Cindy wiped her shoes and followed. She caught up with Heather in a nicely appointed room full of antique furniture. Cindy had always favored character over bland conformity. “You have a beautiful home.”
“Thank you.” Heather sat on a wingback chair, and Merv started to sit beside her.
“If you wish, Mr. Wainscott, you can get back to whatever you were doing when I arrived,” Cindy said. “I just need to speak with your wife.”
Heather giggled. “Whatever he was doing. That’s a funny one, dear. All he does is putter around since he retired.”
“It’s not puttering.” Merv puffed out his chest.
“What do you call a new hobby every week? First, it was carpentry, then making specialty lamps. These days he’s trying his hand at pottery.”
“It’s called expanding myself, Heather.”
Exactly like Grams and Pops…Her grandfather had his various hobbies he tinkered with that drove her grandmother crazy. “Excuse me, but if we could discuss what I came here for…”
“Merv, leave us,” Heather told her husband, and he complied. “Sorry about that old buffoon. What is it you want to know about the days I worked for Hanson?”
“You worked on the top floor with three other secretaries. One of them was Susan Crawford. Do you remember her?”
“Susan? Oh, heavens, yes, I do. We were great pals the whole time she worked there, even for a while after. We’d fallen out oftouch, though, in the years before her… Well, I still attended her funeral. Such a tragic situation that was, leaving her young son behind.”
Cindy pulled out her notepad and pen, thrilled this woman’s mind seemed so clear. “It was indeed. Then you were friends when Susan became pregnant?”
“We were.”
Cindy noted the change in Heather’s demeanor. How it had transitioned from open to shut. “Did she ever say who the father was?” While Cindy had that answer, she wanted to pry what she could from Heather and, ideally, gain more clarity on how the relationship had started between Susan and Timothy.
Heather shook her head. “She told me she didn’t know.”
A small note in her voice gave the woman away. “You didn’t believe her, though, did you?”
“Not really.”
Cindy could push Heather harder to try to squeeze out what information she was holding back. But there was something to be said for a less aggressive approach, or the scoot around. A label her training officer assigned to slowing down the questioning with an eye on the long-term. She’d switch tacks for now and circle back. “Did she become pregnant before she left Hanson?”
“I’m not exactly sure, but she changed. She became quiet and withdrawn.”
Cindy wrote that down. Sometimes detours paid off, and it was curious where this one would take her. “Which wasn’t like her?”
“Not at all. She usually had a bubbly personality, an extrovert, making friends with everyone.”
“What changed?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Any idea why she quit her job?”
“She told me she wanted a change, but again, I sensed there was more.” Heather’s gaze drifted to the other side of the room, leaving Cindy’s eyes.
“Such as…?” Cindy held her pen poised over the page to record the woman’s response.
Heather took a staggered breath. “I don’t like to speak ill of the dead. But maybe she did get pregnant before leaving. She was showing within a few months after she quit.”
Cindy’s best friend welcomed her first child last year, keeping her apprised every step along the way. She started showing around four months. The timeline with Susan was easy to calculate. She wrote,Likely pregnant when she quit!in her notepad. “Going back to the father, do you think he was someone from work? Someone she might have wanted to get away from?” Again, she was digging to see if she could pry any more out of Heather to get a deeper sense of Timothy Hanson and the relationship between him and Susan Crawford.
“I suppose it’s possible.”
“Any guess as to who? Do you remember anyone who showed a special interest in her?”
