“Onyx wouldn’t do this.” Would he? He did like to play games, but slashing tires didn’t fit him.
“You have a sexual relationship with him?”
I blinked. “No.”
“Have you had one?” he pressed again.
“Why?”
The officer looked to his colleague and then back at me. “You’re an attractive woman. You tell me you have a tense relationship with a work colleague; usually, nine out of ten times, there’s history. You work with him. He has access to your office, your purse. He has access to the surveillance . . .”
“Are you implying he therefore has access tome?” I asked him incredulously.
“You have lingerie on your bed,” the female officer spoke softly, “in your size. It’s possible you know who came into your home, someone you have history with.”
“I can assure you that Onyx Santo is not creeping into my home and leaving underwear on my bed,” I told them as I stood. “What else do you need to do here tonight?”
The two of them looked at each other. “Well . . .”
“That’s it?” I asked in surprise. “Don’t you need to get fingerprints or anything?”
The fact that I knew he was trying not to laugh at me made me angrier. “Um, no.”
As the female officer talked me through the process of what would happen next, I watched the male officer look around my house.
“You think it’s Onyx?” I cut the other officer off. He opened his mouth, and I stopped him. “Trust me, this wasn’t him.”
“How can you be so sure?” he asked. “You said you got dead flowers. He was with you in the elevator when you got them. Did he see you open them?”
“No, I was in my car.” And then I thought about it. “He did see me after it. I was in my car, and he beeped his horn at me a little later.”
“So he saw you, or he wanted toseeyou?”
Clenching my fists, I nodded. “Yes, he saw me. I had been in the car for some time. He’d left and come back again.”
“Okay, tonight, the car — he was with you?”
“No, I was alone.”
“But he turned up?”
This was completely wrong, but I couldn’t deny it. “Yes.”
“Was he the one who told you the cameras were down?” he asked me.
“Yes.”
“And he left you?” He cocked his head to the side.
“I told him I could handle it.”
“So he knew your house was empty while you handled it?”
“I guess.”
“And that seems okay to you? For him to leave you when you have four tires slashed, which are done obviously with ill intent?”
“We’re not close. I told him I would handle it, and I did.”
