A Widow's Guilty Secret. Marie Ferrarella
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Despite the growing chasm between Peter and her, she’d never once thought of seeking solace in someone else’s arms. She might not have been in love with Peter, but she was definitely loyal to the institution of marriage.
“What?” she cried, thinking she’d heard wrong. But the expression on the detective’s face told her that she hadn’t. “No, of course not. Why would you say something like that?” she asked.
“Just a natural assumption,” he answered mildly. “If your husband was seeing someone, that made you feel less guilty about you seeing someone.”
“You have it all wrong,” she informed him with more than a touch of indignation.
“Then enlighten me.”
Suzy took a breath. She really didn’t like baring her soul this way, but she knew she had no choice. If she kept things back from this man, she was certain that he would think the worst.
“If Peter was seeing someone else, that would have made me feel less guilty about not having feelings for him.”
Now, there was a novel approach to marital discord, Nick couldn’t help thinking. “I see. And when did you stop having feelings for him?”
Suzy shrugged again, her slender shoulders rising and falling beneath the light blue cotton blouse she had on. She thought of telling the detective that was none of his business, but he’d probably counter that protest by telling her that right now it was. She might as well avoid a verbal squabble with him and just answer the question.
“I don’t think I ever started to have feelings for Peter, not the deep, everlasting kind. Don’t get me wrong,” she cautioned quickly, not wanting the detective to come away with the wrong impression. “There was a really intense attraction between us from the very first moment we met, but there turned out to be nothing behind it, nothing substantial. At least, not for me,” she told him sadly. With all her heart she wished that there could have been. But this was a case where wishing just didn’t make it so.
“But there was for him?” Nick questioned, watching her closely.
To him, half of police work was getting a feeling for the person you were dealing with, looking beneath their layers, their complexities. He was fairly certain that he would be able to tell if this woman was lying to him.
The answer to the last question was yes, but how did she get that across without sounding conceited?
“Well, Peter said he loved me, that he wanted to take care of me for the rest of my life,” Suzy said. A rueful smile curved her mouth as she remembered the first stages of their relationship, before the wedding ring, the disappointments and the baby. “You have no idea how good that sounded to me at the time.”
She raised her eyes to Nick and he saw a defensiveness entering the bright blue orbs, as if the woman dared him to find fault in her words.
“I had less than an ideal childhood,” Suzy added by way of an explanation, “and just wanted someone to care whether I lived or died. Peter said he did.” At the time, that seemed to be enough of a basis for marriage. “So I married him, hoping that I’d eventually feel the same way about him.”
“But you didn’t.” It wasn’t really a guess at this point but a conclusion drawn from what she’d already told him.
“Well, I didn’t want him dead.” And then she relented slightly, adding, “But I didn’t particularly want him living with me. Especially when he was growing so distant—not that I really blamed him for that.” This was all coming out really badly. To her ear, it sounded as if she was digging herself into a hole. “I began to think that the whole thing—marrying Peter—was a mistake.
“The baby wasn’t a mistake,” Suzy quickly added in the next breath, anticipating what the detective was probably thinking. “But on the other hand, no baby should be used as a way to keep a marriage together. It’s not fair to the baby or to the two people involved.”
That all sounded very noble. Maybe too noble, Nick thought. “Do you know how much insurance your husband was carrying?”
Suzy frowned, confused for a moment. “Life insurance?”
“Yes, life insurance,” he repeated, a trace of impatience in his voice. “How much was your husband carrying?”
She was still reeling from news of Peter’s murder. Practical questions like the one the detective had just posed hadn’t even occurred to her yet.
“I have no idea,” she told him. “As far as I know, he wasn’t carrying any.” And then, although she didn’t want to believe anyone would even remotely think this horrible way about her, that she would kill someone, especially her husband, for money, Suzy demanded, “Why? Do you think I had him killed so I could get the insurance money?”
The whole thing was too ludicrous to believe—yet the detective obviously saw it as a possibility. Suzy didn’t know whether to be angry—or afraid. Was she going to need a lawyer on top of everything else?
Nick deliberately didn’t answer her directly. “It’s been known to happen.”
“Well, not as far as I’m concerned,” she retorted angrily. Stress and overworked hormones had her fairly shouting at him. “I’m an accountant. I have a good job and I don’t need extra money from some stupid life insurance policy.”
“Everyone needs extra money,” Nick told her matter-of-factly. And women had killed their husbands for reasons other than money.
Her eyes flashed. Okay, she was getting really tired of this verbal sparring match. If he thought she’d killed Peter for the money, she wanted him to come out and just say it.
“Are you trying to accuse me of something, Detective?”
Just then, before he could respond, they heard the baby begin to cry, Andy’s wails clearly audible over the baby monitor she’d placed on the coffee table. There were two more monitors scattered throughout the first floor, one in the kitchen, one in the bedroom.
But Suzy remained where she was. Waiting for an answer.
“No,” Nick told her, “I’m trying to rule you out of something, Mrs. Burris. Where were you yesterday?”
She walked away from him and went up to the nursery. Her son needed her. “Here. At home.”
Nick was right behind her, following the woman up the stairs. Walking behind her was eventful, he caught himself thinking as he watched the gentle, rhythmic sway of her hips as she went up the stairs.
“Can someone verify that?”
Stopping at the landing, Suzy looked back at him, a cynical expression on her face. It was her mask, allowing her to hide from certain people.
“The baby,” she answered flatly.
He laughed shortly. The kid was a bit too young to take on the role of witness. “Can anyone older verify that?”
She thought for a moment as she went into the baby’s room. It was everything that her own room—hers and her sister Lori’s—was not. The space was cheerfully decorated in bright yellows and greens since she’d opted not to know the baby’s gender until after he was born. It proclaimed to the world that a child was happy here—also not like her childhood bedroom.
The second she entered the nursery, Suzy did her best to shift gears. She smiled brightly at the fussing baby in the crib. At two months old, Andy was the picture of perpetual motion, his little arms and legs all going at once.
“Hi, little man. Miss me?” she murmured.
Picking up the baby, Suzy turned to look back at the detective. She expected him to be out in the hallway and was surprised to see that he had followed her into the room.
Just what did he expect to find in her son’s room?
“The mailman saw me,” she