to meet Belinda?”
“Like who?”
“I’m asking you.”
“What’s going on here, Rona? Is there something weird about Ann’s accident I should know?”
“Okay, let’s start there,” she said. “I’ve been down there, to the harbor, a couple of times. And I’ve read the investigating officers’ reports.”
Slocum looked at her curiously. “Yeah?”
“And, I have to tell you, Darren, it’s not coming together for me.”
He took a sip of coffee. He’d put too much cream in it. He grimaced. “What do you mean?”
“The way it looked, initially, is that Ann noticed she had a flat, she gets out to check, leaving the door open, the motor running, goes around the back, on the passenger side, and takes a look, somehow loses her balance, maybe hits her head on the edge of the pier, and goes into the water.” She looked into his face carefully. “Are you okay talking about this?”
“Of course.”
“So I’ve gone down there, and parked in the same spot, and I can’t figure how, exactly, she did it. She hadn’t been drinking before she left.”
“That’s right.”
“When I was down there, I kind of pretended to stumble, you know?” She did a brief demonstration, like she was tripping over her own feet. “There’s plenty of opportunity to catch yourself before you go in.”
“But it was dark,” he reminded her evenly.
“I know. I was down there last night. There’s plenty of streetlights.” She shook her head. “There’s another thing, a big thing.”
Slocum waited.
“You know we took Ann’s car in, just to give it a going-over. The tech guys didn’t notice it at first, but there are these two scratches on the trunk lid.”
“Scratches?”
“It’s an odd place for them. You get them on the bumper, you get them on the doors, but on the trunk lid? Tech guys said they were very recent.”
“I don’t know what they would be.”
“Ann had rings on both hands,” Wedmore said.
“Uh, yes, she did. A wedding ring on her left and another one on her right. Why?”
“If you can picture someone being pushed up against the back of a car, with their hands on the trunk, that’s where the scratches are.” Wedmore demonstrated, holding her arms out and slightly to the back. “They think the scratch marks could have been made by her rings.”
“If she had a flat tire, and went for the spare, she’d have had her hands on the lid.” Slocum turned and dumped his coffee in the sink.
“Except there’s nothing to suggest she ever attempted to change the tire. She hadn’t even turned off the car.”
“Why don’t you just tell me, Rona, what you think happened.”
“I wish I knew. All I know, Darren, is that it doesn’t play out the way it looks. It’s not playing out the way we’re supposed to think it looks.”
He shook his head. “What are you saying? That it was staged?”
“I’m saying it doesn’t feel right. But if that’s all there was to it, maybe I’d have to write it off as one of those things. Like you said, maybe she did somehow stumble, then lost her balance and went in. As unlikely as it seems.”
Slocum’s eyes narrowed. “But you say that’s not all there is to it?”
“No. There’s this business about why she decided to go out for a drive.”
Slocum adopted a puzzled look. “I just told you. Belinda called her. She decided to stop by the harbor first.”
“That was the only call she got?”
“Right. Just before she went out.”
“She wasn’t on the phone earlier that evening?”
“How many times we going to go in circles, Rona?”
“Darren, are you going to keep on playing dumb or you gonna be straight with me here?”
“And why don’t you just level with me? If there’s something you want to put out there, just fucking say it.”
“What about the call she took in the bedroom? The one the Garber girl heard?”
That stopped him. “Rona, I don’t know what people have been telling you, but-”
“Why’d Garber take a punch at you yesterday? What was that all about?”
“Nothing. Just a little misunderstanding.”
“The bullet that went through his daughter’s bedroom window last night, was that just a little misunderstanding, too?”
“Jesus! You think I had anything to do with that?”
“Whoever shot at that house, they may not have been aiming at the kid, but they were sure sending a message. Did you want to send Glen Garber one after he clocked you?”
“Damn it, Rona, you have got to believe, I did not have anything to do with that.”
“Convince me. Tell me why he slugged you at the funeral home.”
“I’m guessing you already think you know the answer.”
She smiled humorlessly. “You were talking to Kelly Garber, without her father’s permission. Even though he’d warned you not to. How does that sound?” When he was silent, she continued. “You’d already tried to talk to her before, and her father wouldn’t let you, or she wasn’t there at the time. How’m I doing?”
“Oh, you’re doing just great. I’m fascinated.”
“And the reason you’ve been so desperate to talk to her is, she was hiding in your bedroom closet when Ann was on the phone. She was having a conversation she chose not to tell you about. This is the phone call that prompted her to head out, not the one from Belinda. Kelly Garber was in that closet when your wife was having this conversation, and you really want to know what she overheard.” She put out her hands, as though she’d just finished a performance. “How’s that?”
Slocum placed his palms on the countertop and pressed down, like he was trying to keep his kitchen from floating away. “I didn’t hear that call, and I didn’t hear Ann talking to that person. And that’s the God’s honest truth.”
“But you know there was a call. You know Ann was on the phone earlier, and you know the Garber kid was there.” Slocum said nothing, so she carried on again. “Here’s what I don’t get, Darren. First of all, you’re a cop, so you’re trained to look for things that don’t add up. But you don’t seem very curious about the circumstances surrounding your own wife’s death.”
“That’s a lie,” he said, stabbing an accusing finger at her. “If you know Ann’s death wasn’t an accident, I want to know what you know.”
“The thing is, I’m getting this sense you don’t want to know,” she said. “If it was me, and someone I knew died this way, I’d have a hundred questions. But you don’t have any.”
“Bullshit,” he said.
“And I can only think of two, maybe three reasons why that would be. You had something to do with it, or you know who did and you want to settle the score on your own. Or-and I haven’t quite sorted this one out yet-you don’t want us nosing around in this because it’s going to open up a can of worms you’d rather stayed closed.”
“You’re really something else,” he said. “Going after members of your own department. That give you a little thrill? You know the officers talk, right? About you? About how’d you make detective, anyway? Was it one of those equal opportunity things, trying to make up for the lack of black women detectives in the department?”
Wedmore didn’t even blink. “You got anyone who can vouch for where you were all night?”
“What? Are you serious? I was here with Emily.”
“So if I asked her now, she could tell me you never left the house? She never went to sleep?”
“I’m not having you bother my daughter at a time like this-”
