Page 22 of Jon's Helter Skelter Cold Case

Addiman seemed to realize he might be in trouble as he abruptly switched tunes. “Ha! If she was in a burning house, she deserved it, but I had nothing to do with it.”

I gestured for the walkie, and Donovan held it up quickly. “Lie.”

Borrowman didn’t bat an eye; he just kept going. “Have you been up to the family cabin before?”

“Sure.”

“Beautiful country up there.”

Addiman didn’t trust this casual chitchat but went along with it. “Yeah, it’s real pretty. Hunting’s great too.”

“How often you been up there?”

“Maybe a dozen times over the years. Hard to get off work, you know.”

“And it’s some distance away from your house, right?”

“Yeah, about a two-hour drive, with traffic and all.”

“That why you have to stop for gas?” Borrowman pulled a photocopy of a receipt out and shifted it so Addiman could see it. “This gas station is about five minutes from the cabin.”

And the plot thickened.

Addiman stared at the receipt like it would bite him, given the chance. “I went up that way to see if she was there, sure. I didn’t stick around, though. I had work the next morning.”

Pigs fly, too. “Lie.”

“Bet it was easy to light the cabin on fire,” Borrowman mused, like he hadn’t heard anything. “Log cabin, old wood, probably didn’t take more than a spark. If not for the sprinkler system installed inside—which was a smart precaution—whole thing would have gone up in minutes. Having been inside, you’d have known that. So was this another scare tactic? Or were you actually trying to kill her?”

Rage and the sage green of apprehension mixed like a Christmas cocktail in Addiman. Man was not as smart as he thought himself to be.

“You got nothing on me, Cop!”

I gestured for the walkie and said, “It was a scare tactic, but if she died, he wouldn’t have been too upset about it.”

Borrowman shook his head in resigned disgust. “You’re acting like this, and you wonder why she left you.”

“She left me for another man!”

“Stella isn’t with anyone else, man. She just outright left you.”

Addiman scoffed at Borrowman’s words, unbelieving.

Abby leaned into my side and whispered, “Is that anxiety I’m seeing in his lines?”

“The sage green? Yeah. Usually, anxiety means he’s hiding something that will absolutely nail his hide if we can figure out what it is.”

I had an idea of what it was, but I was curious if Abby would also pick up on it.

“Do they have kids?” Abby abruptly asked.

Ah-ha, she had picked up on it.

“Ask Borrowman,” I encouraged her.

Donovan held up the walkie-talkie and Abby repeated the question. “Do they have kids together?”

Borrowman was a veteran at this, so he didn’t look at the mirror, but from the way his head drew back for a second, he wasn’t expecting Abby to talk. But he dutifully repeated the question. “You got kids, Addiman?”

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