh.”
She could hear the pain and anger in his voice, the night growing colder as a breeze moved like a specter across the rooftop.
Thomas let out a stream of smoke and looked over at her. “Guess how I felt when the doctor told me that they wouldn’t be needing my blood for my son’s first operation because it wasn’t a match?” He nodded, smiling a monster’s twisted smile. “I knew Joey wasn’t mine. What I didn’t know was that Tricia was no longer mine, either. Everything I’d believed was a lie.”
“I didn’t know about Joey,” Mo said quietly.
“No one did.” He let out a laugh that sounded more like a sob. “I kept it to myself, still hoping that however Joey had come into existence, it wouldn’t destroy our lives. Do you have any idea what it is like to carry a burden like that?”
She couldn’t imagine the kind of hell he’d gone through learning of Tricia’s deception, her betrayal, and
