One Wrong Step Read Online Free PDF

ex-husband was at this very moment laid out in the morgue.
    “He left around ten,” she told Stevenski for the second time. “I remember because right afterward I took a half-hour bubble bath to relax, and when I got out David Letterman was on.”
    A half-hour bubble bath. Nothing like an indisputable time line.
    Cecelia pulled another tissue from the box on the coffee table and blew her nose in that dainty way only women can pull off. She looked different than she had down in Mayfield the last time Rowe had seen her. Her blonde hair was longer; maybe that was it. Her eyes looked greener than usual, but that was just because she’d been crying. Then he figured it out. She’d gained weight. Her cheeks were plump, and the rest of her body seemed slightly fuller now than it had eight months ago. Probably the stress, Rowe decided. Lots of people put on weight when they were under pressure, and Cecelia Wells had been under plenty of pressure since her husband became a fugitive last summer.
    “And can you remember anything else you talked about?” Stevenski asked. “Anything besides money and your idea that he should seek rehab?”
    Rowe wandered into the kitchen as the interview dragged on. Another strategic reason for Stevenski to take the lead was that he’d never met Cecelia before today. Rowe was interested to see whether his partner could elicit new answers to some of the questions Rowe had asked a few months ago.
    So far, no luck.
    Cecelia had cooperated fully and given a convincing performance as the bereaved-but-not-overly-so ex-wife. Everything she’d said thus far had checked out, right down to the wilted yellow carnations in the bottom of her trash can, the flowers she claimed Strickland had used to get past the doorman downstairs.
    So what was bothering him?
    “And about the money again,” Stevenski continued, “you say Robert asked for a few hundred bucks to tide him over, and that’s when you told him you only had a twenty in the house?”
    “That’s right.”
    Bingo.
    Rowe pretended to be looking out the window while he waited to hear whether Cecelia would realize she’d changed her story.
    “I told him I didn’t keep cash like that lying around, but he could have the twenty,” she said. “I hoped he’d use it for a meal. I guess deep down I knew he’d try to buy drugs, but I felt guilty, you know? He looked so skinny and awful, I didn’t want to send him away empty-handed.” Her voice faltered. “I guess I was wrong, huh? If he hadn’t been on something, he might not have had the wreck.”
    Stevenski refrained from assuaging her guilt, and Rowe waited for him to pick up the thread of inconsistency in her story. At the start of the interview, she’d said Strickland asked her for a few thousand bucks, not a few hundred. She was lying about her conversation with Strickland, at least about the money part. And now Rowe had a lead.
    “Okay, so that’s when you told him to wait while you got him an aspirin?”
    Stevenski had switched topics again. Damn it, this was why Rowe liked to conduct interviews himself. But females didn’t open up with him like they did with Stevenski. At six-one and 210 pounds, Rowe tended to intimidate women, especially shorter-than-average ones like Cecelia Wells. Plus, other agents had told him that his eyes put people off, that there was something cold about them.
    “—and when I came back in, he was standing by the door,” Cecelia was saying now. “I didn’t realize he’d taken my keys until I was getting ready for work this morning.”
    “At the Bluebonnet House, right?”
    “Right. We were supposed to have an Easter party today, but we’re doing it tomorrow now because I couldn’t make it. The police asked me to come to the station….” Her voice trailed off as she reached for another tissue.
    Rowe strolled back into the living room and stood behind the sofa where Cecelia was curled up, her legs folded under her, hiding the shiny pink toenail polish