Jessie Hunt 13-The Perfect Impression by Blake Pierce (ebook reader online free .txt) 📗

“What kind of supplies?” Jessie pressed.

“I found a novelty shop that sold kitschy stuff. I bought a blonde wig,big sunglasses, and a baseball cap.”

“Why?” Jessie demanded. It seemed that as long as she kept thequestions coming and made them short, Ariana was happy to answer.

“I knew about the dinner reservation at seven thirty and I wanted toobserve what was happening without being noticed. So I hurried over to a spotacross from the restaurant they were at. I watched them hang out there forhours and then followed them back to the hotel. Once they got settled in at thebar, I snuck in quietly, sat in a corner, and watched everyone. It seemed likeTheo was really flirting with Gabby. She was talking to Rich and Theo kind ofinserted himself into their conversation and was leaning in really close to herwhen they talked. It looked suspicious.”

“Couldn’t he just have been leaning in because it was loud?” Jessieasked.

“Maybe,” Ariana conceded. “But right after that, Gabby left. Theo talkedto the others a little, but after a couple of minutes, he went upstairs too. I wantedto follow him but I couldn’t go up in the same elevator with him in case herealized who I was. I couldn’t take the stairs right away either. I was afraidthat if he saw some strange woman barging up the stairs to his floor, he’d bewary. So I waited a few minutes before going up. But before I could, my momcalled because Ginny was running a slight fever. I went out to the courtyardand told her where the medication was and walked her through Ginny’s soothingroutine. It took a few minutes before she was comfortable with everything and Icould hang up.”

“What time was that?” Jessie asked.

Ariana reached into her pocket.

“What are you doing?” Jessie demanded, stiffening.

“I’m just getting my phone,” Ariana replied, apparently taken aback byJessie’s intensity. “I was going to check when my call with my mom ended.”

“Go ahead.”

Ariana scrolled for a few seconds before answering.

“I hung up at ten thirty-nine,” she said.

“Okay. What then?”

“I went up to our floor, but of course the hallway was empty by then,so I went to our suite and…listened at the door.” She seemed to choke upbriefly, as if overwhelmed by the indignity of what she’d been reduced to,before gulping hard and going on. “I didn’t hear anything so I moved on toGabby’s.”

“You didn’t try the Landers’ suite? Didn’t they also leave around thesame time as Theo?”

“To be honest, I didn’t really notice them. Now that I look back on it,I think they were all talking to each other before Theo went up. But I was sofocused on his whispering with Gabby that it never occurred to me to suspect thathe was going to their room.”

Jessie couldn’t help but notice that, although Ariana’s voice wascomposed, her body seemed clenched up, like she might burst at any moment. Itcould simply be attributable to remembering a stressful event, or it couldsuggest she was on the verge of doing something dodgy.

Either way, Jessie took an imperceptible step back and glanced around,making sure that there were no potential weapons in easy reach. She’d justrecently had a case in which a woman threatened to kill herself with a kitchenknife and didn’t intend to end up in a similar situation.

“So you said you went to Gabby’s suite,” she prompted.

“Right,” Ariana replied, not needing additional coaxing. “I stoodoutside her room and pressed my ear to her door. It was humiliating. But I didn’tcare because I heard them.”

“What did you hear?”

“Voices: Gabby’s and another person. It made perfect sense that it wasTheo.”

“But it wasn’t Theo,” Jessie reminded her. “He was with the Landers atthat time. What made you think it was him? Was it a male voice?”

Ariana’s face dropped.

“Now that you ask that, I don’t know. I just assumed it was. But theother person was quieter than she was.”

“How do you know she didn’t just have the TV on?”

“No,” Ariana insisted. “I definitely recognized her voice. Whywould she be talking at a normal volume with the television on? It was aconversation.”

“Could you hear anything she said?” Jessie asked.

Ariana paused again, either scanning her memory or pretending to.

“No,” she finally said.

Jessie fixed her eyes intently on Ariana as she asked the next questionafter that.

“What did you do next?”

Ariana seemed to sense the magnitude of the question and of her answer.

“I left,” she said simply.

“You just left?” Jessie repeated, unable to keep the skepticism out ofher voice.

“Yes,” Ariana replied forcefully. “I left the hotel, went back to mine,and cried myself to sleep. I left on the first morning boat back here.”

“To be clear,” Jessie said, “you left Avalon early on Saturdayafternoon, then turned right around and took a ferry back to the island thatevening, wore a disguise, and covertly watched your husband all night? And whenyou heard what you thought was him in a hotel room with another woman, you justleft?”

“I was in shock,” Ariana said self-righteously.

“Are you sure you didn’t just go back downstairs and wait a while, thengo back up to the room and knock on the door to confront them, find only Gabbythere, and give in to your rage?”

Ariana stared back at her coldly.

“I’m sure,” she said flatly.

“Well, I’m not. And I’ve got to do something about it.”

“What does that mean?” Ariana asked warily.

“It means I need to take you in.”

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

As she watched Ariana Aldridge sit forlornly in an interrogation roomat LAPD’s Central Station interrogation room glass, Jessie supposed it couldhave been worse.

Ariana didn’t put up much of a fight. Before they left the house, shegave Ginny a kiss and called her husband several harsh but appropriate names,but she didn’t make any aggressive moves toward him. Jessie did still cuff herfor the ride to the station as a precaution. After that, while Ariana waited tobe interrogated, Jessie and Detective Peters argued from the observation roomon the other side of the two-way mirror.

“You should have told me,” he repeated for the third time since they’darrived.

She’d already explained why she didn’t include him in the questioning ofeither the Landers or