Aldridge sat down on the bed. Peters moved to the corner of the room.He looked like he wanted to be anywhere else. Jessie found his demeanorunnerving, but chose to keep her focus on the giant man sitting befuddled onthe bed before her.
“What then?” he asked apprehensively.
“I spoke to your wife,” she said without preamble. “She explained whyshe left.”
She let the comment hang in the air, seeing how he’d respond.
“What did she say?” His voice was frustratingly impassive. In the spaceof a minute, he’d gone from annoyed to apologetic to cryptic. Since he wasn’ttipping his hand, Jessie had to be careful how she answered the question.
“She told us she wasn’t into the kind of activities you all hadplanned. I can understand why. But considering that she obviously has a bit ofbias, I wanted to give you a chance to explain yourself. This is your oneopportunity to come clean, in your own words. If you hold out on me and I haveto pull teeth to get answers, it’s going to go much worse for you. So make yourchoice.”
She stood still, waiting for his reply. She’d learned that sometimes itwas best to let an interview subject stew, their imagination conjuring upconsequences far worse than she could administer. She saw that Aldridge was goingthrough exactly that process. When he finally spoke, she could tell he wasspooked.
“Look, I’ll tell you,” he said resignedly. “But I don’t know what thishas to do with Gabby’s death. The other couples we came with—they’re swingers.”
Jessie let the admission settle in. It was hardly the most shockingrevelation she’d heard in her career. In the last few years, she busted up anunderage sex ring, caught a killer intent on executing cheating women, andnailed a couple who worked in tandem to murder a woman they’d both beensleeping with. Swingers was comparatively tame.
“Okay,” she replied. “What does that mean exactly?”
“They come to this place a few times a year and I guess all the rulesgo out the window. Apparently the Paragon caters to stuff like that. There arehotel staffers who work as waiters or porters or housekeepers but do doubleduty as sexual partners.”
Jessie looked over at Peters, who had a guilty expression on his face.It was now clear to her why he’d been so reticent to pursue this line ofinquiry. He clearly knew all about the hotel’s reputation.
She bored into the detective with her eyes, furious at how muchinvestigative time he’d cost her by keeping this secret. She wanted to rip intohim then and there, but that confrontation would have to wait. With mucheffort, she swallowed her frustration, said nothing to him, and returned herattention to Aldridge.
“Why did Ariana get cold feet?” she asked.
“She didn’t,” he told her. “We didn’t know about any of this until wegot here. Friday night was just like a normal vacation. They only sprang it onus yesterday. I guess they wanted to give us a chance to settle in. Ari wantedno part of it. I was more…curious.”
“And that’s what set her off?” Jessie pressed.
“She seemed like she might be open to the idea at first,” he said. “Butthe more she heard about it, the less she liked it. She said it seemed likecheating. I said it wasn’t cheating if everyone was cool with it. She told meshe definitely wasn’t cool with it. It escalated from there. She accusedme of wanting an excuse to sleep with the hot bartender. That’s around the timeshe started demanding to go home.”
“But you didn’t want to go,” Jessie prompted.
“I thought she was overreacting and made the mistake of saying so. Thatonly made things worse. She started packing her bag right then. Nothing I saidafter that mattered. She wouldn’t let me come with her.”
He was saying all the right things but Jessie didn’t quite buy it andshe let him know.
“It doesn’t seem like you tried that hard. You could have taken thenext ferry and met her back home. But you didn’t do that.”
“No,” he said, a flush of arrogance in his tone. “I thought about itbut then I said ‘what the hell—I’m not going to ruin my weekend just because shegot all puritanical.’ I’d been looking forward to a break from a crying babyfor weeks and then I had to cut it short, just because my wife got on her highhorse? I don’t think so.”
“So you stayed to spite her,” Jessie poked.
His face got red and he sounded like he was trying hard to keep theagitation out of his tone.
“No, I just didn’t want to be bullied. Sure, I wanted to have a nicedinner, maybe get a little loaded, and relax. What do I care if these guys liketo bed down with the staff? It’s none of my business. For the record, I didn’tdo it. Ask anyone who works here if I was with them. They’ll all tell you thesame as me: no.”
Jessie could tell that his anxiety was giving way to defensiveness. Shewas dangerously close to the point where he might start talking about invokingrights and talking to lawyers. She wanted to avoid that mess, especially whenshe wasn’t sure she could count on her partner, and decided to back off fornow.
“Thanks for your time, Mr. Aldridge,” she said abruptly, turning toleave.
She caught Peters’s eye. He looked likehe might prefer to stay in here than face her outside. But as irked as she waswith him, she was more fixated on something else. After Ariana Aldridge’s inadvertentrevelation, and her husband’s reluctant confirmation, she finally had a stringto pull at. If she handled it right, hopefully the whole thing would unravel.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Night Hunter sat patiently in his car.
He’d fasted since last night so he wouldn’t have to leave his post to goto the bathroom. And he had water bottles if things got dire. He didn’t lovethis part of it. But it was essential to know what he was dealing with. Andthat required patience, something he had in spades.
It had taken him a while to find the house. There
