Page 31 of One Last Goodbye

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“You didwhat?”

Sean, of course, is less than pleased that I don’t follow his advice. We’re talking in my bathroom again. The children are eating lunch, and I’ve excuses myself to shower as I don’t get a chance to do so before my excursion into Genthod this morning.

“I informed the police of my suspicions,” I reply. “I had to. They were going to rule his death a suicide and close the case.”

“So bloody what?”

Now it’s my turn to be surprised. “You can’t be serious. What do you mean, so what?”

“I mean what I bloody said, Mary.” His accent is thickening again. “Have you gone off your rocker, have you? What ye’ve done is announce to anyone who cares to look that ye’re looking into this murder.”

“I was careful,” I insist. “I told Catherine that I was opening a Swiss Bank account.”

“Where?”

“What do you mean, where?”

“Where did you open the bloody account, Mary? Did you go, perchance, to the bank nearest the police station where Detective Dubois has his office?”

Heat climbs my cheeks. “Well, I couldn’t drive all over the country, could I?”

“Oh, for the love of… Mary, for God’s sake. You arenota detective.”

“And yet I’ve solved four murders thus far.”

"We've solved three. You were told about the Deirdre McCoy murder."

“My point still stands.”

"So does mine. If you want to be a detective, join the police force. Then you'll have people with guns to protect you. Right now, you have no one. For Christ's sake, Mary. How many times have you nearly been murdered? You must know that one of them's going to succeed one of these days, right?"

“Your concern is appreciated, Sean, but we’ll save time if you accept that what happened has happened and focus on the future instead of the past.”

“Cracking good advice coming from you,” he snips. “You’re the queen of leaving the past in the past.”

I roll my eyes. "Excellent retort. You've scored a point. Now, can we get to the reason I've called you?"

He sighs. There’s a great deal of reluctance in his voice when he asks, “Why?”

“I have a list of suspects I’d like you to look into.”

“Isn’t that why you’ve talked to Dubois?”

“Yes, but you can look into them free of politics and removed from the situation. I want as many eyes on this as possible.”

“Of course, Commissioner,” he says drily.

I ignore his sarcasm and get to the point. “At the top of the list is Catherine. She has shown no remorse for her husband’s loss.”

“Can I play Devil’s Advocate and suggest that holding one’s trophy husband in disdain is not necessarily an indication that one is a murderer?”

“I caught her sleeping with Hugo van Doren, Sean.”

“Ah. Well, that is a little beyond the pale.”

“Just a little,” I say wryly. “And her coldness to her children… it’s like she doesn’t care for them at all. In fact, she doesn’t care for anyone but herself. I don’t think she even cares for Van Doren. She behaves like a narcissist.”

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