Free The Final Detail: A Myron Bolitar Novel by Harlan Coben Page A

becoming something of a mantra for you, Myron. Say it often enough and you start to believe it, right?”
    “I believe it.”
    “So?”
    “So if she didn’t kill him, someone else did.”
    Bonnie looked up. “If she didn’t kill him, someone else did,” she repeated. Pause. “You weren’t just bragging before. You really do have a background in this.”
    “I’m just trying to find out who killed him.”
    “By asking about our marriage?”
    “By asking about anything turbulent in his life.”
    “Turbulent?” She let out a stab of a laugh. “This is Clu we’re talking about here, Myron. Everything was turbulent. The hard thing to find would be patches of calm.”
    “How long were you two together?” Myron asked.
    “You know the answer to that.”
    He did. Junior year at Duke. Bonnie had come bopping down to the frat house basement dressed in a monogram sweater and pearls and, yep, ponytail. Myron and Clu had been working the keg. Myron liked working the keg because it kept him so busy he didn’t drink as much. Don’t get the wrong idea here. Myron drank. It was pretty much a college requirement in those days. But he wasn’t a very good drinker. He always seemed to miss that cusp of fun, that floaty buzz between sobriety and vomiting. It was almost nonexistent for him. Something in his ancestry, he assumed. It had actually helped him in recent months. Before running away with Terese, Myron had tried the old-fashioned approach of drowning one’s sorrows. But, put bluntly, he usually threw up before reaching oblivion.
    Nice way to prevent alcohol abuse.
    Anyway, Clu and Bonnie’s meeting was pretty simple. Bonnie walked in. Clu looked up from the keg and it was as if Captain Marvel had zapped him with a thunderbolt. “Wow,” Clu muttered, the beer overflowing onto a floor so coated with beer that rodents often got stuck on it and died. Then Clu leaped over the bar, staggered toward Bonnie, dropped to one knee, and proposed. Three years later they tied the knot for real.
    “So after all these years what happened?”
    Bonnie looked down. “It had nothing to do with his murder,” she said.
    “That’s probably true, but I need to get the full picture of his life, travel down any possible avenue—”
    “Bullshit, Myron. I said it had nothing to do with the murder, okay? Leave it at that.”
    He licked his lips, folded his hands, put them on the desktop. “In the past you’ve thrown him out because of another woman.”
    “Not woman. Women. Plural.”
    “Is that what happened again this time?”
    “He swore off women. He promised me that there’d be no more.”
    “And he broke that promise?”
    Bonnie didn’t answer.
    “What was her name?”
    Her voice was soft. “I never knew.”
    “But there was someone else?”
    Again she didn’t answer. No need. Myron tried to put on his attorney skin for a moment. Clu’s having an affair was a very good thing for Esperanza’s defense. The more motives you can find, the more reasonable doubt you can create. Did the girlfriend kill him because he still wanted to be with his wife? Did Bonnie do it out of jealousy? And then there was the missing money. Wouldn’t the girlfriend and/or Bonnie have known about it? Couldn’t that be an added motive for murder? Yep, Hester Crimstein would like this. Throw enough possibilities into a trial, muddy the waters enough, and an acquittal is almost inevitable. It was a simple equation: Confusion equals reasonable doubt equals a not-guilty verdict.
    “He’s had affairs before, Bonnie. What was different this time?”
    “Give it a rest, Myron, okay? Clu isn’t even in the ground yet.”
    He pulled back. “I’m sorry.”
    She looked away. Her chest rose and fell, her voice fighting to stay steady. “I know you’re just trying to help,” she said. “But the divorce stuff … it hurts too much right now.”
    “I understand.”
    “If you have other questions …”
    “I heard Clu failed a drug test.” So much