“One that loved her back. The minute she was free of me he dumped her.”
“You’d have felt better about things if she’d married him?”
“And been happy? Yes. This way she wasted our marriage, for nothing, if you see what I mean.”
“I do,” I said.
He was a well-set-up man, middle sized with sandy hair and square hands that looked as if he might have worked for a living. On the mantel over the fireplace was a picture of a young girl. It had the strong coloration of one of those annual school pictures that kids take, but the frame was expensive.
“Your daughter?” I said.
“Yes. Jennifer. She’s eleven.”
“How’s she handling all this,” I said.
“She doesn’t understand, but she’s got a good temperament. She sees her mother usually every week. Divorce is hardly a stigma in her circles, half her friends have divorced parents.”
“She’s all right?”
“Yes,” Roth said, “I think so.”
“Where is she now?” I said.
“She has soccer practice until six,” Roth said. “I have to pick her up then.”
“You dating anyone?” I said.
“I don’t mean to be discourteous, but you said you were investigating something about my ex-wife and a stalker.”
“Stalking is usually about control or revenge or both. I’m trying to get a sense of whether you are controlling or vengeful.”
“My God, you think I might be stalking her?”
“It’s a place to start,” I said.
Roth was quiet for a time. Then he nodded.
“Yes, of course, who would be the logical suspect?” he said.
“Did you say you were dating?”
“I’m seeing someone,” Roth said. “She’s fun. We sleep together. I doubt that we’ll walk into the sunset.”
“Do you think your ex-wife would invent a stalker?”
“Well,” he said, “she’s pretty crazy these days. So much so that I’m careful about letting Jennifer spend time there. KC and I had a pretty good fight about it, and I can’t simply keep her away from her mother. But I always stay home when she’s there so she can call me if she needs to.”
“So you think she might?” I said.
“No, I don’t really. I think she might go out with her boyfriend, now former boyfriend, and leave Jennifer alone. Or I think she might bring her with her when she and the boyfriend went someplace that was inappropriate for an eleven-year-old girl. She might be crazy that way, sort of like in junior high school where there was a girl who was boy crazy. But for all her drama and affect, she is a pretty shrewd woman in many ways, and I think she loves her daughter, and I don’t think she’d invent a stalker, even to blame me.”
“Why would she want to blame you?”
“Because she feels guilty about leaving me, and she feels like a fool for being in love with a guy who dumps her, and she can’t stand either feeling, so she needs to make it my fault somehow.”
“You seeing a shrink?” I said.
“Oh, yeah,” Roth said. “This is much too hard to do alone.”
“You know the boyfriend?”
“We’ve never met.”
“Know his name?”
“Just his first name, Louis.”
“How do you feel about him?”
“I’d like to kill him.”
“Of course you would,” I said.
“But I won’t.”
“No,” I said.
“You sound like you understand that.”
“Yes,” I said.
He looked at his watch.
“I’ve got to pick up my daughter,” he said. “I don’t want to discuss this in front of her. Would you like to schedule another time to talk?”
