Page 60 of What the Wife Knew

“I was serious. We need to talk about hiring a bodyguard for you.”

The detective left and Mom ventured upstairs to look at the bedroom wall again. I expected Elias to launch into a “be more careful around Detective Sessions” lecture. Not this.

“Are you worried if something happens to me your bill won’t get paid? Because you’re the estate guy. I bet you can pay yourself.”

Elias tensed. “I don’t want you to get hurt and it’s starting to feel like a distinct possibility.”

Unexpected. Interesting. Genuine care for my well-being. Almost dad-like. Not the kind of thing I was used to at all. “You believe me about the camera and the tree?”

“Of course.”

Notof course. I expected doubt. Pushback. Support scared the hell out of me because what did it mean? What would he demand in return?

Sarcasm stood as my usual go-to move in situations like this. Hide behind a thick wall of pretend indifference and barbed responses. I’d been taught not to show panic and punished for theone time I gave in to fear. That didn’t leave a lot of healthy responses to counter danger.

But a curated response failed me. “I think the attacker was a man.”

Not sure why I said it, but it was true. The detective barely asked. It might not be a bad idea for someone to know in case this nightmare scenario kept happening.

“Wyatt?”

“The body size was wrong.” I understood Elias’s question but couldn’t see that answer. Wyatt personifiedoutraged young mansyndrome every time he stopped by the house, but he seemed equal parts confused and pissed. Still spouting the rah-rah party line about his dad and painting me as the homewrecker, which to Wyatt I was, but also struggling to make what he was told about me line up with what he saw.

I didn’t know the kid and he might have learned diversion and lying tactics at his father’s knee. He might be a rabid misogynist and all-around jackass. All possible. But under all the bluster Wyatt could just be a kid who’d been lied to and bullied in his own house and never taught any skills to deal with real world issues.

Another Dougherty family victim.

“That brings me back to the bodyguard idea,” Elias said.

As usual, there was something Elias wasn’t saying as he said something. I could hear the blank spaces. “Why?”

He studied me for a few seconds before speaking. “My investigator located August Christopher, the doctor implicated in Ben Cullen’s surgery death.”

The idea of Elias having an investigator on speed dial started my nerves spinning. “And?”

“August didn’t leave the area. He doesn’t have another job. It looks like he’s been staying on property owned by his great-aunt in Fishkill, about an hour away.”

So many questions. “Looks like?”

“My investigator hasn’t seen him, but his backpack was there. His car is hidden under a tarp in an outbuilding.”

I shifted in my seat, trying to find a more comfortable position in case bad news came next. “I feel like we’re playing a strange game where I have to guess context and facts from your clues.”

“The investigator is still working. There are some limits on what he can do, but he was able to track a vehicle that was parked on the Fishkill property earlier. Not August’s car but another one registered to the great-aunt. That car has been in Rye. In your neighborhood.”

“Your guy followed August?” And August was stalking me? That didn’t make any sense. “How does August even know to come after me?”

“We’ll ask him when we grab him, but now you know why I want someone with you at all times.”

A mix of stray and fragmented memories bombarded my brain. I mentally searched for what this August guy looked like then gave up. Wading through every thought and every fear, I landed on an unrelated question. That seemed safer. “Did you have this investigator look into my past? I assume Richmond ordered that.”

Elias just sat there.

So, yes. Not a surprise. I suspected it. I’d lived my entire life creating as little footprint as possible, which I hoped made things harder. Until recently, I didn’t have a bank account. Ipaid for things in cash and didn’t own anything. I lived my life at a sprint to make it harder for Mom to corner me. Those skills happened to hide the pieces of my life Richmond likely hoped to latch on to before we got married.

“Much to Richmond’s annoyance, the investigator had some difficulty finding out the particulars about your past.” Elias reached for his coffee mug then abandoned the move, letting his hand drop on the table. “He couldn’t find a birth certificate to match Lance, the last name you used before Dougherty, but I stopped the work when Richmond died.”

“Wouldn’t it have been smarter to ramp up the surveillance, or whatever you were doing, in case I was a killer?”

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