Chapter 20
Rather than wait for the elevator, I take the stairs to the ground floor. My phone rings just as I step onto the first landing.
“Thirty seconds,” I say when I answer, certain it’s Logan.
“Shall I hold, then?” a male voice asks. Not Logan’s. When I check the screen, I see it’s an unknown caller.
“Who is this, please?”
“It’s Chip, Chip Conway. We met at dinner last night.”
This is not a call I want to be dealing with right now.
“Oh, hi, sorry,” I say. “I’m just running out for dinner. Can I ring you tomorrow?”
“Um, sure. But if you’ve got even half a minute, I wanted to give you a heads-up.”
“Okay,” I say, now on alert.
“I heard from the reporter again, and it looks like he’s preparing a second story, saying there’ve been several recent developments regarding your daughter’s case.”
I pause on the steps, catching my breath. Someone in law enforcement has clearly leaked information.
“Is he aware of what those developments are?”
“If he is, he didn’t share them with me. Is there anything you can tell me, Ms. Winter? I feel slightly on the back foot here.”
Back foot. What does he think this is, a game of pickleball?
“Chip, I appreciate the heads-up, but I’m not free to speak about the case at this time. I’ll let you know if and when that changes.”
“All right,” he says, sounding less than pleased with the response. “The more information we have, the better we can be at dealing with the press.”
Maybe he sees nosiness as part of his PR role, but it’s starting to get on my nerves.
“Have a good evening” is all I say, hoping to drive home that it’s pointless to pressure me.
Logan is in the lobby now—but not pacing. He’s standing by the front windows, staring out to the street. Perhaps time has taught him to wait with greater patience.
He turns as I approach him and smiles. There are a few guests congregated by the fire in the parlor now, so I hold off on telling him about the call from Conway until we’re outside.
“Well, good,” he tells me. “As we’ve said before, this probably helps our cause.”
Once we’re cocooned in the car, I find myself finally decompressing a little. For the first minute or two, I simply stare out the window at the endless clapboard houses we pass, many lit inside right now with only the muted glow from a TV screen.
“So,” I say finally, “tell me your impressions of Jack.”
Logan nods, his eyes still on the road.
“As I’m sure you noticed, he’s abandoned the Inside Llewyn Davis look. He’s all cleaned up now.”
“Well, if he’s out auditioning for parts, he’s got to keep up with the times.”
“Exactly. And believe it or not, his career might be taking off.”
“Are you serious?” I say, more than a little surprised.
“This is all according to him, of course, but he just shot a pilot for a series with some big-deal—what do they call them?—showrunner, and it looks really promising. He’s not the lead, but he’d be a regular, in every episode.”
“I thought you said he was waiting tables.”
“He is, but just till the show gets the green light.”
So now, eight years later, Jack Lawler might be closing in on his dream, something never allowed to happen for Mel.
“Okay, good for him,” I say as Logan navigates a turn. We’re now on the outskirts of Cartersville, traveling a two-lane highway. “But that makes it an even bigger surprise that he took the time to drive up for the reception.”
“You don’t buy the ‘paying tribute to Mel’ stuff?”
“Like I said, I could if tomorrow night was a memorial, but it’s not . . . What . . . what if this trip is really about the show and his red-hot future?”
“I’m not following.”
“There’s a lot on the line for him now, so maybe the whole point of him coming was to meet with you face-to-face and make sure there aren’t hard feelings that could backfire on him.”
“He’s covering his ass in some way?”
“Yeah, maybe,” I say. “I’m not exactly a People magazine reader these days, but I’ve seen stories in the news about male actors on the brink of major stardom who get dropped by agents and studios if there’s even a hint of impropriety in their dealings with women.
If Jack’s career takes off, and reporters investigate his background, they might learn he was on police radar following the murder of his former girlfriend. ”
Logan nods, fully catching my drift. “And now that he’s met with us and made nice, he’s probably fairly confident we won’t malign him in any way.”
“Yup . . . But should we be maligning him? Do you think there’s any chance he did it, Logan?”
He pulls back a little in the driver’s seat, obviously surprised by my comment. “As of now, I’d have to say no, I guess. I mean, Riley’s story—if it checks out—pretty much leaves him in the clear.” He glances over. “Why? Are you still having trouble believing her?”
A sigh escapes my lips. “No, not anymore, actually. The reason I tried to reach you earlier is because I had a visit today with Morgan Kroll, the woman Riley said she spoke to.”
“What?”
I tell him about tracking down Kroll and meeting her at the diner—going alone at her insistence—and how she explained that Riley divulged the same story all those Mondays ago. My eyes are trained on Logan. Even in the dimness of the car, I can see that he’s taken aback.
“Christ, that confirms it, then,” he says.
“Are you shocked I contacted her?” I ask. Because he’s still looking stunned.
“Yeah, but not as much as Halligan’s going to be. I’m glad you did it, though. At least we have corroboration now.”
I’m grateful for his response. This would all be so much worse if we didn’t see eye to eye.
Logan slows the car suddenly. “Okay, here we go,” he says. “I almost overshot the place.”
The restaurant, Nino’s, is in a white stucco building set back a little from the road.
“I know, it looks pretty old school,” he tells me as we make our way from the car. “But I swear it’s good. And I know you’re a fan of southern Italian.”
He says it with complete confidence, not like a man who hasn’t been to a restaurant with me in close to a decade and knows almost nothing about my life since then.
Based on the modest exterior, I’m half expecting red-and-white-checkered tablecloths and wine bottles in straw flasks hanging from the wall, but the dimly lit room, with a long wooden bar at the end, is more formal than that.
All the tables are set with crisp white linens and have a small, glowing lamp in the center.
There’s currently a dozen or so diners, though many look close to finishing their meals.
We’re led to a quiet spot in the back and handed two huge leather-bound menus, the size of something you’d pack for a weekend trip.
“I’m almost too tired to look,” I say after the ma?tre d’ steps away. “Can you Sherlock the menu for us?”
I regret the suggestion as soon as it’s out of my mouth. That was something I used to say when we were married because, after all, Logan knew all the games restaurants played. But if I don’t want him referencing the past, why should I?
“Sure,” he says. He pulls a pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket and quickly peruses the menu with the glasses perched midway down his nose. He looks as exhausted as I feel.
When the waiter arrives, Logan orders a Caesar salad to share, two chicken piccatas, and two glasses of Chianti classico.
“Sounds good,” I say when we’re alone again.
“You’re not secretly craving some Uruguayan blood sausage and a plate of empanadas?”
I laugh and tell him no, but at the same time I wonder if even coming with him tonight has been a mistake.
I swore to myself that I wouldn’t give Logan any reason to think we were friends, that I had no intention of sharing another meal with him, and yet here we are sitting together in a dimly lit restaurant.
And looking like a middle-aged couple out on date night, no less. What would Bas say if he saw me now?
I need to course correct after tonight.
“So,” Logan says, letting his body find the back of the chair. “Where does this leave us?”
His question completely throws me. What’s he asking—whether we really can be friends now?
“In terms of what?” I say.
“In terms of Riley. Are you really over your reservations?”
Okay, good. I’ve simply mistaken his meaning.
“How can I not be over them?” I say. “Morgan Kroll confirmed every word of the story.”
“So, we’re back to what we believed years ago? That Ruck killed Melanie?”
I shrug. “I guess.”
“Wait, what’s going on?” he asks.
And for the first time since I spoke to Morgan, I realize that something about the meeting with Riley has continued to pester me. It’s like a shimmer of light on water, tremulous enough for me to see but impossible to grab hold of.
“I’m convinced now that Riley was attacked,” I say, “and that she almost died. But I still can’t let go of the way she came across at times. Maybe . . . maybe the evasiveness I picked up has to do with Ruck.”
“That she’s mistaken about him?”
“Yes. It would have been such a relief for her back then to discover her rapist had been apprehended, and so maybe she convinced herself that Ruck was the guy. But at the same time, she might have niggling doubts about him, and those leaked out when she was talking to us.”
Logan cocks his head. “Well, his mug shot was all over the news, and the power of suggestion could have taken over.”
“Right, you hear about that kind of thing happening. Look, I want to believe Ruck did it, but what if he was never on any kind of rampage in Cartersville?”
“But what would that mean, then?” he says. “That there was some other serial killer in the area that weekend, and he attacked both girls with the same MO as Ruck’s?”
“You’re right. That makes no sense at all.”
Logan rests an elbow on the table and exhales into his fist. “What we need is a follow-up with Halligan to see where he stands on all of this. It’s late, but let me text him and say we want to talk tomorrow.”
I watch as he digs his phone from his pocket and taps out the message.
I’m glad I confessed my lingering worries about Riley and wonder, sitting there, if I should also tell him about my encounter with Handler and all my concerns on that front.
But I decide against it. As I told Harry, I don’t have a good reason to suspect Handler of sleeping with Mel, so why inject that ugly thought into Logan’s head tonight?
The salad arrives, and then, as soon as we finish, the chicken piccata appears. Logan digs in with relish as if we’ve driven to some far-flung Michelin-starred restaurant where it’s taken months to get a reservation.
“See, it’s quite good, isn’t it?” he announces after a few bites. “They haven’t dredged the damn thing in a ton of flour and turned it into a congealed mass.”
“Delicious,” I say, though under the circumstances, it’s hard to really relish it.
“Remember that period when Mel was nine or ten, and all she seemed to want was chicken piccata?”
“Yeah. She’d beg you to make it every week, sometimes twice.”
“But then she’d order it out, too. Always when we went to Monte’s, that place on MacDougal.”
I look off, feeling a swell of emotion and hoping I can contain it.
“God, I loved the Monte years,” I say. “That was before Mel decided she hated me.”
“Bree, she didn’t hate you. How can you say that?”
“Come on, Logan, you were there. Whatever connection we’d had when she was young was gone by the time she was thirteen. From then on, I could do almost nothing right in her eyes.”
He swipes at the air with his hand, dismissing the idea. “That was all about her being an adolescent. Of course Mel loved you, but like any teenager, she sucked at showing it.”
“The adolescent Mel didn’t have any trouble showing you she cared.”
“Well, that’s because I was her father, not her mother. I’m no shrink, but I know it’s supposedly a whole different ball game between mothers and daughters.”
It’s more or less the same wisdom he used to impart years ago, when he was working hard to reassure me. I have to hand this to my ex: he never gloated about his own closeness with Melanie, never found any way to rub in my failure.
“Maybe,” I say.
“Not maybe. I’m sure everything would have changed once Mel was an adult. She had a total love of words and books, just like you. Think of what you two would have shared.”
“I can never be sure of it, though, can I?”
My voice has cracked as I’ve been speaking, a warning from my body that it doesn’t like the topic.
“Yes, you can be. Bree, I can’t let you think this way.”
We’re sitting catty-corner, our forearms only a few inches apart on the table, and suddenly he’s laying his hand over mine.
And without any warning at all, I’m overwhelmed with a rush of desire.