She jabbed at the phone with a manicured hand and swiped under her sunglasses.
"I'm sorry to disturb you," I said gently. "But are you okay?"
She turned to me and adjusted her glasses; I noticed thick makeup on the side of her face closest to the wall. "I've had a really bad week," she said. "I don't usually break down in public; sorry."
"No need to be sorry," I offered. "Mine's not been so hot, either."
She considered me from behind the dark sunglasses, which dwarfed her heart-shaped face. "Wait. You're the bookstore owner, right?"
"I am," I confirmed.
"So you're... you're the one who found him," she said, leaning in.
"You mean Cal Parker?"
She nodded. "I... I was seeing him," she said, and she took a deep breath. "I just can't believe he's gone."
"I'm so, so sorry," I said. "What an awful thing to happen."
Her lower lip trembled. "He... he was murdered, right?"
I nodded.
"How?"
"I'm not supposed to say," I said.
"Was it... well, quick?"
"It looked like it," I said. "I hate to ask this, but... do you have any idea who might have wanted to do something like that to him?"
She bit her lip. "From what I've heard, it could be you."
"It's not," I assured her. "Trust me. I only met him the first time the night before. I could never do anything like that to another person." Besides, I added silently, if I were going to do in anyone, it would be Agatha Satterthwaite. Or Scooter Dempsey.
"I want to know what happened, too. I... I was with him that night."
"You were?" I asked, although I already suspected as much.
"We had champagne... it was my birthday. And then we got into an argument, and I told him I didn't love him, and now..." she sobbed. "Now I'll never see him again so I can't tell him I didn't mean it."
"That's awful," I said, reaching out to touch her hand. She grabbed onto my hand as if it were a life preserver and she were a drowning woman surrounded by hungry sharks. "So what happened after the argument? Did he go out for a walk?"
"I don't know," she said. “I left right after we fought. And now... I keep thinking that if I'd stayed, maybe he wouldn't be dead."
"Nothing you did or didn't do had anything to do with what happened to Cal Parker," I said. "If someone really meant to do this, they would have found a way."
"You think?" she asked.
"Yes," I confirmed, using the same tone of voice I used to talk my kids through their self-doubt.
"I'm Deirdre, by the way," she said. "Deirdre Sloane."
"Max Sayers," I said. "Good to meet you, although I'm sorry about the circumstances.”
"Me too," she said forlornly.
"I know it's hard, but the thing now is to figure out what happened, so whoever did it doesn't kill again."
"What do you mean? You think someone else might die?"
"I don't know," I said. "I don't know why someone killed Cal. Do you have any ideas?" I asked a second time.
She lifted her sunglasses slightly to dab at her eyes, and I suddenly understood why she wore the glasses inside—and why she had applied such heavy makeup to her already smooth skin.
Even through the pancake make-up, I could see an ugly purple bruise blossoming under her eye.
"Why would someone want to kill him?"
I shrugged. "Did he make life difficult for anyone?"
She snorted. "Just about everyone in Snug Harbor, it seems like. He wanted change. Nobody likes change."
"What kind of change?"
"Modern, standardized business procedures," she said. "Making sure the town was profitable. There were a lot of old-timers who wanted things to be just like they always were. Not come into the 21st century, you know?"
"Like who?"
"Well, the guy from the Salty Dog was livid with him for cracking down on code violations. He came to the house last week and said Cal should be run out of town on a rail. Or worse."
"Ouch," I said.
"And then there was that woman he beat in the election. Meryl? She tried to chat me up last week, find out dirt on Cal. Her family's been on the board of selectmen since Snug Harbor started. She saw him as a usurper."
"Do you think she'd kill him over it?"
Deirdre shrugged. "You never know what people will do," she said in an odd, dreamy voice.
"This is an awkward question," I said, pausing to sip my coffee, "but do you know who inherits Cal's estate?"
She looked away quickly and said, in a flat tone, "No."
I didn't believe her.
"Do you think he might have willed it to his brother?" I pressed.
"No way," she said quickly. "He would have been happy if Josiah left town and never came back."
"Why?"
"Josiah is a jerk," she said. "Always asking for money, when he didn't do anything to earn it. They came from a middle-class background, you know. Cal was a self-made man. Josiah had every opportunity he had—more, in fact. Their parents paid for Josiah to go to a fancy prep school, but not Cal, did you know that? Josiah was the family's golden boy."
"It didn't turn out that way, though, did it?"
"It certainly didn't," she said, turning her espresso cup around with a pale hand. No engagement or wedding ring on the third finger, I noticed. "I admire... admired his drive," she said. "He always got what he wanted, and wouldn't stop until he won."
"Do you think that may have been what happened? He pushed someone and they pushed back?"
Her hands tightened on the cup; the knuckles paled.
