Tanya gave me a small forced smile when I walked back into the room. It could have looked like we were old friends… had it not been forced, that is. Lucas looked nothing short of curious. He knew that I didn’t need the bathroom, I was up to something.
“Are they done?” Tanya asked me.
“The police?” She nodded. “I don’t think so, no.” She nodded again and turned her gaze back to Lucas.
Tanya refused to speak about her husband, the murdered woman, or anything about the case. My suspicion was that she had said little from the time I’d left, which sort of sent a surge of anger in me. It was time we solved this case. We were about to leave when I decided it was time to jump in and say something.
“Oh, uh, Tanya.” I turned to her. “I have a question.”
“Yeah?” She sounded exhausted. Huh! Well, that goes for you and me, Tanya.
“Do you know anyone called Alison?” I asked, keeping my most innocent face on and using an inconspicuous voice.
“What’s her last name?” I shook my head, showing that I had no idea. “Then no, I don’t know her.”
“But don’t you guys know everyone in town? Like, even without the last name, you could describe all the Alisons in town, couldn’t you?” She moved back a step and gave me a puzzled look.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But she knew, I saw she knew. Her muscles tensed, her jaw ticked and her pupils dilated. I knew she knew, and I knew I was right. The thing about such evidence was it was circumstantial and could be thrown out the window. This was a delicate ground, and I needed to be careful.
“No? Okay.” I acted as if I was leaving, but then turned around and continued. “One more thing.”
“Yes?”
“Alison had black hair, she has brown eyes, she’s about 1.65 metres tall, she had a mole behind her right ear.” I moved closer to her, tucked her hair behind her ear and touched the exact spot where the mole was. “As you do, in exactly the same place. That’s one heck of a coincidence, isn’t it?” I gave a breathy laugh.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about…?” She sort of asked.
“Huh?” I looked and sounded bewildered. “What? I was talking about your mole. It’s in the exact place Alison has hers. So weird, right?”
“I guess…?” She was now careful. I knew I didn’t have much time anymore, my minutes were numbered. I looked at a very impatient Lucas… I must hurry.
“So, I found something somewhere.” I reached into my purse and pulled out the plastic bag. Tanya’s reaction was one worth the books. She gasped, stumbled back a few steps and then closed her eyes and opened them. I wanted to laugh, but this was a serious situation. When she opened her eyes, she was emotionless. Trying to seem unbothered, she looked straight at me and said;
“What?”
“Here, put that on.” I handed her the black wig. She glared at it, then glared at me. If only looks could kill…
“I don’t want to.”
“That’s one quality wig,” I inspected it. “Where did you get it? You know, it’s the exact length of Alison’s hair. Oh, and um… aren’t you guys the same height too?” That’s when Lucas joined the conversation. The surprise made Tanya lose her focus for long enough.
“Please, put on the wig, Tanya, if it’s not true, then you have nothing to fear.” She took the wig from me and put it on.
I gasped. Well, I mean, I expected it. But it was way too accurate. She became Alison at that moment. She was her; they were one person.
“Wow!” I said. “Thanks, do you wanna try the brown contacts?” She gave me a disgusted look, so no.
Then we turned to leave, but a thought accrued to me;
“Tanya, do you have siblings?”
“Yes, why?”
“Just wondering.”
“She hates me, doesn’t she?” I asked once we’d made it out of the house to the car. Lucas told the other officers to finish up head to the station when they were done.
“She hates many people, I think. Anyway, what were you doing when you found those things?”
“Looking for them.”
He gave me a disapproving look. “That’s… you shouldn’t have done that.”
“How did you get a search warrant? Shouldn’t you have substantial evidence for that kind of thing?”
“Yes, and we did.” He said. “After you left yesterday, I had my guys look more into Tanya and her movements over the past few months. It wasn’t pretty.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, but then he refused to answer me.
“You can watch the interrogation once we get enough to take her down to the station. We don’t know much of her involvement in Celine’s death, but I’m positive she had something to do with it.” He gave a sigh. “We could only secure a search warrant, but we can’t bring her in unless she does it willingly at this point.”
“Oh,” I said. “What did you find out?”
“How did her father-in-law die? Here’s the thing. When we looked into it, we realised he’d been dead a long time, almost five years now. Which completely makes her out to be a liar about that, she’s lying about her husband’s whereabouts.”
“So, you mean… he’s missing?”
“The husband?” I nodded, he didn’t look because he knew who I was talking about. “Yeah, but I don’t think he’s alive anymore.”
“So, did you look into how he could be involved with Celine? Maybe they were involved and that could give us a motive.” I said and felt like a genius after that.
“Yes. I left someone doing that already. It wasn’t easy digging anything up on her, so it’ll be a lot more difficult digging that up.” I wasn’t that much of a genius after all.
“She was a celebrity.” I deadpanned.
“And he isn’t.”
“Still. And anyway, did you look into her family?”
“Yes, she had two sisters… or had. She doesn’t anymore. She only has one now.”
“What happened to the other?”
“Disappeared without a trace. Hasn’t been seen in close to five years…” He stopped.
“Five years?” I asked. “That’s how long her husband’s father has been dead.”
We’d arrived at a red traffic light, Lucas turned to me with a look of concern plastered on his face. We’d hit a goldmine, and I knew it, but how was any of this significant? That could be a simple coincidence. Maybe it wasn’t anything and one had disappeared when one was dying. A simple coincidence.
“Where was Tanya living at the time?” I asked.
“When we looked up the father-in-law’s death, we found she was visiting her family the day her sister disappeared. That was also the day she was scheduled to leave town with her husband and come back here.”
“And when did the father die?” He didn’t know, so he made a quick phone call to the station.
“My guy says he was found dead in his bed five days after the sister disappeared.”
“Where was Alan’s mother at that time?” Alan was Tanya’s husband.
“They divorced a few years after Alan and Tanya married.”
I frowned, “So he was alone? How do we know Tanya was there? Wasn’t she supposed to be home?”
“Nope, they’d stayed on with his father a while. He was terminally ill. So he needed all the help he could get.”
“Did… was he… Were they well off?”
“A bit, he did have a substantial amount left for his son when he died.” He said. But then something struck him, so he stopped talking.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I asked. “Were Tanya and Alan having money problems when he died?”
“I don’t know about that. But I know that they got roughly ten million when the old man died, and that’s excluding his life insurance money.” And with that, we’d found a possible motive for that murder.
“But how do we know if Alan didn’t do it himself? And also, how does one die from potassium poisoning?” I was a little in the dark when it came to that. It was a well-known fact that I wasn’t too intelligent in such matters.
“Alan could have. But when police did the required foul play inquiry, they couldn’t find a link between him and the murder.” We’d now arrived at the station, and so we got out, and walked into the station, into his office. And this was the first time I was here, with him not protesting too. “And potassium is a naturally occurring substance in the body. So, you can’t tell when someone overdoses on it. That was a suspicion the Medical Examiner had, but he couldn’t be sure. And when taken in large quantities, it can cause heart attacks and even death. He went into cardiac arrest and then died, he was alone.”
“Oh!” Well, that was enlightening. “Was Tanya ever a suspect in his death?”
“No, I mean, she did have a medical background, but she wasn’t suspected of anything. Especially since the death seemed so… expected. He was ill after all.”
“Medical background?” This was all new to me.
“Is that all you know about her?” He asked me. “If you’re going to play amateur sleuth, then at least try to do background checks on people.”
Blood rushed to my cheeks, but then, I’m dark, so he couldn’t see me blush from the embarrassment.
“You still haven’t answered my question.” I sounded unflustered.
“Yeah, right.” He chuckled. “She worked in a retirement home for a bit. She was allowed to give medications and things. She studied to be a nurse but never graduated, so she knows a fair bit about potassium poisoning.”
By now, we were in his office. He had a neat and uninteresting office. It had a desk and a computer and two chairs and also a locked cupboard, which I assumed I wasn’t allowed to open. And then he had a lot of food wrappers and old receipts for junk food all over the place. Those were the only things out of place, otherwise, the place was neat.
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