“It’s okay, Shannon,” says the second woman. “I’ll talk to her.”
Shannon gives me a disgusted look that makes her opinion of the situation crystal-clear. I ignore her and focus on Susan instead.
“Did you say your name was Winston?” Susan asks me.
“Yes. Mattie Winston. I work with—”
“Yes, I heard you tell Shannon. But your interest in this is more than just professional, I’d wager. David Winston is your husband, isn’t he?”
Busted.
“Yes. Almost ex-husband, though.”
Susan flashes me an ironic smile. “I would imagine so.” She steps around her sister and onto the porch. “Let’s walk,” she says. “Shannon’s kids have big ears and I don’t want them to hear what I have to say.”
I can feel Shannon’s eyes burning little holes into my back as I step off the porch with Susan. Since I’m not sure just how much Susan knows about Karen at this point, I decide to start with a general question and see what she offers before getting specific. “How long were you and Karen roommates?”
“Not long. Six months. There was someone else before me but I gather that she and Karen didn’t get along too well.”
“How did you know Karen?”
“I didn’t. I answered an ad she placed in the paper. We met, seemed to hit it off, and I moved in a week later. Frankly, I was desperate. I had to move out of my old apartment because the owner had sold the building and I had nowhere to go. What Karen proposed was the perfect solution, one I could afford. I sensed early on that something wasn’t quite right with the woman, but I wasn’t in any position to be picky.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, that whole impostor thing.”
So she did know.
“I don’t get it,” she goes on. “I mean, I always thought Karen was a bit strange, but I never suspected anything like that.”
“I’m not sure anyone did. Do you know if she owned the house?”
Susan shakes her head. “I assumed so at first, but it turns out she was just renting the place. The owner is willing to let me stay there, though I’m not sure I want to at this point. And I don’t know how long it will be closed off for the police investigation.”
“You work at a bank, right?”
She nods, shooting me a wary glance before looking away again. I notice that her eyes are a more natural shade of green than her sister’s.
“Did you have a feel for Karen’s financial situation at all? Was there anything unusual you were aware of?”
She hesitates, as if unsure of her answer. “Funny you should ask that,” she says finally. “Money was a subject Karen didn’t like to discuss. There were times when I saw her counting wads of it—tens, twenties, even hundreds. Yet she always seemed broke and the balance in her checkbook was always low.”
She pauses, giving me a sidelong glance. “I’m not usually a nosy person. I try to respect other people’s privacy,” she says. “But I knew something was going on with Karen and was worried that she might be dealing drugs or something like that. I work at Community Bank and Karen is a customer there. So I sort of peeked at her account activity one day while I was at work.”
“And?”
“And all she ever deposited were her paychecks. Every two weeks. No unexpected withdrawals, no savings, no investments that I know of. So where did all that cash come from? And where did it go?”
“You have an idea, don’t you?”
We have reached a corner and stop there by some unspoken agreement. Susan looks at me and nods, then drops her gaze to her feet. “I think she was blackmailing someone.”
“Any idea who?”
“I thought at one time that it might have been your husband,” she says, giving me a quick, guilty look. “I overheard her on the phone one night threatening to squeal to the wife of whoever she was talking to about his fooling around.”
“Did you tell all of this to the cops?”
“Not all of it. I told them that she’d been seeing your hus–David. But I didn’t think of the money thing until recently, the past day or so. I’ve been so…upset by the murder that I haven’t been thinking straight. Besides, I knew they’d look at her financial stuff as a matter of course anyway, and if anyone found out I’d looked at Karen’s account the way I did, I could get fired.” She gives me a fearful, pleading look.
“I won’t tell anyone,” I assure her. “In fact, our entire conversation is just between the two of us.”
“Thanks.”
“The police said there was an anonymous caller, a woman, who claims to have seen David at your and Karen’s house the night of the murder. Was that you by any chance?”
She frowns and shakes her head. “No. I was gone all night. I wasn’t even in town. My boyfriend lives in Madison. I went there to stay with him for a few days. I had Monday and Tuesday off but I was scheduled to return to work on Wednesday. Rather than fight the rush hour traffic in the morning, I decided to come home Tuesday night. I’d just gotten home when I found Karen.”
If Susan isn’t the eyewitness, I feel certain it must be one of Karen’s neighbors.
“You said you thought at one time that it might have been David she was blackmailing. Does that mean you don’t think that now?”
“I haven’t thought that for a while, though that’s based on a hunch rather than any facts,” she says. “Thing is, I think she genuinely cared for David. I don’t think she would have done that to him. To anyone else? Yeah. But not to him.”
How sweet, I think with no small amount of sarcasm. If what Susan is telling me is true, Karen and David were probably an item much longer than I originally suspected. The realization that the two of them were meeting and conspiring behind my back while they smiled and talked directly to my face every day is galling. Right now I hate them both passionately, particularly Karen. And hating a dead person is a wholly unsatisfactory state of being. It’s hard to imagine what sort of revenge you can wreak on someone who’s already dead.
Susan reaches over and touches my arm, letting her hand rest lightly near my elbow. “There’s something else I should tell you, and I can’t think of a way to broach the subject delicately so I’m just going to ask. Besides, if you work in the coroner’s office, you must know already.”
“That Karen was pregnant?”
“Yes.” She breathes a sigh of relief, closing her eyes. When she opens them again, she studies me closely for a few seconds and then pulls her hand back. I guess she figures it is safe to let go since I’m not about to launch myself into the stratosphere. As if a featherweight like her could hold down a heavyweight like me if I did.
“Did she tell you who the father was?” It pains me to ask and I fear the answer will hurt even more.
“Hell, she didn’t even tell me she was pregnant. I found out when I emptied the trash. I saw the home pregnancy test in her bathroom garbage. Later that night I asked her about it. I expected her to be mad at me for finding out, but she seemed quite happy and unbothered by it all.”
She pauses and gives me an apologetic look that tells me something more is coming. “I overheard her telling someone about the baby on the phone. She said she hoped it would be a boy and that he would grow up to be a doctor as talented as his father.”
I swallow hard, then grasp at a straw. “That still leaves the list of suspects pretty wide open.”
“Perhaps,” Susan says, grimacing now. And then she gives the knife she’s unwittingly plunged in my back a wicked twist. “But it gets pretty narrow when you consider that I also heard her say she wanted to name the baby David. After his father.”