Page 39 of The Hard Way

Rhonda furrowed her pretty brow. “Tim?”

“Yeah.”

“Why? What are you thinking?”

Zeus tapped his clipboard. “One of the questions on the list.”

“People loved him. His marriage wasn’t so good. That’s not a secret, but I wouldn’t call Nancy his enemy. She just…”

Thor cocked his head, focusing all of his sparkly attention on her. Oh, I knew all about being on the other side of that look, feeling mysteriously eager to tell him anything. “They weren’t getting along?”

“Nancy and him weren’t right for each other. I know she loved him in her own way—she’s a good person, but…they weren’t intellectually compatible, I’d say.”

Sweet Rhonda Broom. She didn’t want to say Nancy Zietlow was stupid.

“Was their marriage actually in trouble?” I asked.

“There was some thought she was having an affair—a rumor. Tim knew about the rumor—some friend of his told him, which was so insensitive. The man was fighting cancer, you know? So that was extremely demoralizing to Tim. It made it hard to focus on his battle. But he didn’t want to stop working. Honestly, I know pancreatic cancer is nasty, but he was turning the corner. He’d just gotten a really positive blood report. He was determined to fight the cancer and get their marriage back on track, and suddenly he gets sick from that cheese?” She sighed, this time not so silently. “He just didn’t have the immune system left to fight it.”

“We know he ate the cheese that made him ill at home, but did you witness him eating cheese here ever?”

“Are you kidding? I would kick it out of his hand if I did. A man in his condition isn’t supposed to be eating soft cheeses. He showed me the list. I mean, I love the Sunny Sisters, but that cheese—they sold bad cheese. It’s really sad. Those girls have had a bad time, but they shouldn’t have put people’s lives at risk to make their bottom line. I’m so off of their shit.” She set down the pen. “I know you’re investigating this from their side, but they really do need to answer for what they did.”

“What were the affair rumors?” I asked, trying hard to stifle my anger.

She shrugged. “I’m not the person people gossiped to about it. I wouldn’t think it was very entertaining or interesting, being that I was his friend. And his friend who told him didn’t even know who it was. Just a bunch of accounts of Nancy Zietlow and some guy out at a pub out near Moose Lake. He wasn’t sure whether to believe it.”

“Did you believe it?”

She cast her eyes downward. “Not for me to say. They just shouldn’t have been married, though. That’s the bottom line.”

Zeus set a card on her desk. “Thanks. We just needed the lay of the land. Appreciate it.”

She smiling, looking from Thor to Zeus to Odin and finally to me. “Insurance investigators.”

My face blazed. “Thank you.” I led my guys out the door and away from pretty Rhonda.

“What’s your impression?” Odin asked as we drove away. “You know her.”

“Insurance investigators,” I mimicked. “So that’s where you’re keeping the hot guys.Three tens and a dorky two—interesting!”

“You think that’s what she meant?”

“Um, yes.”

“But you don’t think she was hitting on us.”

“No.”

“I shouldn’t think so,” Odin said.

“Why, because she’s married?”

“No, because she was in love with Tim Zietlow,” Odin said.

I nearly spit out my soda. “What?”

“Now that you mention it, I could see that,” Thor said.

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