Page 136 of Passions in Death
“I’d like to add something I just learned, via Detective Callendar.”
Eve relayed the story.
“Hearing that story didn’t surprise you,” Mira commented.
“No. You, either.”
“No, but again, some of our work runs in the same lane of human behavior. He enjoys his social standing, again as he sees it. From a solidly, dependably upper-middle-class background, and a classically traditional one, he rose a bit above as a teenager. Class president, star athlete, and a pairing with a popular and attractive girl that made them both stars in that arena. I don’t believe either of us will be surprised to find at least some—especially on lower rungs of the social ladder—of his former schoolmates won’t remember him with particular fondness.”
“He’s a bully,” Eve said, “but not an obvious one. He hovers, observes, insinuates, placates. He’s ridden some on his looks, like Lopez. His job makes him a kind of boss, and in a shiny venue. Both are important to him. Appearances are important to him. I’ve seen Becca’s high school pictures, and he wouldn’t have looked twice at her back then. But since? She…”
“Blossomed?”
“Okay, that works. She found a style that suits her, developed confidence in herself, her looks, her work. But he didn’t move to the city for Becca—even if he knew she already lived and worked here. He moved because of Shauna.”
“Yet they remain friends.”
“He found a worthy substitute. And, surfacely, she’s a kind of redhead, too. If he follows his family pattern, he’ll want to be married around thirty, and to a white woman, or at least not obviously mixed race. He’ll expect to have a child within two or three years, and for the woman to take leave from her work and serve as professional mother for at least the first five years after that.
“It’s like a template,” Eve added. “And it’s pretty rigid. Those who deviate tend to drift away.”
“Then why kill Erin?” Mira lifted a hand, turned it palm up. “He has Becca to suit his lifestyle.”
“Shauna was his—half of the whole. He may want her back, I’m not sure about that, but she was his, then she wasn’t. Like with Lopez, her relationship with Erin might have triggered feelings. It was one thing, at least acceptable, since he had Becca, for Shauna to sleep with attractive men. But she deviated from the template.”
“And whose fault is that?”
“Yeah, has to be Albright—manipulating, using, and so on. Not half of the famous Shaunbar. He manages. Not just the men’s store, but people. And Shauna moves out of that scope—she can’t be managed when she’s marrying someone who doesn’t fit the pattern. And what about the years they were together? What does it say about that, about him?”
“To him? She’s made a terrible mistake. She’ll not only ruin her life, but smear their history together. Diminish it—and him. It’s very personal, as the murder was very personal.”
Eve set the tea aside, then pulled out her ’link. She cued up the recording to the smirk.
“This is him, right as Lopez slapped Hunnicut.”
Mira took the ’link, studied the screen. “An unguarded instant. A mean, satisfied smile. A derisive smirk. An approval of Hunnicut’s comeuppance. His feelings for Hunnicut are very complicated, aren’t they?”
Mira handed back the ’link. “He needs and holds on to what they were together, the glossy couple admired, envied, even revered by their peers. I believe he may have genuinely enjoyed their friendship—with him managing it—while he cemented a relationship with the old schoolmate, and his former love’s best friend.”
“It says I’ve got someone, and—during that time—you don’t. No one that sticks. Until Albright.”
“Until,” Mira echoed. “He may have been somewhat amused initially, then appalled when it became clear the relationship was serious. Undoubtedly alarmed by the idea of marriage, a future, when he began to disrespect, at the least, the woman who’d once been half of his whole due to what she became.”
“And the last straw—Maui,” Eve added. “How could he allow Albright to fulfill that dream? More, how dare she try to? And she has the nerve to ask him to help her pull it off?”
“You conclude Erin needed to die—the only clear way to stop the wedding, the mistake, the deviation. But Shauna had to be punished, had to suffer some consequences for her choices, for tainting what they’d been to each other, what they’d had together.”
“That’s the nutshell.”
Now Mira set her tea aside. “I don’t disagree.”
“I need more.”
“I think you’re taking the right direction in speaking to former classmates. So much of his persona is still tied there. You might dig up some former staff. Current may not wish to speak frankly about his attitudes on the job.”
“I’ll do that.”
“And when you interview him, when you’re ready to, make him angry.”
