Unknown Means by Elizabeth Becka

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    “Really?” Riley asked. “I can’t imagine why.”
    His neutral tone didn’t fool her. She paused for a moment; the silence swept through the room like a slap.
    David made his voice friendly and warm. “Had they been talking about divorce?”
    “He was cheating on her.”
    “Cheating on Grace.”
    She raked her hair with long nails, rocking in her seat. “Of course, on Grace! Who do you think I mean?”
    “I’m sorry, that’s just a big chunk of information. Who was the other woman?”
    “Grace didn’t know. But she had been worried about it for months. She added up the little things—coming home in a different tie than he went to work in, putting in all these late nights but not mentioning any big projects or rush jobs that might account for it.
    She thought it might be someone at work—and really, isn’t it always?”
    “Did she confront him?”
    “Oh, yeah. More than once. He kept denying it. She asked me about hiring a private detective.” She hitched the chair forward again. She’d be sitting in his lap in the next five minutes if he didn’t move back.
    “You’ve had experience with private detectives?” Riley put in.
    She glared at him again, as if examining the question for some sort of insult. “Not personally, no, but who else could she trust? And my girlfriend’s sister got one to follow her second husband, and she got great photos. That was a long time ago, but I told her I’d ask around.”
    “Did you recommend someone?”
    “No, I hadn’t come up with anyone. It was just last week she asked.”
    “Did she tell William she would hire a private detective?”
    “Well, duh! That would defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it? He just

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    might have had the sense to get careful and the guy wouldn’t get any pictures.”
    David threw in a curveball to keep her off balance but kept the warm tone. “Did you know the code to their penthouse?”
    She picked at a loose thread in the seam of her slacks. “No.
    What would I need it for?”
    “Any reason—to drop something off when she wasn’t home, to feed her fish when they went on vacation.”
    “They didn’t vacation much. The only thing she wanted to do was travel, and that was the last thing he ever wanted to do. But it makes sense, if you think about it. He didn’t want to leave his girlfriend. Besides, he’d rather spend money on toys. He always wanted a new car, a new computer, something for his office.”
    “Did they argue about money?”
    “All the time. He’d have gone through every cent if she didn’t hold him down. So”—she slapped her palms on her thighs with the air of summarizing—“he kills Grace, gets all her money, and doesn’t have to give up the girlfriend.”
    “How long had this affair been going on?”
    “Two months. Maybe three, I mean, since she started noticing how all his little inconsistencies added up to a ton of bullshit.”
    “About as long as she’d been pregnant, then? Did she think his cheating had something to do with the baby?”
    “Baby?”
    Joey Eames sat, for the first time, perfectly still. She stared at David wide-eyed, every red blood cell draining from her face. “What baby?”
    David felt a little ill himself. Only rookies made the mistake of revealing confidential information to a potential witness. But he couldn’t take the words back, so he might as well see where they led.
    “Grace was two months pregnant.”
    After a pause, the woman spoke. “No, she wasn’t.”
    “How do you know?”

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    “Because she would have told me.”
    “Maybe she didn’t want to announce it yet.”
    She slapped her hand down on the armrest so hard it must have hurt. “It’s not a damned announcement ! She would have told me! We told each other everything!”
    “Apparently not this,” Riley said.

    C H A P T E R
    5
    EVELYN TOOK OVER A PARKING SPACE FROM A DEparting Channel 15 van and hurried into the lobby of Grace’s and