Eyes open again, he pulled away from the wall, rested his hands on the back of her chair. “Hackett let me in.”
She hadn’t asked and didn’t know why Gregory needed to explain, but took it as a sign he’d eventually spill his guts.
“I’ve gone through all the drawers,” she said. “I think what’s in the box is everything.”
She dumped the contents of the dustpan in the trash and came within a foot of the man. He smelled, not badly, just a hint of sweat as if he’d spent a restless night, then skipped his morning shower.
He stepped back. “Sorry about the way I sounded. I’m preoccupied. I hope you’ll forgive me.” He nodded toward the ceramic dust still coating her desk.
“It wasn’t my mug, Mr. Gregory.”
He swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing. The shadow cast by the overhead light gave the contours of his esophagus a lizard-like quality. The man radiated bad vibes.
She touched his arm and reeled him back in. She wasn’t done with him yet. “You must have been terribly shocked the night she didn’t come home.”
He looked down at her plain, short nails. “There was nothing my wife could do that would shock me, Mrs. Starr.”
So, Hackett had imparted her name.
God, what she would have given to be a fly on the wall during the conversation between the two men. It might have been tug-of-war, stiff politeness, or down-and-dirty knuckle grinding. The suspense was killing her.
Max wanted to push, wanted to know if Wendy had finally done something that shocked her husband. Maybe there was a motive for murder there. The lack of scratch marks on his hands didn’t deter her, but she didn’t know which questions would bring him around, which ones would turn him against her.
Time slipped away. He stepped around her to pick up the box of his wife’s belongings.
“After my husband died, I couldn’t talk to friends. Sometimes it’s easier to talk to strangers.” She knew Cameron would forgive her that lie. The truth was she hadn’t talked to anyone except him. Sutter Cahill might have understood, but Max hadn’t called her. “I’d like to invite you out for a drink.”
In mid-bend, Hal stopped, then straightened. A hand to his mouth, his jaw working back and forth as if grinding his teeth, he regarded her with an unreadable expression.
Unreadable, that was, until he spoke. “So tell me, how does it feel stepping into my dead wife’s shoes?”
The words slapped her in the face as if the man had read her mind. Her cheeks flamed. Hal Gregory’s anger was there in the white line of his mouth, the tense muscles of his cheeks, the narrowing of his distant gray eyes.
Before she could answer, he gave another non-apology. “There I go again. I’m no good with other people’s sympathy.”
Despite the placating words, the guy was pissed as hell. Pissed enough to kill his wife?
“I wasn’t good with other people, either.” She still wasn’t. “The offer stands if you need it.” She prayed he would because this disastrous interview hadn’t answered her main question: why hadn’t he reported his wife missing?
“I’ll call you here if I do.”
Max accepted, then pointed to a bushy spider plant, a multitude of babies hanging from its long fronds. “The plant was your wife’s, too.”
He stepped toward the lateral file closest to the desk. “How did she grow it with no window?” he murmured, then shook his head, as if his wife, and not the plant, had been the mystery in his life.
“Florescent lighting,” Max offered. “Plants love it.”
He turned to her suddenly. “You keep it. I’d kill it.”
Then he walked out.
Max wondered what else he might have killed.
*
In less than a day and a half, Max knew everything there was to know about Hackett’s Appliance Parts from ten different points of view, thanks to the copy machine—the now dead copy machine. Not a person walked into her office for a copy who didn’t offer an opinion on who had killed Wendy Gregory. It was the husband, a lover, the boss, the janitor, even Marvin, the copy repairman. By ten o’clock, when the copy machine finally choked on a glob of toner, she hadn’t learned a thing that brought her closer to finding the murderer, but she did know Hackett’s grapevine inside and out.
Peggy from Payables confirmed the whole office knew Wendy was having an affair with “somebody,” but no one knew who.
Theresa from the front counter said Wendy carried her planner everywhere. Of course, that was after Max accidentally-on-purpose let it slip she’d found the appointment book in the desk.
Archie from the warehouse thought Wendy acted strangely that last day. When Max pushed for more details, he’d shrugged.
It was a start. Not perfect. But more than she knew when she’d walked in the door.
But she wasn’t getting info without that copier, or rather, from the people who used it.
Max resorted to asking the counter girl’s help.