‘You know, when I saw him the other day I thought he looked like he was dragging a little,’ said Adam. ‘I hope he’s OK.’
‘I hope so too. Rayanne’s trying to make him get a checkup.’
Adam nodded. Then he cocked his head toward the porch. ‘How’s our girl doing?’
Hannah glanced at Lisa. ‘A little bit better, I think. She has been getting some rest, which doesn’t hurt, with her schedule.’
‘Good. She needs that. Hey, I think I’ll have a beer to celebrate being back home. Can I get you one?’
‘No thanks. After I get cleaned up,’ said Hannah.
‘I’ll have one,’ said Lisa, not lifting her gaze from the computer screen but obviously hearing every word they said.
Hannah could tell that Adam was about to protest. She gave him a meaningful look of reproval. Lisa had only recently turned twenty-one but she was a medical student and a mother and there was no rational reason to deny her a beer. The problem was, Hannah thought, that Adam still saw her as his little girl. Hannah’s warning glance said, without words, that it was high time he began to treat Lisa as the woman she had become.
‘Two beers coming up. I’ll be right back,’ Adam said, climbing the steps up to the deck and letting himself into the kitchen. Hannah sank down on the picnic table bench in the shade of a tall evergreen. The late afternoon shadows were beginning to stretch across the yard. Sydney had resumed her digging, and seemed to be covered in dirt almost from head to toe. Hannah figured she would put her casserole in the oven and then pop Sydney in the bathtub before dinner. She did not have the heart to ask Lisa to bathe her. Lisa seemed so overwhelmed lately between work and the loss of Troy. Hannah suspected that she was barely holding herself together.
‘Almost time for you to go in and get washed up for supper, pumpkin,’ said Hannah to her granddaughter.
Sydney shook her head. ‘No. More patients!’
Just then the back door opened and Adam stepped out onto the porch. He was not carrying any beers. Behind him there was a man in a suit and a uniformed police officer following him.
Hannah frowned and stood up. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked.
Adam studied his daughter for a moment. Lisa seemed to feel the weight of his gaze. She looked up, her expression inscrutable behind her black-rimmed glasses.
‘These men want to talk to you,’ Adam said. ‘They’re from the police department.’
Lisa closed the laptop and rested her hands on it. ‘To me? About what?’
‘About Troy,’ her father said.
Lisa shook her head. She looked genuinely perplexed. ‘What about Troy?’
The man in the suit stepped forward. He had a bushy mustache and a sheen of perspiration on his forehead. ‘Ms Wickes? I’m Detective Hammond. Perhaps you remember me. We spoke when I questioned everyone at the hospital after the explosion.’
Lisa shook her head impatiently and then seemed to reconsider. ‘Oh sure,’ she said.
‘You were the last person to see Mr Petty alive?’
‘Well, I guess I was,’ said Lisa. ‘I was just lucky I didn’t stay over that night. I had a really early class so I left. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be talking to you here today.’
‘So you claim that you were with Mr Petty on the night of the explosion but that you left his house before it occurred.’
‘Well, obviously,’ said Lisa. ‘I’d be dead if I were there when it occurred.’
‘You two parted on good terms?’ asked the detective.
‘Yes, why?’ asked Lisa.
‘No argument between you. No harsh words.’
Lisa’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why are you asking me this?’
‘Did you have an argument?’ Detective Hammond persisted.
Lisa shook her head. ‘I don’t know. We might have had some . . . words. So what?’
‘Words about what?’ asked the detective.
Lisa lifted her chin. ‘I don’t remember. Anyway, what difference does it make?’
‘We have received all our lab results back now. It seems that the explosion in Mr Petty’s house may not have been accidental after all.’
Lisa stood up and came around the table. ‘What? You think he blew himself up on purpose? That’s ridiculous. Why would anyone do that?’
‘No, we don’t think that.’
‘Well, then, I don’t understand,’ said Lisa, frowning.
Hammond looked at her impassively. ‘The coroner’s report indicates that Mr Petty may have been unconscious at the time his house blew up.’
‘Well, he was certainly conscious when I left him!’ Lisa exclaimed.
‘We thought you might know something about it.’
Lisa regarded the detective with narrowed eyes, her arms crossed over her baggy shirt. ‘How would I know anything about it?’
‘Now, wait just a minute,’ said Adam. ‘That’s ridiculous. How can you even say such a thing? My daughter had nothing to do with that explosion.’
Detective Hammond continued staring at Lisa. ‘That last paycheck the hospital sent Troy Petty — he was able to cash that check. Sign it and cash it. Just hours after his cabin blew up. That’s quite a trick, for a dead man.’
Lisa stared back at him. ‘That would be,’ she said.
‘We have security-camera footage from the store where it was cashed. Care to take a guess who really cashed it?’
Lisa lifted her chin defiantly and did not reply.
Leaving Sydney digging in the flowerbed, Hannah mounted the porch steps, looking from the cold-eyed detective to her daughter in frantic confusion. ‘Wait a minute. What are you talking about? This has nothing to do with Lisa.’
‘Lisa Wickes,’ said Detective Hammond, nodding to the uniformed officer, who pulled a pair of handcuffs from his belt. ‘We’re here to arrest you on charges of larceny and suspicion of murder in the death of Troy Petty. I must caution you that you have the right to remain silent . . .’
‘Wait! What?’ Hannah cried. She turned to
