“I have Reid’s key. I’ll take you up,” Rock said. “Will you be okay here for a half hour or so, Lace?”

“I’ll be fine, but get right back, will you? Please? The fact that someone was here has me freaked.”

“I will, baby. Let’s go, Zee.”

I stood. “Where is Reid? Moira said he wasn’t answering his cell phone.”

“I don’t know,” Rock said. “He usually responds. Must be in an important meeting. Come on.”

44

Reid

“Irene Lucent?” My mother’s eyes popped wide. “I’m your father’s first wife.”

“You sure about that?”

“Of course I’m sure. Don’t you think I’d know if my husband had been married?”

Her tone sounded almost sincere, but I was so used to her lies I didn’t believe her for a second.

“Nice try, Connie. Maybe if you weren’t such a pathological liar, I might give you some credence.”

“Look, Reid. I have no idea who this Irene is. Your father and I were young when we married. He couldn’t possibly have been married to someone else.”

“I have a marriage certificate that says otherwise,” I said.

“Then it’s a forgery.”

“Could be.”

“It is. Where did you find it?”

“None of your business.”

“Of course it’s my business. What if it’s real? That means…” Her face went white.

“Right you are, Mom. It means your marriage to Dad was never legal, and the four of us are bastards.”

Oh, she wanted to reply to that with some smartass comment. So apparent in her eyes. But I’d give her credit. She let it pass.

“Even if it is legal, he obviously divorced her.”

“Did he?”

She stood. “This is completely ridiculous. I’m done here.”

“Sit, Mother.”

To my surprise, she sat.

“Don’t you think it’s odd,” I said, “that all four of your children are implicated in Dad’s murder but you, his ex-wife, are not?”

“I don’t find it odd at all,” she said. “I didn’t kill him.”

“Neither did I, and neither did Rock, Roy, or Riley.”

“Talk to Rock,” she said with a sly smile.

“We have. He told us everything, Mom. How he caught Dad in Riley’s room and tried to off him with a kitchen knife. How the two of you sent him away to Buffington Military School and how he had to keep from being molested himself.”

Mom kept her face rigid. Good. This got to her.

“Rock has an alibi. I figured it out. You conned him into continuing to pay you off by saying you’d go to the cops with your story of his youth. Too late. We’ve already been to the cops. They know everything, and so much has gone on in such a short time that Rock hasn’t even thought about rescinding his payments to you.”

“You’d see your mother starve?”