"It's the attorney-client privilege," Jedd said. "If you talk to your lawyer and you let somebody else listen in, the privilege doesn't apply."
"But," Debra said, "this isn't a good time for him to be alone."
"He won't be alone," Gina told her. Matter-of-factly, putting on a tight smile, she added, "I'm afraid that this isn't really a request." She spoke to Stuart. "It's a condition."
Stuart nodded. "Don't worry, Deb. I'll be fine. She's on our side."
Jedd was already on his feet. "Stuart's right, Debra. The best thing we can do is let them go to work."
Worrying her lower lip, Debra seemed to be fighting it for another second, but finally she shrugged, huffed an "Okay, then," and stood up. Stuart got up with her. She put a hand on his arm one more time and told him she'd be on her cell phone if he needed her. "Have you had anything to eat? I could bring you dinner when you're done here. Or we could go out."
"Maybe," he said, "but I've got to be picking up Kym sometime. She's taking the bus up from Santa Cruz."
"Oh God, that's right. Kym. We could go down to Greyhound and get her together. Just let me know."
"I will."
Jedd Conley was standing by the open door, holding it. "Gina, if you need anything else from me, you've got all my numbers. And again, thanks for coming." He cast an expectant glance at Debra, motioned to the doorway.
Debra turned and clipped a cold "Yes, thank you" in Gina's direction.
When they'd gone, Gina sat down in her chair and let Stuart get comfortable on the couch. Meeting his eyes, she smiled. Sitting back, adopting a casual air, she crossed her legs. "So," she said, gently now, "how are you holding up?"
The question caught him off guard. He rubbed a palm along his unshaved cheek. Finally, he drew in a lungful of air and let it out. "Not too well. I keep thinking this can't be real, that I'm going to wake up and it won't have happened."
"I know. That's how it feels at first." Gina took in her own deep breath. "My fiance was killed a few years ago. Sometimes it still doesn't feel real."
"I'm sorry," he said.
Gina shrugged. "You go on." Regrouping, not having meant to reveal even so little about herself, she said, "But you've already told Inspector Juhle that you and your wife were having troubles."
"Having troubles doesn't mean I wanted her to die."
"No, of course not. But how you felt about her may become an issue. It is an issue."
"Is that a question?"
"This is one: Did you love her?"
He hesitated, scratched at the birthmark near his eye. "Once upon a time I did."
"But not anymore?"
"We just weren't very compatible anymore. We didn't like to do the same kinds of things. But until last Friday… I don't know, I had more or less considered it another phase that we'd probably get through like we'd gotten through other ones. Our daughter just started college a couple of weeks ago, and the house felt different without her, but I figured it would settle back to normal sometime. Until then, I'd just wait it out."
"So you didn't want the divorce? On your own?"
"I wasn't actively thinking about it before she mentioned it, if that's what you mean."
Gina nodded. "Close enough. So you weren't fighting?"
"No. She worked all the time and I mostly tried to keep out of her way when she was home. But we hardly talked enough to fight."
Gina took a beat, then came out with it. "What about her sister?"
Stuart's face went dark. "What about her?"
"You and her."
"What are you talking about? There's no me and her. Deb and I are friends."
"Yes, I could see that. Your wife wasn't jealous of her?" "No. Or, at least she had no reason to be."
"That's not the same thing. I'm just telling you that if you have been having an affair with your wife's sister, and it gets out, which it will if you were, it's going to cause problems."
Stuart's voice went up a notch. "It wouldn't mean I killed Caryn, for Christ's sake!"
But Gina needed to nail down this fact. She uncrossed her legs and leaned toward him. "So for the record, Stuart, your relationship with Debra is not now and never has been intimate?"
"No. Yes. Correct, is what I'm trying to say."
Sufficiently ambiguous, Gina thought, and nicely camouflaged. But she simply said, "Okay. Because if you were involved with her, it would be a very strong motive."
"I just said I'm not."
"I know you did." She stared at him and waited.
He returned her steady gaze for several long seconds, unbending. Finally, he came forward on the couch himself. "Besides which," he said, "I was at Echo Lake when Caryn was killed, or died, or killed herself. I believe I've said this once or twice. So who cares what motive I might or might not have? I couldn't have done it."
"Yes," Gina said. "I know that." Again she waited.
"What?" he asked.
"You're not going to like what I'm going to ask you next, and I want you to know that I'm not being accusatory. I'm trying to get my arms around where you are."
This almost brought him to a resigned grin. "I think I can take it."
"All right. If you still loved Caryn enough to say that you were committed to your marriage before she mentioned divorce on Friday, I'm just wondering about where you're putting any sign of grief. Are you sorry, or even sad, that your wife of twenty-some years is suddenly gone? Because if you are, I'm not getting much of a sense of it."
"I told you. It hasn't sunk in yet. I'm probably in shock. I don't know how I'm feeling, to tell you the truth. Conflicted, I guess. Confused. If there's a book or something on proper feelings you're supposed to have when your wife dies, I haven't read it. I loved her once.
We used to be great. Lately we haven't gotten along very well. Last weekend I finally let myself get pretty pissed off at her, and this morning I come home and she's dead." His shoulders sank as he sat back, rubbed at his cheek again. "You mentioned sad. I don't know if I'm sad. I don't know how much I'm going to miss her. I'm sorry if that's the wrong answer."
"There isn't a wrong answer," Gina said. "And even if there were, that was a pretty good one. So what was it that made you stop getting along?"
He barked a one-note, bitter laugh. "Everything. Money, issues with Kymberly, money, me, her, time. Did I mention money?" "What about money?" "She became obsessed with it. I didn't." "Obsessed how?"
"The way people get obsessed with anything. It's all she thought about, cared about, worked on, you name it. If it wasn't going to make her money, she wasn't interested."
"And you didn't feel the same way?"
"Not even close." He held up a hand. "It's a flaw in my character, I know. And if you didn't know, she'd tell you."
"Are you saying she complained about you to other people? In public?"
"I imagine so. She complained about me to me enough."
"But you weren't fighting? Were you ever tempted to hit her?"
"Tempted? Sure. Did I ever? No. Let me ask you one: Juhle really thinks somebody killed her? He thinks this was a murder?"
Gina nodded. "I got the very strong impression he's leaning that way."
This gave Stuart a moment of pause. His eyes scanned the corners of the ceiling, then came back to Gina. "I'm starting to be pretty glad they talked me into you," he said.
Seven
Juhle got Gina Roake's message that she was representing Stuart Gorman, but couldn't do anything about it in the near term. He was only a few blocks away from the Travelodge, but he was on his way to Russian Hill to try to talk with some of the neighbors.