“Yes,” I croaked, forcing the words out. “I recognize him.”
FIVE
“Around The Corner,” I said. “We met through Around The Corner.”
I was sitting at the dining room table with Jake and Detective Hanborn. The kids had come back downstairs once they’d heard her booming voice but I’d shooed them back up. I knew our kids, however. They’d be parked on the winding staircase, far up enough so their feet weren’t visible from my spot at the table, but close enough to eavesdrop on our conversation. I could picture them, lined up in chronological order, their eyes wide and their ears perked as they strained their necks to hear how I was going to explain to Detective Hanborn—and Jake—how I knew Olaf Stunderson.
“What is that exactly?” Detective Hanborn asked, scribbling on the yellow legal pad in front of her.
I swallowed. “It’s a…dating service. Or website. Whatever you call it.”
“A dating service?” Jake asked, his eyes wide. He was parked next to me, his hands gripping the edge of the table.
“Before you,” I said. I reached my hand out to touch his. “After Thornton and I separated. It was way before you and I even started talking again.”
“Who is Thornton?” Hanborn asked, her eagle eyes darting back and forth between us.
“My ex-husband,” I said, still looking at Jake. “It was before you came to visit me. Way before. I went on one date. With Olaf.”
His left eyebrow arched up the way it always did when I said or did something that irritated him. Most of the time, it was charming. Sitting there now, trying to explain that I’d gone on a date with the dead man in our coal chute, it was anything but. Because I was pretty sure Jake wasn’t just irritated. He was pissed.
“You two are married, correct?” Hanborn asked, looking at each of us.
“For now,” Jake muttered.
I tightened my hand on his and looked at her. “Yes. We are married.”
“Alright,” Hanborn said, scribbling on the pad. “Around The Corner.”
“Yes,” I said. I rubbed my thumb across his ring—the ring I’d given him. “Around The Corner. A friend recommended it as a place to meet people. My ex-husband and I had separated and I was…just looking to get out and meet new people.”
Hanborn stared at me impassively and Jake raised his eyebrow higher.
“I was!” I insisted. “Thornton and I divorced and I was looking to meet some people. Not for a relationship,” I said quickly as I glanced at Jake. “I’d been a wife and a mother for almost twenty years. That was all I’d been. And I just felt…alone.”
Detective Hanborn concentrated on her notepad, her white head bobbing up and down as she listened. I didn’t want to go into all of the sordid details about why my marriage had ended or why I’d felt alone. If I’d needed a therapist, the steely-eyed detective sitting in front of me was the last person I’d pour my heart out to. I was just hoping I wouldn’t have to do it in another setting. Like a witness stand.
“So a friend told me about Around The Corner, which was called Around The Corner because Love Is Always Just Around The Corner. That’s their slogan. Anyway, it was easy to use and search profiles and all I wanted was to go on a date and have a normal conversation with another nice, normal adult male.”
A normal adult male. Someone who didn’t spend all of their free hours playing online slots and watching professional wrestling. Someone who recognized I was a woman with thoughts and opinions, not just someone who took care of the house and made meals. Someone who wanted to be an adult and not the fourth child in our household.
“Enter Olaf?” Hanborn asked, her pen poised in mid-air.
“Yes.”
“So you just met the one time?” Hanborn asked.
I nodded, then cleared my throat. “The one time, yes. It would’ve been about two years ago.”
“You sure?” Jake asked. “I mean, if you forgot to tell me you went on a date with him, maybe there were more. Or more guys.”
I frowned at him. “Stop.”
He made a face that looked very much like Grace’s face when she was on the verge of a melt down. My frown deepened and his pout intensified.
“And was that here?” Hanborn asked. “That you met?”
“No, because we’ve only owned this house six months and I was with Jake when we bought it. As I said, the date was about two years ago.” I hesitated. I didn’t want to recount the entire date in front of Jake, especially when he was acting like he might throw a temper tantrum at any moment. “We went to Lotto’s.”
Jake rolled his eyes. “Never going there again.”
“Stop,” I said, my voice tight. “It was before you.”
He drummed his fingers on the table. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
I turned back to Hanborn. “We went for pizza. We had dinner. That was it.”
“Did you meet him there at the restaurant?”
“Yes.”
“And did he…accompany you home?” The question hung over the table like a thick, heavy cloud.
My face flushed. “No. NO. That was the only time I ever saw him. I never even spoke to him again. He didn’t come to my old house and he certainly was never here.”
Hanborn’s mouth twisted into a weird smile. “Well, I don’t know if that statement is accurate since we just pulled him out of your basement.”
My heart beat a little faster. I didn’t like Detective Hanborn and I didn’t like having the conversation in front of Jake. It was like I was suddenly suspect number one because I’d gone on a single date with the stiff in my basement a lifetime ago.
“I didn’t even know about this house back then,” I pointed out. “Anyway, he didn’t come home with me that night and he was never here that I knew about.”
Jake was still frowning and I felt the sudden urge to ask him if he’d like to be deputized. Because it seemed like he was siding with the shrewd detective sitting across from me.
A loud crash sounded from upstairs.
“We’re fine,” Will called. “Everything’s fine!”
I glanced at Jake and he stood up. “I’ll go make sure we still have four kids,” he said. He stood up and placed his hand on my shoulder, giving me a gentle squeeze before he crossed the living room and made his way up the stairs.
Hanborn turned her attention back to me. “The dinner was fine?”
“Sure.” Dinner at Lotto’s was always fine. They served the best pizza in town.
“What did you talk about?”
I sighed. “I don’t know. It was a very unmemorable dinner. Movies. Music. Where we’d lived. The kinds of things you talk about on an awkward first date.”
Hanborn tapped her pen against the legal pad. “Try to remember.”
“Look, there’s nothing else to tell you,” I said, exasperated. “It was a mistake.”
“A mistake?” She perked up. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” I said. “We ate pizza and we talked about boring stuff. He was nice. And completely uninteresting.”
“Were you angry about that?” she asked. “Maybe upset because you’d wasted your time on a date that didn’t amount to anything?”
I almost laughed at her insinuation. “No. He was nice. We had a fine time. But that was it. We shook hands when we said goodbye.”
“Did he call you after?”
“Never called, never emailed, never anything.”
She tapped her pen some more, then shrugged. “Alright. We’ll see what we can find and confirm.”
“I’m telling you the truth,” I said, my voice shaking a little.
“I didn’t say you weren’t,” she said. She ran a hand over her short white hair. “I’ll just need to confirm some things. Routine procedure. You weren’t planning on going anywhere anytime soon, were you?”
“Well, I need to go to the grocery store…”
“No, ma’am. I meant like out of state or out of the country.”
“What? You think I’m going to disappear or something? Because there was a body found in my house? A body that I have nothing to do with?”