Adam didn’t reply.
“And then a few weeks later, some referee doesn’t show up at a game in, say, Toms River, and you lose three hours of time covering for him, so hey, the least the organization can do is pay for your gas on the ride down. Then maybe it’s a dinner because you’re far away from home and the game ran late. Then you need to pay for the pizzas for the coaches when the board meeting makes you all miss dinner. Then you need to hire local teens to ref the little kids’ games, so you make sure your teen gets the job. Hey, why not? Who better? Shouldn’t your family benefit from all this volunteering you’re doing?”
Adam just waited.
“So you keep sliding like that. That’s how it starts. And then one day you’re behind on a car payment and what do you know—your organization has a big surplus. Because of you. So you borrow some money. No big deal, you’ll pay it back. So who are you hurting? No one. That’s what you fool yourself into believing.”
Tripp stopped and looked at Adam.
“You can’t be serious,” Adam said.
“As a heart attack, my friend.” Tripp made a project of looking at his watch. He threw some bills on the table and stood up. “And who knows? Maybe we’re all wrong about Corinne.”
“You are.”
“That would thrill me to no end.”
“She asked for a little more time,” Adam said. “Can you just give it to her?”
Tripp quietly sighed and hitched up his pants a bit. “I can try.”
Chapter 33
Audrey Fine finally said something relevant. And that led to Johanna’s first real lead.
Police Chief Johanna Griffin had been right about the county guys. They had put on their spouse blinders and zoomed in on Marty Dann for the murder of his wife, Heidi. Even the fact that poor Marty had a rock-solid alibi for the timing of the killing hadn’t dissuaded them. Yet. They had assumed a “professional hit job” from the start, so now they were digging into poor Marty’s phone records and texts and e-mails. They were asking around the offices of TTI Floor Care about his recent behavior, about his contacts, about where he went out for drinks or lunch, that kind of thing, hoping to find some connection between Marty and a possible hit man.
Lunch was the key.
Not where Marty had lunch, though. That’s where the county boys had messed up again.
But where Heidi ate lunch.
Johanna knew about Heidi’s weekly lunch with the girls. She had even gone a time or two. At first, Johanna had dismissed it as indulgent, as a privileged waste of time. There was some of that. But these were also women who wanted to bond with other women. These were women who made it a priority to make their lunch hour last a little longer so that they could share time with friends and connect to something other than their own family or career.
What was wrong with that?
This week, the lunch had taken place at Red Lobster and included Audrey Fine, Katey Brannum, Stephanie Keiles, and Heidi. No one noticed anything unusual. According to all of them, Heidi, fewer than twenty-four hours from being murdered in her home, had been her usual ebullient self. It was an odd thing talking to these other women. All of them were beyond devastated. All of them had felt that they had lost their closest friend in Heidi, the one person whom they could confide in, the one who was the strongest among their friends.
Johanna felt that way too. Yep, Heidi was magic. She was one of those people who made all those around her feel somehow better about themselves.
How, Johanna wondered, does one bullet take out a spirit like that?
So Johanna met with the entire lunch group and listened to them give her nothing. She was about to call it a day and see if she could uncover some other lead, something else the county boys wouldn’t consider, when Audrey remembered something.
“Heidi was talking to a young couple in the parking lot.”
Johanna had been drifting off, lost in a memory. Twenty years ago, after much trial and error, Johanna had gotten “miracle” pregnant through IVF. Heidi had been with her at the ob-gyn when she’d gotten the news. And Heidi had been the first person Johanna had called when she’d miscarried. Heidi had driven over. Johanna slipped into the passenger seat and told her the news. The two women sat in the car and cried together for a long time. Johanna would never forget the way Heidi lowered her head onto the steering wheel, her hair spread out like a fan, and cried for Johanna’s loss. Somehow they both knew.
There would be no more miracles. This pregnancy had been Johanna’s only chance. She and Ricky ended up never having any children.
“Wait,” Johanna said. “What young couple?”