Free The Beast A DeckerLazarus Novel by Faye Kellerman Page B

have become friends—mostly out of our concern for Hobart’s mental health. Over the years, he’d become increasingly odd. Now I’m not immune to eccentricity. My entire maternal half lives in a series of tiny English villages, each one more quirky than the next. But with Hobart, it had crossed the line from different to problematic.”
    Marge had taken out her notebook. “How’s that?”
    “We met when I was young. I was immediately taken with him. He was a very vital man. He reminded me of my father, so I understood men like Hobart very well.”
    “What do you mean ‘men like Hobart’?”
    “You know, these hypermacho males always trying to prove to themselves that they’re Ernest Hemingway’s successor—running with the bulls at Pamplona, mountain climbing in Nepal, navigating an uncharted river in the Amazon. Men like that are well understood in my circles.”
    “What are your circles?” Oliver asked.
    “You mean you didn’t Google me?” She stared at him with mock offense.
    “I looked you up,” Marge said. “All it mentioned was that you were the former wife of Hobart Penny.”
    “Then I’ve done my job well,” Sabrina said. “My parents believed that you should be in the news for birth, marriage, and death. I suppose divorce now is acceptable, but that’s it. Let me give you a little family history. My great-great-grandfather was Jacob Remington—as in Remington aircraft. My mother was a Remington. Myfather was an Eldinger on his mother’s side. If you look up the families, you’ll see that I come from old, old money. We’re the old-fashioned snooty WASPs. My parents were thrilled when I married Hobart . . . that someone wasn’t going to fleece me. Not that they needed to worry.” She pointed to her head. “I know where every dollar goes. Meticulous is my guideline. Hobart liked that about me. That I wasn’t just arm candy. Even with my pedigree and my looks and my brains, it took Hobart five years to propose. It probably had to do with his divorce from his first wife and my age. We met when I was nineteen.”
    “Was Hobart’s divorce a messy one?” Marge asked.
    “Not terribly messy, but there was no love lost. I was not the cause of the breakup. Hobart always had other women. And he was always odd, the stereotypic mad inventor. Not the most socially adroit. I think number one wife had had enough of him.”
    Oliver flipped over a notebook page. “How did you two meet?”
    “At a boring old fund-raiser for some disadvantaged something. We locked eyes, and that was it for me, although his roving eye was apparent even when we were dating. I thought that being wed to me would cure him, silly goose that I was.”
    “Can you clarify what you mean by a little odd?” Marge asked.
    “Although Hobart exuded animal sexuality, he really didn’t give a shit about people—except for beautiful women, which he more or less objectified.” She draped a leg over the armrest. “He’d always had a fascination with wild animals—a TR kind of thing, you know.”
    “TR?” Oliver asked.
    “Teddy Roosevelt. The man who shot lions and rowed down the Amazon when he wasn’t being president. Now I loved a good safari just like the next person. But I like safaris the way that I do safaris—first-class accommodations and armed guards in the open jeep. Maybe a hike or two as long as someone else is carrying the backpack. Hobart wanted to camp out in the wilds of Africa. I mean camp for goodness sakes. As in pitch a tent and eat out of tins and make our own fire and gather up the water from a stream two miles away. Now I ask you. Do I look like the sleeping bag type?”
    “Not to my eye,” Oliver said.
    Sabrina sighed. “Something cracked in Hobart as time passed. He went from being rich and odd to being a very odd, rich man. What really scared me were the delusions.”
    “What kind of delusions?”
    “This is going to sound ridiculous, but he started to believe that he was a wild animal