Bone by Bone by Carol O'Connell

she probably knew about the other women you were sleeping with.”
    Oren sipped his beer, appearing only mildly curious and keeping to a boyhood habit of never confirming or denying those rumors.
    Leaning back against the side of a chair, Swahn dragged out this lull. “Mrs. Straub was very attractive in those days. These past twenty years, she hasn’t aged well. And that’s odd. You know she has the money to stay young forever.”
    Absently turning a page in his notebook, the man never took his eyes off Oren. “Your housekeeper asked me to find you an alibi witness. That was my job. She had no inside information about your affairs, but she had eyes. Miss Rice knew the effect you had on females. When she first came to me, her focus was on your refusal to say anything in your own defense. It was her theory that you might keep silent to protect a married woman. So I didn’t just single out Mrs. Straub. I talked to all the women posed with you in Josh’s photographs. Unfortunately, my efforts backfired. Two women came forward. The two alibis should’ve cancelled each other out. But the sheriff believed one of those stories. Hers.” Swahn tapped the photograph of Evelyn Straub.
    “You had good taste, Mr. Hobbs. She was a pretty woman in those days. I liked her. Very jaded—very hip. I figured she was only in it for the sex. A teenage boy never runs out of juice. No real emotion in play. That’s why I thought the sheriff believed her when she told him you spent the whole day in her bed. But I was wrong. Later, I discovered she had a prenuptial agreement. If she was caught cheating on her husband, she’d get nothing in a divorce settlement. Mr. Straub was an old man—good as dead. His wife only had to bide her time for another year. But she put everything on the line for you.”
    Swahn flipped another page, though he never looked down at the lines written there. “I never told Mrs. Straub how I found out about her affair with you. I suppose she assumed that you betrayed her. For all I know, she still believes that. But after I talked to her, she went to the sheriff anyway. You were only seventeen—probably younger the first time she took you to bed—the underage son of a judge. That woman risked a lot more than money.” He leaned forward, the better to study the younger man’s face when he asked, “Did she tell the truth? Or did she risk everything to lie for you? . . . Did she love you, Mr. Hobbs?”
    Oren looked at his watch. “Time to go.” He brushed pizza crumbs from his jeans as he stood up. Extending a hand down to his host, he helped the man to rise from the floor.
    Swahn seemed deeply disappointed. He had dug his hole, his trap of words, and covered it over with twigs and branches, but Oren had not fallen in.
    “That wasn’t an idle question.” Swahn’s limp worsened as he followed his guest into the foyer. “It doesn’t matter if Mrs. Straub lied or not. Just consider what she stood to lose.”
    Oren opened the front door.
    “Mr. Hobbs, either this woman loved you—or she needed an alibi as much as you did.”
    “Thanks for the beer and pizza.” Oren stepped outside, escaping. He was walking down the driveway when he glanced back.
    Swahn had followed to the edge of the portico and now called out to him, “When you report back to the sheriff, ask him about Mrs. Straub’s séances in the woods. The judge and Miss Rice go out there to commune with your dead brother.”
    Oren stumbled and then moved on.

Ten
    The phantom spiders had been vanquished by the doctor from Saulburg.
    While Sarah Winston slept off a sedative in the tower room, her husband and daughter stood outside on the deck. Isabelle focused a telescope on the winding fire road. In the twilight hour, the running lights of vehicles made them visible through the scrub pines of the foothills. These were the witchboard people.
    “Yes, it still goes on.” Addison Winston swirled the whiskey in his glass. “Since when do you care what