to them, she got to the table and pulled out one of its chairs, indicating that they do the same.
They all sat.
“I’m supposed to be at work in about an hour and a half. Should I call them and tell them I’ll be late?”
Juhle and Russo exchanged a glance, and Russo said, “I don’t think we’ll be that long, but if we get close, you’ll have that opportunity. Okay?”
“Fine.” She looked from one inspector to the other. “So.” She drew a breath. “What can I do for you?”
“Well,” Juhle began, “as I said, we’ve got a few more questions for you.”
“About Mr. Como?”
Russo had gone solemn, and she nodded. “Him and a few other things, yes.”
“Am I some kind of a suspect?” Alicia asked.
Juhle answered. “We haven’t identified any true suspects yet, Ms. Thorpe. We’re trying to fill in gaps in our understanding at this time. And hope you might be able to help us.”
“So I’m not under arrest?”
“You are absolutely not under arrest,” Juhle said. “You don’t have to talk to us at all and can terminate this interview at any time.”
“So I don’t need to call a lawyer?”
Russo forced a conspiratorial smile. “If you want to call a lawyer, Alicia, that is your right,” she said. “We could wait here for him or her to show up, or make another appointment later. But we are hoping to keep making progress on this case and thought you would want to help us keep it moving along to catch Mr. Como’s killer.”
“It shouldn’t take us more than a half hour,” Juhle added. “Maybe less.”
“Okay,” Alicia said. “In that case…”
“Great. Thank you.” Juhle took out his pocket tape recorder and placed it on the table between them. “We’ll just be taping what we say to preserve an accurate record. We did this last time, too, you recall?”
“Yes.”
“All right.” Juhle pushed away from the table and leaned back in his wooden chair. He crossed one leg over the other, his body language clearly stating that he was no threat to Alicia or to anyone else. “I apologize if we cover a few things we went through last time, but we’ve been talking to a lot of people and sometimes we lose track of the sources of certain information.”
This was the purest of twaddle, and Juhle knew it. What he was really hoping was that Alicia would contradict her earlier answers, and thus give them substantial leverage. And of course, if Alicia had elected to wait to talk to a lawyer, she would have known this. But there wasn’t anything she could do about it now. She didn’t even seem to realize it might be a troublesome issue.
“Now, then,” Juhle began, “you’d been driving for Mr. Como for how long?”
Tag-teaming, Juhle and Russo walked her through most of her earlier statement-her service at Sunset, her duties as Como’s driver, her perceptions of some other key members of the staff at the Ortega campus-and finally got to her personal relationship with her boss, which she answered as she always had. They were close friends, but not intimate.
Juhle kept it casual. “So, once again, you did not have any kind of physical relationship with Mr. Como?”
“No.”
“Never kissed him?”
She hesitated. “Not in a romantic way, no.”
Russo picked up the distinction. “What other way did you kiss him, then?”
Alicia showed her first sign of true frustration, a sigh accompanied by a slight puckering around her lips. “More like a buss on the cheek, sometimes, when I’d first see him or when I was leaving.”
“Both?” Russo asked.
“Sometimes.”
Russo wasn’t letting it go. “Usually?”
Pausing again, nodding, Alicia said, “By the end, yes. Most days. Just like friends do. Maybe a small hug and a little kiss hello.”
“A hug and a kiss, then?” Juhle asked.
“Not a big hug. Really just like a greeting or a good-bye.” She leveled her gaze at both of the inspectors in turn. “Come on, you guys. You know what I’m talking about. We usually kissed hello and good-bye, just like I’d do with my brother. It wasn’t sexual. We had become friends, that’s all.”
Juhle asked, “And you were still friends on the day he was killed?”
“Yes, of course.”
Russo: “You weren’t having any troubles at work?”
“No.”
“None?”
Alicia straightened up in her chair. “What’s this about?”
Russo came forward, but did not answer her. Instead, she said, “You were at Mr. Como’s service this morning.”
“Not for long.”
“We understand that Mrs. Como asked you to leave.”
A bitter chuckle. “If that’s how you want to put it.”
Juhle asked, “How would you put it?”
“Were you there?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Well, the way I’d put it is she had me thrown out.”
“Why would she have wanted to do that?” Russo asked.
“Because she’s a crazy woman,” Alicia said. “She thinks I had something going on with Dominic, which I think we’ve been through enough, huh?”
“Were you aware,” Juhle said, “that she demanded that Mr. Como fire you?”
“That wouldn’t surprise me. Nothing she did would surprise me.”
“But Mr. Como didn’t tell you that?”
“What?”
“That his wife wanted him to fire you.”
“No. When?”
“Anytime. It never came up?”
“No. Never.”
Sarah Russo, her hands clasped in front of her on the table, raised her head. “And he didn’t, in fact, fire you?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“That last Tuesday was just another day at the office for you,” Juhle said. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“That’s what I’m saying. God knows, I’ve thought about it enough, trying to remember any hint he might have given me while we were on the road about his appointment that night. But it was just a normal day.”
“Tuesday, you mean?”
“Right. That last Tuesday.”
“But you didn’t come into work the next day?” Russo asked.
“Yes, I did. I went home when I saw Dominic wasn’t there.”
“And what about the day after that?”
“What about it?”
“Did you come in then?”
Alicia paused. “No.”
“Why not?”
Alicia hesitated a moment longer. “Well, Dominic wasn’t in, so there wouldn’t have been anything for me to do.”
Russo, on a scent, came forward. “How did you know he wasn’t in?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean-it’s a straightforward question-how did you know Dominic wasn’t in?”
