Cause of Death by Laura Dembowski (ereader iphone .TXT) 📗

We have a whole new list of people to speak with as soon as the phone records are in our hands. I can’t decide if Margaret was hiding things from us or if Lana was hiding things from her mother. This could be another one of those cases where we’ll never really know the truth. I hate those cases. They drive me crazy and keep me up at night.

Before we bring in all of Lana’s potential friends, lovers, boyfriends, friends with benefits, Kate and Sarge think we should go and see if the Moores are back from their vacation and will talk to us again. See what we can get out of them. Push some buttons.

Just as we reach the car, my phone vibrates again. It’s Beth. It’s actually the third time she’s called. She must really want to see me, and I can’t quite figure out why. Our relationship has been so hands-off, no strings attached, that this number of calls and texts is kind of freaking me out. Shit, maybe Tracy threatened her.

“I gotta take this,” I say to Kate, and walk away to a spot in the station where I’m pretty sure I’m alone.

“I can’t talk now,” I say into the phone.

“Fine, but can’t you come over later? Devin’s working late again.”

“What about the kids?” I ask, certain she’d never let me come over when her children are roaming around freely.

“Oh, God, they go to sleep at, like, eight. Sleep like rocks; wish I could do that. They’ll never know the difference. Please,” she says in a whiny, pleading tone.

“I can’t tonight,” I say, hoping she’ll drop it.

“How about tomorrow? Or the next day? Even on your lunch. Whatever.”

“Tracy knows,” I blurt out. I don’t regret saying it, either. In fact, I feel better the moment the words cross my lips. Simply knowing someone else knows relaxes me.

“Your girlfriend knows about us?” she screams into my ear. I pull the phone away, hoping no one else heard. “How?”

“She had me followed, apparently.”

“You’re a cop,” she’s still screaming. “How do you not realize someone is following you? How is that even possible?”

“I wasn’t thinking clearly. I just wanted to have a good time and be with you. I think I love you, Beth.”

Whoa. And there’s the tension back.

Do I really love Beth? I must, since I just said it. I’m fairly certain I don’t love Tracy anymore—not that she really loves me, either.

“You love me?” Beth asks, baffled.

“Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.”

“I have a family. This wasn’t about falling in love. It was about having fun. Come over, don’t; I really don’t care what you do with your life. Why are all guys such assholes?”

I say nothing. I have no answer for that.

I walk back to the car, slightly breathless.

“Why don’t you drive,” I say to Kate, noticing that my hands are shaking.

“But you never want me to drive,” she says, too distracted to notice my current state.

“First time for everything.”

The last thing I want to do right now is go to the Moores’ house, but I have no choice.

Kate talks on the drive there, but I don’t process a single word. I’m too busy thinking about Tracy and Beth, about the mess I’ve made, and how to get out of it.

Suddenly, I’m worried that the first thing Beth did after she hung up the phone with me was call her sister.

Chapter 11

Margaret

“So let me get this straight,” I say to Officer Whatever-His-Name-Is, who has been bothering us since the first time he and his partner walked into our house.

“You think my daughter had a secret cell phone and a secret job, along with a secret boyfriend.”

“Yes, ma’am, we do,” the girl cop says, looking at the floor. She’s not even woman enough to look me in the eye while telling me I know absolutely nothing about my daughter.

I turn my head from the detectives standing in front of me, just inside the door—they are not welcome to come any further—and see Dave. He’s on the floor, his legs crossed, his face in his hands, swaying back and forth.

“She had so much to live for,” he sobs. “How is she gone? How is this possible? Why her? Why us? Why me?”

Girl cop—Detective Hutchinson, whatever her name is—walks over to him and stoops down.

“I am so sorry for your loss, Mr. Moore. I know it is no consolation, but we are going to find out what happened to her,” she says in a soothing voice that makes me want to kick her in the ribs.

“We know what happened to her. She killed herself,” I say.

What are these detectives talking about? This is bullshit.

“She had friends, a new job,” boy cop says. “Life was going pretty well for her, it seems to me, and we are struggling to figure out why she would have killed herself.”

“You never know what’s going on inside people’s minds,” I say, staring them down. “How dare you question our daughter’s motives. Don’t judge us.”

Dave looks back and forth between the two officers, confused. “So she really didn’t kill herself?” he asks.

“We don’t know yet. Sometimes things like this can be staged, and it’s almost impossible to tell the difference,” girl cop says, moving to sit on the floor next to him. She doesn’t touch him, keeps her distance, but I can tell she’s trying to make an emotional connection, to break him down, get him to confess to something. She has another thing coming.

“Should I not have touched her? Did my DNA contaminate her body? Or maybe if you’d been able to see her room as she left it,” Dave cries, his voice and body shaking.

“Sir, you tried to save your daughter. You did what anyone would have done. The officers on the scene at the time of her death collected the evidence,” girl cop says in her annoyingly soothing voice.

Dave manages to stand, God knows how, and shake the detectives’ hands.

“Thank you for your hard work. I know you