“Interesting,” I reply. “About the same time Chandonne was transported out of here to New York. And then Bray’s memorial service and when I first met Berger.”
“In your mind, how does all of ‘his connect?” McGovern is listening carefully with her astute, experienced eyes fastened on me. She was one of ATF’s most gifted certified fire investigators before she got promoted to supervision by the very people who would eventually cause her to quit.
“I’m not sure,” I reply. “Except Berger was interested in seeing who showed up at Bray’s service. I’m now wondering if she wanted to see if I would, and if that might indicate she knows I’m being investigated and is checking me out on her own.” Anna’s phone rings. “Zenner residence,” I answer.
“What’s going on?” Marino says loudly over his television.
“I’m just beginning to figure that out,” I reply.
He knows instantly by my tone not to ask questions but to get in his truck and drive over here right now. It is time for
truth. No games and no secrets, I tell him. We wait for Mm in
front of the fire in Anna’s living room, where a tree is wrapped in white lights and garlands and decorated with glass animals and wooden fruit, with presents underneath. I am silently go- ing through every word I have said to Anna, trying to remember what she surely will when Righter asks her under oath about me in front of jurors who have been seated and sworn to decide if I should go on trial for murder. My heart is seized by frigid fingers of raw fear, yet I sound reasonable when I speak. I am outwardly steady as Anna goes into detail about how she has been set up. It began when Righter contacted her on Tuesday, December 14. She spends a good fifteen minutes explaining that Righter called as a. friend, a concerned friend. People were talking about me. He was hearing things that he felt he must check out and he knew Anna and I are close.
“This isn’t making any sense,” Lucy says. “Diane Bray hadn’t even been murdered yet. Why was Righter talking to Anna that early on?”
“I don’t get it,” McGovern agrees. “Something really stinks about this.”
She and Lucy sit on the floor in front of the fire. I am in my usual rocking chair and Anna is on the ottoman, sitting rigidly.
“When Righter called on the fourteenth, what exactly did he say to you?” I ask Anna. “How did he introduce the conversation?”
She meets my eyes. “There was concern about your mental health. That is what he said right off.”
I simply nod. I am not offended. Although it is true I wobbled badly after Benton was murdered, I have never been mentally ill. I am secure in my sanity and my ability to reason and think. I have been guilty only of running from pain. “I know I didn’t handle Benton’s death well,” I admit.
“How do you handle something like that well?” Lucy replies.
“No, no. That is not what Buford meant,” Anna says. “He wasn’t calling about how you’ve managed grief, Kay. He was calling about Diane Bray, about your relationship with her.”
“What relationship?” I instantly wonder if Bray called
Righteryet one more trap she set for me. “I hardly knew her.”
Anna’s eyes are steady on mine, the shadow from the fire wavering on her face. I am startled again by how old she looks, as if she has aged ten years in a day. “You’d had a series of confrontations with her. You told me so,” she replies.
“Instigated by her,” I am quick to say. “We didn’t have a personal relationship. Not even a social one.”
“I think when you go to war against someone, that is personal. Even people who hate each other have a personal relationship, if you see what I am saying. Certainly, she had gotten very personal with you, Kay. Starting rumors. Lying about you. Creating a bogus medical column on the Internet that made it appear you were the one writing it, making a fool out of you and getting you into trouble with the secretary of public safety, even with the governor.”