“Someone has been sending me notes. With pictures. Telling me to the go to the tree. They’ve left me money. They’ve left jewelry. It makes no sense.” He looks at them. “But they keep saying you and Dad have lied to me. And this happened right after Danielle died.”

The three of them are silent. “Show me these emails,” Iris says.

He gets his laptop. Opens it up and opens the emails.

Iris stares at the first picture, of the woman in the rain. “Peter searched it. It’s a stock photo from France.”

Iris blinks. “Show me the rest of them.”

He shows her the cat looking out in the snow from the house. She stares at it.

“Mom?” Julia asks. Iris seems far away.

Grant says, “They left me money and some jewelry. Why is someone doing this?”

“The thousand dollars in your room?” she asks. “I found it.”

Grant nods.

“Who else has seen this? You said Peter.”

“He checked my laptop and found a program planted on there. He said it’s an old kind of software the CIA once used, but that hackers might have gotten it, and that the emails come from Saint Petersburg. In Russia.”

Iris’s face is like ice. She is utterly silent, and her children wait.

Julia finally speaks: “Mom?”

“I am going to need you both to do exactly what I say,” Iris says very softly. “You stay in the house. You stay off your devices. Don’t tell anyone where you are. Don’t…Don’t go anywhere. We don’t talk to the police or the press. I will handle this.”

“Mom, what’s happening?”

There’s a knock at the door. It’s Detective Ponder. Iris opens the door and simply says, “I’m not answering your questions. You do not have permission to interview my children.”

“Mrs. Pollitt…”

“Kyle didn’t kill her,” Iris says. “He may have confessed, but he didn’t kill her.”

“So who did? I’m curious what you think.”

The question throws her off. Why would Ponder ask? She has a confession. “I don’t know.”

“Is he protecting you, then? Or another family member?”

Iris doesn’t answer. Something’s wrong with Kyle’s confession. There must be holes in it. Because…he didn’t do this.

“I have concerns about his confession,” Ponder says. “Do you know what happened, Iris?”

“No.”

“Help me help your husband. Why did he confess?”

Iris shuts the door in Ponder’s face. She turns off the porch light.

Ponder calls through the shut door. “Mrs. Pollitt, it doesn’t work this way. We have a warrant to search the premises. Open up.”

She turns to her children. “He confessed to buy us time. Remember that. Your father is innocent. I’ll believe nothing else. But say nothing right now. Say nothing.”

Iris opens the door and steps aside to let Ponder and the police in.

50

Iris

Two hours later.