Emily Kenyon 01 - A Cold Dark Place

didn’t stop.
    Chris pressed harder. “What was the nature of the calls? We have to know.”
    Tina just sat there. It was almost as if she wasn’t listening.
    “Do you get this?” It was Emily taking charge. “The woman’s been murdered”
    “Right. I know,” she finally answered. Millicent the dog jumped to the floor and Tina stood up. “But if I tell you what I know you’ll think I killed her.”
    Emily glanced at Christopher. This was the money shot. “Try us,” she said. Her words were a command, soft, but not without some very real force.
    Tina bent over and set her coffee on the table tray. “I didn’t kill her. I couldn’t kill anyone”
    “All right.” Christopher was standing now, too. “Talk to us”’
    With her arms wrapped around her like she was fighting off the chill of the air conditioner, Tina started across the room. She wasn’t having any of it just then. “I think I might need a lawyer.”
    Emily indicated to Christopher that he stay put. She took Tina by the arm and they moved to the breakfast room off the kitchen. “Look, Bonnie was a big girl. I doubt you killed her and moved her body around that house. But you do know something. If you get a lawyer involved it’ll just make things messier and more public. You don’t want that, do you?”
    Tina’s hands were trembling then. She tried to steady them by clasping them together.
    “I just don’t want my husband to know.”
    Emily nodded. It was a false assurance, but she needed to nudge the woman into saying what she knew. “I can’t guar antee anything. But trust me. I will do what I can to keep your name out of this. Tina, what do you know?”
    Tears were streaming down Tina’s face and she looked for a tissue. Finding none, and not wanting to go back out to the living room and be seen by Christopher Collier, she took a linen napkin from a sideboard drawer and dabbed at her eyes.
    “I had a baby.” She stopped talking as she fought to form the words that would reveal her darkest secret. “I gave it up for adoption.”
    Pieces were falling into place.
    “Through Bonnie at Angel’s Nest?”
    “Right. Bonnie helped me”
    “A lot of young women have given up babies when they couldn’t care for them”
    Tina set her napkin down and flattened and folded it. “That’s not what happened. I had a job. I wasn’t some dumb girl.”
    `But you did what you thought was right.”
    Tina was crying so hard now, she could no longer speak with any clarity. A few words tumbled from her lips, but they were nearly unintelligible. Whatever she was about to say had been buried for a long time. It wasn’t going to come out without a fight. Right then, Tina Winston Esposito was fighting a losing battle. She could not hide it any longer. She was in quicksand.
    “Take your time. It’ll be all right.”
    Tina steadied herself. “Please,” she said, “don’t tell Rod. Promise. Promise me. Don’t tell anyone” Her pretty eyes were pleading. Her hands were now held like she was praying.
    In fact, she was.
    “I’ll do my best. What is it?”
    “My baby’s father was Dylan Walker.”
    It took almost half an hour to calm her down. By then, Tina Esposito had been ravaged by her emotions. Her blond hair was entirely limp, her carefully applied makeup had left her face for the folds of a linen napkin. She no longer looked like the woman who lived in that fabulous penthouse, but a stranger at odds with all of her surroundings. She was frightened and ashamed. She seemed short of breath in the way that an asthmatic might while confronting the last flight of a staircase.
    “Relax. We’ll get through this.”
    “I can’t”
    “You can. You will.”
    Emily went to the refrigerator and retrieved some bottled water. Tina’s getting ready to talk Just have to keep at her. Give her the space she needs.
    “My Xanax is in the cabinet to the left of the sink, behind the Earl Grey,” she said.
    By then, Christopher had joined them, but with the shock of the revelation, he abdicated the role of lead interviewer to Emily, who was doing all she could to reassure Tina.
    “There’s no need for this to come out,” she said. “But we do have to know everything.”
    “How can I be sure?” Tina suddenly looked like a middleaged woman with a past that finally caught up with her. “My husband will leave me”
    “He wouldn’t do that,” Emily said.
    “You don’t know Rod. He’s all about appearances. This is his home. His money. It