Free Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross

bedroom to collect her plate.
    “Do we have anything sweet?” she asked.
    Hastroll blinked twice. “You’re kidding,” he said.
    “Kidding how?”
    “You mean like blueberry pie?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Pineapple upside-down cake?”
    “That sounds delicious, though just some ice cream will do.”
    Hastroll pointed at his chest and jabbed himself. “I don’t
do
dessert!” Then he pointed at her.
“You
do dessert!”
    Hannah smoothed the blankets over her legs and sighed. “You still haven’t figured it out.”
    “David and I are business partners,” said Frank Cady. “We started this company together. What’s all this about?”
    “Do you know if he and his wife had any marital problems?” Hastroll asked.
    “We didn’t have the kind of relationship where he’d tell me.”
    Hastroll looked around his office. The walls were covered with posters of Marvel Comics superheroes, some of which even he recognized (though he imagined he’d know them all if he and Hannah had any kids): Spider-Man, Silver Surfer, the Hulk. Action figurines lined shelves along with Dungeons & Dragons books, the Dune series and
Lord of the Rings
, a Wolverine phone in a glass case. A light saber, framed with an autographed photo of Cady and George Lucas; a road sign reading YOU SHALL NOT PASS , with a symbol that looked like a wizard. The credenza had four computer screens mounted on a bracket, YouTube and a video game running on two, one filled with lines of code like an endless blank-verse poem, the other a screen-saver slide show of children—Cady’s, he guessed; the boy who’d just faded in and out looked exactly like him. A flat-screen television on the far wall showed five commentators above a ticker silently streaming news, everyone in the world living life through avatars, in simulacra, in worlds within worlds …
    “For what it’s worth,” Cady said, “they didn’t seem like they had problems. At least none beyond Alice’s health.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “Alice struggled with her weight for years. And then she finally got it under control. But none of this matters,” Cady said. “There’s no way David killed his wife.”
    “Was there anyone here Pepin was close with?”
    “Look, Detective, a guy’s wife kills herself. He sees the whole thing. Why drag him through the mud?”
    “I can ask around if you prefer.”
    Cady shook his head. His e-mail pinged. “There’s Georgine,” he said, “Georgine Darcy. She’s a junior designer. She and David were working on some major projects together.”
    Hastroll could tell at first glance that Darcy had been a ballet dancer simply by how she walked with her feet turned out. She was blond, full-lipped, a poor man’s Scarlett Johansson, although there was a bubble of loneliness around her, a remoteness that preceded her as she approached. He made a mental to note to get the neighbor, Rand Harper, to ID her.
    “Miss Darcy?”
    When Hastroll showed her his badge, all the color left her face.
    “Let me see if there’s a conference room available,” she said, then led him down the hallway with her eyes to the ground. “We’ll be private here.” She turned on the light and closed the door behind her, sat down, crossed her arms over her chest, and watched as Hastroll pulled up a chair. He placed his notepad on the table and stared at her until she lowered her eyes.
    “This is about David, isn’t it?”
    “Mr. Cady tells me that you and Mr. Pepin worked together regularly.”
    “We were developing several games together.”
    “Would you say that the two of you were close?”
    Georgine put a fist to her mouth and cleared her throat. “We were.”
    Hastroll waited. “Did the relationship—”
    “Yes.”
    “How long did you and Pepin have an affair?”
    “About a year,” she said. “We broke it off a couple of months ago.”
    “You both agreed to?”
    She looked at Hastroll impassively. “He broke it off.”
    “Why?”
    “He said it