Ramirez drives us to a swanky hotel on the outskirts of town. It looks like the sort of hotel that has a spa in every room and linen that gets replaced every hour on the hour. In other words, it’s a hotel that I could never afford in my wildest dreams.
A valet takes his keys to park the car, and we walk together into the hotel and up to the concierge desk. Ramirez reaches into his pocket and pulls out his badge, sliding it across the table. “My name is Detective Ramirez of the NYPD. I’m looking for a guest of the hotel named Suzette Lowell.”
The concierge picks up the phone and calls Suzette’s room. When he reports that a member of the NYPD is here to see her, we are immediately granted access to the room. “Up to the tenth floor and all the way down the hallway,” the concierge tells us.
I walk purposefully in the direction of the elevator, and Ramirez hurries to keep pace with me. The elevator walls are entirely mirrors, which makes me feel a little sick to my stomach. Or maybe I’m sick to my stomach because I’m visiting the wife of a man who threatened both my children and she just let it happen. God knows what he would have done to Nico if Ada hadn’t intervened.
“I don’t know about all this, Millie,” Ramirez says. “I’d rather do this by the book when she’s at the station.”
“Please give me a chance to talk to her,” I say to him. “This is our best shot at getting my family off the hook. We have to try.”
He just shakes his head.
The elevator dings as we reach the tenth floor. I dismount the elevator and stride in the direction of Suzette’s room—Ramirez has to jog to keep up with me. I don’t stop until I have reached her door. I lift my fist to knock while Ramirez sighs and shakes his head.
“Just a moment!” a voice calls out from behind the door.
A second later, the door to the hotel swings open. Suzette is standing there, wearing a white fleece bathrobe with the name of the hotel printed on the lapel. She had managed a pleasant smile on her painted lips, but that vanishes when she sees me standing at the open doorway.
“What are you doing here?” Suzette hisses.
“Mrs. Accardi is with me, Mrs. Lowell,” Ramirez says.
She looks between the two of us, and for a moment, I’m certain she’s going to slam the door in our faces. And that would be her right. “Are you really with the NYPD?” she asks him.
“I assure you, I am,” he says. “And if you’ll allow me and Mrs. Accardi to come inside, I’d like to make you an offer that can save us all a great deal of grief moving forward.”
She puts her hand on her hip. “Show me your ID.”
Ramirez obligingly reaches into his pocket again to pull out his badge. He shows it to her, and she takes a moment to examine it, as if she could possibly tell the difference between a fake ID and a real one. But if that makes her feel better, she can knock herself out.
“Fine,” she says stiffly. “You can come in for a minute, but I was about to take a shower.”
“I bet they have nice showers here,” Ramirez says as he strolls into her hotel room. Suzette has a chance to slam the door in my face, but she doesn’t take it, and I manage to slip inside with him. “Not as nice as the ones in your house though.”
“Thank you,” Suzette says stiffly. “I can’t go in there right now, for obvious reasons.”
“Oh, I know.” He stops when he gets to the giant, king-size bed. “You want to take a seat, Mrs. Lowell?”
“I don’t think we need to get too comfortable.” One side of his lips quirks up. “Fair enough.”
“So what did you want to talk to me about, Detective?”
“Well, actually,” he says, “it’s about your house. The police were in there, you know.”
She rolls her eyes. “That’s how it works with a crime scene, I assume.”
“And they saw every part of it.”
Her eyes narrow, and I detect a tiny flicker of fear. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“I mean,” Ramirez says, “they saw the room below your stairwell.”
If I hadn’t been staring at Suzette’s face, I would’ve missed the way she blanched. I swear to God, if Ramirez weren’t standing next to me right now, I would scratch that woman’s eyes out. I would rip her heart right out of her chest.
“I I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Suzette sputters.
“No?” Ramirez arches one of his dark eyebrows. “So you didn’t know there was a room below the staircase on the first floor of your house concealed behind a bookcase?”
She shakes her head slowly. “I think I saw some sort of storage room when we first moved in, but we never ended up using it.”
“That’s so strange,” he muses.
“Not really,” she says. “Jonathan already owned the house when I moved in, so I never went through the floor plans.”
“Even though you’re a real estate agent, you never looked at the floor plans of your own house?”
She shrugs. “We already owned it and weren’t considering selling.
Why should I have? Is that a crime, Detective?”
“Here’s the thing though.” Ramirez levels his eyes at her. “Your fingerprints are all over that room. So if you didn’t know about it, how did that happen exactly?”
When he first came in, she had declined the offer to sit. But now she sinks onto the mattress, her face ashen. It’s gratifying to see how terrified she looks. She deserves it.
“You know what else the police found in that room?” Ramirez asks her.
She can only mutely shake her head.
“We found blood and DNA belonging to a kid named Braden Lundie,” he says. “A kid who disappeared three years ago. The police are
digging up your backyard as we speak. Any idea what they’re going to find?”
Suzette seems to be having trouble breathing. She looks like she is at a complete loss for words, much as I was when Ramirez told me that piece of information when we were in his car. Unfortunately for her, I am no longer at a loss for words.
“You’re the accessory to the murder of a little boy, Suzette,” I hiss at her. “You’re going to jail for the rest of your life. And you deserve it.” A lump forms in my throat. “You knew that your husband murdered a child, and you didn’t tell a soul. You let your husband walk free. You still let my kid into your home! How could you? What is wrong with you?”
Suzette buries her face in her hands for a moment. She still hasn’t said a word.
“Mrs. Lowell?” Ramirez says.
When Suzette lifts her face from her hands, her cheeks are streaked with tears. “I didn’t know about Braden until after. I swear. If I had known ”
“But you did know,” Ramirez says in a low growl. “You knew what he did, and you didn’t call the police. You didn’t tell anyone.”
“What would have been the point? It was too late!”
I’m sick to my stomach. Janice mentioned that kid who went missing years ago, but I thought she was being dramatic, especially after Suzette claimed the boy had been found. It turns out Janice was the one who had it right. The fact that Suzette said it’s too late means there will not be a happy ending for that family.
“I hated him too, you know.” She wipes the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. “I couldn’t even stand to be in the same house with that man. But I stayed with him to keep an eye on him and make sure he didn’t do anything you know, like that ever again. I kept any other children from getting hurt.”
I glare at her. “Wow, you’re a saint.”
“Millie,” she murmurs, “if I called the police, do you know what that would have done to my life? I would have been the wife of a child murderer. Do you know what that would have been like?”
I shake my head. “You’re despicable, Suzette.”
At least she has the good grace to hang her head.
“Detective Ramirez came here to bring you to the police station,” I say. “But I talked him out of it. Instead, we’re going to give you another choice.”
Suzette looks up at me in surprise. I glance at Ramirez, who nods at me, and then I continue. “You need to confess to your husband’s murder. Say you killed him because you found out what he was doing in that room, and that’s why your fingerprints are all over the room. You can call it self-defense.”
“You want me to lie?” she gasps.
“You got another choice,” Ramirez speaks up. “Second choice, you let Enzo Accardi go down for a murder he didn’t do, and then we prosecute you for conspiring to kill that little kid. And believe me, we will go after you hard.”
Suzette stares at us, shaking her head. “But I didn’t kill Jonathan.” “But if you did, nobody would blame you, right? You get a good
lawyer—which you can afford—and you might not go to jail at all. But if they nail you for that kid or even if people think you were involved, which we both know they will ”
She sucks in a breath. We have given her two terrible options. For a split second, I almost feel sorry for her. Then I remember what she did.
“What about the blood on Enzo’s knife?” she asks. “The police told me about that.”
“Enzo left his knife behind in your house.” Ramirez shrugs. “You used it to kill your husband, then tried to get rid of the evidence by returning it to him.”
Suzette drops her eyes, looking down at the palms of her hands. No matter what she decides, her entire life is about to change forever. “Can I think about it?” she asks in a small voice.
Ramirez looks at his watch. “You can think about it, but I’m telling you now that Detective Willard is on his way. He’ll be here any minute.”
She takes a ragged breath. “Would you mind leaving my room so I can get dressed?”
Ramirez agrees to leave the room—we’ve got to get out of here before Detective Willard catches us and discovers what we’ve been up to. As the door slams shut behind us, I stare daggers into the door to the hotel
room. I never liked Suzette Lowell, but I had no idea about the depths of her depravity. I had no idea that she would cover up such horrible crimes just for the sake of her own reputation. When I look over at Ramirez, I can tell he’s thinking the same thing.
“Only for you and Enzo, Millie,” he says. “I’ll pull every string I’ve got to make this come together and get him off the hook.”
“So we’re even then,” I say.
“No, I think I still owe you a few more.”
I bring my ear close to the door to the hotel room, listening for sounds coming from within. “What if she tries to kill herself in there?”
“She won’t do that. She’s a fighter. You can just tell.” “What do you think she’ll decide?”
He smiles sadly. “She’s going to confess to killing her husband—I’m sure of it. She doesn’t want that other charge. And she knows they have her.”
I hope he’s right. I need my husband back. And I need this nightmare to be over.
Although I have a feeling it’s not going to be over for a very long time.
