Page 72 of Last Girl Standing

Delta uttered a sound somewhere between a laugh and a moan.

McCrae wanted to burst in and help her. Held himself back, barely.

Quin said, “Dr. Stahd’s nurse called the department as well, as soon as she heard. She reiterated what the other women said about the state of your marriage.”

“Candy. She has a husband and two teenage boys, all of them over six feet, which kept Tanner from hitting on her. Or maybe she says he went after her, too. I don’t really know.” Delta gave a twisted smile. “They’ve all believed our marriage has been on the brink of failure for years.”

“And has it?” Quin was relentless.

“I don’t think so.”

McCrae started, “If Delta—”

“I didn’t stab him!” Delta broke in. “I didn’t. Someone tried to kill my husband, but it wasn’t me. I’ll sit here and answer any and all of your questions, but it wasn’t me. When Tanner wakes up, he’ll tell you.”

“If he wakes up,” said Quin repressively.

McCrae said, “I’ll call the hospital and get an update.” He wanted to glare at Bob Quintar. It wasn’t like the man to barrel forward so coldly, but then anything that had to do with his daughter’s death, even peripherally, stirred an unresolved anger and sadness within the man, and Delta, by virtue of being one of Bailey’s classmates, a member of the Five Firsts, had reminded him acutely of his loss.

But that didn’t make Tanner’s attack Delta’s fault.

“We’re going to find out who’s behind the stabbing,” McCrae added.

Quin nodded in agreement. “I just have a few more questions.”

“More?” Delta asked wearily.

McCrae thought the same thing. It was clear Quin had purposely left him out of the day’s developments. Maybe he felt McCrae was too close to Delta to be impartial. There was wisdom in that. He probably would’ve done the same thing if the situation were reversed. But he didn’t have to like it.

“Mr. Sutton said you were flirting with a man at the bar at the Bengal Room,” Quin said.

She drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. This, then, was what had made her go pale, McCrae decided.

“He was flirting with me,” she corrected. “It wasn’t anything. I really wish Coach would’ve said hi to me. I would have liked to see him. He didn’t come to the reunion. But now . . .” She swallowed, and for a moment, McCrae worried she was going to break down, but she tightened her lips and her resolve, straightening in her chair.

Quin switched tactics. “You said you and your husband love each other, but you seem to believe your husband has been . . . unfaithful?”

“Marriage is sometimes . . . challenging. But we love each other,” Delta said doggedly.

Quin was doling out rope, letting her pick up the slack, before he yanked the line tight in the hopes of pulling her off her feet. He’d done the same thing with suspects more times than McCrae cared to count. But it just felt wrong, him doing it to Delta.

Delta, however, gamely went on with what she knew about her husband. She seemed to want to set the record straight about their relationship. Mostly Tanner stayed late at work, and therefore she saw him only a few hours a day. She’d caught him once on an angry phone call, but when she’d asked him about it, he’d said that people expected instant miracles, and the only one who could do that was God, so she’d assumed it was one of his patients complaining about the results of his diet supplements. He’d also had several meetings with his father, one of them spilling out of the clinic and to their house after an apparently contentious encounter. The two Stahds hadn’t spoken for nearly a month afterward. Delta didn’t know what the rift was about but felt it had been over Tanner’s running the clinic differently from what the older Dr. Stahd had started.

Quin asked a few more pointed questions, one being if Delta were dating anyone outside the marriage, to which he got a resounding “No.”

Quin finally turned to McCrae and asked if he had any further questions.

“I

think you’ve about covered it,” he answered dryly.

A few minutes later, Delta got up to leave. McCrae rose from his chair to drive her home, but she waved him back down, telling him she’d catch an Uber or Lyft.

Clearly, she’d had enough of the West Knoll PD.

“Oh, one other thing,” Quin added as Delta was at the door of the interview room, her hand already twisting the knob. “All three of your husband’s employees said the knife he was stabbed with came from your house, but you said you’d never seen it before.”

She stopped short, her back to them. A long pause and then a small voice, “I don’t know . . .”

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