Page 55 of Wild Justice

Lulu promised she would, and waved goodbye to them as she backed out onto the road. It was nice to be praised, but she could also feel the heavy weight of expectation. They were watching her closely. The whole town was, and she could feel it everywhere she went. They were waiting for her to screw up.

I’m not going to do that.

Glen Foster was a local photographer who usually did family portraits, weddings, anniversaries, and other various occasions. He had a studio just about ten minutes from the sheriff’s station and had agreed to speak with Lulu in between clients.

When she walked into the studio, Glen was still busy taking a golden retriever’s photo. The adorable dog was wearing a brightly colored birthday hat, and there was a fake birthday cake in front of him and a large bouquet of balloons in the background.

Maybe I need to get a dog. Now that I’m almost settled in.

Her furniture was supposed to arrive tomorrow morning, and she was looking forward to having more space. She adored Henry, and they got along well, but they both needed a bit more privacy than they were getting in the tiny apartment above the station.

Glen finished up with the canine that was named Charlie, before grabbing a bottle of water from the small fridge behind the main desk.

“Do you want one, too?”

“No, I’m good, but thank you.”

“We can go into my office, or we can just talk here.”

The studio had a waiting area with a couch and a few chairs. Photos that Glen had taken were all over the walls, and she recognized several people that she knew in them.

“Here is fine,” she assured him. “I just had a few questions for you.”

“Okay, I’ll help you if I can. But why don’t you just go ahead and ask the question.”

“The question?”

“If I had an affair with Dana. I’m not the smartest guy in the world, but I’m not stupid. I live in this town, and I heard the rumors. Everyone thinks that Dana cheated with me, and that’s why she and Jay got a divorce. Except that they’re wrong. Dana and I never had an affair. The fact is, we didn’t like each other very much.”

“You hated her?”

“No, not at all,” Glen laughed. “We didn’t hate each other. We just didn’t like each other. There’s a difference. Dana was okay. It’s just that Jay is my best friend, you know? And when he started dating Dana, they got serious real fast. I told him to slow down, take his time. Have fun while he’s young, but he didn’t listen. Dana found out that I was encouraging him to not get married, to wait a few years. She always resented me for it. I guess she got the idea that I thought she wasn’t good enough for Jay, which wasn’t the case at all. I just wanted him to slow down.”

“So, you were jealous of all the time Jay spent with Dana?”

“I think you expect me to deny it, but yes. I was jealous. Jay and I went from hanging out several times a week, to having a guys’ night every now and then. He’s one of those guys who when he has a girlfriend, all his friends cease to exist. Then when they breakup he expects all of us to be there to hear him whine about how perfect she was and how miserable he is.”

Some of Lulu’s friends were the same way. She hadn’t liked it much either. She couldn’t blame Glen for his stance.

“If you weren’t the reason Jay and Dana got a divorce, what was it?”

“It was a lot of things,” Glen explained. “They argued a lot about stupid shit. Who left the cereal bowl in the sink, and who dropped their wet towels on the bathroom floor. The answer to both of those, by the way, is Jay. Dana tried to keep a tidy house, but Jay is a slob. I know because we were roommates for about four years. But that’s not the big reason they broke up. Dana ended things because Jay was smothering her to death. I think she ran out of sheer self-preservation.”

“Can you expand on that? How did he smother her?”

“He wanted to do everything together. He wanted to spend every minute that he wasn’t at work with Dana. Now in the beginning of a relationship that seems sweet and romantic. But after a couple of years of it, I think Dana wanted a little freedom. She wanted to see her friends, she wanted to run to the grocery store. Alone. Christ, he didn’t even want her to run to the store for bread and milk without him. He wanted them to be joined at the hip. When I questioned him about it, he said that he loved her so much he wanted to spend all his time with her.”

That didn’t sound healthy. But then Allie had seemed overly jealous as well. Were she and Jay two peas in a pod?

“Let’s skip forward in time a bit. What were you all arguing about the night at the sports bar?”

“That was nothing,” Glen scoffed. “Jay asked Dana how she was doing since they hadn’t talked in a while. It’s my opinion that he’s never truly gotten over her. Anyway, it was all fine until Allie got in the middle of them spewing her jealous crap. Dana told her off, and I came over and took Dana’s side. Then Dana told me that she wasn’t going to like me just because I took her side, which is such a Dana thing to say. That’s it. That’s all it was.”

“Allie was jealous?”

“Allie is always jealous,” Glen said with an eye roll. “It’s ironic, really. Jay was clingy with Dana, and now Allie is clingy with him. To his credit, he doesn’t seem to mind, but I think she’s batshit crazy.”

“Did you tell Jay that?”

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