"One call to the police department about that little trick with the badge and I could have you arrested."
"It's real," he said without emotion.
"It's also irrelevant, and it was used to intimidate. I don't like that."
"Okay."
"What do you want?"
"I wouldn't mind knowing who you are, for starters," he said.
She made no apologies. "I'm Rosalie Coven, the center's director."
She left it at that, letting the ensuing pause suggest that her question had been left unanswered.
He got the hint. "I'm trying to find out why Mary killed herself."
Coven's eyes narrowed slightly. "I was told it was accidental."
"Might have been. She still killed herself."
"Point taken. Why do you care?"
"Because I was married to her. Because I'm the only one they could find to identify her at the morgue."
"You also abused her when she was most vulnerable."
Was there anybody in this city who didn't know about that? he wondered. "Most vulnerable compared to what?" he asked instead. "I'm not asking for forgiveness, but I was pretty messed up, too."
"The devil made you do it?" she suggested sarcastically.
He saw where this was going, and knew he'd get nothing in return if he continued. "No," he conceded. "I did it all by myself, and while it sounds pretty lame right now, I've lived with it ever since."
Rosalie Coven stared at him for a few moments before asking, "What happened to the arm?"
"Job-related. I was shot."
"Long ago?"
"About ten years."
"Soon after you two broke up, if my memory's right."
"It's right."
For some reason she wasn't about to reveal, that seemed to thaw Rosalie Coven ever so slightly. The hands unsteepled and she pointed to a metal carafe and some cups on a filing cabinet by his side. "Pour yourself some coffee. It should be pretty hot."
He took her up on the offer, dexterously manipulating the process with his one hand. Coven watched him work, as if grading a test.
"You have doubts about how Mary died?" she finally asked.
"Don't you?" he countered. "So far, people I've talked to said she was on the mend."
Coven shook her head. "I've been doing this way too long to think that means much. You're an alcoholic. You should know."
"Still," he insisted.
She yielded. "I was surprised. I thought she was further along."
He felt the blood rise slowly to his neck and cheeks. "That's it? You had her on the wrong place on the graph? Too bad, but shit happens?"
The woman opposite him leaned forward and rested her forearms on the desk, staring at him intently. "Don't give me that, you little toad. You helped put her on that graph. You don't ever get to be self-righteous."
He held up his hand as if to stop her coming over the tabletop at him. "Okay, okay. Enough with the who's holier crap. Maybe I sent her down this road, and maybe you missed the signs and let her hit the ditch. So, we're both feeling guilty. Who cares? I just want to find out if it's true."
To pay Rosalie Coven her due, she took Willy's dismissal of her outburst in stride and seriously considered his last comment.
"She was one of the few I thought would make it."
"Were there any signs at all she was heading downhill?" he asked.
Coven shook her head. "Nothing. Everything was pointing in the opposite direction."
"Was there anyone here she was tight with? Someone besides you she might have confided in?"
"Louisa Obregon, everyone calls her Loui. They were very close. But I asked her about Mary, and she was as stunned as the rest of us." Coven looked at him sourly before adding, "Not that that'll stop you from pestering her anyhow."
He merely smiled back at her. "What's her address?"
"She lives in the neighborhood, like most of us." She scribbled the location on a piece of paper and handed it to him. "Here. It's probably a waste of time telling a cop this, but go easy with her, okay? She took this hard. She left work right after we heard and hasn't been back since."
Willy glanced at the address and slipped the note into his breast pocket.
Coven gave him a stern look. "I've done you a favor I normally never do, giving you that. You better not disappoint me."
Willy rose to his feet and crossed to the door. "Little late now, isn't it?" The address Rosalie Coven gave Willy Kunkle led him to a slightly improved version of Mary's building: more modern, less run-down, and on a street that didn't look so much like a depopulated, hundred-year-old daguerreotype. In fact, just standing in the lobby with his finger on Louisa Obregon's doorbell, Willy found the surrounding sounds of kids shouting and the smell of food on the stove a crucial vital sign, and a big difference from the stale silence of Mary's place.
"Yes? Who is it?"
"Is this Louisa Obregon?"
The slightly accented voice dropped a note into wariness. "Who is this, please?"
Willy chose his wording carefully, knowing he probably had only one shot at gaining entry. "I'm a police officer, Ms. Obregon. Rosalie Coven at the Re-Coop gave me your address. It's in connection to the death of Mary Kunkle."
There was no response, but the door lock buzzed him through.
He took the elevator to the fifth floor, stepped into the corridor, and heard the same voice call out, "Turn right. About halfway down."
He walked up to a barely open door and saw through the crack both a thick, taut chain and the dark, suspicious eye of a woman checking him out.
"You have identification?"
He put on his best manners while he reached into his pocket. "Yes, ma'am. I should warn you, though, I'm from Vermont. That's where I'm a cop." He held out his identity card and shield so she could read it, keeping one fingertip over his last name.
"The Vermont Bureau of Investigation?" she asked. "What do you have to do with Mary's death?"
"She was from there, as I'm sure you know. The nature of how she died has raised some questions we'd like to have answered."
As implausible as that sounded to him, it seemed to work for her. The door closed briefly, the chain was taken off, and Louisa Obregon let Willy in.
"What do you think happened?" she asked. "We were told it was an overdose."
"Nobody I've talked to seems to think she was back on drugs. I'm not saying it couldn't have been that way, but it does make you wonder."
A little girl in a flowered dress and bunny slippers appeared from around the corner and hugged her mother's knee. Obregon spoke to her quickly in Spanish and the child disappeared. Moments later, they heard the sounds of music leaking in from farther back in the apartment.
"Mrs. Obregon," Willy said. "Could we sit down someplace? I'd like to ask you a few questions about Mary."
But Louisa Obregon stood her ground. "It is Miss Obregon, and there is nothing I can tell you. Mary was fine up to the last time I saw her. She was happy and normal."
"I understand her finances were pretty tight."
Obregon laughed harshly. "Everybody's finances are tight. She wasn't in worse shape than anybody else, and things were going to get better soon."
"How so?" Willy asked, remembering Bob's comment that Mary had been hoping to move soon.
But Obregon wasn't very helpful. "I don't know. Maybe it wasn't true. I say the same thing all the time, too. But she liked her job, and she said she wanted to go back to school to become a drug counselor."
Willy sensed a softness welling up behind her resistant exterior and worked to expand it. "I can see why. It sounds like the Re-Coop saved her life."
It was an educated shot in the dark, but a lucky one. Obregon's eyes glistened suddenly at his words and she nodded vigorously. "Hers and mine both. And by saving mine, Teresa's, too." She pointed to where the music could still be heard in the background. "Mary and I couldn't have made it without Rosalie and the others."