She found her sunglasses inside her coat pocket and put them on. I saw myself reflected in the lenses. “That’s easy for you to say. You didn’t hear me insisting to the detectives that Hans couldn’t possibly have been fucking Ashley Kim.”
“You were in denial.”
She took a sip of tea to recover her composure. “I remember telling you how well I understood Hans, how there was no way he would have chosen a twerp like Ashley over me. I still have no idea what he saw in that kid. But you never really know someone until your relationship with them is over.”
“What do you mean?”
“At the end is when all the secrets come out. I never would have imagined Hans could have committed suicide, let alone murdered someone. He had too much self-regard to take his own life.”
The last time we’d spoken, she’d been certain that her husband was also a victim. “You don’t believe he killed himself?”
“I never would have believed it was possible. But I never believed he was having an affair with Ashley, either.”
I chose my next words with care. “You might not know this, but I was the one who found his body yesterday.”
“Of course I know it,” she said brusquely. “That’s why I asked you to come here.”
“What did the investigators tell you?”
“They told me that his throat was slashed. Then they asked me if Hans had any enemies.”
So Menario was continuing to look at alternate suspects. I was relieved to hear he hadn’t believed Danica Marshall’s assertion that this case was a murder-suicide.
“ Did your husband have any enemies?”
“No one except the rest of the Harvard Business School faculty, the executives he excoriated in his book, and many of his former students. Hans was an arrogant man who never minded being disliked. But I doubt he ever did anything in his life to make someone decide to murder his girlfriend before slashing his throat. Then again, what do I know? I thought he was a faithful husband.”
The sea breeze was beginning to flay my exposed skin. There were so many questions I wanted to ask. “What about Ashley? Did she have enemies?”
“I have no idea. We weren’t girlfriends, for Christ’s sake. Hans and I had her up here last summer, visited some lighthouses, bought lobsters off the dock in Seal Cove, had a few too many drinks.” The bottom half of her face, beneath the sunglasses, was contorted, but her forehead remained smooth. “These are the same questions Detective Menario asked.”
“Did he mention the name Erland Jefferts?”
“You mean the man in prison everyone says is innocent?”
I was somewhat surprised that she recognized Erland’s name, until I realized how much publicity Ozzie Bell had stirred up for him in the Maine media.
My hand was burning like a three-alarm fire. “It might sound ridiculous, but I wondered if there was some sort of connection between your husband and Jefferts.”
“What sort of connection?”
“Had he been following the controversy over Jefferts’s conviction in the papers?”
“I’m not sure what you’re suggesting,” she said warily.
“I’m just trying to make a connection.”
She put two and two together very fast. “You don’t think Hans’s death was a suicide. You think whoever killed the Donnatellis’ daughter also murdered him?”
It irked me that she gave no consideration to Ashley Kim. And I was about to protest that I actually believed Erland Jefferts had killed Nikki Donnatelli, when the weight of what she’d said smacked me in the temple. “You know the Donnatelli family?”
“Of course I know them. I remember Nikki from when she was a toddler.”
Now I was completely confused. It was my understanding that the Donnatelli family hadn’t owned property in Maine for seven years. “Didn’t you just move here, Mrs. Westergaard?”
“My family has had a summer cottage on Parker Point for three generations. I learned to swim off the dock in town. I practically grew up in Seal Cove.”
It took me a while to absorb the importance of what she was telling me. “I thought this was a new home.”
“It is a new home,” she said, “built to replace the falling-down cottage my family has always owned here. This was supposed to be my dream house. I spent years designing it and supervising the construction. And now I can’t even stand being inside it for more than five minutes without wanting to vomit.”
That explained the movers. She must have known days ago that even if her husband was found alive, she could never live in this house again.
“It must be difficult.”
“Let me tell you what’s difficult.” Her voice climbed in pitch. “My family’s been coming here for a hundred years, and still I’ve got illiterate clammers calling me a ‘summer person’ or, worse, a ‘Masshole.’ As far as I’m concerned, I have a far deeper connection to this place than people like you. And through no fault of my own, I am losing that connection forever. Being forced out of your favorite place in the world is a tragedy I hope you never have to experience, Warden Bowditch.”
Her predicament brought to mind the situation Charley and Ora were going through in Flagstaff. I didn’t much care for Jill Westergaard, but her speech did engage my sympathies. “Stanley Snow told me you were selling the house.”
“ Stanley did?”
“We ran into each other last night at the Harpoon Bar.”
“The Harpoon?” She brought her hand to her mouth reflexively. When she took it away, I saw that she had smeared her lipstick at the corner of her mouth. “That wasn’t very discreet of him. What else did my caretaker tell you?”
“Only that you were upset.”
“You’re damn right I’m upset!” She flung her hands wide and accidentally knocked the mug from the railing onto the rocks below. “Who wouldn’t be upset?”
It had been a mistake to come here, I realized. I was only making her more emotional. “Maybe it would be better if I left.”
She grabbed my good arm with sudden fierceness. “Who are you? What’s your involvement?”
“Excuse me?”
“First you break into my house and find Ashley, and then a week later you discover Hans’s dead body in the forest. That’s not a coincidence. You’re involved in this somehow.”
I wasn’t certain if I’d just been labeled a murder suspect. “I’ve just been doing my job,” I explained.
“As a game warden?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a lie,” she said hoarsely. “Stanley told me about you. He says you’re a guilt-driven man obsessed with what happened to Ashley Kim. I want to know why.”
Was this the real reason she’d summoned me to her house? I’d assumed that her apology, however unwarranted, was genuine-that she’d only wanted to confess how deluded she’d been before. Now I began to wonder whether this calculating woman had played me for a sucker.
I didn’t know how to defuse the situation except with candor. “I found Ashley’s car on the night she disappeared, and I suspected something had happened to her.”
She laughed at me. “So is this some kind of mission for you? Are you trying to atone for your incompetence?”
“I need to go now. You have my sympathies, Mrs. Westergaard.”
“I don’t care if you have a guilty conscience,” she said. “You’d better stop sticking your nose into my life!”
Her threatening words chased me out of the house and up the streaming driveway to the top of the hill. It was obvious that Jill Westergaard knew how to push my buttons. The question was why she kept doing it.
