Aaron looked at her in hurt silence. “You genuinely don’t like me, do you?”
“What do you care?”
“I’m not perfect, I freely acknowledge that. But I swear to you, my days as a player, as you call it, are behind me. I am going to end this thing with Hannah. She’ll be disappointed, to be sure, principally because she sees me as her career savior. I did what I could for her with Grandmother. In that regard, my conscience is clear. It’s not my fault the old girl is dead, is it?”
“I wouldn’t know. You didn’t exactly answer my question before.”
“Regarding what?”
“Regarding Carly. Did you succeed in calming her down when you came up here looking for her?”
Aaron’s face dropped. “I can’t say I did, no.”
“Exactly where was she?”
“You’ll have to ask her that. The truth is, I never found her. Not until I heard Hannah scream.” Aaron’s eyes fell on the door to room three. “I came running out here into the hall, and Carly was standing right there outside of Ada’s room with Hannah and Spence.”
“Where had you been?”
“In our room.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, alone.”
“What were you doing in there?”
“Looking for Carly, as I just said. My God, you don’t actually believe I’m the killer, do you?”
“Aaron, I’m simply asking questions,” Des said. All the while thinking that Aaron Ackerman had no one to vouch for him when Ada was strangled. Not a soul.
Downstairs, Teddy finally switched to a new tune-an Ellington number, “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.”
“Do you think it’s too late?” asked Aaron.
“Too late for what?”
“To save my marriage.”
“If the love is still there, it’s never too late. But Carly did tell me that she’s thinking about divorcing you.”
“She would never do that. She didn’t mean it.”
“She sounded like she meant it, but you know her better than I do.”
“I will try to be a better husband from now on,” he said with firm resolve. “I just have to figure out how.”
“By showing her the love and respect she deserves. By being honest with her. Hell, Aaron, do I have to draw you a picture? You’re a smart guy.”
“Not when it comes to women I’m not. I’m still that same lonely fat boy sitting all by himself in the cafeteria, wishing that some nice girl would come and sit-”
“Man, if you start in on this chess-club stuff again, I swear I will get ugly.”
“You’re right, you’re right; I’m sorry.” Aaron scratched irritably at the stubble on his neck. A rash was forming at the edge of his tightly buttoned shirt collar. “Carly will be fine on her own, if that’s the course she decides to take. But I hope that doesn’t happen. I’d genuinely like to save our marriage. I mean that.”
“I’m sure you do. From where I’m sitting, your future depends on it.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because if Carly decides to get nasty, you can forget all about Common Ground. Also your town house, your farm and your stock portfolio. She’d clean your clock in a divorce court.”
“You’re not incorrect,” he admitted. “I simply have to do a better job. If I don’t, I’ll lose everything. It starts at home, doesn’t it? Learning how to listen to each other, I mean.”
“Beats the hell out of Hardball, if you ask me. But that’s just one girl’s opinion.”
“Well, from this moment on, it is my top priority. Carly is my top priority.”
“Glad to hear it,” Des said, wondering if he meant one single word of this.
“May I speak with her?” he asked.
“Not just yet. Soon.”
Des led Aaron back to his room and went to fetch Carly from room eight, her mind turning it over. Aaron had no one to vouch for him when his grandmother was strangled. This gave him opportunity, and that made him a suspect. But what about his mother’s death? Certainly, he had the greatest motive of anyone for killing Norma-becoming lord of Astrid’s Castle was one hell of a motive. Only, what about opportunity? Could Aaron have engineered that digoxin overdose in the night? How? Acting alone? Or with someone else, someone like Hannah, as his accomplice?
Carly was huddled in her mink in a chair before the fireplace, jotting down notes on an Astrid’s Castle notepad and smoking a cigarette. Des still could not get over how much older and plainer she looked with her hair tied back and no makeup on.
“Is it my turn now?” she asked, glancing up at Des a bit skeptically.
Des stayed in the doorway so she could keep an eye on the hall. “If you don’t mind.”
“Of course not.” Carly flicked her cigarette into the fireplace, tore several pages off the notepad and folded them into the pocket of her fur.
“That seems to be contagious today,” Des observed as the professor followed her to the chairs at the top of the stairs. “Aaron was making notes just now himself.”
“We ought to compare them. That would be good for a laugh.” Carly sat in the chair her husband had just vacated, shivering inside her fur. “I was just trying to get some personal priorities straight. I find I think better when I have a pen in my hand.”
“I hear you. With me, it’s a piece of graphite stick.” Des sat back down, gazing at Carly intently.
Carly stared right back at her, her manner not the least bit guarded or uneasy. She was not behaving like someone who had anything to hide from the law. She just seemed cold. “What can I tell you, Des?”
“For starters, where were you when Ada got attacked? Aaron said he came up here looking for you, but you weren’t in your room.”
“I know.” Carly nodded her blond head. “I was having a cigarette out on the observation deck.”
Des shot a look at the glass door down at the end of the hall. “Kind of nasty outside, isn’t it?”
“I’m a smoker,” Carly said. “They shove us out into the rain, the sleet, snow, dark of night-we all ought to just quit our current jobs and become mail carriers. I guess I’m not being very amusing, am I?” She lowered her eyes. “Do you want the real truth?”
“That would be nice.”
“I needed some space from Acky. He can make me so crazy, and I hate feeling that way. I don’t feel like me anymore. Do you know what I mean?”
“I’d like to, Carly.”
“I feel like an airhead in a daytime soap opera. Someone who is bovine and clueless and pathetic. I have a doctorate, damn it. How did I end up this way?”
“You fell in love, that’s how.”
“Never again,” Carly vowed. “I will never let another man do this to me. I’m going to buy myself a nice little brick Victorian near campus in Staunton. I’ll have my books, many comfortable chairs. I’ll get myself a half dozen cats-”
“I can help you out in that department.”
“And I’ll become dear old prune-faced Professor Cade, Mary Baldwin’s faculty eccentric. I’ll have my students over for tea and spirited political discussions. I’ll author a definitive text or two. When I retire, they’ll name a building after me. I’ll certainly be in a position to leave them a lot of money. Just think how many thousands of dollars a year I will no longer be spending to inject toxins into my face.” Carly broke off, her eyes filling with tears. “I’m sorry, you’re trying to take my witness statement and I’m carrying on like a lunatic.”
“You’re not doing anything of the sort. Was anyone else with you out there on the observation deck?”
“Not a soul.”
“Do you know where Aaron was at the time?”
“Why, what did he say?”
“Carly, the format we’re searching for here is I ask the questions and you answer them, okay?”
“Acky was in our room, I think.”
“But you don’t know this for sure?”
“I don’t know anything. I was coming back inside when I heard Hannah scream. She was standing right here in the hall outside of Ada’s room.”
“Can you recall exactly where Aaron was at that moment?”
“He was out here in the hall with Hannah and Spence.”