Page 21 of Dying to Meet You
“So...” I say, and I feel like I’m trying to speak from underwater, “he didn’t shoot himself?”
Another slow shake of her head. “Not unless someone removed the gun from the scene afterward.”
“You’resure?”
“Very sure,” she says firmly. “But why is that more shocking? You said yourself that you didn’t think he was suicidal.”
“Because he wasn’t...”Parked there for very long. Even in my half-addled state, I quickly back away from this mistake. I’m not supposed to have any idea how recently he’d arrived there. “Because there was nobody else around. And itseemedlike it had just happened. When I touched him.”
“He was still warm?” she says softly.
“Yes,” I quickly agree.
“Okay.” She reaches across the table and gives my forearm a squeeze. “I need to ask if you can think of anyone who was angry at him. Did he have enemies?”
“If he did, I never heard about it.”
“Did you meet any of his friends?”
My stomach drops. “No, I didn’t. I got the impression that most of them are in New York.”
And if that’s wrong, he clearly wasn’t interested in introducing me.
“All right. His LinkedIn profile says he was an investigative journalist. Did he talk about work with you?”
“Sometimes.” I rub my eyes, as if it might help to remove the memory of his dead body. “But what he described sounded routine. He had a lot ofphone calls with CEOs. Interviewing them about earnings reports. Or something. There were a lot of spreadsheets involved.”
“Anyone specific?” she prodded.
“He talked about trying to pry quotes out of people. But he’d tell me in a comical way. And he never named names.”
“Did he tell you what story he was working on now?”
“No clue. But you could find out. He took a lot of longhand notes. He liked Moleskine notebooks—the hardback kind. He had them in a few different colors. He kept them in a basket on his car’s back seat. He liked working in his car, and I’d started referring to it as his office.”
She frowns. Then she jots something down. “All right. Good tip. Did you notice the notebooks in his car?”
“Last night? Not a chance.”
“How about his laptop or phone. Did you see those? Neither one was found in his car.”
Another shake of my head. “All I saw was his dead body. And I wish I’d never seen that.” Although the only person I have to blame is myself.
“I’m so sorry,” she says patiently. “I have just a few more questions. Do you and your daughter live here alone? How old is she?”
“Natalie is sixteen. It’s just the two of us, plus Lickie.”
The dog raises her head when she hears her name, and her tail swishes a couple of times.
“What a good baby,” the cop says in a soft voice, offering Lickie her hand. “Do you look out for your humans?”
Lickie gets up to give her a sniff, just in case she’s holding a piece of bacon.
“My father gave her to us as a guard dog, but she only looks menacing. She’s the most docile dog ever born.”
Riley grins. “Well, sometimes a deterrent is all you need. Right, girl?”
Lickie accepts some head rubs.
