Page 117 of State of Alert

“That’s not to say they weren’t empathetic to their mother’s terrible loss, because they were,” Trina added. “At least I know Jada was. We talked about it once. She said that even though she couldn’t stand Zoe most of the time, she couldn’t imagine something like that happening to her or what it must’ve done to her mother to go through that kind of ordeal.”

“The girls said Elaine had a lot of friends, but Frank said she didn’t spend much time with them. Was that your observation as well?”

“I didn’t know a lot about her other friends. She never talked about others.”

“Would you say you considered her a friend?”

“Yes, but it took a long time for me to feel like I knew her at all. She was very guarded for the first few years and seemed to keep our interactions focused on the girls, while I was trying to get to know her. She didn’t seem to want that, so I backed off. Over time, though, as we spent more time together, she started to open up a bit more. She told me once, years after we first met, that she’d debated having kids at all because she knew it would be so hard for her when they got older, but she loved Frank, and he wanted kids, so she’d gone along with it for his sake.”

That was an interesting piece of information they hadn’t had before, which made the interview worth the bother.

“Is there anything else you can tell us about Jada, Elaine or their family that might shed some light on our investigation?”

After thinking on that for a minute, Trina said, “There is one more thing, and I debated whether I should mention it or not.”

“I’d urge you to tell us anything you know. Every detail is critical in a homicide investigation.”

Trina crossed her hands on the table and then focused on them when she said, “About a year ago, Jada asked if she could come to live at our house for the rest of high school.”

Holy bombshell!

“What did you say?”

“We told her we’d have to discuss it with her parents.”

“Did that conversation ever happen?”

“It did.”

“When?”

“Shortly after Jada asked us. Things with Elaine and Zoe were bad and getting worse all the time around then, and Jada wanted out of there.”

“Tell us about the meeting with Frank and Elaine.”

“We asked to meet them for dinner, figuring it would be better to have that conversation in public so it couldn’t get heated. That was a mistake.”

“How come?”

“Elaine totally flipped out and didn’t care who was listening. She said we had some nerve interfering in her family this way and that if we wanted Ali and Jada to remain friends, we needed to butt out of their business.”

“What did Frank say?”

“He tried to get Elaine to calm down. He said that we were just the messengers delivering Jada’s request, and it wasn’t our fault, but Elaine took the whole thing as us being disloyal to them as fellow parents. I tried to reason with her and make her see how difficult it was for Jada to be in the middle of Elaine’s war zone with Zoe. That was the wrong thing to say. She told me to fuck off with my judgment, got up and walked out.”

Judging by the tingling in her spine, this felt like a breakthrough of some sort to Sam.

“What did Frank say?”

“He told us he appreciated our concern and that he wassorry for the way Elaine had reacted. Then he went after his wife.”

“Did you eventually patch things up with her?”

Trina shook her head. “She never spoke to me again, not directly anyway. If we invited Jada to do something with us, that was all done through the girls.”

“I need to ask you something that may seem obscene to you, but I have to ask it anyway.”

“Okay…”

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