Eva
Hillary’s den became, for lack of a better term, our war room. That we would continue to assemble there was unsaid but understood. She had space. She had homemade food. She had money to buy whatever we needed. And we certainly couldn’t do what we were doing in public.
She had corkboard tiles on one wall that used to be filled with Pinterest-worthy photos that “inspired” her. She’d taken all that down so we could pin some of the men’s photos with their descriptions and put a map up with all their houses designated with color-coded pins. It quickly became clear that both my daughters could have had careers in law enforcement, such was their natural enthusiasm and ability toward this task.
“Wow,” I said, surveying the wall with a maple scone in one hand. I took a bite of it, and it was so creamy it didn’t even crumble. “This is impressive, girls. But do you think—should we add their wives, too? Along with Cat, Inge, and Anya?”
“Why?”
“Well, women can be part of a man’s motive or alibi, don’t you think?”
“Well, of course. But, Mom, what are you thinking, though? Precisely? Do you have a theory?”
“No. Nothing. Just making the observation that women are also awful.”
Hannah shot me a very specific look. She was chewing on the tip of a pencil in a way she’d done since she was a little girl. I used to worry about her teeth, the way she chewed on pencils. I called her my little beaver until the girls found out the alternative meaning and insisted that I stop. A month or so ago, I picked up her reading glasses in error, and the ends of them were chewed to bits, too. Some things don’t change.
“Mom, spill.”
I walked to the door, closed it.
“Well,” I said, “the men were drunk and don’t remember going home. That sounds like a group excuse. Like they devised it and agreed to it.”
“Mom,” Hillary said, “are you saying Ben is lying?”
“Not exactly. Several of them could be telling the truth, and the rest of them could be lying. It’s a convenient excuse, and it protects them all. Bandwagon excuse, that’s what I’m saying.”
“Okay, so?”
“So the men were drunk, but the women were at home, stone-cold sober. Some of them are probably protecting their men. Or they might have seen or heard something that’s important, and they don’t even know it.”
Hannah reluctantly agreed this could be useful and started searching Facebook and Instagram, combing through friends lists, printing out the wives.
“But,” Hillary said, “by the same token, anyone in the house could know something. Kids. Live-in nannies.”
“Are there live-in nannies in the neighborhood?”
“Of course there are. So where does it end? Do we have to consider everyone in the poker dudes’ houses?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Start with the men, but don’t discount the others.”
Ben helped us pull in a long table from the basement, and we put it in front of the corkboard wall and spread out our laptops and papers.
We grilled him about Barrett Smith, but he wasn’t much help.
“The guy never talks,” he said.
“That’s suspicious right there,” Hillary said.
“A man not talking? I believe that’s rather normal,” I said.
“No, I mean, he doesn’t even say hello. He waves or nods. Sometimes he opens his mouth as if he’s saying the word ‘hi,’ but no sound comes out.”
“He spoke to me though,” Hannah said.
“A, you’re a woman. B, you probably asked him a direct question.”
“Yes.”
“So answering a question isn’t the same as talking.”
Ben was a garrulous man, it was true, and so was Robert Barker. Based on Hannah’s notes, thin Matt was also extremely friendly and talkative, and so was James, but he had not been at the poker night in question. He’d been out of town at a dinner, getting an award.
“Why don’t you try to get the chatty ones to tell you more about the quiet ones?” I said suddenly. “They probably spent hours trying to draw them out, asking them questions. So they know some answers.”
“Well, if that were true,” Hillary said, “then Ben would know more.”
“Well, are there any talkative ones who don’t drink themselves into oblivion the day before their daughter comes home from camp?”
“Ouch,” Ben said.
“You deserve it,” Hillary said. “You’re lucky any of us still speak to you.”
The tension in the room with those two sometimes just shifted into ice. It was as if everything was fine until Hillary suddenly remembered what he’d done, and she lashed out.
He cleared his throat and said he had some yard work to do. Hillary agreed. There was plenty of yard work to do. Go do it. It was another awkward moment, and I couldn’t help thinking we could have avoided it by collaborating at Hannah’s. But then I took another bite of scone and changed my mind.
We all agreed to focus on Barrett and Matt Carruthers. We all felt a need to find out the circumstances of the restraining order and the DUI. First things first.
“Well, both of them are divorced and live alone, so my theory of including the women is not helpful,” I sighed.
“Wrong,” Hillary said. “The ex-wives could prove helpful for sure. Especially if there are no kids involved and they have nothing at stake for retribution.”
She opened the window and called out to Ben, inquiring about children. He seemed both surprised and grateful to be summoned back. No kids, he said, shaking his head. Hillary asked if he was sure, and he said yes. It had been an issue in both marriages. Matt’s wife was infertile, and Barrett’s wanted kids but he didn’t.
“I thought you said Barrett didn’t talk.”
“Well, he isn’t completely mute.”
“When we asked you in the beginning, you didn’t know their last names, and now you’re telling me he told you he didn’t want kids? That seems pretty intimate.”
“It came up somehow.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
Hillary sighed, cranked the window shut, and sat back down without thanking him. I couldn’t blame her, really, for being angry, but she had to soften. If she wanted to save her family, she’d have to do more than keep Ben out of prison. She couldn’t save him from one cage only to put him in another. She would have to forgive him. Surely, she knew this. Surely, she planned to, just as soon as she was done punishing him?
We stared at the men’s photos up on the corkboard as if they would suddenly come alive and reveal themselves. Their ages leapt out at me suddenly. Stocky Matt was only twenty-eight. Plenty of time for children. Maybe he wasn’t ready. But Barrett Smith was thirty-seven years old. I felt a chill sweep across my arms suddenly.
“Hannah,” I said, “when the police told you about the footage of your house, what did they say?”
“They said they’d asked for surveillance footage from all the houses.”
“Is that true?”
“Well, they asked if I had any,” Hannah said.
“But you clearly don’t. Anyone can see that.”
“But they asked Hillary, too.”
“Yes, but did they, in fact, ask everyone?”
My daughters blinked, looked at each other.
“I mean, that’s something we can ask the wives, right? That’s something we can know by the end of the day.”
“Mom, what is your point?”
“My point is, maybe Barrett Smith offered the footage.”
“To protect himself?” Hannah said quietly. “Because he had a police record.”
“No, just to be a good citizen,” I smiled. “Just to have an excuse to go talk to the police because he likes to talk so very much.”