Page 42 of The Inmate
My jaw drops. “I… it… whotoldyou that?”
He lifts one of his dark eyebrows. “A few people, actually.”
“Shit,” I mutter under my breath. “Okay, look… I mean, yes, I might have said that. As a joke. I didn’t say it toDawn. I just… I was making a joke. You know, because she liked turtles so much. I didn’t do it to hurt her feelings.” I dig my fingernails into the palm of my hand. “It doesn’t make me a terrible person because I made one joke.”
“Of course not.” But there’s something in his voice that makes me think he believes otherwise. “So are there other jokes you made about Dawn?”
“No. I mean, I don’t remember any.”
“Did you invite her to office parties?”
I blink at him. “Yes, of course I did.”
“Because several people said you deliberately kept her from going to workday parties…”
“I did no such thing!” I burst out. “I always sent out an email to the entire office. I wouldn’t exclude Dawn on purpose.”
“Did she come to the parties?”
“No, but that’s not my fault, is it?” I plant my hands on my hips. “Was I supposed to give her an engraved invitation?” I glare at him. “What are you accusing me of, exactly?”
He cocks his head to the side. “Several of your coworkers felt you were bullying Dawn Schiff.”
This time my jaw feels like it’s about to become unhinged. “Bullying Dawn? Are you serious? Who said that?”
“I’m not at liberty to say. But it wasn’t just one person.”
“They’re lying.” I can feel a fleck of saliva fly out of my mouth as I spit out the words. “I never bullied Dawn. We’re not inschool. What does that even mean?”
He frowns. “It means that there was a pattern of cruelty to her perpetrated by you.”
“A pattern of cruelty?” I can’t believe my ears. “Because I made ajokeabout her?”
“Because you excluded her from company events. You kept her out of meetings. You damaged her personal property…”
“I…what?” My head is spinning. “I never did anything like that. I was nice to her. Nicer than she deserved.”
“Nicer than she deserved? What does that mean?”
I immediately regret my choice of words. “I just mean Dawn was strange. People didn’t like her. But I tried to be nice to her, okay? Maybe I made a couple of jokes about her behind her back, but so did everyone else. I neverbulliedher.”
Santoro gives me a look that makes me think he doesn’t believe one word I’m saying. I wonder who told him these terrible things about me. Probably somebody who’s jealous of my sales record.
“Just because Dawn was different,” he says, “you didn’t have to be cruel to her.”
“I wasn’t!” Tears spring to my eyes, and I struggle to keep them from rising to the surface. “Ask my boss. Seth Hoffman. He’ll tell you I was nice to her.”
Santoro’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. “Seth Hoffman? You mean your married boss who you were sleeping with?”
Okay, now I feel like I’m about to keel over from a heart attack. How does he know about that? I get that he’s a detective, but it seems out of the scope of the investigation into the disappearance of a completely unrelated person. “Did Seth tell you that?”
“No. He only said nice things about you.”
“So who told you I was sleeping with him?”
He hesitates a split second. “Dawn wrote about it to a friend in emails we found in her computer.”
Oh God.
