“Do you think I was having an affair with Ken?”
Melissa and Gael were alone together at the cabin. They had been talking for about twenty minutes.
“I’m quite sure you weren’t,” Gael answered. “This will sound arrogant, but I don’t think Ken was capable of cheating on me like that. He might have spent a night now and then with call girls on some of his out-of-town trips, although I’m not sure he even did that. But from the day we were engaged, there’s no way he had a romantic relationship with anyone but me.”
“He adored you.”
“Yes, he did. He gave me everything he had emotionally.”
“This must be a terrible loss for you,” Melissa said. “I’m deeply sorry.”
“Ken’s death is an incredible jolt. I feel like several of my emotional circuit breakers have tripped. I’ll have a lot more sobbing to do in the next few days, but for now it’s comforting to focus on the needs of the moment.”
Gael settled back a bit farther in the couch near the fire and sipped black coffee that Melissa had made. She glanced at the pint bottle of Jim Beam that she’d taken from a carry-all and put on the end table, then shook her head.
“Better save that until after I’ve talked to the constabulary,” she said, glancing at her watch. “I’ll be seeing them before long.”
“They don’t know you’re here yet?”
“No. I plan to get to a ranger station by four o’clock to speak with the investigating officer. I’m not just a widow, though. I’m also a lawyer. As cold-blooded as it sounds, I’m hoping to learn what you told him before he questions me.”
“I think I’ve covered it.”
“I see.” Long pause, deliberate coffee sip.
“You sound dubious,” Melissa said.
“If what you’ve shared with me so far is everything you’ve told the deputy, then I think there must be a lot you didn’t tell him. I’d like to know what it is. Feel free to tell me that it’s none of my bloody business, if you like. I give you my word of honor that you won’t hear anything you say to me repeated in front of a jury. You don’t have to believe that, but I hope you will.”
“I told him the truth but nothing close to the whole truth,” Melissa said flatly. “My Grammy Seton would have said that what I did was worse than actually lying—that simply lying without making any bones about it would have been less dishonest than dancing around the real facts.”
“That’s uncomfortably close to what lawyers tell witnesses to do. Tell the truth about what you know, but don’t volunteer information and don’t talk about what you just think or suspect. If you don’t mind sharing, what specifically didn’t you tell Deputy Oldenberg?”
Melissa reminded herself that she was talking to a woman who had just lost a husband of almost thirty years. A man who had adored her. A man who had killed for her.
“I didn’t tell him that I thought Ken had come here to kill me and Rep,” Melissa said then, in the kind of flat, unenthusiastic, let’s-get-this-over-with voice you might use to confess a petty theft. “I didn’t tell him that I thought Ken had killed Vance Hayes to keep your confirmation from being blocked, and that he’d killed Max Levitan to cover up the Hayes killing. I didn’t tell him that I thought Ken was trying to frame Leopold for the Levitan murder.”
If any of this shocked or infuriated or even surprised Gael, no such reaction showed on her face. What Melissa read in her expression was something like I asked for it and I got it, so no whining.
“You’d be good at a pretrial deposition,” Gael said. “I hope I’ll be that good when I have my little chat with the deputy.” She glanced at her watch and put her coffee down. “Speaking of which, I’d better get moving. With not much more than an hour of daylight left, I’d rather be early than late.”
Melissa and Gael stepped out of the cottage to see Rep standing beside the Sable and Kuchinski next to his Escalade.
“Here’s the theory, your Honor,” Kuchinski said. “Rep will drive you. I’ll lead the way, because I know where the place is. Rep will stay there during your interview and drive you back when it’s done. That way, you three can head back tomorrow morning. I’ll drive over to deer camp, show my trophy here off to my buddies, and pack Rep’s gear up. He can collect it from me when we’re both back in the office after Thanksgiving.”
“That sounds fine,” Gael said, “except that I don’t need a chauffeur. I can follow you while Rep and Melissa spend some time together.”
“No, no,” Melissa said quickly, “Walt is absolutely right. The last thing you need to worry about right now is navigating rural Wisconsin.”
“That’s very kind of you. I can’t say I was looking forward to the drive.”
Melissa went back into the cottage. She would have loved spending the next two hours wrapped in her husband’s arms in front of the fire, or cooking some improvised meal together, or just trading a little verbal by-play with him. But those thoughts only sharpened her sense of Gael’s loss. Gael’s needs took priority over Melissa’s wants.
She started toward the work-table she’d been using, then turned back and bolted the front door behind her. No sense taking chances.
She intended to pack up tonight. Before she packed, though, she had an essential task to perform: making sure Ken had completely erased her transcription of the decoded email from her computer. She could do the work over again later, if necessary, but she wasn’t going to leave the fatal words readily accessible to people who might have mischievous ideas about them.
As she booted up the computer, she felt a chilly intuition that someone else was in the cabin. She reproached herself for behaving like some frail and timid heroine in a gothic romance. Then she heard the voice.
“My God,” Roger Leopold said as he strolled into the room, “I thought they’d never leave.”