In Self Defense Susan Sloan (summer reads .txt) 📖

didn’t happen to tell you this private detective’s name, did he?”

“No, he didn’t,” Jeffrey said.  “And again, I didn’t ask.  Look, I like Clare.  I’ve always liked her.  I think she’s a real nice woman, and a great mother.  I didn’t want to believe what Richard was saying.  But he told me she had changed a lot lately, that she was unpredictable.  I never saw that side of her, but Richard claimed, ever since the arsenic episode, she had begun to have these wild emotional swings, and she’d fly off the handle for no reason at all.  I know it sounds silly, but I think he was a little afraid of her.”

***

“I’m not sure I should be discussing any of this with you,” Elaine Haskell, Richard’s sister from Ravenna, said.  “I don’t think either Richard or Clare would appreciate me airing their dirty linen in public.”

“Did they have dirty linen to air?” Erin inquired.

“Everyone has some,” Elaine replied, looking directly at the detective.

“Did you know your sister-in-law was seeing someone on the side?” Dusty asked.

“No, I didn’t,” Elaine said.  “And I doubt that she was.  But if she had been, I wouldn’t blame her.  My brother was never terribly conscientious about keeping his wedding vows.  Between you and me, I don’t know how Clare put up with it.  I certainly wouldn’t have.”

“Did you know your brother had hired a private investigator?”

“To do what -- follow Clare?”  Elaine asked with a giggle.  “Now that would have been a boring job.  If she isn’t at Thornburgh House, or out working for one of those endless charities of hers, she’s at home with the children. Richard didn’t need a private investigator to tell him that.  Doreen could have told him.  So could I, for that matter.  Clare and I speak on the telephone just about every day.”

“You and your sister-in-law are close?”

“We’re family,” Elaine declared.  “If you must know, I like her better than I liked my brother.  He could be a real ass, sometimes.”

“Did your sister-in-law ever discuss the question of divorce with you?”

Elaine thought about that for a moment.  “Not exactly,” she replied.  “But I remember an odd conversation we had during the summer, it was a few weeks after her accident on the mountain.  Clare said something about how terrible it would be for Richard if he ever lost his position at Nicolaidis, because it meant so much to him.”

“Did she say why he might lose it?”

“Well, I asked her what she meant by that, and if Richard was actually in danger of losing his job, but all she said was something about how people change, sometimes so much so that they weren’t the people you thought you knew anymore, and you wondered if they ever really were who you thought they were.  And then I asked her if she was thinking about leaving Richard, and she said she wouldn’t have to do that, it was Richard who was going to do the leaving.  Pretty spooky, when you think about it now, isn’t it?”

“Do you think your brother would have left?”

“Never,” Elaine said flatly.  “He may have wanted other women, but take my word for it, he wouldn’t have given up being the CEO of Nicolaidis for any of them.”

***

Edwin Zipp worked out of a small dump of an office on Denny Way, with a discreet sign on the door.  He was a burly man with bushy eyebrows and an ugly scar down his left cheek that he passed off as a war wound.  In his time, he had been a Marine, a police academy dropout, and a private security guard.  Now he scrounged around the edges of society with a notebook and a camera.

“How’d you find me?” he asked.

“It wasn’t hard,” Erin told him.  They had simply started at the top and then worked their way almost all the way to the bottom.

“Well, I can’t tell you anything, you know.  My work is strictly confidential.”

“Your client is dead, Mr. Zipp,” Dusty reminded him.

“Yeah, well, even so,” the private investigator said with a shrug, “I still don’t have to talk to you.”

“Durant told his brother you had some pictures that would prove his wife was having an affair.  Is that correct?”

“What if it is?”

“If you have them,” Dusty declared, “produce them, or we might tell his wife, and then you might just find yourself caught in the middle of a nasty little lawsuit.”

Zipp sighed.  “Okay, so I spent a few days and took a few pictures.  The guy was hungry, I needed the money, and he didn’t care what it cost.  He said his wife wanted to divorce him, and he needed some ammunition to fight back.”

“Where are the pictures?”

Zipp heaved himself up out of his chair and walked over to a rusty metal file cabinet that sat against one wall, rummaging through one of the drawers until he found what he was looking for.

“This is all I got,” he said, handing Dusty a thin folder.

Inside were several photographs of Clare Durant, wearing an evening gown, and smiling up at a young man who was not her husband.

“Richard Durant thought his wife was having an affair with the guy in these pictures?” Dusty asked.

“I don’t know what he thought,” Zipp replied with a shrug.  “But that’s what I got.”

Erin leaned over to have a look.  “Isn’t that the assistant?” she asked.  “We met him at Durant’s office.  What was his name . . . Lilly, wasn’t it?”

“James Lilly,” Dusty said.  “And the way I understand it, he took Clare Durant to charitable events whenever her husband was unavailable.  I think it was part of his job description.”

“Every time her husband had a more pressing engagement, I’ll bet,” Erin murmured.

“What?” Zipp said.  “She wasn’t having an affair with the guy?”

“Not likely,” Erin told him.

“Let’s just say, if she was having an affair with him, her husband wouldn’t have had to hire you to find out about it,” Dusty added.

“Not much of a detective,” Erin said on their way out.  “But then,