Jane gives it some thought, nods her head. “I agree, that’s probably how it happened,” she says.

“But why kick it under the table?”

“To . . . to hide it. No?”

Ria doesn’t think much of that theory. “Jane, by that point, Lauren is hanging from the rafters. There’s blood. The offender has to know there’s going to be an investigation. Cops are going to scour this scene. He thinks the police won’t look under a coffee table that’s five feet from where the victim was subdued?”

“Okay, but look, Ria, criminals make mistakes all the time. Especially if they aren’t pros. Especially if this was heat of the moment. He’s just killed Lauren, he’s freaking out, he sees that phone, and he kicks it under the table. He won’t win any awards for intelligence, I grant you that, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen the way I’m saying.”

Ria shakes her head.

“What am I missing?” Jane asks.

Ria shrugs. “What you’re saying, that may be right. He sees the phone and panics and kicks it under the coffee table.”

“Right.”

“But why not take it with him?”

“Why not— Huh.” Jane starts to pace, as she usually does when working through something, but thinks better of it, considering the fragility of the crime scene. “Okay,” she says. “I’m the offender. I’m having an affair with Lauren. We have burner phones, and we’re using them for one reason and one reason only, to send each other little love notes.”

“Right.”

“I’ve just killed Lauren,” Jane goes on, “maybe premeditated, maybe more of a heat-of-passion thing, and there I see her pink burner phone on the floor. I know what that phone represents. I know if the cops get inside that phone, they’ll read all our text messages, they’ll know all about our affair. So I walk over to that phone . . .”

“And you kick it under the table?” Ria says. “Knowing we’ll find it?”

“No. I take it.” Jane looks at Ria. “I take it with me. I don’t leave the phone lying there for the cops to find. I take it with me, so the police have no idea it even exists. The police would never know it exists. That’s the point of a burner. You can’t trace it back to an owner.”

“So why kick it under the table, knowing we’ll find it?” Ria says.

Jane throws up her hands. “He wanted us to find it. He didn’t want to be too obvious about it—he didn’t want to put it in a gift box with a bow on it. He made it look like he was trying to conceal it by kicking it under the table. But like you said, he had to know we’d look under a damn table right next to the crime scene.”

Ria nods. “He wanted us to find it.”

“He wanted us to find it.” Jane chews on that. “He wanted us to focus on the person on the other end of those text messages, Lauren’s boyfriend.” She looks at Ria. “Holy shit.”

“So maybe it wasn’t the boyfriend who did this,” says Ria. “And maybe we should no longer be referring to the offender as a he.”

Jane runs her fingers through her hair. “You’re blowing my mind here at the end of a long day,” she says. “I need to think about this.”

“Didn’t mean to complicate your life,” says Ria.

Jane smiles at her. But the smile doesn’t last long.

“So maybe Lauren wasn’t the only one in this love affair who was married,” she says. “Maybe Lauren’s boyfriend was married, too. His wife finds out about the affair, kills Lauren, and puts the whole thing on her cheating husband.”

Ria’s turn to smile. “The fantasy of every woman who’s ever been cheated on,” she says. “Kill two birds with one stone.”

THE DAYS BEFORE HALLOWEEN

60

Thursday, October 27, 2022

I’m probably just being paranoid, with everything about to happen. Maybe the guilt I’m feeling over what I’m about to do to Vicky is skewing my perception.

But it sure feels like Vicky has been different. More solicitous. More affectionate.

She got into bed with me last night. Usually, I’m early to bed, early to rise, and she’s the night owl, in bed well after midnight, sleeping until eight or nine.

But last night, she came to bed with me.

“Want some company?” she said.

I didn’t know what to do. I felt so conflicted. I’m with you now, Lauren, in every way but officially, and so I felt suddenly like sleeping with my wife would be cheating on you.