I waved off her objection. “Different departments. California, Colorado. It’s a left hand, right hand thing. I don’t mean to be repetitive-to force you to be repetitive-but in my business it truly helps sometimes to hear things yourself.” I glanced away from her, then right back. Gibbs Storey was still gorgeous; that hadn’t changed. “I’d understand those reasons. You know, if you were scared. If that’s the reason it took you so long to-”
“But you don’t understand that I love him. And that love made every choice difficult. Every option… complicated.”
Is that what love did? Would Sherry say the same thing? I didn’t know. I’d like to have asked her.
Maybe I would. Probably I wouldn’t.
I said, “I’m having a little trouble with that, I’ll admit.”
Gibbs stood up and crossed the space between us. She leaned over, placing her hands on her knees so that the flawless skin of her face was only about a foot from my eyes. She said, “Would you like something to drink, Detective? Some coffee, maybe? It’ll just take a minute.”
She made me some decaf in a little glass coffeepot with a spring thing in the middle. It looked like something from a high school chemistry lab. The results were pretty good. I bet Alan had a pot just like it. Probably most of Boulder had a pot just like it. Sherry and I would be last. More likely, everybody would move on to another kind of coffee-making appliance before we got around to getting the one with the little spring thing in the middle.
We’d get ours on the sale table at Target.
She served the coffee in a cup with a saucer and a little platter of cookies. Often when I go into people’s houses to talk, they offer me coffee, or a Coke, or even a beer, but I know it’s fake polite, not real polite. They’re seeking to grab some of my advantage; they don’t really want me there. I didn’t get that feeling from Gibbs. She seemed sincere with her coffee and cookies.
“About your husband’s disappearance, ma’am? If you can bring yourself to discuss it-I’m sure it’s painful-I’d very much like to hear your thoughts about what happened.”
Her eyes filled with tears again. Was that grief? If it wasn’t, it was a close approximation.
“I got a call just last night around bedtime. After eleven. It was from someone in Georgia, a policeman, I think. Maybe a firefighter. I don’t recall. They’re still looking for him, you know. I haven’t given up hope.”
“Yes, I know. That’s why I called it a disappearance. I’m sure they’re doing extraordinary things to find him.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Was last night like him? Like your husband? To stop and help someone like that? That was a courageous, selfless thing he did. An act of true heroics.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe it’s the work I do, maybe it’s just some inborn cynicism-I admit that’s a fault of mine-but I’ve come to believe that some of us are born with more of the Good Samaritan gene in us than others. I’m curious where Sterling fell on that spectrum.”
She thought about it for a moment.
“It wasn’t like him at all. Stopping to help someone like he did. Usually Sterling put his own self-interest first. It’s not one of his best traits. Love doesn’t require perfection, does it?” Her eyes found the small plate in front of me. “You don’t like the cookies. Some fruit, maybe, instead? I think I have grapes.”
I almost got stuck on that question. Not the cookies-and-fruit one. The one about perfection. Sherry hadn’t done what she did because I wasn’t perfect. No, that’s not why she left. That had to be true. The day I said “I do,” I knew I wasn’t perfect. I went to bed every night knowing I wasn’t perfect. I knew it the same way I knew that the stars felt like snowflakes under God’s feet. I just knew it.
She knew it, too. Sherry left me for some other reason then, something more.
Or something less.
“No, ma’am. No thank you on the fruit, and no, love doesn’t require perfection. So what evidently happened last night at the Ochlockonee River?” The name of the Georgia river rolled magically off my tongue. “Him stopping to rescue somebody. That would have been an exception then, what we might consider an anomaly?”
She nodded. “I’ve been comforting myself with the possibility that it was an act of… you know, contrition? Atonement?”
“Because he heard about the investigation that was going on? He was making up for what he had done?”
“Yes, I’d like to think so. I’d been keeping him informed of what was going on here, you know, legally. Sterling knew what kind of trouble he was in.”
I lowered my eyes and allowed my expression to soften before I looked back up. “My understanding is that at the time of the… tragedy, he was traveling to visit a friend?”
“Yes, an old college friend. A man named Brian Miles. Brian lives just outside Albany, Georgia. He’s a tech guy. An electronics genius of some kind. I don’t know him that well. He and Sterling used to chase girls together in school-he’s that kind of friend. They stayed in touch. We never socialized much together, though. I always thought Brian was kind of, you know, gay. Sterling says not.”
Relevance?Got me; I filed it.
“And this visit? It was typical for Sterling to look up old friends during business trips?”
“No. Not male friends anyway, not just for the hell of it. Sterling likes women for company. He prefers women for company. Always has. He always will.”
She managed to state it as though it were a simple fact, as though he preferred Hilton to Hyatt or Pepsi to Coke. But there had to be something more, didn’t there? When people do unexpected things at unexpected times, it’s important.
“Has that been a problem for the two of you? That Sterling prefers women for company?”
She stared at me again. She had quite a repertoire of stares. This one was an it’s-none-of-your-business stare.
“All couples have issues, Detective. We have ours.” She glanced at my stubby left hand and spotted the thin gold band almost disappearing in the lard on my finger. “You’re married, aren’t you?”
I was tempted to get lost with her. Tell her about Sherry and Simon and having Thanksgiving alone. But I don’t tell stuff to strangers. Certainly not to strangers treading in homicide soup like Gibbs Storey. So I didn’t tell her. But I knew I’d come close.
I came close because she’s so pretty.
That was an ugly realization.
I moved my right hand so that the gold ring was no longer in view. What did I want to ask? I wanted to know how in the world a man could prefer the bed of another woman when he was married to the one who was sitting in front of me. I opened my mouth to ask at least twice, but each time I chickened out. Even rehearsing the words in my head, they sounded wrong.
I ended up asking a safer question. “So this whole sojourn from Tallahassee was unusual? The trip to see an old friend, a man? Then stopping to aid a stranger. Were you aware that Sterling was going to visit Mr. Miles?”
“Yes. Yes, I was. Sterling called me during the football game in Tallahassee. He knew about the search of our home, about the detective waiting here from Laguna Beach. He knew what was facing him here. He really wanted to talk it out-you know, his situation-with someone he trusts. Sterling doesn’t have too many male friends, but Brian is someone he trusts. As much as he trusts anyone.”
“Mr. Miles?”
“Yes.”
“The one he chased girls with?”
“Yes.”
“Was Sterling angry with you for your role in exposing him to the police?”
She maintained her balance and matched my steps as though she was accustomed to following bad dancers.
“He was, and he wasn’t. I’ve been so torn-my loyalty to him, my love for him. An impossible choice. He understands that I’ve been placed in a difficult position by all this.”