At the police station, the female officer introduces herself again as Detective Sweeney. She gets me set up in an interrogation room, which, besides the name, isn’t nearly as scary as it sounds. It’s a small room painted sky blue with a metal table in the middle and a plastic chair on either side. I’d rather not be in here a long time, but it doesn’t frighten me.
I sit down in one of the chairs and Detective Sweeney sits across from me. She has a pleasant face with a disarming smile, which I suspect might be the point. They’re hoping I’ll tell them something to incriminate myself. But I won’t.
Because I didn’t kill Denise.
“Mrs. Adler,” Sweeney begins. She hesitates. “May I call you Abby?” “Yes.”
“Great. Abby.” She flashes that disarming smile again. “I was hoping you could clear up a few things for me.”
“Uh, okay.”
She folds her hands in front of her. “You were fired by Ms. Holt yesterday, weren’t you?”
I nod.
“What was the reason for your termination?”
I consider lying, but that would be stupid. It would be easy enough to find out the real reason. “I took a drug test that came back positive for meth. But it was a false positive—I don’t take any drugs.”
“I see.” Sweeney nods, but something changes in her expression. “So given you were fired, why were you in the building?”
“Denise asked me to come by.” “For what purpose?”
“She said she thought someone had tampered with my drug tests and she wanted to discuss it.”
Sweeney raises an eyebrow. “She called you and said that?” “Yes.”
“Did she say who she thought had tampered with the test?”
I hesitate for a moment before nodding. “Monica Johnson. My former personal assistant.”
“I see. And why did she think Ms. Johnson tampered with the drug tests.”
“She found a bottle of Adderall in Monica’s… er, Ms. Johnson’s desk. That’s an amphetamine. She believed Ms. Johnson had spiked my coffee with it.”
“Why was Ms. Holt searching Ms. Johnson’s desk?”
I squeeze my hands together. “She told me she saw Monica snooping around her desk, and… I think she wanted to make sure she wasn’t stealing stuff.”
Sweeney cocks her head thoughtfully. “You know, Adderall is a medication prescribed for ADHD. Why did she jump to the conclusion that Ms. Johnson was poisoning you? Couldn’t it have been a prescribed medication?”
“I… I’m not sure…”
“And are you aware,” she continues, “that Adderall is very unlikely to result in a urine drug screen being positive for methamphetamines?”
I was not.
Sweeney doesn’t wait for my response. She quickly jumps to an entirely new line of questioning, which makes me nervous the other line didn’t go very well for me. “So you say Ms. Holt called you on your phone…”
“She did call me. I have the call in my history.” “Can I see?”
I nod and pull my phone out of my purse. At least I have proof of the call from Denise. I bring up my call record and hand it over to Detective Sweeney, who studies it thoughtfully.
“Did anyone else witness this call?” she asks me.
“No.” I think about how I raced out of the café the second I saw Denise’s name on the screen. “But she called me. You can see it on the screen.”
“Right.” Sweeney nods. “The question is, what did she say?” “I told you what she said.”
“Yes,” she agrees. “You did.” What is that supposed to mean?
“And did Ms. Holt tell her suspicions about Ms. Johnson to anyone besides you?”
“Well, no,” I admit. “I don’t think so, at least.”
“Don’t you think that’s odd though? If you believed one of your employees was poisoning another, wouldn’t you speak to HR?”
My palms feel very sweaty all of a sudden. “Well, she thought it might be an issue because, you know… Monica is pregnant.”
I know it will come out eventually, but I can’t tell the detective that Monica is our surrogate. I can’t even imagine how that revelation will make me look. I don’t want to think about it. I’ll deal with it when it happens.
“Now Abby,” Sweeney says, “when is the last time you saw that letter opener?”
“A few weeks ago?” I feel my eyebrows bunch together. “I thought I lost it.”
“Lost it?” She cocks her head at me. “Would you have taken it out of your office?”
“No. But… it wasn’t in the drawer where I usually keep it. Maybe someone borrowed it.”
Or stole it because they wanted to frame me for murder.
“Prior to your termination yesterday,” she says, “how would you categorize your relationship with Ms. Holt?”
“Um, it was fine.”
“Did you get along with her?”
“More or less.” I’m finding it hard to swallow and I feel like I’m choking. “Everyone has their differences, right?”
She smiles at me. “That’s true.”
How long will it take for her to hear the story about the “bitch” email? “Is it typical for Ms. Holt to stay at work that late?” she asks.
“Uh, yeah. Usually.”
“Is the office usually otherwise empty at that time?” “Mostly. That’s why she wanted to meet at eight.” “Did you ask Ms. Holt if she would meet with you?” I frown. “No, I told you. She asked me.”
“So you didn’t send her an email, requesting to speak with her?” “No…”
My heart is pounding as Detective Sweeney reaches into the inside pocket of her jacket and pulls out a folded piece of paper. She carefully unfolds it and examines the contents. “So you didn’t send Ms. Holt an email saying, ‘I have information about you that could ruin you. If you don’t want it to get out, I suggest you meet with me tonight at eight.’”
I stare at her. “No. I definitely didn’t.”
She pushes the printout across the table so I can look at it more carefully. I see the return email address at the top as my own, addressed to Denise. And then the words Sweeney just read to me. Threatening words. Words I never wrote.
Unless I’m going crazy.
“I didn’t write that email,” I say with as much conviction as I can muster.
“Would you give us access to your work email account, so we can look for it?”
“Yes, of course.”
But I have a sick feeling what they’ll find when they check my email. Because it occurs to me now that I’m not the only person with access to my email account. My former assistant also had access to my email. Monica.
I’m about to tell Sweeney this detail, but then she leans forward, as if to tell me something in confidence. She flashes me that disarming smile of hers. “Listen, Abby,” she says. “I know it was very hard on you losing your job yesterday. That’s devastating for anyone. And when something like that happens, people can do desperate things.”
I freeze. What is she saying?
“I get it,” Sweeney continues. “It’s rough enough to find another job in this economy even without the drug accusations hanging over your head. And even if it wasn’t their fault, you tend to blame the person who swung the ax.”
“I… I didn’t blame Denise…”
“Didn’t you?” She raises an eyebrow. “I’m going to be honest with you, Abby. The evidence is overwhelming right now. You are going to go to jail for this—I guarantee it. But if you confess now, maybe we can work out a deal.”
I stare at her. “I didn’t kill her.”
She gives me a pitying look. “I’ve been doing this a long time, Abby. I’m telling you what’s going to happen. You seem like a good person who made a really bad mistake, and I want to help you.”
“I didn’t kill her,” I say again.
“Now we both know that’s a lie.” Her eyes connect with mine. “If you confess now, I can offer you a deal. But the second you leave this room, that deal goes away. And when we arrest you, it will be for first degree murder. That’s life in prison.”
I feel sick. I literally feel like I’m going to throw up all over this nice, clean table in front of me. She thinks I’m a murderer. All the police think I did this. And so will everyone else in the world.
“I want to speak to a lawyer,” I say.
It’s nearly midnight when I get out of the police station. They haven’t arrested me, which I’m taking as a good sign. They must not have enough evidence, if that’s the case. And maybe that’s why they were pushing so hard to get me to confess. After Sweeney, another officer came in to talk to me, then a third after that. But I kept my mouth shut. I wasn’t saying one damn word without a lawyer.
An officer leads me into the waiting room in the station, where there are two long rows of plastic uncomfortable-looking chairs. I’d imagine during the days that the chairs would be mostly filled, but right now, there are only a few people there, including one guy who looks like he’s passed out drunk. In the middle of the second row, I see a familiar figure, slumped forward, his head in his hands.
Sam.
“Mr. Adler?” the officer calls out. “Here she is.”
He lifts his head from his hands. There are purple circles under his eyes like the ones I had this morning. He doesn’t smile when he sees me. He doesn’t even look at me—not really. He struggles to his feet, fumbling with his jacket.
“I parked down the block,” he says in a hoarse voice. “Okay,” I mumble.
I follow him wordlessly to his Highlander. I have no idea what they told him exactly, but by his reaction, it’s clear he’s heard a lot of the details.
I wonder if they questioned him. If they did, I wonder what he told them.
My wife has a drug problem. I tried to get her help, but she’s refusing to admit she has a problem. She hated her boss and probably killed her.
We don’t say another word to each other on the entire walk to the car. When we get inside, I expect Sam to start up the engine, but instead, he drops his head against the headrest, his eyes glassy.
“Sam,” I say.
He rubs his face with his hands. “What?”
I don’t know what I want to say. I want to ask him if he thinks I killed Denise, but I’m afraid of the answer to that question. So instead, I say, “Did the police question you?”
He shakes his head no. “They just told me what happened. They wanted to question me, but I told them no. I’m not talking to anyone without a lawyer and I wish you hadn’t either.”
“Yeah,” I breathe. “I didn’t realize how bad it was till I was in there.” “We’ll find you a lawyer tomorrow,” he says.
I feel a twinge of hope. He’s saying “we” will find me a lawyer. That means he’s still on board. He’s not packing up my belongings and throwing them out the window.
“I didn’t kill her,” I say. “I swear to you.” He doesn’t say anything.
“I didn’t. Do you honestly think I did?”
He shakes his head. “If you had asked me a few months ago, I would have said no. Definitely not. No way in hell. But now…”
“Sam!” Tears spring to my eyes. “You’re saying you think I’m a murderer? You really think I’d do that?”
He’s quiet for a moment. He rubs his face again. “No. I guess not.”
My shoulders sag with relief. He believes me. “I think I was framed, Sam. Apparently, someone sent an email that—”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” “But you need to know that—”
“I don’t want to hear it right now.” His Adam’s apple bobs. “I just want to go home, okay? We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
Silence fills the car. I don’t say another word. Even though Sam claims he believes me, I’m not so sure. At the very least, there’s doubt in his mind.
I always felt like Sam was a man who would stay by my side no matter what. Somehow, in eight short months, we’ve lost that.
