Influenced Eva Robinson (polar express read aloud .TXT) 📖

“It must have been embarrassing.” Ciara managed to convey sympathy. She hadn’t struck Michael as being much of a people person, but luckily she was able to mask her distaste for Adam well enough to play along.

“It was embarrassing,” said Adam. “Maybe throwing a drink on your husband is cool when you’re twenty and at a punk show, but I’m in my mid-thirties.”

“And it sounds like there was hardly any justification for it,” said Ciara.

“Right. My hand brushed Rowan’s leg by accident. Rowan leaned into me. She got like that at parties. I mean, she likes a drink.”

Interesting.

His eyes had filled with tears, and he was still looking at the table. “It shouldn’t have been a big deal. But that was the thing with Arabella. It was always about drama. I mean, I loved her, obviously. But that night, when we came home, she smashed a glass on the countertop, and then she mashed her fist into it.”

“Did she get stitches?” Michael asked.

Adam looked confused for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, I took her to the ER at Mount Auburn.”

“Were you fighting before she fell ill a few days ago?” asked Ciara.

“No, but she was angry at me. She was always angry. The day before she died, it was because she thought I was patronizing her when I said I didn’t think there were people out to get her. There are thefts on campus all the time. And anyone can get into the William James building. There’s a stream of broke people signing up for psychological testing for fifteen dollars an hour. I don’t understand the point of their research, because I can’t imagine the results of any of those tests are representative of a normal population.”

“Did you ever go in there to visit her?” asked Michael.

Adam shook his head. “No, I had no reason to go there. On the rare occasions we met for lunch, we’d just meet in Harvard Square. But in any case, I didn’t think it was a conspiracy. She’d written a blog post on her computer, hadn’t yet published it, and then her computer was stolen. And she thought this meant that a nefarious league of… I don’t know, some kind of conspirators were after her. And that turned into a whole thing where she thought I was patronizing her.”

Even after his wife was dead, he managed to be condescending.

“So you suggested she was being ‘irrational’ again,” Ciara said, “and she became ‘hysterical.’”

“She was furious with me.”

“Can you tell us what kind of laptop she had?” asked Ciara.

“A MacBook of some kind. I can look it up if you need it.” He rubbed at the table. “If the doctors say she was poisoned, then I think she probably took something herself to make a point. When she set her mind to something, she always succeeded. And in this case, she wanted me to feel terrible. And she did a fantastic job.”

Ciara flipped her notebook closed, then frowned at him. “You didn’t come to see her in the hospital.”

“I wasn’t here. I had a meeting in Connecticut. I didn’t return until later that night.”

“And when did you leave for Connecticut?” asked Michael.

“The night before.”

In the car, Michael clicked his seatbelt into place.

“Impressions?” asked Ciara.

“I want to speak to Rowan. I’m wondering about an affair. Nice work, by the way, figuring out that connection. And I want to follow up on the records of poisonous substances in the lab where he works. If the toxicology report confirms that it’s thallium, and the dosage, we might be able to get a timeline of when it happened. We can find out if he has an alibi with his Connecticut trip.”

“Good call.” She pulled on her seatbelt. “But the laptop is sticking in my mind. If she wasn’t psychotic—and you don’t think she was—maybe there is something to her claim that her computer was stolen to hide something. And she didn’t trust anyone enough to tell them what it was.”

Slowly, Michael pulled out onto Oxford Street. “Adam was right about the fact that there are a million people going in and out of that building every day, many of them not even students. But if you want to look for Adam among them, there are surveillance cameras—one on the ground-floor entrance, one in the elevator. He said he hasn’t been in the building. We can find out if he’s lying, or if he popped in to steal her laptop.”

“Well, I can start there.” She turned the radio up.

“You don’t like silence, do you?”

“I hate it.”

“So you’re not into meditating, I take it,” he said.

“I would rather crush my fist into broken glass.” She smiled, but it quickly faded. “That was too much, wasn’t it?”

“No, you’re fine.”

Michael’s phone hummed in his pocket, and he pulled it out to answer it.

“Hello?”

“Detective Stewart? I have the toxicology report.”

He caught Ciara’s eye, holding up a finger to let her know it was important, then he tuned in.

His pulse started racing as he listened to the results. When he hung up, he held Ciara’s gaze. “The toxicology report confirmed the doctor’s suspicions: thallium it is. A particularly large dose, which was why it progressed so quickly. I think we should check the records in Adam’s lab right now.”

Seventeen

Hannah flicked through Rowan’s images again, completely absorbed with her temporary vacation from reality. Nora sat on the floor, entranced by stacking a set of plastic cups.

The sense of calm was interrupted only by texts from her mom that popped up on her screen.

When are you going to settle down, Hannah!? Yr not getting any younger!!!

Have you been excercins . I’m start belly dancing.

Can you fix my blinds? Stupid things don’t work.

Much better to look at pictures of Rowan standing in London’s vivid Temple Church gardens, or on a picnic blanket with Marc.

Rowan had kept her word. She’d tagged Hannah in a few stories, and already Hannah’s follower count was starting to rise. Not that it really mattered