“I’ll bet,” Rachel replied.
“Huh?”
“Nothing. I’ll wait.”
Rachel barely had time to sit before a young man with a haphazardly tied ponytail and a crinkled suit entered the reception area. He looked at Rachel, his eyes full of utter confusion. But behind them was a trace of fear. He couldn’t have actually been expecting to see Caroline Drummond but knew that her name was being used as some sort of leverage. I know your secrets.
“Mr. Wickersham,” Rachel said, offering her hand. He took it, waited for Rachel to give her name. She didn’t.
“Um, please, come with me,” he said. Wickersham’s face was covered in five-day-old scruff, and his cheeks looked ashen, eyes bloodshot. He was wearing an unfortunate amount of cologne, and his suit jacket was wrinkled. He looked like he hadn’t showered—or slept—in several days.
Rachel followed Wickersham into a small office. She heard the handle rattle slightly as he closed the door behind them. His hands were shaking.
Wickersham’s desk was glossy, polished oak, covered with just enough papers to make him look busy, but each page had a freshly printed look, which said to Rachel that they were just for show. There were no photographs anywhere around the office, no pieces of memorabilia, nothing that gave the space a personal touch. It said to Rachel that he was either a bad decorator or was waiting to be fired.
Wickersham stood behind his desk. He was already sweating. Surely hearing the name Caroline Drummond would have upset him, but Wickersham was acting like something had already gone terribly, terribly wrong.
“Are you going to sit down?” Rachel asked. “Or should we talk standing?”
“P . . . please have a seat,” he stuttered. Wickersham sat down but leaned forward. He was as relaxed as a guy who’d just been pulled over by a SWAT team. Rachel took a seat on the other side of the desk.
“Nice place you got here.”
Wickersham didn’t respond.
“I guess you figured out by now that I’m not Caroline Drummond,” she said. Wickersham still didn’t speak. He was either trying to figure out what this lady was trying to pull—or he was petrified. Rachel guessed a little of both. But she wasn’t quite sure why. Something else besides her ruse had spooked him.
Serrano and Tally, she thought. Do they know about Sam and Caroline Drummond?
If so, she had to give the detectives some credit.
“I’m here for Constance Wright,” Rachel said.
“She’s dead,” Sam said matter-of-factly.
“Did you facilitate that?”
“Did I what?”
“Did you have anything to do with her death?”
Sam’s eyes widened. “Who are you?”
“An interested party,” Rachel said. “I know about you and Caroline Drummond. Not many guys have the kind of game to carry on an affair with a mayor while also sleeping with her sister-in-law. And I’m guessing you’re not one of them.”
The blood drained from Sam Wickersham’s face, leaving his cheeks the color of printer paper.
“I . . . we . . .”
“Save it,” Rachel said. “I don’t think you killed Constance Wright. But I think you know who did.”
“I swear to God I had nothing to do with it,” Wickersham said. “Just leave me alone. It was a long time ago, and I already talked to the cops. Wait, are you a cop?”
He already talked to the cops, Rachel thought. Which explained why he had been on edge from the moment she’d arrived. But the fact that they hadn’t arrested him meant either he hadn’t committed a crime—or they were using him to hook a bigger fish.
“Tell me about Constance Wright,” Rachel said. “Your affair. The truth.”
“I already told the cops, the black lady and the white guy. Albatross paid me to make up the affair with Ms. Wright. I just went along with it.”
So there was no affair.
Rachel’s brain started whirring. Albatross. Paid him. Went along with it.
“So how was Caroline Drummond involved?” Rachel said.
Wickersham hesitated.
She slammed her fist down on Wickersham’s table and shouted, “How?”
A petite brunette in a sharp yellow blazer knocked softly and opened the door.
“Mr. Wickersham?” she said. “Is everything all right?”
Rachel glared at him.
“It’s fine,” he said. “Go back to your desk, Edith.”
Edith nodded, skeptical, and disappeared. She closed the door behind her.
“Caroline was playing you,” Rachel said. “Sleeping with you to get you to do what she wanted.”
“She wasn’t playing me,” Wickersham pleaded. “We were in love.”
“Oh come on,” Rachel said dismissively. “Successful woman, sister-in-law of the mayor, a hotshot politico on the rise? She suddenly decides to start doing the devil’s dance with some pissant twenty-year-old? No way. She was diddling you to convince you to go ahead and testify against Constance Wright. She was worried—they were worried—that the money wouldn’t be enough.”
“Stop it,” Wickersham said. Tears had begun to spring up in his eyes. Rachel felt a modicum of sympathy for this poor young sap. But then she remembered that Constance Wright had been thrown off a bridge like an empty soda can, and this little asshole knew something about it.
“How did you two meet?” Rachel said. “You and Caroline.”
“A fund-raiser when Ms. Wright was first running for office. I had just graduated high school, and her campaign held a rally in our gym. My folks were big supporters of Ms. Wright. At one point I wandered off and saw Caroline standing alone. She’d finished her drink. I offered to get her another. She laughed, asked how old I was. When I told her, she said to get her a cranberry vodka. I did, and she seemed impressed. I told her I loved politics and would love to work for someone like Ms. Wright. She gave me her email address and said to get in touch. I did. We emailed every now and then, no big deal, just friendly. But when I graduated college, she hooked me up with a job in Ms. Wright’s office.”
“When did you start sleeping with her?”
Wickersham looked at his lap.
“About a year into the job, there was a cocktail party. Just for staff and family. Caroline was there. She wore this little black dress, and . . . we hit it off, and . . .”
“Was she the one who approached you to lie about the affair?”
Wickersham nodded. “She told me that Ms. Wright had made some people angry. Her family had lost them a lot of money. She wasn’t trustworthy. She said for the good of the people of Ashby, they needed to get her out of office. I figured if the mayor’s husband’s sister was saying this, it had to be true.”
“You were already sleeping together by this point.”
“Yes,” he said softly.
She was grooming him. And she got the sense from the anguish in Sam Wickersham’s eyes that he’d just realized it.
“Caroline told me someone would be in touch. To handle all the details. She said there would be a lot of money in it for me. That I wouldn’t have to worry about anything.”
“That ‘someone’—was this the Albatross you mentioned?”