She Wore Mourning by P.D. Workman (best desktop ebook reader .txt) 📕

Looking around as Spencer led him through a living room with deep greens and pink pastels, Zachary couldn’t see any sign that a child had lived there. No toy boxes or shelves. No fingerprints or crayon pictures on the coffee table. Declan Bond had drowned months before, at the end of the summer. They wouldn’t have just left everything out. Maybe for a few days, but not for months.

Spencer led him into an office. Large windows, the afternoon sun streaming in. The room was warm, so either the windows had high-efficiency ratings, or they had a good furnace.

“Have a seat,” Spencer muttered, going around the desk to sit.

Zachary selected a chair. Spencer reached over to a bottle of antibacterial gel cleaner and pumped a squirt into his hand. He rubbed his hands together, distributing it. All of this was done in an automatic gesture as if he wasn’t even aware of it.

“Do you work from home?” Zachary asked, looking around.

“Yes.” Spencer’s dark eyes met Zachary’s. “Didn’t you already read our police interviews?”

“No. I’m still waiting to get everything. The police haven’t allowed me access to their investigation notes yet, just the public releases. I’ll talk to you and any other witnesses first, and then I’ll go back over the police documentation, looking for any inconsistencies or new information. Okay?”

Spencer nodded, seeming satisfied with that.

“At this point, all I have to go by is your mother-in-law’s initial statement to me, and a bare outline of what was in the news. Yours is the first detailed interview.”

“I’ll help you all I can.”

Zachary looked over the neat desk and filing cabinets. “I didn’t find any mention of what type of work you do.”

“I am a reviewer.”

Zachary wrote a note in his notepad, considering the answer. “What kind of things are we talking about? What do you review?”

“Product reviews. Anything. Food, cleaning products, toiletries, car accessories, books… anything and everything.”

“Really. That must be interesting. Companies just send you products, and you test them…”

“I test them and post product reviews,” Spencer completed, nodding.

“That lets you work from home. You don’t have another office?”

“No. I work from here.”

“And your wife is The Happy Artist. Does she spend a lot of time out of the home, or are both of you generally around?”

“Normally she’s gone in the mornings. Then we’re both around in the afternoon. It depends. She doesn’t like to lock herself into a schedule.” Spencer’s eyes went to the big calendar on his wall, with carefully marked starting and ending times and columns of tasks. Zachary glanced over it.

“What were your child care arrangements? Whoever was home took care of Declan?”

“I was his primary caregiver. Isabella had to be away from the home more than I did. Taping, touring, doing interviews. She had her own artwork aside from the show. Painting, attending showings and schmoozing with the right people…”

“What happened the day Declan died? Can you walk me through the events of that day?”

Spencer swiveled his chair and gazed out the window. His office looked into the back yard.

“Deck was playing out back. Isabella was watching him. In the afternoon. She looked away, and when she looked back, he was gone. She thought he was just out of sight… waited a few minutes… looked out again… called him… I’m not sure how long he was gone before she started to worry. She came and got me. We both searched the house inside and out. Then we called the police. They started a search of the neighborhood.”

Spencer stopped speaking. His voice had a flat tone to it, not what Zachary expected from a father talking about his only son’s last hours on earth.

“The police organized a search. At what time?”

“I’m sure their records will be more accurate than my memory. I wasn’t looking at a clock at the time. Four-thirty. Five o’clock. Something like that.”

“And how long did it take to… find his remains?”

“Seven-fifteen. I think it was seven-fifteen.”

“So only a couple of hours. You didn’t have to deal with days of searching. That’s a blessing, anyway.”

Spencer stared out the window. “I suppose.”

“Did they attempt to revive him?”

“At that point… they think he’d already been dead a couple of hours. There was nothing they could do.”

“They put time of death at five o’clock?”

“Or thereabouts.”

“By the time you started looking, it was already too late.”

“Yes. So they said.”

“I’m waiting for the medical examiner’s report, but I assume they found water in his lungs. Were there any signs of… assault of any kind?”

“No. Nothing.”

“How deep is the pond he was found in?”

Spencer turned his gaze to Zachary. “I’ve never waded in to find out.”

“Natural or man-made?”

“Natural. Why does that matter?”

“If it was man-made, it probably has a gentle slope and fairly stable sides. If it’s natural, it could be more treacherous. Deeper. Eroding banks. Maybe… sinkholes. I don’t know.”

“Oh.” Spencer shrugged. “I see.”

“Did Declan like to go to the pond? Is that somewhere you went regularly? To feed the ducks, maybe?”

“No.” Spencer gave a definite shake of his head, looking almost angry at the thought. “We never went there.”

“Molly said Declan was afraid of the water.”

“It’s a normal fear.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t a normal fear, but it was a fear he had?”

“I suppose, yes. Molly makes it out to be a lot worse than it was.”

“She’s brought it up with you as well?”

“Of course.”

“What is your opinion? Do you think that he would have been too afraid to get close enough to the pond to drown?”

“No. Kids are unpredictable. He might have seen something that interested him… a dog or a rock… I don’t know.”

Zachary watched Spencer’s Adam’s apple moving up and down. The man’s face was blank. The newspaper articles had said that he had shown no emotion either on Declan’s disappearance or on the discovery of his body. That didn’t mean that he wasn’t feeling anything. Looking around the office, Zachary could see a framed picture of Declan placed prominently on the desk. On the back of the printer sat