Page 82 of Little Empty Promises

She shook her head.“Cordelia gave me the idea.On the day he died, I waited until nightfall, and then I pulled my car into the garage.I put Eddy in the trunk, and I drove to the rental.My plan was to leave him there for no more than a few days.Cordelia was going to help me figure out what to do next.”

“And then she was murdered.”

She nodded.“And I lost it.”

“Did you have anything to do with Cordelia’s death?”

“No.”

“Do you have any idea who killed her or why?”

“If I did, I would tell you.”

Rosalyn had lied to me before.

What was stopping her from lying to me again?

She gave her dog a squeeze and said, “What’s going to happen to me?”

“Foley and Whitlock will come in and take your confession.You need to hire a lawyer, a good one.Do you have someone?”

“N-no.”

I grabbed my wallet out of my handbag, fishing out a business card.I stood and handed it to her.“Tiffany Wheeler is a friend of mine.We went to school together.She’s good.You can trust her.”

Rosalyn thanked me, adding, “You know the saddest thing of all?A life in prison is refreshing after all I’ve been through.It’ll be far less of a hell than the life I would have spent living with him.Because he would never have let me go.”

35

When I entered Foley’s office after my interview with Rosalyn, he was standing next to Whitlock, talking about her confession.They looked over at me, smiled, and Whitlock let out a long whistle.

“Way to go in there,” Foley said.“You sure there’s no way I can talk you into coming back and working for me?”

“I’m sure but thank you.”

“We have one confession.Now we just need to get the other one out of her.Any ideas?”

I moved a hand to my hip.“You don’t think she committed both murders do you?”

“I sure do.Don’t you?”

“No, I don't.”

“Why not?Given she had a relationship with both victims, it seems obvious.”

“The murders were nothing alike.And then there’s the note Whitlock found in the library, which suggests someone was hired to kill Cordelia.”

“We’ve never been able to confirm the note has anything to do with the case.”

We hadn’t disproved it either.

“Then you have Eddy, who was poisoned over the course of a week and then stuck in a refrigerator,” I said.“Their deaths seem too different to be connected.”

“The connection is Rosalyn.The way I see it, the woman killed her husband, and then she either hired someone to murder her neighbor, or she took care of it herself.”

“Why would she kill Cordelia, the one person who was trying to give her a way out, a new life, without Eddy in it?”

Foley shook his head.“Was it a way out?What if, after Rosalyn murdered her husband, she worried Cordelia might let it slip, tell someone what she’d done?Rosalyn could have wanted to tie up loose ends.”

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