Page 19 of Kill Your Darlings

“Sure. Are you... My husband isn’t here.”

“I spoke to your husband this morning at the university. He was very helpful. I’m just following up on some of his answers.”

A strange sense of unreality went through Wendy—not that a detective was in her house but that her husband had been interviewed already, that there was some sort of formal investigation into his part in Alex Deighton’s death. “Okay?” she said. “Are you sure I can’t get you a water?”

“Sure, I’ll take a water.”

Wendy got a glass from the cabinet as the detective stood awkwardly on the other side of the kitchen island. “Ice?” she said.

“Sure.”

She cracked one of the trays and dropped two cubes of ice into his glass and passed it to him. “Please sit,” she said.

He took a sip of water then settled onto one of their kitchen stools. He really did look young to her, and he seemed a little nervous, as though he were here to be interviewed instead of the opposite.

But after putting his glass down on the island, Detective Elo took a breath through his nostrils and said, “How would you characterize your husband’s relationship with the deceased? He’d been his boss for how long?”

“Over eight years, I think. Since right before we moved here.”

“Did they get along?”

“In a literal sense, they did. They worked together for eight years.”

“Did your husband like him?”

“No, but I’m not sure anyone really liked him.”

“You didn’t like him?”

Wendy, striving for as much truthfulness as possible, said, “I avoided him, mostly. He worked with my husband, so it wasn’t always easy. I mean, I’d see him at parties, but I didn’t have a personal relationship with him.”

“What was he like when you saw him at parties?”

“He was mainly very arrogant. He liked to talk about himself and he didn’t ask questions of other people. And he was one of those men who are completely unaware of how physically unattractive he was.”

“He hit on women?”

“Well, yeah. He had three wives, you know, and, yes, he was pretty inappropriate at times.”

“Physically?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did he ever touch you inappropriately?”

“Lingering hugs, I suppose, but nothing else. But he flirted and leered and said gross things.”

“And how did your husband feel about this?”

Wendy thought for a moment. “I don’t suppose he liked it, but it was more something we laughed about. He wasn’t jealous or angry or anything like that. Alex Deighton was gross, but he wasn’t a threat in any way.”

“Okay, Mrs.Graves. What about your husband’s working relationship with Mr.Deighton? How would you characterize that?”

“I’m confused. Is there some issue around Alex’s death? I thought it was ruled an accident.”

“It hasn’t been ruled anything yet. There were some indications that Mr.Deighton might have been in a physical altercation before he died, so we’re just following up with some of the people who knew him best.”

“You mean, some of the people who might have wanted him dead.”

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