Free Evidence of Murder by Lisa Black Page B

before his aunt could slap it away.
    “You haven’t heard him discourse on the many ways in which he truly loved Jillian and Evan truly didn’t.”
    “He’ll need more than that. This guy sounds like a loony tune.”
    “He’s harmless,” Theresa said, but without conviction.
    “Jeesh, Tess, how do you figure that? What you’ve described sounds exactly like your classic call-twenty-times-a-day, leave-notes-on-your-car stalker.”
    She knew this to be correct, but still felt oddly protective of the weepy man. “Because I
dated
guys like him. Nerdy, sweet, too shy for their own good. The biggest mistake I made was marrying the one who
wasn’t
nerdy and shy. I don’t think Drew’s dangerous.”
    Frank considered this, since he had met every boy she had ever dated, but still shook his head. “You don’t know that. Obsession can be a very dangerous thing.”
    They paused to sing “Happy Birthday,” a chorus of happy and only slightly off-key voices. Theresa stammered through the third line; she had forgotten whose birthday it was, but consoled herself with the thought that the lack of oxygen in the room had starved her brain cells.
    The birthday girl ripped into the wrapping paper like a human chain saw. Theresa’s aunt returned to cut the cake. Theresa didn’t envy her the job of dividing the swirls of colored frosting among close to fifteen panting children with strong views on the particular decoration to which they were entitled. She turned again to Frank. “Yes, obsession can turn violent. But so can greed, and the idea of that much money makes me look at Jillian’s marriage in a new light. What happened when you told Evan?”
    “I said we found her body, he started crying, that was about it. I offered victim-assistance services, he declined. He asked all the standard questions, where, when, how did she get there. The usual.”
    “And he said she disappeared while he was at work on Monday?”
    “Yeah. She was doing the breakfast dishes when he left at nine thirty, gone when he got home about three.”
    “What had she been wearing?”
    “He couldn’t remember. At least not when I spoke to him today—it might be mentioned in the initial missing-person report.”
    “Strange.”
    “Not really. Do you remember what Rachael wore to school today?”
    Theresa handed a slice of cake to a redheaded boy. “The same shirt she has on now, but her black jeans, which are way too tight and I hate them.”
    “Yeah, but you’re female. I wouldn’t be able to recall what my date wore the last time I went out even if you promised me Indians tickets to do it.”
    “But you’re not married to her,” Theresa argued.
    “Married?” the aunt asked.
    “Indians tickets?” the redheaded boy asked. Theresa stuck a fork in his cake for him to use and ushered the next child forward.
    She said again, “It just seems weird. This guy marries an escort who’s had someone else’s child, someone else’s very wealthy child, and three weeks after the wedding the wife is dead?”
    Frank snagged a piece for himself, earning a glare from the next child in line. “Am I missing something here? Jillian wasn’t murdered.”
    “We don’t know that yet.”
    “You said yourself there wasn’t a mark on her. She committed—” A sharp glance from their aunt stopped him. Children’s birthday parties were not the place to discuss suicide. “She did it herself.”
    Theresa persisted, disinclined to stifle herself for a traditional family gathering. The last traditional family gathering she had attended had been Paul’s funeral, and memories of the warmth, the crowd, the discomfort filtered back to her. “I won’t be positive until the toxicology results come back. What if she had too much stuff in her bloodstream to walk, much less walk two miles?”
    “If she did, I’ll look into it. Until then, there’s nothing I can do. You really think the husband murdered her?”
    “He said ‘had.’”
    “Beg pardon?”
    “When