Page 35 of What the Wife Knew

Chapter Twenty-Five

Her

Present Day

The last twenty-four hours crawled by without the expected knock on the door by Detective Sessions and his minions. I didn’t know if he’d actually be the one to come and arrest me. Probably, since I think it was a fantasy of his. Elias warned me about questioning and forensic testing and a whole bunch of nonsense I barely remember because I was wearing a disinfectant-soaked T-shirt at the time.

After I finally got permission to return to the house I used the rest of last night to put everything the police ripped apart back together. The crime scene cleaners had already been here once to remove any sign of Richmond’s demise. I didn’t want a repeat of that experience.

My nosy neighbors spent most of the search warrant time standing outside in their driveways, straining for a better look. By now, the news of what had happened likely ping-ponged around the country club set. The idea of walking into a beehive of angry Richmond supporters kept me at home. I could make my own coffee.

Three showers and the smell of disinfectant still clung to my hair. I needed industrial-strength shampoo to kill the scent.Searching for it would be risky but maybe there was a way. I’d barely swiped my finger across the cellphone screen when I heard the deepbongfrom the front gate and my security app lit up.

I checked the video. “Sweet hell.”

A Kathryn and Portia visit this time. Looked like news about the search warrant had made its way across town to the other Dougherty household. Last thing I needed was a showdown and I really didn’t want to engage in a yelling match in front of Richmond’s kid.

Bong

The noise turned into one long moan. I could see from the camera that Kathryn held her finger on the intercom button. The woman was endlessly annoying.

Fine. I’d play along. The app let me respond without leaving the kitchen.

“What do you want?” Nothing in my tone saidwelcome.

“Let us in.” Kathryn’s clipped voice echoed through the kitchen.

A snide response about her having her own house seemed in order. Only the panicked look on Portia’s face stopped me. The kid wanted to be anywhere else. I empathized because I once was that age and wanted to escape a messy mother-daughter relationship.

I blew out a long breath and prepared for another unwanted round with Kathryn. Five minutes after I buzzed them in the doorbell rang. Two minutes after that we were standing in my kitchen. The goal was to confine Kathryn to one room of the house. Not let her wander around and cause trouble.

“You changed the gate code.”

Kathryn barely let me walk into the room before launching that one. I ignored her and focused on Portia, whom I’d spoken to exactly twice in my life for a total of less than five minutes. “Do you want something to drink?”

Portia shook her head.

She looked less severe today than she had at her father’s funeral. Still dressed all in black. Black pants and a black sweater. The latest in sullen teenage fashion. But her choice of outfit didn’t explain why she was here.

“Is your school on some kind of break?”

Kathryn held up her hand to stop Portia from answering. “She’s staying with me for a few days to get her bearings.”

“My school is about twenty minutes away. It’s easy to go back and forth. I only board five days a week anyway,” Portia said.

“It’s what?” Why in the world was I paying for her to live and sleep at a spa-like adventure camp that was close enough to home for her to bike to it? I should have listened closer when Elias brought this subject up and I agreed to pay. Kathryn and Richmond really wanted to offload this poor girl.

“Thanks, by the way.” Portia’s voice came out like a whisper this time.

The kid stumped me. “For what?”

Portia shrugged. “Mom said you’re paying for my school through college graduation.”

Is that what I agreed to? She was fifteen. That meant years of being connected to this family in some way.

“I didn’ttellyou. You were snooping around my desk and saw the confirming email I sent to the school about the payment responsibility change.”

Kathryn made it very hard to like her even a little bit. Treatme like shit, sure. That was to be expected. Snapping at her grieving kid was an asshole move. “You’ve already notified the school they should forward the bill to me?”

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