Chapter Thirteen
“Ihate this,” Sam said to Freddie as they made their way through traffic toward the home of Mark and Josie Ouellette in the Woodley Park neighborhood.
“I do, too. She’s at home minding her own business while her husband is at work and her kids are at school with no idea a bomb is about to go off in her well-ordered life.”
“I have to be honest,” Sam said. “I didn’t have Pam pegged as the type to have an affair.”
“Me either. If you’d asked me to bet my life…”
“I know. Same. It seems out of character from everything we’ve learned about her.”
“I just wonder when she’d have the time between running her own business, taking care of a family, attending football games, helping with other people’s kids. She seemed really busy.”
“People make time for the things that’re important to them.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Don’t be disillusioned, young Freddie. Not all marriages end up this way.”
“We run into an awful lot of them that are so far off the rails, you wonder how they ever got together in the first place.”
“Doesn’t mean that’s going to happen to you.”
“I know, but it makes me wonder when does it happen? At what point do you go from wanting to spend forever with someone to being so over them that you’d find someone else to sleep with?”
“If you’re looking for an actual answer, I’d have to say it happens gradually in most cases. In others, you realize almost right away that you made a huge mistake getting married in the first place. That’s how it was for me with Peter. I knew I’d fucked up by marrying him almost from the start.”
“Why did you marry him? I’ve always wanted to ask you that.”
“You only knew him as the weirdo psychopath. You never knew the sweet, charming, romantic side of him. He really poured on the charm, and I was vulnerable after what happened with Nick—or what I thought had happened with Nick.” It would burn her ass forever that Peter had withheld messages from Nick that she’d desperately wanted, because Peter had wanted her for himself.
“He saw an opening, and he stepped right into it to give me what I needed.” She glanced over at Freddie.
“I know it may surprise you to hear that I wasn’t always the ruthless woman I am today. ”
He snorted as he tried to contain laughter that spilled out nonetheless.
Sam held back her own need to laugh at the absurdity of her ever being married to Peter Gibson while Nick Cappuano existed in this world.
“I made a big mistake marrying Peter for many reasons, but primarily because I was still in love with the man I’d shared one night with.
That was on me. But I never would’ve cheated on Peter while we were married.
Toward the end, I might’ve considered homicide, but not infidelity. ”
“Wouldn’t have blamed you there. When he hassled you about spending time with your dad after he was shot… None of us could believe that.”
“That was the end of the road for us. How could you know me for years and not know what my dad meant to me? To all of us? Between Peter at home, Stahl at work and my dad adjusting to being a quad while his shooter ran free, it’s a wonder I didn’t kill someone during that time.”
“No one would’ve blamed you.”
“Ah, but the paperwork wouldn’t be worth it.”
“True.” He pointed to a row of four-story, luxury townhomes. “This is it.” He took a closer look. “His business didn’t look profitable enough to support something like this.”
“Maybe football coaching is lucrative. What is AAU football, anyway?”
“It’s for the really, really good kids, the ones with a chance at playing D-1 in college.”
“I didn’t want to ask in front of everyone back at the house, but what’s D-1 mean?”
He gave her the side-eye. “Division 1. Top-level college.”
“Ah, okay. So his kids and Pam’s are very good football players.”
“If they’re playing AAU, then yes.”
“What does AAU stand for?”
“I’m not sure. Let me go to the Google.” He tapped around on his phone.
“Amateur Athletic Union. It’s a pretty big deal in the amateur-sports world.
The site says more than seven hundred thousand athletes participate in more than thirty AAU sports around the country.
According to the site, it was ‘co-founded in 1888 by William Buckingham Curtis to establish standards and uniformity in amateur sports.’ I remember it being a fairly elite thing when I was in school.
You have to try out, and only the top kids in each sport end up at that level. ”
“I’m glad Scotty isn’t into football. I’d be afraid of him getting hurt.”
“But you let him play ice hockey?”
“That doesn’t seem as bad as football.”
“I hate to break it to you, Sam, but hockey is one of the most dangerous sports out there.”
“Don’t tell me that!”
“I shouldn’t have to tell you that,” he said as they got out of the car. “You’ve been to games. You know how rough it is.”
“They aren’t allowed to check in his league.”
“But they will in high school.”
“No one told me that!”
“I can’t with you. I just cannot.”
“How in the world am I supposed to know how high school hockey works when I’ve never had a kid play high school hockey?”
“While I’ll acknowledge that’s a good question, you had to know the checking started at some point.”
“I figured they saved that for college.”
“Nope.”
“My husband and I will be having a conversation about that later.”
“I feel like I should warn him.”
“Don’t you dare. I need the upper hand on this.”
“That’s a fight you can’t win with your two hockey jocks.”
Sam would rather spend the rest of the day arguing about hockey with Freddie than tell Josie Ouellette that her husband had been having an affair with a woman who’d been murdered. “Ugh, this sucks so bad,” Sam said as she looked up at the front door that was festively decorated for the holidays.
“Sure does. Let’s get it over with.”
They trudged up the stairs and rang the rather normal-sounding doorbell. That neither of them commented on its normalness was indicative of how stressful this sort of thing was for both of them.
A blonde woman wearing a red sweater and a shocked expression answered the door. “Holy. Shit. It’s you! The first lady! At my door.”
Sam held up her gold shield. “Are you Josie Ouellette?”
“I am.”
“Lieutenant Holland, Detective Cruz. May we have a moment of your time, please?”
She stepped aside to let them in. “You work on murders, right? Oh, wait. We knew Pam Tappen. That’s why you’re here.
We were so shocked to hear the news about her.
” Josie led them to a warm, cozy kitchen in the back of the home.
“Can I get you anything? Coffee, tea, hot chocolate? It’s so cold out there. ”
“We’re fine, thank you,” Sam said, taking the seat she was offered at a round wooden table with six chairs.
“I just feel sick about Pam. It’s all I can think about. And poor Bob and the kids. They’re such a great family. We’ve known them for years.”
“How many years?”
“Oh, well… It has to be seven or eight since my Aidan started playing with their Lucas. They started at U8, which is the youngest group. They’re both standout players and have won several championships together.”
“How would you describe your relationship with Pam?”
“We were friends through our kids. When your children play at a highly competitive level, it takes over your life as well as theirs. We spent a lot of weekends away at tournaments, and the other families become like a football family of sorts. It wasn’t uncommon for all of us to help each other out with rides and stuff, too.
When she traveled for work, I brought Lucas and later Justin to practices, and she gave my kids rides home when I had to pick up my others.
It takes a village to raise an elite athlete. ”
“Sounds like it. What was Pam’s relationship like with your husband?”
Josie’s brows furrowed with confusion. “With my husband? He’s one of the team coaches and she was the head of the boosters, so she helped out with lots of things. We spent time together at tournaments and games, had dinners afterward, tailgated here and there. That kind of thing.”
Dear God, Sam thought. The woman truly has no idea. In some ways, that was good news for Josie, as she didn’t appear to be a suspect in Pam’s murder. But in other ways…
“Why do you ask?”
“It’s come to our attention that she and your husband were involved. Romantically involved.”
For a heartbeat, Josie’s face went completely blank as she shook her head. “That’s not possible.”
Sam remained quiet to give the other woman a moment to wrap her head around what Sam was telling her.
“How do you know that?”
“He told us.”
She shook her head again with disbelief.
“That’s ludicrous. He’s so busy, he barely has time to eat or sleep between running his business and coaching the team.
When in the world would he have time for…
” Josie stopped as if something had occurred to her that made her realize that what Sam was telling her might be true. She immediately began to weep.
Sam glanced at Freddie, who seemed as agonized over this as she was. “I’m very sorry to have to tell you this, Mrs. Ouellette, but we’re trying to figure out who would’ve been angry enough with Pam to do what was done to her.”
“It wasn’t me,” she said between sobs. “I didn’t know she was sleeping with my husband.”
Sam believed her. “Can you think of anyone else who might’ve had a beef with her?” She asked the necessary questions, even though she had to believe the affair played into what’d happened to Pam. It was the only thing out of the ordinary they’d discovered yet about the dead woman’s life.
Josie shook her head as she wiped away tears. “Everyone likes her. Or they did. Or so I thought. Who knows what’s true and what isn’t?” She used a paper napkin to mop up her tears and blow her nose. “Does Bob know?”
“He’s our next stop.”
“This will devastate him. He adored her. That was obvious to everyone who knew them. Why would she do something like this to him? To her children? To my family?”