Page 108 of Dead Man's List

“Not the way you heard it, I know.” Trisha wrung her handsabsently. “I was the topic of a lot of gossip at the country club.” She eyed Connor warily. “I know your mother, Detective. She was kind to me after Munro.”

“She was the one who suggested we speak with you,” Connor confessed. “She seemed to think that you didn’t want to be with Munro.”

“Because I didn’t,” the woman said through clenched teeth. “He was a monster.”

“What can you tell us, ma’am?” Kit asked, trying to be gentle. This woman seemed emotionally brittle.

Trisha stared down at her hands. “My husband and I were separated. I was at the bar at the country club that night, drinking too much. Munro seemed to care, like he wanted to listen.” She exhaled heavily. “The next thing I knew I was waking up in my own bed and he was in the shower. We’d had sex, that much was clear, but I didn’t remember anything about it.”

“Do you think he drugged you?” Connor asked.

“I know he did,” Trisha said with a bitter laugh. “He told me that he did.”

Bold,Kit thought. “Did he blackmail you, ma’am?”

“Yes, but not because we had sex. My husband had his next wife all lined up by then, so he didn’t care what I did or who I did it with. We had no prenup. I was always going to get half of our assets, so there was no reason for Munro to do…what he did. It wasn’t like Munro telling my husband we had a one-night stand was going to make me get less money.”

“But it wasn’t just a one-night stand. Munro raped you,” Kit murmured, realizing how Trisha had glossed over that fact.

Trisha jerked a nod. “Yeah, I guess he did.”

“If it wasn’t the sex, then what did he blackmail you about?” Kit asked.

Trisha closed her eyes. “When Munro contacted me later to give me the terms of the blackmail, he told me that I was a ‘very chatty drunk.’ I’d told him a secret I’d been holding on to for sixteen years, at that point. No one knew. No one. But all of a sudden Munro knew and that’s why I paid him to keep quiet.”

Kit wanted to ask what that secret was, but she felt like she was treading on thin ice with this woman. One wrong question and Trisha Finnegan would fall apart. “You donated to his campaign.”

Trisha laughed again, the sound more hysterical than it had been before. “I did. That was how he started getting money from me. The first payment was to his reelection fund. He shouldn’t have had one because he couldn’t run again. He’d just been reelected to his second term. I told him this because, contrary to how it might seem at the moment, I’m not stupid.”

Trisha was a retired schoolteacher. She’d won awards for exemplary teaching twenty years before. “You’re far from stupid,” Kit said.

“Thank you.”

“What did Munro say when you told him that he shouldn’t have a reelection fund?” Connor asked. “Because we’ve been wondering about that.”

“He said he was going to run for state senate and to just donate the money without arguing or he’d tell my husband.”

“Did it stop there?” Kit asked.

“No. It went on another three months.”

Kit tensed. This could be what they needed to know. “How did he contact you?”

“Texts to a burner phone, supplied by him.”

Kit nodded. “How did you make the payments?”

“Put the cash in a locker at the bus station the first time. Thenat the gym another time. The third—and last—time, it was at a train station.”

So the location did vary, Kit thought. Veronica hadn’t lied about that. “The gym? Which gym?” Because that was weird. If Veronica was picking up the money, that meant she’d have to have access to the gym’s locker room, which meant she was a member of that gym, too.

“The Beachside Athletic Club. That was a last-minute change. I was supposed to use the train station that time, but I was contacted and told to use my gym locker instead. That I should give them the combination to my lock. So I did.”

That was the same gym Connor went to. Where he played squash, of all things.

“How did you manage to stop paying him?” Connor asked.

Another bitter laugh. “My husband finally served me with divorce papers. He cited infidelity, but not with Brooks Munro.”

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