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There’s a beat of silence then Anderson asks, “And is that what you did?”
“No,” I say quickly. “I didn’t want to make any trouble for Nora at work. Plus, she had her car to think about. Wharfman wanted it out of the parking lot before an important customer arrived in the morning. So we drove over there so I could put the spare on. Only when we got there, there was already a tow truck on sight. Wharfman had called them to come. So, after we confirmed with the driver where we wanted the car towed, we came back to my house.”
“I see, and that’s where you stayed the rest of the night?” Anderson asks. I’m momentarily distracted by the sound of Montgomery’s pen scratching along his pad as he takes notes on what I’m saying. It’s disconcerting—the sound of all our lies being recorded.
“Well, no,” Nora speaks up. “We did go out and grab some dinner at a Chick-fil-A. Despite the late hour I hadn’t eaten anything. But then we came back.”
“I was going to take her home after we ate,” I quickly cut in, remembering my promise to her last night, “but after we decided to get married we got to talking.” I swallow, willing myself to ignore the scratch, scratch of the pen. “She fell asleep on my couch. It was so late I decided to just carry her to my guest bed. And that was that. We woke up this morning and headed straight for City Hall to get married.”
Montgomery’s pen comes to a stop along with my story. I realize belatedly that my portrayal of things didn’t sound very romantic, but before I can attempt to course correct Mel speaks.
“I like your dress, Nora.”
Her words are innocent enough in nature, but the implication is not lost on me—and it sends a rush of cold zipping through me. Does she know where I got the dress? That I snuck into Nora’s house in the dead of night to get it, crossing the police lines set up on her lawn to do so?
So stupid. I should’ve just grabbed the birth certificate and gotten out there.
Although in my defense, I never expected my friends to crash our courthouse wedding.
“Oh, thank you,” Nora answers with a glance my way, as if she too senses impending danger. The room is quiet for a few seconds. I’m not sure what all of the others are thinking about, but I’m busy wondering if I should make up some lie about where we got the dress or just move on in the hopes that no one will give the dress another thought.
The sound of someone thwacking something against their leg draws everyone’s attention Becca’s way. I watch with growing horror as she rips the top off a thin pink packet and dumps an even pinker powder into her water turning it a pink color that will very much stand out against her cream-colored shirt. She lifts a spoon that I didn’t even realize she’d brought with her from the kitchen off the coffee table and starts stirring.
“Oh, sorry,” she says quickly when she realizes everyone is staring at her. “I forgot I had this with me. Free sample from my grocery pickup order.” She holds up the now empty packet of what looks to be some sort of strawberry-lemonade flavored water mix. “Didn't mean to disrupt the investigation. Carry on.” She waves a hand toward Anderson, almost knocking the glass of pink water to the floor. Nora and I both flinch, but luckily at the last minute Becca manages to right the glass before it topples off the table and onto her.
This might be worse than if I’d just given her some hot chocolate.
I’m so preoccupied with Becca and her newfound pink drink liability, that I almost miss Stafford’s question to Nora.
“Generally speaking, did the people at your office like Ian Wharfman?” he asks, leaning back in his chair as if he’s simply asking her about the weather and not, you know, trying to build a suspect list. If Nora wasn’t the murderer, this question wouldn’t be so bad. But since she is, he’s essentially asking, is there anyone you can pin this murder on in your place?
Obviously he doesn’t know that’s the byproduct of his question, but I can see that Nora does by the way she sucks in a breath and starts jiggling one leg.
“Whether or not they liked Ian I hardly think any of my coworkers are capable of murder, if that’s what you’re asking,” she says, effectively pinning the murder on no one.
Which is fine.
I mean, it’s not like I want some innocent person sent to jail for Nora’s crime.
But isn’t there some jerk wad at her office that goes around yelling at everyone, always acts like he’s better than everyone else, and never starts a new pot when he finishes the coffee that we could at least use as a distraction from Nora?
His innocence would be proven quickly enough, but by then we’d have figured out some new rabbit hole to send them down.
Then once that rabbit hole goes cold, we’ll send them to the next and so on and so forth until they rule the whole case as cold.
Which yes, could take years and lots of wasted police resources, but I really can’t focus too much on those things right now.
Not if I want to keep my guilt in check and my mind from playing out scenarios where this fake marriage of ours eventually turns into wedded bliss.
“Don’t worry,” Stafford says, putting one hand up in a calming gesture, “I’m not asking you to accuse anyone. Just trying to get a general sense of office relations and morale. I know that you know from your time dating Reynolds that murderers don’t always fit the stereotypes. In fact more often than not in cases like these they look like regular people. People you’d never think were capable of murder.”
Does his gaze hitch meaningfully on Nora as he says these last words? Or am I imagining things? Surely he hasn’t grown suspicious of her too.
“Look,” Nora says, remarkably calmly, “Ian Wharfman was a tough boss. Nobody loved the man. Well, except maybe for Frank.”
“Frank?” I cut in. “The security guard?”
She nods. “He practically worshiped the ground Ian Wharfman walked on.”
