Our Wicked Lies by Gledé Kabongo (story read aloud TXT) 📗

“Warn me about what?” she said, staring into her coffee cup.

“Part of the strategy I want to discuss with our attorney is handing the investigators a potential suspect. Get the spotlight away from us, so we can get back to our normal lives.”

“Nothing will ever be normal again,” she mumbled in a distant voice.

“But I have a plan, Alicia. We’ll give the police Richard—”

She slapped the mug down on the table with a speed that he’d not expected. Coffee splashed across the gleaming cherry-wood table. She blinked at him twice as if he’d just spoken in a foreign language.

“Are you out of your mind?”

“Hear me out. Nobody is looking at the fact that Katalina died while Richard was in the house. That’s suspicious. He heard nothing, saw nothing. He said he found her unresponsive and called 9-1-1. There was no forced entry, no evidence of any kind that another person was at the scene. Just the two of them in the house with no eyewitnesses. Then there’s the previous concussion.”

He stopped to collect his bearings. Pitching this to Alicia was risky, but handing the police another suspect was a popular strategy with defense lawyers. Neither he nor Alicia were officially named as suspects, but McBride had turned their lives upside down when he leaked the affair and the confrontation to the press. Eliot didn’t have any proof that McBride had done any such thing. It was just a feeling that someone had, and Eliot’s two suspects were the detective and Richard Deluca.

Richard could have leaked the affair to play on public sympathy for the betrayed, grieving husband. It was a straightforward way to deflect suspicion. But if Richard was going to play that game, so would Eliot.

He wanted the nightmare to end, and the best way to do that was to put the spotlight on someone else. Then he would turn his attention to repairing the damage to his marriage and rebuilding his family.

“I just don’t see Richard as a killer.” Alicia wrapped her hands around her mug.

“But you see me as one?” he asked bitterly. “You had no problem asking me if I killed Katalina. Richard is the same guy who knew about the affair weeks before you found out; yet, he said absolutely nothing. You think he’s a good guy, but I’m not so sure. Consider the previous concussion. Have you ever thought of that? And the injury that caused her death. What if he snapped and, in a rage, pushed her so hard that the impact of the blow to her head killed her? The report concluded the two wounds were in the same area at the back of her head.”

Eliot was aware that his declaration betrayed a raw emotion, a desperate tone to convince his wife that this was a good idea.

Instead, her eyebrows pinched together in disgust. “I thought you were a lawyer, Eliot. Even I know this theory won’t stand without evidence.”

“True. But it’s not my job to find evidence. It’s my job to create reasonable doubt, and it’s available in spades. McBride unfairly targeted us. It’s an easy narrative. Cheating husband, wife finds out, mistress ends up dead. But why, if I wanted her dead, would I wait until after my wife found out?”

She drew her lips into a thin line. “If he thinks you killed Kat, what better way to deflect suspicion than the argument you just made?”

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to law school after you get you bachelor’s?” The joke fell flat.

“Don’t mock me.” She stared at him blankly.

The threatening text clattered around in his head. This would be the time to tell her, just get everything out in the open so they could plan their strategy together. But he could not do what the stalker had asked. He would try to uncover what the blackmailer truly wanted. He had to keep a lid on the truth of the affair.

He cleared his throat, then said, “Anyway, I don’t want to think that Richard killed her either, but you must admit that the circumstances are strange. Besides, we have no idea what he said to McBride.”

Alicia sighed. “I’ll go along with whatever you and Harry come up with. I don’t really have a choice. But I just can’t swallow the idea that Richard did this.”

“But what if he did? He had motive and opportunity. No witnesses. No evidence that points to him. The perfect crime.”

CHAPTER 53

Alicia sat in silence the entire time their attorney was there. She was merely a fly on the wall while Harry and Eliot discussed ways to get McBride to back off. They’d even floated the idea of threatening to sue. Although they had no proof that McBride or someone within the department leaked information to the press, the lawyers argued that they could claim the department was careless in their handling of the investigation so far. She and Eliot were being tried in the court of public opinion because McBride did sloppy police work.

As she watched the men plot their strategy, Alicia felt like she was collapsing in on herself. Her world failed to make sense. She had no idea what the future held for her. But one thing was crystal clear, her marriage was over. Period. She could no longer remain married to this man.

Although superficially unsure, Alicia knew she’d made the decision a while ago. The moment she’d found out that Kat was the other woman, something inside her had broken. But then again, it could have been the bold-face denial when she’d asked Eliot about an affair that pushed her over the edge. Was it the disgusting and humiliating words Kat hurled at her during their final confrontation? Or the final betrayal: Kat’s revelation to Eliot that Alicia had an abortion?

A gathering of papers suggested the end of the meeting. A strategy had been agreed. Eliot would own up to the fact that he was on the receiving end of anonymous text messages