Page 14 of Safe Enough

“I didn’t.”

“She’s known to have uttered threats. Him too. I’m telling you, if she was gone, we’d be looking at him, for sure.”

Wolfe said nothing.

The cop said, “Therefore we have to look at her. We have to be sensitive about equality. It’s forced on us.”

The cop looked at Wolfe one last time, working man to working man, appealing for class solidarity, hoping for a break.

But Wolfe just said, “I’m working here. I don’t see things.”

Wolfe saw cop cars up and down the road all day long. He didn’t go home that night. He let the Dodge Caravan leave without him and went over to Mary Lovell’s house.

He said, “I came by to see how you’re doing.”

She said, “They think I killed him.”

She led him inside to the kitchen he had visited before.

She said, “They have witnesses who heard me make threats. But they were meaningless. Just things you say in fights.”

“Everyone says those things,” Wolfe said.

“But it’s really his job they’re worried about. They say nobody just walks away from a job like his. And they’re right. And if somebody did, they’d use a credit card for a plane or a hotel. And he hasn’t. So what’s he doing? Using cash in a fleabag motel somewhere? Why would he do that? That’s what they’re harping on.”

Wolfe said nothing.

Mary Lovell said, “He’s just disappeared. It’s impossible to explain.”

Wolfe said nothing.

Mary Lovell said, “I would suspect myself too. I really would.”

“Is there a gun in the house?” Wolfe asked.

“No,” Mary said.

“Kitchen knives all accounted for?”

“Yes.”

“So how do they think you did it?”

“They haven’t said.”

“They’ve got nothing,” Wolfe said.

Then he went quiet.

Mary said, “What?”

Wolfe said, “I saw him hit you.”

“When?”

“Before the holidays. I was in the woods, you were on the lawn.”

“You watched us?”

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