Faye Kellerman - The Burnt House

More tears.

“I was too stunned to question Marina’s story. On some level, it made sense. I couldn’t get hold of Roseanne and now Marina was telling me she was on that plane.”

Tears ran down his face.

“I was in a stupor for a long time afterward. I didn’t go to work, I didn’t go out, I didn’t call anyone, and I didn’t answer any calls. I drank a lot because I was a wreck.” He shook his head. “I was a zombie.”

“I’m sure you were,” Decker said. “And I feel very bad for you. But we still have the car problem, Ivan. How did Roseanne’s blood get all over the car?”

“I don’t know!” Dresden protested. “I don’t have any idea.”

“You say that when you went out to the parking lot that morning, Roseanne’s car was gone.”

“Yes.”

“So how’d you get it back?”

Dresden furrowed his brow, trying to bring back the memory. “I think…I…oh, wait. Okay. This is what happened. A few days later, or maybe it was just a day later-it was after the airport reopened-Marina came back with Roseanne’s car, saying that she picked it up at the airport for me. She said she didn’t want me to have to think about something so trivial, so she did me the favor.”

“How’d she get the keys to the car, Ivan?”

“I don’t know how she got the keys unless she took them from Roseanne.”

Bingo, Decker thought.

“But why would I think that? I was still thinking that Roseanne died in flight 1324.”

“So she brought you the car a few days later?”

“No…No…wait…” He thought a few moments. “Okay, this is what happened. Marina said she had the car. Then she asked if she could borrow it for a while. At first, I told her no, that it would be a very bad idea for her to drive it. You know, that it would look weird for my girlfriend to be driving my wife’s car a few days after she died. That’s when she told me that she had actually picked up the car from the airport after the crash and that it smelled funky…that some old food had been left inside and she wanted to take it to the car wash or have it professionally cleaned or something like that. I think I asked her where the car was now and she told me it was at her apartment. So I told her return it to me as soon as it was clean. I also told her that we shouldn’t see each other right after Roseanne died. Man, did she get pissed! It wasn’t like I was planning to dump her. I just needed some time to myself.”

“Totally understandable. So what did she say to you when you wanted to cool it for a while?”

“I don’t remember the exact words, just that she was going on and on about how she was going to tell everyone about the affair and that I wasn’t worth her time and that she was going to ruin me. I finally shut her up by promising her some insurance money once the whole thing was settled.”

“And calmed her down?”

“A little. I don’t know. I don’t remember anything too well.” He rubbed his forehead. “I think it took about a month for her to finally bring me back the car. It reeked of mold. I asked her what the hell happened. She told me she was really sorry, but she left it out in the rain with the top down. But then she handed me twenty-five hundred bucks in cash and told me to get the car reupholstered the way I liked. She gave me Jim Franco’s name and told me that he’d do a great job and after all I’d been through didn’t I deserve a little something for me?”

“You weren’t suspicious?”

“Man, those days were such a haze. I had taken a leave of absence for a month and I wasn’t doing anything except drinking…smoking, if you get my drift.”

“Got it.”

“So Marina gives me twenty-five big ones and tells me to clean up Roseanne’s Beemer, I figured that the bitch actually had a good idea. So that’s what I did. I changed the car inside and out…it was a real mess…and that’s the last I thought about it. Then you guys started sniffing around, telling me that Roseanne didn’t die in the crash. The second the police got involved, I knew Roseanne’s father-in-law must have said something. The man absolutely hates my guts. That’s okay. I don’t like him, either. So I wasn’t concerned because why should I be nervous? I didn’t do anything wrong…I mean, I cheated on my wife, but she cheated on me. I certainly didn’t hurt her. Even after that lady detective found the phone, I still figure so what? It’s only a phone.”

“Why didn’t you just give it to the police instead of destroying it?”

“Because, I don’t know…I was shocked to see it. Like I told you, it must have fallen out of Roseanne’s purse when I pushed her. You guys were already on my case. I wasn’t going to admit to a bad fight on the morning she died. You can understand that.”

“I do.”

“Anyway, when the search of the condo came up dry for you, I thought, ‘Finally, that’s that!’ Then you started in on my car…I called my lawyer up as soon as you executed the warrant to search my car. He asked me if I had anything to worry about and I told him no, I didn’t. So he told me not to say anything if the police ask me questions, and that I should call him if things got hairy. When you called me up, saying that there were just a few questions you needed to ask, I figured why should I pay that jerk two-fifty an hour just to answer a few questions?”

A moment of silence.

“I probably should have called him up.” He paused. “But I didn’t do anything. Why do I need a lawyer? I don’t know what happened to Roseanne!”

“She was murdered in her car.”

“I wasn’t there. I didn’t run after her. Marina ran after her. Why don’t you ask her what happened? She may actually have an answer for you!”

A S IT TURNED out, Patricia Childress a.k.a. Marina Alfonse had absolutely nothing to say. Thirty seconds into the questioning, she sobered up enough to ask for a lawyer-exactly what Dresden should have done. Decker thought that maybe he hadn’t asked for representation because he had actually thought he had done nothing wrong. And since there was no physical evidence that linked him to the murder scene in the car, maybe he was telling the truth when he insisted he wasn’t there. Dresden was eventually charged with tampering with evidence-suspended sentence and two years’ probation. Although the law may have allowed him to slip through the cracks, insurance wasn’t going to play so gently. He’d be tied up for years in court before he’d see a single red cent from his wife’s death.

Patricia Childress wasn’t going anywhere. The police had her bloody fingerprint at the scene, but most important, the knife that Oliver had pulled out of Childress’s purse had minute amounts of Roseanne Dresden’s blood on it. She had been charged with premeditated murder. Since she faced a possible death sentence, she pleaded guilty to murder two and a minimum sentence of twenty-four years in prison in exchange for her full confession, telling police exactly what happened in Roseanne’s Beemer, and also where she had buried the body.

At the personal invitation of the Lodestones, Decker flew up to Fresno to attend Roseanne’s funeral. Afterward, Farley, somber and uncomfortable in a black suit, thanked him with a firm handshake and a whisper of a job well done. Shareen squeezed his hand, and with tears running down her face, thanked him profusely for all his hard work. He flew back down to L.A. on the same day and never heard from either one of them again.

IT WAS STILL an hour away from Shabbos when Rina rushed out of the kitchen to answer the knock on the door. She was having a crowd tonight. Hannah had invited two friends to sleep over, and Jacob, on semester break, had brought home a couple of college buddies. She had also invited her parents, plus another couple who were new in the area. Counting Koby and Cindy and Peter-if he made it home from work on time-she was cooking for thirteen.