She couldn’t catch it. It was too low. Quiet. Almost a whisper. Scott never whispered. He blared loud music, crowed out his sentences, whooped and hollered when he leveled up or won some game, but he never whispered.
She knocked quietly on the door, and he fell silent. “Scott?” she called out.
There was the shuffle of items, steps on the wood floor, then he was opening the door and peering at her through the thin crack. “Yeah?”
“Are you okay? I thought I heard someone talking.”
“It’s just videos I’m watching on my phone.” He gave her a shy smile. “It’s late, Mom. Go to bed.”
He was right. It was almost two. A couple of weeks ago, she’d have taken a sleeping pill and be drooling on her pillow, her body tucked against George’s. But in this new reality, with her son back, she couldn’t sleep until his light was off, the sounds of quiet snores coming from underneath his door, and that didn’t seem to happen until three or four in the morning.
“Okay,” she said reluctantly, wishing he would open the door and let her in. Since when did he crack the door like this? What was he hiding in there? Normally she would have suspected it was a girl, but ever since he got home, none of the girls had been around. Neither, come to think about it, had any of his friends. He used to have so many friends.
Maybe that’s why the house still felt empty. She kept waiting for it to come back to life. It used to be so full of activity and noise. She would trip over Scott’s baseball bag, left carelessly in the kitchen. Grumble over his books on the counter, the empty soda cans littering every surface in the media room, and the open bags of chips attracting ants in the pantry. And, oh, the kids. It had been normal for her to wake up on Sunday morning to find a half dozen of them zonked out in her living room. That Ralph kid had spent two months in their guest room, and the entire football and baseball teams seemed to have their gate code and the green light to help themselves to anything in their fridge, including the beer.
Where had they all gone? Those first few days, they had all called and stopped by, but Scott had begged off seeing them. He’d said he was busy, and tired, and she had let it go because of course he wouldn’t feel like seeing anyone right after all that—but what about now? It had been two weeks, and Scott felt fine enough to go in front of TV cameras, or chat with new followers on social media, yet he hadn’t returned a single message from his real friends.
George kept telling her to mind her own business, and maybe he was right. So what if Scott was being distant? He was home and he was safe. She was looking for problems instead of counting her blessings.
She said good night and headed down the stairs to the bedroom she shared with George, vowing not to think about it anymore. But Scott had been talking to someone. She knew it. Even with the heavy door between them, even with his voice muffled, she would swear that he’d been begging someone to call him back.
CHAPTER 17
In my last decade of counseling, I’d given out over a thousand business cards. Never had any been such a pain as this one. I stared down at the business card from John Abbott’s wallet, which had made it back onto my desk, still in its evidence bag. Underneath it, and without a protective sleeve, was the one thing I really hated to see. A warrant.
“What’s with the coffee? It got mint in it?” Detective Saxe peered down into a pale-blue mug, which must have been poured by Jacob.
“If it’s from the lobby, yes. You can dump it out if you don’t like it.” I flipped over the top page of the warrant and scanned the appropriate sections, hoping for a miracle in the short and precise descriptions. According to the warrant, I was required to answer questions about Mr. Abbott’s state of mind and any criminal activity I was aware of, but I didn’t have to surrender his client file. Thank God.
“Nah. It’s fine. Not bad, actually.” He pulled one of my chairs loose of its cluster and faced it toward my desk. “You can keep that warrant. It’s your copy.”
“Thanks,” I said smartly.
He sat down and opened his notepad. “We’ve been looking a little more closely into John Abbott.” He glanced at me. “Interesting guy.”
“In what way?”
He grinned. “Come on now, Doc. Let’s not play games. I got your warrant. Now let’s talk openly, okay? I got a lot of bad guys out there I still need to catch.”
Yes, and I had a business I needed to protect. If Brooke Abbott’s family sued me for negligence, I could be ruined, both financially and professionally.
“I don’t want to play games,” I said. “But you can’t make a random observation and just expect me to gush information. Ask me a question and I’ll answer it.”
His expression soured. “We have three Peeping Tom reports that were filed against Mr. Abbott. What can you tell me about his sexual perversions?”
“What?” If it was possible for a jaw to drop open, mine did. Twelve months of sessions, and this was an absolute surprise. “Who was he spying on?”
“Various wealthy women. Was caught on security cameras most of the time. Are you telling me you didn’t know anything about this?”
I raised my hands in innocence. “I’d swear to it in court. And to be honest, it shocks me. I—” I paused, not wanting to violate John’s privacy any more than I had to.
“What?”
“Are you certain it was him?”
“Three separate reports from three different women over seven years?” He nodded. “Yeah. Why?”
I grimaced. “It just doesn’t match his personality type. John was a very precise, organized individual. He thought things through, sometimes obsessively. And sexually? First of all, this warrant is focused on the deaths of Brooke and John Abbott, so I don’t see how an outside sexual obsession or deviance would be relevant, but I don’t mind answering the question, because the answer is simple. John Abbott didn’t have sexual perversions, as you put it. At least, none that he shared with me.”
“Never hit on you? Said anything inappropriate? Made you feel uncomfortable?”
I shook my head. “I’m shocked that he was stalking women. If anything, his focus was completely on his wife. He was practically asexual toward me.”
“Did you ever feel unsafe around him? Get the sense he was taking an unnatural interest in your personal life?”
“Absolutely not.”
“So, no sexual perversions.” He eyed me as if he didn’t believe it.
I spread my hands in ignorance. “Not that I had any knowledge or hint of.” I kept my voice mild and the rest of my opinion to myself. In John’s continual suspicions of his wife and other men, I’d often suspected a latent homo- or bisexuality. But that was pure speculation on my part, and would never hold up in court. It would be both easy and reckless to say that a man who wanted to kill his wife was doing so out of a growing frustration of his own inability to be attracted to or sexually perform with her. To share that hypothesis now would do a disservice to John, as well as Detective Saxe’s investigation, which still seemed muddy in scope and focus.
I dipped a toe into dangerous waters. “What exactly are you investigating?”