Page 69 of Want to Know a Secret?

“I’m very sorry for your loss.”

He sounds like he means it. He doesn’t sound suspicious of us at all. It sounds like he’s just letting us know, by the way, Elliot’s receptionist is dead.

I wonder if he knows Brianna was pregnant. He’s going to know sooner or later, I assume. They do an autopsy on anyone who gets murdered. That’s the sort of thing that would show up on autopsy. And then he might not seem quite so friendly.

“This is so sad,” I speak up. There’s no need for him to know that I hated Brianna with a passion. “I can’t believe somebody would do that to poor Brianna. She was such a nice girl.”

He nods. “Yes, it’s very sad.” His eyes dart between the two of us. “I’m afraid I gotta ask you both a few questions. You have time to talk?”

Elliot raises his face to look at the detective. He reaches out for the banister and shakily gets back to his feet. “Of course. Whatever we can do…”

Hanrahan clears his throat. “Can you tell me where you were during the late evening last night?”

Elliot rubs his neck. “I was home. I was here the whole night. With my son.”

“Me too,” I quickly add. “We were here together.”

Hanrahan raises his eyebrows. “So you two were together here the whole night?”

“Well,” Elliot says, “except for the time when April went to her book club.”

Why? Why would he say something like that?

“You went to a book club meeting last night?” Detective Hanrahan asks me.

“Yes,” I say. Technically, it’s true. I did go to the book club meeting. But Lucy wouldn’t let me in the door.

I flinch as the officer studies my face. “What book?” he says.

“Excuse me?”

“What book were you reading for your book club?”

“Oh!” My smile feels so phony. He must see through it. “We were reading Life of Pi.”

He gives me a crooked smile. “I always meant to check that one out. Any good?”

I did read the book, but that doesn’t mean I have anything intelligent to say about it. “Yes. I enjoyed it very much.”

He nods, like this is a key piece of information. “And the other members of the book club could vouch for you that you were there?”

“Yes.”

My stomach feels like it’s full of rocks. Why did I lie like that? Nobody at the book club will vouch for me. I have no alibi at all for last night. It will take the detective five minutes to walk over to Lucy’s house and find out I was lying through my teeth.

My head starts to spin as I realize what is happening here. Brianna has been murdered, and I have both motive and a lack of an alibi.

I look over at Elliot, who seems like he’s going to throw up. I wonder if we should just tell this detective everything. Admit to him that Elliot was having an affair with Brianna. She was pregnant. It was his. And then admit to him that I wasn’t at the book club last night.

Of course, that last bit of information is damning. I can’t bring myself to hammer that nail into my own coffin.

“Mr. Masterson,” the detective says, “do you have any idea who might have done this to Miss Anderson?”

Elliot shakes his head slowly. “No… No one I can think of.”

“Did she have a boyfriend?”

He runs his hand over his skull. “Um. Maybe. I don’t know. We didn’t discuss things like that.”