Page 44 of Dirty Looks

She chewed on her bottom lip and looked back at Jack.

“I’m not here to cause trouble with your job,” Jack asked. “We’re trying to find out what happened to Evie Lidle.”

Her eyes widened. “You think Alan had something to do with it?”

“We don’t know,” Jack said. “I guess you haven’t watched the news recently. I’m sorry to tell you that Alan is dead. He was killed earlier today.”

The color drained from her face so her freckles looked stark against her pale skin. “What? No way. I just saw him. I saw him today.”

“You went to him instead of going home?” I asked gently.

Her eyes were glassy and I knew she was in shock. She shivered involuntarily. “I was revved, you know? From the foals. So I texted him when Alex cut me loose, wanting to celebrate. He told me to meet him at the staff garage.” She swallowed with some difficulty. “So I did.”

“He was there waiting for you?” Jack asked.

She shook her head. “No, he’d not come into work yet. Said he’d had to take care of some things. He pulled into the garage around ten thirty.”

“Did y’all go anywhere?” I asked.

The color came back into her cheeks. “Uhh, no,” she said. “We stayed in the garage. In his car. He has a Bronco. When we were done I left in my car, and I came home. I grabbed some lunch and watched the news. That’s when I saw about Evie. And then I crashed and slept the rest of the afternoon.”

“Why would Alan be in Astrid Nielsen’s house?” Jack asked, taking a different route to the questions.

“They had a thing for a while,” she said, her voice almost robotic as she talked. “Alan had a thing with just about everyfemale who stepped foot on that property as long as they were somewhat attractive and didn’t mind him not being able to commit.”

“A recent thing?” I asked her.

“I think on and off for a while,” she said, shrugging. “He’d told me a couple of months ago he’d broken it off for good this time. He said she was starting to show her age.”

“I’m going to ask you some hard questions,” Jack said. “And I need you to really think about the answers.”

“Okay,” she said, looking at him warily.

“You said Alan had a thing with just about every female who stepped foot on the property,” he said. “Did he have an age limit?”

“Astrid was probably as old as he was willing to go,” she said. “I think she’s in her mid-forties.”

“What about the other direction? Younger girls?”

She started to shake her head and then her eyes widened in shock. “Like girls girls?” she asked. “Like Evie?”

“Any whisperings he liked to start young?”

“Not that I’ve ever heard,” she said.

“Ever caught him watching pornography or anything he shouldn’t have?”

“No,” she said.

“What about his sexual habits? Anything weird in the bedroom?”

“No, no,” she said, continuing to shake her head. “He was just a hot guy who oozed sex appeal. To tell you the truth he wasn’t all that great in bed once you got past the initial stages. He was always more concerned about himself than making sure I was having a good time. But other than that it was just sex.”

“Do you know of any other sexual partners he was juggling besides you and Astrid?” he asked.

“Not since he and I started things up,” she said. “I believed him when he said he’d broken things off with Astrid for good. I knew he wouldn’t last. That he’d start sniffing around someone else when he got bored with me. But for a couple of months I had his undivided attention. Or at least I thought I did.”

Jack stood and I pushed the dog off my lap and followed suit.

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