Free Close to the Bone by William G. Tapply

think I might’ve done something,” she said.
    A waitress appeared at the table. “Just coffee, please,” I said. “Bring the lady a refill.” When she left, I said to Olivia, “You know how it works. You’re the spouse. But I doubt if the police are pursuing any theories right now. They’re investigating. They want all the information they can get. It’s logical for them to talk to you, that’s all.”
    “But you think you should be with me.”
    “Yes.”
    “To protect me.”
    “To protect your rights, yes. But mainly because I figured you could use a friend right now.”
    “I sure can. That’s why I called you.” She smiled quickly. “And I guess I understand that if that friend is also a lawyer, so much the better.”
    “So tell me about last night.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “What you did.”
    She frowned, then said, “Oh. Like, do I have an alibi?”
    I shrugged. “Yes.”
    “I had a meeting up in Salem until about seven-thirty or eight. Then I went home.”
    “Directly home?”
    “Yes. Directly home.”
    “Then what?”
    “Then nothing. I went home, heated a frozen chicken pie in the microwave, ate it while I watched the news on CNN, and went to bed. I read for a while and then went to sleep.”
    “Any phone calls?”
    She frowned for a moment, then shook her head. “No. No calls. Nobody to verify where I was. That’s what you’re getting at, isn’t it?”
    “The police might ask,” I said.
    The waitress brought our coffees. Olivia stirred milk into hers.
    “I don’t have any alibi, Brady,” she said. “After I left the meeting I went straight home. I had no visitors. I didn’t talk to anybody on the phone until I got that call from the Coast Guard. I could’ve gone up to Newburyport and dumped Paul off his boat. There’s nobody to say I didn’t. Except me. And if you don’t believe me—”
    I gripped her wrist. “Stop,” I said softly. “Cut it out. The police might ask these questions, and I want to know the answers before they do. No one’s accusing you of anything.” I let go of her wrist and took a sip of coffee. “It would help me to know what happened to the two of you.”
    She shrugged and looked down into her cup.
    “You were separated,” I said. “Paul moved out. What happened?”
    She lifted her cup to her mouth and held it there for a moment. Then she put it down. “We just drifted apart, I guess.”
    “That’s no answer, Olivia.”
    She looked at me, then nodded. “No. It’s really not. It’s true, but it’s not really what happened. See, as soon as Paul took the job with Tarlin and Overton, he changed. Before, when he was prosecuting, he was a wild man. Just bubbling with energy and enthusiasm and—and righteous zeal. Oh, he loved to nail the bad guys. He was making justice happen, he liked to say. He really believed in it. He was like a kid. It was like electricity just crackled out of him. We had so much fun. I loved it. I thought he was the sexiest man. You know?”
    I nodded. “I know what you mean,” I said. “I knew Paul back then, too.”
    She took a quick sip of her coffee. “I mean, sometimes he’d work fourteen or sixteen hours a day. And when he got home he’d be absolutely wired. He’d keep me up half the night talking about his cases. We didn’t see that much of each other. But when we were together, it was intense. I had my own career.” She smiled. “Our life was full and complicated and exciting.”
    She bowed her head for a moment. When she looked up, she was no longer smiling. “Everything changed when he took that job. He still worked long hours, and he was making about ten times as much money. We bought a nice house and he got a new boat and everything, and we tried to pretend things were great. We were moving up in the world, right? But when he’d come home, he’d plop himself in front of the TV. Or during the fishing season he’d just change his clothes and hitch the trailer to his car and take off. He