Page 87 of The House Across the Lake

“I was doing some investigating.”

“Which is my job,” Wilma replies without a hint of humor. “But go on.”

“And I learned—well, Boone told me, actually—that he and Katherine Royce did know each other. They were friends. Maybe more than friends.”

“I know,” Wilma says.

I pause, more confused than surprised. “You do?”

“Boone called a half hour ago and told me everything.”

“So he’s now a suspect, right?”

“Why would he be?”

“Because he lied,” I say. “About a lot of things. Then there’s what happened to his wife.”

“That has nothing to do with this,” Wilma says with sudden sharpness.

“But it does. Katherine knew about it. She—at least I think it was her—Googled an article about it on Tom’s laptop.”

I realize my mistake the second the words are out. Like a car sailing over a cliff, they can’t be taken back. The only option is to wait and see how hard they land.

“How do you know that?” Wilma asks.

At first, I say nothing. When I do speak, it’s with a guilty hush. “I was inside their house.”

“Please tell me Tom let you in and that you didn’t just barge in when he wasn’t home.”

“I didn’t barge in,” I say. “I snuck in.”

The long silence from Wilma that follows feels like a lit fuse slowly snaking its way toward a pile of dynamite. Any second now, there’s going to be an explosion. When it arrives, it’s both louder and fiercer than I expect.

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t come over and arrest your sorry ass right now,” Wilma says, her voice booming in my ear. “Do you know how stupid that was, Casey? You might have just fucked up my entire investigation.”

“But I found things,” I say.

“I don’t want to know.”

“Important things. Incriminating things.”

Wilma’s voice gets louder. Somehow. I’d assumed she had already reached peak volume.

“Unless you found Katherine Royce herself,I don’t want to know.You understand me? The more shit you say and do means the less I’ll be able to legally present to a judge and prosecutor. That laptop you looked at is evidence. Those rooms you walked through might be a crime scene. And you just tainted all of it. Not only that, your presence in that house—and the possibility that you could have planted something incriminating inside it—gives Tom an easy way to explain away every single thing we might find in there.”

“I didn’t plant—”

“Stop talking,” Wilma commands. “Stop snooping. Stop everything.”

“I’m sorry.” It comes out as a squeak. “Really, I was just trying to help.”

“I don’t need you to be sorry and I don’t need your help,” Wilma says. “I need you to stay the fuck away from Tom Royce. And from Boone.”

“But you have to admit Boone’s suspicious, right? First his wife died, and then Katherine goes missing.”

I glance at the laptop, still open to the article about Boone not being charged in Maria’s death. I scan it, hoping to find a snippet that supports my argument. Instead, I see a quote at the tail end of the article.

“As far as the state police are concerned, Officer Conrad is completely innocent and all accusations against him are completely baseless.”

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