Dead Lies (10 page)

“I’m sorry, but I don’t understand,” Danny blurted, and everybody turned to look at him. “Who would want to hurt them?” Web noticed that Danny was wearing the same expression—bewilderment mingled with fear—he’d seen on his father’s face when he’d come home last night with Serena’s blood splashed all over his clothes. Web hadn’t even realized he was covered in it until his father had pointed at his chest wearing an expression of horror.

Kreeger said to Danny, “We don’t know, sir, but we’re trying to find out.” He paused. “Can you tell me your name again?”

Danny stared at him for a moment. “Danny,” he answered finally. “Daniel Callahan.” Kreeger wrote Danny’s name down in his book. “I’ve known Web since kindergarten,” he added.

The detective looked at Tim. “And you?”

Tim said his name, too, spelling out Christiansen. He looked at Web, his face impassive.

“Were you two friendly with the couple?” Kreeger asked them both.

“Of course,” Tim replied tightly. “We grew up with Serena, too. We were all in the same class in school. She and Web are twins.” Web thought he heard the female officer suck in her breath, but no one else seemed to notice.

“I didn’t know that,” Kreeger said. He flipped a page in his notebook. “Did you have a friendship with the couple outside your friendship with Mr. Marino?” he asked Danny and Tim.

“Not so much anymore,” Tim admitted, his eyes darting between the detective and Web. “I live just outside the city and don’t get out here much.” Tim gave Web a look that he couldn’t read. Web looked away.

“I occasionally saw Serena and Bill around town,” Danny offered shakily. “I live in Avondale, over on Farm Pond Lane.”

Kreeger scribbled in his notebook again. “You got kids?”

“Yeah. Four of them.”

Web saw Kreeger’s eyes dart to Tim’s ring-less hand, but he didn’t comment. He turned back to Web. “Can you tell me who Mr. and Mrs. Vance’s friends are? We’d like to talk to them.”

Web offered several names of people who lived in Avondale, as well as a few who lived in the city. But he guessed none of them would know anything. If something was wrong, Serena would have come to him,
not one of her friends. He was her protector. That’s how it had always been.

“Let’s go back to the phone call you got from your sister,” Kreeger said. “You told me she said, ‘Bet violent.’ Have you thought more about what that could mean?”

That strange little phrase contained the last words Web would ever hear from his sister. But in the fallout after her death, he hadn’t really given much thought to what they meant. He’d simply assumed that she was trying to say “goodbye” or “I love you,” and that in her mortally wounded state, the words had come out garbled. But now he realized she must have been trying to tell him something, sending a message she believed he’d understand. But what? For the life of him, he didn’t know.

“Could it be a name?” prompted the female officer.

“I suppose….” Web said. He mentally ran through the names of some of Serena’s friends, including the ones he’d given Kreeger, but none sounded anything like “Bet violent.” No friends named Bette, Yvette… as far as he knew. Wait. Now, what was her boss’s name again? They’d butted heads a few times, nothing too serious, just business. But, no, the woman’s name was Indian, something like Milaney. Obviously that wasn’t it. Too many syllables. “I can’t think of anything,” he responded finally. “Tim, Danny, can you?”

Both men shook their heads.

Web turned back to Kreeger. “I could check her iPhone. Maybe it would jog something.”

“We’ve already done that. We didn’t see anything that even came close.”

A sick realization hit Web. “Do you think she knew her killer?” His voice sounded flat.

“It’s possible.”

Web fell silent again. “Could this all be a big mistake? Some sort of case of mistaken identity?” He felt desperate now.

“Possibly,” said Kreeger, exchanging a look with the female cop that made Web think it was the first time they’d considered it. “We’re looking into every possibility.”

“Why don’t you tell us about your sister and brother-in-law and their life together,” said Officer Valentine, soothingly.

“What do you want to know?”

“What was their marriage like?”

Web took a deep breath, and his face softened. “It was great,” he said, remembering how Serena had glowed when she’d told him about meeting Bill. “They met five years ago at a party I had. He was a friend of Tim’s who came along,” he added, turning to his friend.

“Bill and I met playing basketball at Chelsea Piers,” Tim explained. “Sometimes we’d go out for beers afterward. I brought him to the party because I thought he’d enjoy my hometown friends.”

“Serena and Bill got married six months after they met,” Web continued. “No one was surprised by how fast it all happened. She’d never had the easiest relationships with men.” He looked up and saw Kreeger’s raised eyebrow. “I don’t mean violent ones,” he said firmly. “It was just that, until she met Bill, she felt like she was never going to meet the right one.” He looked over at the female cop, and she nodded at him in understanding. “I’m sure the depression had something to do with it. But when she met Bill, something clicked for her. She said he made her feel like she was part of something bigger. That’s why they got married so fast. There was no reason to wait.”

Web didn’t mean to wax poetic, but he was glad to see that neither of the cops was looking at him weirdly. Suddenly he was afraid he was going to burst into unmanly tears, so he steered the conversation back down to earth. “For the first year of their marriage they lived in an apartment near mine in the West Village. Then they bought the house out here.”

“Why’d they relocate?” probed Kreeger.

“They wanted to start a family.”

“They didn’t have kids, though,” Valentine observed.

Web hesitated, reluctant to share something so personal.

Kreeger jumped in. “Your sister was what”—he flipped some pages—“thirty four?”

“Yes.”

“If they moved out here three or four years ago to start a family, what were they waiting for? Was she was having trouble getting pregnant?”

Web shifted uncomfortably in his chair. The detective had just barged into his sister’s bedroom. He swallowed his discomfort. “Yes. They were seeing a fertility specialist. They’d had two unsuccessful in-vitros in the past year and were scheduled for another one in January.”

“Who’s their doctor?”

“Why are you asking?” Web shot back. He was starting to get annoyed.

“Infertility treatment is big money,” Kreeger leveled.

The steam that had built up inside Web released. “Robert Park,” he said, naming one of the best fertility specialists in the city. “His office is somewhere on the Upper East Side, but I don’t know where exactly. Madison, I think, in the Seventies.”

His head begin to throb. He still believed this would all turn out to be a mistake.

“Just a few more questions,” said Kreeger. “Again, I have to ask this. Is it possible either your sister or brother-in-law were having an affair?”

“Jeez,” he heard Danny say. Web looked over at his friend and saw a flush break out on his already ruddy face, connecting the dots between freckles. Tim, too, looked pained, and Web realized this was almost as hard on his friends as it was on him.

He reminded himself the detective was only doing his job. “No. I just can’t see that. As I said, they were happily married and trying to have a baby.”

But as sure as he tried to sound, he realized it
was
possible one of them had been cheating. You never really knew. He wanted to suspect Bill, because he couldn’t imagine his own Ceci doing such a thing, but he knew his sister was capable of deception, too. She’d been a world-class liar as a kid; with that sweet face of hers and those big green eyes, she’d many times pulled the wool over an adult’s eyes.

The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed that something was up. Serena
had
seemed preoccupied in the past few weeks. Could that have been guilt over an affair she was having? Or that she’d found out Bill was cheating? Neither scenario seemed totally farfetched. And yet both possibilities seemed disproportionate to her melancholy, which is how Web had come to describe her mood. Though it didn’t rise to the level of depression, she’d seemed more
sad
than upset, as he’d told her during a recent phone call. But she’d brushed his concern aside, assuring him only that she was worried about finishing everything before the holidays. He hadn’t bought that explanation but concluded that she was anxious about her upcoming in-vitro treatment. So he’d let it go. It was easy to understand why she’d be worried. Along with the obvious stress from the painful procedure, she and Bill had agreed that this would be their last attempt to conceive, whether it was successful or not.

He didn’t tell the police any of this, though. His gut told him it wasn’t relevant.

“Did your sister or brother-in-law take out any insurance policies lately?” Valentine asked.

Web shook his head. “I can’t imagine why they would have.”

“Did they have any money troubles?”

“Uh, not that I know of.”

“And their estate?” said Kreeger. “Who inherits?”

Web didn’t know the answer to that either. He knew that before Serena married Bill,
he
was her beneficiary. She’d called him every time she changed jobs in order to get his social security number for the forms. But now he assumed that Bill was her beneficiary, and she, Bill’s. It hadn’t even occurred to him to ask her about all that. He looked at the detective and shook his head.

“I guess that since they didn’t have children, their estate would be divided up between us and Bill’s family.”

“What do you do for a living, Mr. Marino?”

Web felt his face flush, but he wasn’t sure why. “I’m a music producer. I own a company called The Galaxy Group. My office is in Manhattan.” He felt defensive. He wasn’t used to that.

“Do you live in the city?” asked Valentine.

“Yes.” Web gave his Bank Street address and watched her write it down. His thoughts wandered to his penthouse loft with a view of the Hudson River, which he’d bought a few years ago, and he remembered how quickly he’d adapted to his new neighborhood when he’d moved there from Carnegie Hill. He loved the intimacy of the West Village with its old-fashioned taverns and quirky shops. The low buildings and cobble-stoned streets made it feel like he was living in a time warp. Life was slower and easier there. Coming home every night after work was a welcome escape from the steel and glass morass of midtown.

It was strange to think about his life in Manhattan. With everything that had happened in the last 24 hours, that world felt very far away.

“How long do you plan to stay in New Jersey?” he heard Kreeger say.

Web flushed again. Was he a suspect? Kreeger added, “In case we have any more questions.”

“I’ll stay for a few more days at least,” he replied, although he hadn’t given the matter any thought until now. He was just trying to get through today. His thoughts turned to his mother, father, and sister. “As long as I need to be,” he added.

Suddenly exhaustion swept over him like a wave. He hadn’t gotten more than a few hours sleep since this whole nightmare began, and he was feeling every minute of it. “Are we done?” he asked.

Kreeger shot Valentine another look, and something unspoken seemed to pass between then. “Yes,” he said. “Thank you for your time. You’ve been very helpful.” Rising, he reached across the booth and added, “Here’s my card again. Please call me if you think of anything else, or if you have any questions.”

Valentine also rose and pulled a card from her wallet. She handed one to him, looking down at him with eyes full of sympathy.

He realized he was staring, so he looked down at the card.
Anna Valentine,
he read. Hell of a name.

“Again, thank you for your time,” Kreeger said. “Call us if you want to check in. And again, please accept our deepest sympathies for your loss.”

Web listened for the jangle of the bell as the officers left the restaurant. It felt like his cue to speak. But he didn’t know what to say.

Before anyone had a chance to say anything, the waitress arrived with their burgers and said, “I waited until they left to bring these over. I figured you wouldn’t want any interruptions.” She gestured to the man standing behind the bar, who owned the place. “Sam wants you to know that lunch is on the house.”

“Thanks, Sam,” Web called, raising his hand to the man he’d known for many years. He was touched. So many people in town had reached out to him and his family in the last twenty-four hours.

He turned back to his friends, who still seemed at a loss for words. The three men sat there silently, none of them making a move to eat. Web had completely lost his appetite. In fact, the smell of the meat was making him feel sick. It reminded him of the carnage he’d witnessed yesterday.

Tim finally spoke. “How you doing buddy?” he said. Tim had a habit of calling everyone “buddy.” Today it irritated him.

“How do you think?” he said sharply. Tim didn’t react.

“I’m having a hard time making sense of all of this,” Web said by way of apology. “I mean, the idea that Serena and Bill could have been mixed up in something… bad?” He picked up a French fry and forced himself to take a bite. He gestured for his friends to follow suit.

Anger, denial, eating a meal. Web realized a completely disparate group of emotions and activities was what grief was about. You just dealt with each thing as it came until hopefully one day you woke up and actually felt you had your equilibrium back. He’d never lost someone this close to him before, but he guessed one day he would feel better, maybe even normal again. It was only logical that things would improve. Otherwise the world would be full of walking zombies.

“I’m having trouble believing it, too,” Tim said, ignoring the food in front of him, as usual. Tim was tall, but he never ate much, which explained why he always looked a bit like he’d just come back from a vacation on a desert island. It served him, however. Not only did he never have to bother with tailoring his suits, but his gauntness made women around the city want to invite him over for a meal.