The Neighbor Read Free Page B

the sink. A stack of graded papers next to her purse on the kitchen counter. According to the husband, Sandra didn’t usually start work until after putting their daughter to bed at eight P.M. S o we’re working on the assumption that she was at home with her daughter until sometime after eight-thirty, nine P.M. Cell phone shows no activity after six; we’re pulling the records for the landline now.”
    “What about family? Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins?” D.D. asked. The sun had finally burned through the gray cloud cover, but the temperature remained raw, with the wind blowing off the water and slicing viciously through her leather coat.
    “No local family. Just an estranged father in Georgia. The husband refused to specify, just said it was old news and had nothing to do with this.”
    “How nice of the husband to do our thinking for us. You call the father?”
    “Would if I had a name.”
    “The husband won’t give you the name?” D.D. was incredulous.
    Miller shook his head, jamming his hands in his pants pocketswhile his breath came out in faint clouds of steam. “Oh, wait till you meet this guy. Ever watch that show? The medical drama?”
    “ER?”
    “No, the one with more sex.”
    “Grey’s Anatomy?”
    “Yeah, that’s the one. What’s the name of that doctor? McDuff, McDevon …?”
    “McDreamy ?”
    “That’s the one. Mr. Jones could be his twin. That rumpled thing going on with the hair, the five o’clock shadow … Hell, minute this story breaks, this guy is gonna get more fan mail than Scott Peterson. I say we have about twenty more hours, and then either we find Sandy Jones or we’re totally, completely screwed.”
    D.D. sighed heavily. They hit the waterfront, made a right, and kept moving. “Men are stupid,” she muttered impatiently. “I mean, for heaven’s sake. It’s like once a week now some good-looking, got-everything-going-for-him guy tries to solve his marital difficulties by killing off his wife and claiming she disappeared. And every week the media descends—”
    “We got a pool going. Five to one odds on Nancy Grace. Four to one on Greta Van Susteren.”
    D.D. shot him a look. “And every week,” she continued, “the police assemble a taskforce, volunteers comb the woods, the Coast Guard sweeps the harbor, and you know what?”
    Miller appeared hopeful.
    “The wife’s body is found, and the husband ends up serving twenty to life in maximum security. Wouldn’t you think that by now at least one of these guys would settle for an old-fashioned divorce?”
    Miller didn’t have anything to say.
    D.D. sighed, ran a hand through her hair, sighed again. “All right, gut reaction. Do you think the wife’s dead?”
    “Yep.” Miller said it matter-of-factly. When she waited, he offered up, “Broken lamp, missing quilt. I’d say someone wrapped up the body and carted it off. Quilt would contain the blood, which accounts for the lack of physical evidence.”
    “All right. You think the husband did it?”
    Miller pulled out a folded yellow sheet of legal pad paper frominside his brown sports jacket, and handed it to her. “You’ll like this. While the husband has been, shall we say, reluctant, to answer our questions, he did provide his own timeline for the evening, including the names and phone numbers of people who could corroborate his whereabouts.”
    “He provided a list of alibis?” D.D. unfolded the sheet, noting the first name listed, Larry Wade, Fire Marshall , then James McConnagal, Massachusetts State Police , then three more names, this time from the BPD. She kept reading, her eyes growing wider, then her hands starting to shake with barely suppressed rage. “Who the hell is this guy again?”
    “Reporter, Boston Daily. House burned last night. He claims he was there, covering that story, along with half of Boston’s finest.”
    “No shit. You call any of these guys yet?”
    “Nah, I already know what I’m gonna get.”
    “They saw him, but