“Sean was dead too,” Ava said in a kind voice. “But you called right after checking for a pulse?”
“I did. An ambulance wasn’t needed, but the police were.”
“From outside? Or did you go back in the house to call?”
“Outside.”
Ava shuffled through the papers on her lap, and Zander watched Emily out of the corner of his eye. Her shoulders sagged, and anguish was evident in her downturned mouth.
He hoped to God Emily had a good explanation for the time inconsistencies. He shifted forward, leaning his elbows on his knees, wishing he could hide his tension behind a table. Ava was silent as she studied the next papers in her file, and the silence in the room grew heavy. Long periods of silence were meant to create unease for the interviewee, but Zander seemed to be the only uneasy one. He studied Ava, noting the lines on her forehead and the slight tightening of her lower lip. She was frustrated.
Ava hopes for a good explanation too.
And she had alleged that Zander’s emotions were affecting his work.
Ava was also rooting for Emily.
“Emily. I have a copy of your phone records for that day.” She handed a page to Emily, who accepted it with a stunned look.
“Why didn’t you ask to see my phone if you had questions?”
“This is more official.”
“You mean it has calls that can’t be deleted,” Emily snapped. She angrily scanned the sheet, running a finger down the entries. “One, two, three calls to Lindsay, my call to Sean, and then one more to Lindsay’s phone. Exactly as I told you. What’s the issue here?”
“The issue is the twenty minutes between your last call from the porch to Lindsay and the call to 911.”
Emily froze and stared at the paper. She finally looked up, determination in her gaze. “I can explain.”
“Please do.”
Zander held his breath as he watched a war of guilt and frustration play out on Emily’s face.
“After I found Sean, I sat on the back porch before calling—I didn’t realize I had sat for that long, though.” Emily rubbed at an eye. “Jeez—I must have really been out of it.”
“What do you mean?” asked Ava.
“Shock. Disbelief. Confusion. It took me a while to get myself together.”
Ava cocked her head. “That doesn’t sound like you . . . I can see you’re levelheaded. You were the one who stopped the deputies from making a bigger mess at the scene and reported the mark on Sean’s forehead.”
“Trust me. After finding Lindsay and Sean, I was anything but levelheaded.” Emily closed her eyes. “But I was also shook up from something else I saw.”
Zander’s breath caught. “Something else? What?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I should have, but . . .” She buried her face in her hands. “I didn’t understand. It didn’t make any sense. It still doesn’t!”
“Emily—” Ava started.
“Give me a minute,” she said. Her chest moved as she took several deep breaths, her gaze scanning every corner of the room, avoiding Zander and Ava. “I found my father’s pocket watch in Lindsay’s backyard,” she said quietly.
Now I don’t understand.
Zander lifted a brow at Ava, who gave a minuscule shake of her head. “Emily,” he asked. “what does finding that watch mean to you? I don’t see the significance.”
Other than that you shouldn’t have removed possible evidence from the scene.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. Her eyes were haunted. “It disappeared the night he was killed. He had always kept it in his pocket, but it vanished when . . . And its loss added to my mother’s upset—it was a prized possession of his.”
Zander’s mind spun. “How did it end up in the Fitches’ backyard?”
Her hands lifted and fell to her lap, her eyes shiny with tears.
“Zander.” Ava moved closer to him, her blue eyes warning. “She took evidence from a murder scene.”
He no longer cared that Ava wanted to handle the interview.
“I was completely shocked,” Emily added. “I’d stepped on it as I backed away from Sean. When I looked down, I knew what it was.”
“Then what?” he asked as Ava frowned at him.
“I picked it up and opened it, convinced I was seeing things. But it had his initials inside.” She blew out a breath. “I sat on the porch steps and just stared at it. I couldn’t think . . .”
“You sat for nearly twenty minutes in a murder scene?” Ava’s vocal pitch rose. Emily gave no sign she noticed.
“Until you said it, I had no idea I sat so long. I would have said a minute or two.” Emily pressed her eyes with her fingers. “It doesn’t make sense. How—”
Ava opened her mouth, but Zander held up a finger. “Emily, what scenarios ran through your head to answer how the pocket watch got there?”
She wouldn’t look at them. “I don’t know.”
“Who could have left it there?”
“I don’t know!”
Frustrated, Zander sat back. Ava slowly shook her head as they stared at each other.
Emily cleared her throat. “My aunts, I guess, my sister . . . my father’s killer . . . ,” she whispered, looking lost.
“Madison could have left it?” Ava asked.
“No. I meant Tara when I said ‘sister’—although I guess Madison could have found it somewhere.”
“Why do you say Tara over Madison? Madison’s a good friend of Lindsay. It makes sense that she could have left something behind in Lindsay’s house, and you said Tara hasn’t been around in years.”
“She was there.” Emily’s hands trembled.
Zander kept his questions calm and steady, but inside he wanted to drag the answers out of her. “Who was where?”
This watch could indicate who killed the Fitches.
Emily finally met his gaze. “Tara was there the night my father was killed,” she whispered. “She told everyone—even the police—that she had spent the night at a friend’s. But I saw her with someone else just beyond the yard in the woods.” Her shoulders slumped. “Oh God. That’s the second thing I’ve hidden from the police.”
He tried to pull her back to the present. “You think Tara has something to do with the pocket watch being at the Fitch home?”
“I don’t know.” Emily stood and threw up her hands, pacing the small room. “I don’t know anything! Everything is a mess!”
“Where is the pocket watch now?” Ava asked.
“At the mansion.”
“How about you and I go get it?”
Zander started to say he’d come along, but a look from Ava stopped him.
Am I still being too nice?
“I’ll stay here and talk to the sheriff,” he said instead, not knowing if Greer was even in the building. It didn’t matter. He wanted to review everything that Emily had just told them and figure out the implication of the appearance of a watch that had been missing for decades.
“Let’s go,” said Ava.
24
Outside, Emily drew deep breaths. Her nerves still quaked from the session, but there was a small sense of relief that she’d told someone she’d seen Tara at her father’s murder scene. Even if it made no sense to the FBI agents, it was good to have off her chest.
The pocket watch.